A DayZ Epic – The 2nd Battle of Krasnostav!

Just a little background before I get into this. During the early days on our DayZ server, we split XDC up into pairs, so we could have someone to fight against while we build the server population, and also so that there wasn’t a massive “admin” group who’d crush everyone starting off. As the population has increased though, and several other groups have joined the server, we’ve started working more closely together. We maintain our own bases, of which there are several, but we’re always on discord together and sometimes come to each other’s aid. Anyway, our initial split has resulted in several large bases around the map occupied by XDC members, and one of these belongs to Crazy Hippo (and ZigZag when he’s able to play) in the town of Krasnostav.

A few weeks ago, that base was raided. They broke into his barn and cleared out what they could, he lost a lot of semi valuable stuff but luckily the raiders didn’t have enough explosives to break into the strong room section of the base, where his best gear was and also, crucially, where his land claim kit was. This meant they couldn’t complete a takeover of the base, which allowed the rest of XDC to rally around and help Hippo rebuild his defenses later.

Now the raid happened when we were all offline so the fun related to this this didn’t really start until a day or two later when Hippo noticed a land mine while leaving his resecured base. It was sitting right in front of the gateway, which caused him to pause a second, and at this moment he was suddenly shot in the face by a sniper. Stalker, Recoil, and myself were on discord with Hippo at this time, and so we set off to help defend the base from what we all assumed was a second raid. It would take us some time to get in position as we were all at our own bases several kilometres away, but we got there eventually and ended up engaging in what has become known as the Battle of Krasnostav. Now perhaps that deserves its own write up, but suffice to say we came off the worse in this fight. It was 4 of us vs 5 enemies, we got a couple of kills but only one of us escaped the battle unscathed and they held the field so got all the loot. We were a little bruised from this experience, but after we licked our wounds, we had to admit that it was the best fight we’d had in months, something our opponents also declared.

This post is not about that though; this is me setting the scene for the events last night when the 2nd Battle of Krasnostav took place! One consequence of the 1st battle that I must mention though, is that Hippo’s base wasn’t touched that night, but Hippo decided to move into my base in the North, where he would be less likely to be camped and where his stuff would be better protected.

As we are admins on the server, we’ve been able to piece together parts of this story from checking the log files this morning, I won’t mention enemy names in this but rather events we didn’t see ourselves in live play, such as when I stumbled upon the raid at Hippo’s base, a little before the 8pm restart, it had actually been in progress for about 90 minutes already….

I was on a little mission to resupply a coastal stash near Berezino when I heard some commotion in the direction of Krasnostav, which I decided to investigate. There’s a ruined castle SW of Krasnostav which overlooks the town, so I climbed out the tower there and pulled out the binoculars to survey the scene. Over the Western section of the town lay a toxic gas cloud, something which is a new addition to DayZ in the latest patch. Artillery fires these shells from the edge of the map, and shell lands randomly in a town somewhere and hurts anything or person caught in it, and it lies there for about 35 minutes. What was interesting from my vantage point was that there were dead zombies in the cloud, and active zombies to the West of it near Hippo’s base. I was 800 metres away, so this could mean only one thing, there was a player in the area.

Looking more closely at the base, I noticed that the outer gates on Hippo’s airlock were missing, and I just about caught sight of a truck sitting in front of the base. A few minutes later, I see a geared guy run out of the airlock onto a haystack to the side of the base, who then checked the gas, and had a quick look around the area. He looked directly at me on top of the castle tower, and for a moment I thought he saw me so I leave the tower, and find a new vantage point from the forest directly south of the base. It’s around this time that I ping XDC on discord to let them know the base is being attacked, but not many of us are on and I get no immediate response.

By now it’s close to the 8pm restart which would clear the gas cloud, and I wonder if the guys are waiting there for that before they leave. I already suspect the raiders live in a coastal town nearby called Svetlojarsk, and the gas is directly in the path they would take if driving back to base. For this reason, I move in quickly across an open field, using the terrain to block line of sight from the base, and aiming to go into a bar which is opposite the lane which leads up to the base. From here I plan to wait for the driver to get into the truck, and snipe him and any passenger, before they get away. I’m almost at this bar, just behind a haystack in the field when suddenly I hear a car drive right past me and up to the base. I can’t see too well from my position but I’m pretty sure I see 4 players get out of the car.

