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Day 1
Just in case any of you have seen the other thread about this game and are wondering what all the fuss is about, I thought I might just give you all a wee taster of what we’re getting up to. To start off though I’ll give you my first impressions of the game itself from the few hours we’ve managed the last couple of nights.
It’s obviously made on the old ARMA 2 engine, which was itself renowned for bugs, and these bugs are still prevalent in game, however in the short time we’ve been playing they have not detracted from the overall experience the mod provides, and to date have provided more comedy moments than frustrations. The interface in the game is complicated, and also seems a little buggy in places, but once again it’s something you’re able to put up with given the mod itself. The graphics are far from spectacular, but they’re not terrible, and you’ll find plenty of foliage to hide in, camouflage works, and the map is huge (225 square km I believe). There’s plenty of detail to the towns in game, and plenty of atmosphere created by weather effects, as well a day-night cycle that mimics real time. The only downside regarding the day-night cycle, and us choosing a UK server to play our first game on, is that it doesn’t mimic seasonal changes, so last night when I got online at 8pm, it was already dusk, and so most of our game was played at night. This did create a different atmosphere in the game though, and provided us with better cover while we learn the game basics. Flares also look awesome at night 🙂
So having spent Monday frustrated by a DDOS attack on DayZ’s central servers, which were preventing people from connecting to games, we were itching to get on asap last night. I arrive in from work at half seven and find Streff and Stalker already online, playing on a server best described as UK8. Ben had been on a couple of hours already and had worked out some of the basics which he brought me up to speed on, in particular crouch walking, and slow walking to avoid zombies detecting me, as well as some guidance on inventory use.
Orientation.
We don’t start with a map when we first spawn, but the game does at least tell us in which area we’ve spawned, which allows us to use an online map to orientate ourselves. I was near a town we refer to as Electro, which happened to be where Ben was as well, so I had to then find some landmarks to see where I was exactly, given the town is pretty big. I was led to believe this was the most frustrating stage of thegame, the first hour, when you have no idea where you are or what you’re doing, but I found it was no bother at all given a little assistance, and it felt like I’d been Para dropped in behind enemy lines somewhere and having to orientate myself to find the rest of my unit.
I look around, and light’s fading fast, so I’ve really only got a short time before I need to start using my torch, which can be seen from miles away, so I had to be quick in gathering some Intel. I’m at the shore (as is standard when you start), and run up to the crest of the small hill up ahead, crouch down then scan the scene in front of me. There’s a wooden house to my left, and the top of something just visible through the trees to my right down at the bottom, and I can just about make out a couple of zombies moving about, though they’re far enough away not to worry. I see there’s no way into the house, so I move down towards my right and when I emerge from the vegetation I see it’s a petrol station, and as I get closer there’s a road visible over the crest of a verge, and a railway track now visible at the bottom of the hillside I’m sitting on. Perfect, three clear landmarks should be easy to locate, and right enough; on the map it took less than 30 secs to find my spot. I communicate this to Ben on TS and he starts making his way my direction, as he’s not far. While he’s doing this I start exploring the petrol station to see if I can find a weapon. I luck out on this and pick up a fireman’s axe, which is perfect for killing zombies and not attracting attention.
Now I seem to be doing a good job here not aggroing any zombies, but all of a sudden I have to go prone as in the distance I see a player running straight towards me, with a small hoard of zombies chasing him. He runs straight past me but doesn’t see me in the long grass, however a couple of the zombies do and I have to start beating them back with my axe. I’m struggling with this due to the nature of the inventory, but Ben is able to explain on TS and while doing this I learn that the guy who came running past, and who was still running through the buildings at the station (trying to use the AI pathing to deaggro the hoard) was in fact Ben himself. Ok mission accomplished, we’ve met up and I’ve scored a couple of kills, but I notice I’m bleeding and have lost a 3rd of the blood I’m permitted to lose before dying, so need to apply a bandage, and fast!. Done, and while things have gotten a little greyer, I’m good to go.