This stops me in my tracks, because I’m hidden for the moment but if they spread out, I won’t be hard to find. The one-minute warning about a server restart pops up around now though, and so I wonder if I can win the race to reconnect and use that moment or two to get myself to a less exposed position. The restart happens, but I hit the queue and I don’t get in on time. Check mate I think, as now I’m on my own versus probably 6 people and my only escape route is across open fields which are probably now being watched by snipers spreading out to cover the raid.

Just as I’m contemplating how to go out in a blaze of glory, Hippo logs onto the game and discord. He’s at the north west airfield but sets off immediately for Krasnostav, and after some discussion I decide to stay hidden where I am until he maybe scouts me an escape route. In the 20-30 minutes it takes for him to arrive, I hear the odd silenced pistol shot, someone shooting a rifle, and just a minute or two before Hippo reaches the castle I’d been in previously, I hear explosives going off in the base. That tells us that the raiders still haven’t breached all sections of the base, so we probably still have some time while they gather up the loot.

When Hippo reaches the castle, he climbs onto the roof and looks around. The truck is there but there’s no sign of the car and he can’t see anyone running around. He’s there for a couple of minutes on top of the tower when we both hear the boom of a high calibre rifle, and the whiz of a bullet which means it’s flying in our direction. I was behind the haystack, but behind me was the tower, further up the hill, and Hippo hears the bullet impact off a wall near him, so thankfully it was a miss. Now we know there are snipers, but they also know there is someone in the area, and I’m directly on the route people might take if they decided to rush the castle. Hippo is backing away from the castle, and I’m now forced into a decision, I either sit here and wait to ambush anyone running by, or I risk moving to a better position.

In the end I choose to move, I put my sniper rifle into my backpack, to decrease my profile, take out an epi pen, and aim for a small depression in the open field behind me. I pause for a minute or two though planning out in my head the route I’m going to take and replaying how it’ll go should I come under fire. I take a breath, I’m about to go, but then an explosive goes off in the base, which startled any action out of me for a moment. Maybe a minute passes before more explosions go off, and this time I go for it, pop the epi pen for the stamina boost, and run like fuck until I’m in cover. I reach it, without incident, phew. Now we’re both free and mobile, we come up with a cunning plan!

Hippo has a FAL, a top tier fully automatic weapon which packs a punch, I have an M4 variant assault rifle and also a silenced SVD semi auto sniper rifle. We are both now certain that the raiders are the guys from Svetlojarsk, as only they could put 6 people on the field for a raid, and so their most probable route home is down through the town and out to the east towards the coast. We decide that an ambush is our best play, and for this we select the super market in the town square, central Krasnostav. Hippo can sit there looking out the windows, with a wall behind him, and line of sight on the road along the square, while I sit further east behind a wall as you leave the main square. When Hippo hears a vehicle, he’ll open fire, ideally killing them, but at least causing some panic, potentially a crash, while I’m there further down the road to fire shots at the front of the vehicle if they get that far. 10 – 15 minutes later and we’re both in position, waiting patiently.

The wait is a long one and just as we’re starting to wonder if the raiders have perhaps left by another route, Hippo hears an engine and a red Golf flies down the hill and along the exact route we predicted by the supermarket! He opens fire, hitting at least one of the passengers, but the car carries on down towards my position. I see it crest the hill in front of me, and immediately open fire with the SVD…. One or two shots through the windscreen, I see at least one person in the car slump forward, three, four, five shots I lose count, I’m aiming for the engine block as it gets closer, I see another player in the car slumped forward in their seat as it passes me, then suddenly all of the tyres burst in front of my eyes as the vehicle flips forward onto its nose, spins around, and crashes back onto the road. I empty the rest of my SVD mag into the bodies, pull out my assault rifle and spray them all again, but it’s clear the crash killed all 3 players in there. They were super geared, but Hippo’s in trouble with zombies in the town, and we know there are at least 2 or 3 other players now coming for us, so I leave the loot and run for the medical centre in the town, which is where we’d discussed running to as an escape route.

On the way there we both realise that all the enemies will likely be running to where the car blew up, to get all that gear, and the terrain in front of us, near the medical centre, looks perfect for executing a wide flank around the south of the town and back in towards the base via the haystack I’d been in earlier. Without hesitation we go for it, it takes about 5 minutes to flank, and as we get close to the base Hippo takes a more covered route around the western edge of the town, while I rush across the open ground to the haystack, then to the base. Nobody takes a shot at me, which emboldens us further and we move onto the hill behind the base, where the snipers had likely been previously. We had hoped the truck would be sitting there, and we could have stolen it, but it was nowhere to be seen, so instead we take up a position each on the hill and look down towards the car wreck to see if any targets of opportunity present themselves.