We still need to find Streff at this stage, but he’s played the game briefly before and seems to be doing ok, making his way over the 2 or 3km from the next town, so Ben and me start looking for buildings to loot. We start moving along the track and see what looks like a factory with a walled enclosure, so move over to investigate. It’s now getting quite hard to see given the light, and while increasing the gamma settings help a little, we have to be very careful not to walk straight into a zombie, or worse, another player with a weapon. We understand at this stage that all players spawn at the coast, and while there’s a long coastline, Electro is one of two large towns side by side, which see a lot of player activity, and even though players have the same survival goal as ourselves, they are unpredictable, and so we assumed all would be hostile– as we generally plan to be ourselves. It was for this reason then that we froze in our approach to the walled enclosure when we notice zombies running around, clearly aggro’d, which means another player has stirred them up.
We fan out in opposite directions, trying to getting a better view on both the enclosure and the buildings on either side, and Ben catches sight of someone on the roof of the one opposite me, with direct line of sight on me, except for the fact I was in the shadows. Right ok, he looks preoccupied by the Zombie hoard, so we find a way into the first building and scooped up some food and drinks, though still no weapons, but suddenly we become aware of a sound in the distance which is approaching us, and before we’ve time to react, headlights are blazing across the enclosure in front of us, and directly into the room we’re looting. We go prone in a corner, but surely they saw us? We’re cornered, so if they want a fight and if they’ve got guns, game over. They carry on though, through the courtyard, and while it stirred up some more zombies, we’re able to make a dash for it out of the factory area and start moving closer into the town itself, but at least away from the noisy vehicle.
Out of the frying pan into the (friendly) fire.
We’re aware of some high loot buildings in the town, in particular a hospital where we should be able to find blood packs to help replenish what I’d lost earlier, so that becomes our target, while still waiting for Streff to reach us. Given that we’ve already seen 3 people we have to take it quite slow, while trying to keep ourselves under the cover of walls and out of the streets as much as possible. Occasionally we hear a gun shot, sometimes close, sometimes in the distance, but nothing yet in our immediate vicinity, however it does tell us there are armed people about. We come across several dead players on our route, and see the occasional player being chased by zombies in the distance, only once near us, but we’re quite comfortable by now in how we’re managing our movement, so this doesn’t cause us too much trouble. A lot of the buildings we try to get into have been wired off, indicating player activity, but also making it difficult for us to get inside without exposing ourselves to snipers, so pickings are slim, however at some point here Ben does come across his first gun, an Enfield rifle. We’re creeping round towards a mosque, when we hear Streff on TS advising he’s reached the petrol station, and had spotted the jeep we’d warned about earlier. It’s still raking about, so he ignores it and follows our directions into town. We use the train tracks as a landmark to guide us in, and while we almost miss each other in the dark, we’ve finally linked up. Ben has also found a crowbar and some random items which we’re able to equip Streff with so, with 3 of us now, we go back in the direction of the mosque, all of us armed, though hardly armed to the teeth.
By the time we reach it we’ve heard a lot of gunfire and we’re worried because the entrance has been wired off. The gunfire was definitely close, and one or two of the shots we thought pinged off stuff in our direction, so we quickly change our plan and head to a fire station on the other side of the mosque, and take a route that puts the mosque in between ourselves and the direction the shots were coming from. Suddenly we spot a player straight ahead of us and it looks like he has a gun. Through the darkness we just about see the building he’s gone into and, without any hesitation, Ben’s off in pursuit. Something went wrong here though as in trying to equip his gun Ben instead throws a Red flare directly at his feet and lights up the entire street where we’re standing in an eerie red glow (something we assume, and later confirm, is visible for literally miles around). We abort the mission immediately and scurry back into cover and as far away from the incident as we can manage before rechecking our maps and coming up with a plan B, while trying to stop laughing. Sometime around here Streff needs a smoke, so I alt tab to check the map on google, while Ben scouts around the immediate area. Unfortunately I encounter what appears to be a bug, as I reopen the game and my axe is “firing” out of control, with Streff lying there in a very dead looking pose. “Oops”
I love it when a plan comes together, it’s just a shame it never happens.