We’ve barely got ourselves settled though when an artillery shell arcs overhead and explodes right above the West section of Krasnostav. There is now a gas barrier between us and anyone who might have gone to support the car, but we also think the truck was likely abandoned in that section of the town, so no one is going anywhere now with that loot for 35 minutes until the gas clears!

The next 15 minutes are uneventful, and we take stock of our situation. We’ve killed 3 of them, but the loot is still there on the bodies and it wouldn’t take them long to get back to the bodies from the coast if they suicide for new spawn positions. Hippo is low on ammo for his FAL, but other than that we’re in good shape.

We can’t see anyone in the town or around it, but after another 10 minutes or so, a ghillied sniper runs right in front of Hippo. Hippo takes a shot but the ghillie gets away through the bushes, and we lose track until I hear footsteps running near me. I don’t see the guy, but the only way he could have gone is up the hill behind me, so I set off towards the radio tower, thinking that it’s their best player looking for a vantage point covering the whole area (something he’s done a lot in the past). While I’m doing this, Hippo makes a daring move towards the base, running down the hill and in to the barn where the base is, in the hope he can find some ammo for his gun. In that he’s successful as the strong room which has his land claim is still intact, the raiders must not have had enough explosives!

Meanwhile I’m trying to find the ghillie on the hill. It’s a 15-minute game of cat and mouse, as we keep missing each other in the bushes. Every now and again I hear footsteps, and at one point I think I hear two sets of footsteps, but we’re on undulating terrain, the season is summer and the grass is high, so I never get eyes on them. While looking around though I come back towards the base where Hippo is waiting, and suddenly spot the truck through the gas near the water pump in the town. We were right, they must’ve been driving in convoy, and abandoned the truck to hunt us down, then the gas landed on top of it. Better still, Hippo can see the truck cabin from inside his base, through a gap in the wall.

We have spotted it just in time, for now the gas is clearing. I have line of sight on the road leading to the truck, while Hippo watches the truck itself, and we don’t have long to wait. I see a player and call it out, he runs around the truck and Hippo sees him climbing into the truck’s driver seat. His FAL is zeroed right on that position, one shot, boom, he’s dead. Nothing else moves, no sounds, no players, not even any zombies, and so it remains for about 15 minutes.

We’re not sure now what to do, but Hippo sees an AWM rifle on his victim’s back, and he wants it. We discuss laying smoke to cover a sprint towards the truck, but this is Hippo we’re talking about, he didn’t drink that whisky for nothing! He bursts out the front of the base and down to the truck, somehow reaching it without drawing any fire, pulls the body out of the cabin, cuts it up and takes the loot. Now we wonder, which way to drive. We agree that off-road to the south offers our best bet, as it’s away from any point we’ve seen players or action to date. Hippo jumps into the cabin, starts it up and takes off, but suddenly the hills come alive as two snipers light up the truck from somewhere in the trees near my position. I run towards the shots, but it’s so hard to see people I don’t see where they’re shooting from. Right then the ghillie we’d seen earlier breaks cover and runs down I guess for a better angle on the truck. I open fire from behind him, but miss, and he zigzags out of my line of sight. I loop up the hill and back around, catching sight of a second sniper closing on the spot I shot from. I lose him in the bushes before I can fire.

Hippo’s taken a lot of hits on the truck and has a bleed from one of the bullets, but he’s alive and out of the town. He says most of the loot from the raid is in the truck, including furniture, tents, and a barrel. I’m now on my own in this fight again as Hippo heads back for the Northern base, so I decide to get away too.

The enemy have lost a car, 4 players, and now their truck. We’ve lost most of a partially abandoned base, but they didn’t breach the strong room, so we can recover it later (which we do) and also we’ve also recovered almost all the loot. They have spent all their explosives for no gain, so I decide they aren’t getting a kill today, and I leave towards the west. The truck is such a slow beast that I actually arrive at the railway bridge south of Severograd at the same time as the truck does, even though I was on foot, I hop in and we drive safely back to base, laughing our asses off at our good fortune ?

• This topic was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Alzir.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Alzir.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Alzir.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Alzir.