When the laughter calms down, we find out that Streff hasn’t respawned too far away and we meet up again after about 10 minutes with the help of some torch signals, and we’ve also come up with plan B by now. The map suggests there are some high value loot drops on the other side of the train tracks, so we head over that direction, run around a few warehouses, but sadly find nothing of use to us immediately, although there were jeep parts which are high value later in the game. We move along what is the shoreline, but as zombie aggro is fickle, or because we’re still noobs, we pick up some from a few, who swarm towards Streff, who doesn’t have a replacement weapon yet so I have to charge in to kill a few with my axe. While we got ourselves clear of the aggro, Streff’s leg had been broken and Ben has to use his morphine to put him right. We’re now very low on medical supplies, and still only have the one gun between us, which tbh we’re hesitant to use due to the noise it makes and being low ammo, so this leaves me as the only one able to fight off Zombies. Given my earlier injury and us picking up more aggro across this stretch, of what was starting to look like a dockyard, I end up with a broken leg myself but as we’ve no morphine left, I’m now stuck, unable to walk. I can crawl but basically we now need supplies or I’ll be dead.
There’s another hospital in town, but it’s some distance away and there’s still a chance we could find something near by, so Streff and Ben start searching, with me hiding at the back of a warehouse, with a view of the large loading area in front of it. They’re still scavenging when out of the corner of my eye I suddenly spot a player, and give the shout on TS.
“Guys, player spotted, across the yard, under thecrane”
Both of them immediately stop what they’re doing and ensure they’re in some sort of cover, while trying to get line of sight on the yard. I’m watching him from what was probably quite an exposed vantage point, but it was pitch black and I’d have been difficult to see in the prone position, whereas the other player was silhouetted against the skyline.
“He’s gone prone, and it looks like he has agun.”
“Quick Ben, he might have some morphine, can you get ashot on him?”
Again, without hesitation, Ben gets into position and lines up probably a 100 metre shot with his Enfield. We collectively hold our breath as he takes the shot, and there’s relief as he hits, but the guy’s hard to see while prone, so Ben fires a couple of follow up shots to ensure he’s dead. Brilliant, a genuine pvp kill, now let’s see what he has in his kit. Ben runs over after checking around briefly for snipers, but sadly he doesn’t have what we need.
This now leaves us with a dilemma, I’m on the ground unable to move really, and to have a chance of recovery Ben and/or Streff will need to reach town and secure a morphine injection, then make it back to me, taking them through an extremely busy area, while I’ll be totally exposed to any players or zombies in the meantime. Given the shots Ben just took, we’ve also now alerted people that we’re nearby, and it’s a safe bet there’ll now be a bandit group heading our way.
When we weigh up the value of saving my life, we realise that I don’t have much to lose in terms of kit, so we make a decision to put me out of my misery and give Streff a chance at some hatchet revenge. While I’m trying to give him my axe though, a bug intervenes and causes Ben to lose part of his own kit while looting the other player (I suspect this may also have been part caused by a lack in our understanding of how to store kit in our backpacks). Almost immediately after this happens, we hear avoice on the wind, indicating someone in “direct communication” with us. The voice is distant to me, but the mechanics of direct communication mean he’s within 80 metres (with the voice increasing in volume up to maximum within 20 metres range). He’s threatening to shoot Ben, and teasing him slightly, though Ben can hear him better than I can from my distant vantage point. Ben’s lost his gun in the inventory mess up and neither me nor Streff have much to work with anyway, so we change our plan here and Ben dances around to get himself shot, and I discover there’s actually a respawn option, so take it, while I think Streff does the same. We’ve had a taster of the game, so we’ll start again from scratch in hopefully more lucrative area.
The story goes on for this evening, with more adventures around the other big town nearby, called Cherno, where we have greater success, along with another comedy death, but it would take another 2000 words to describe, so I’ll leave it there for now 🙂 We log off for the evening, with Streff suffering from hypothermia after a swim in the Russian seas, and passing out occasionally due to lack of blood, but Ben and me are both well stocked, near Cherno dockyards. Tomorrow promises rich pickings as we’ve got medical supplies as well as a main gun and pistol each. We’ll save Streff and then go hunting for some targets 🙂
Who says a plan ever comes together though……
Haha good stuff. I generally steer well clear of the big towns as i always find trouble. Best bet is to head north and look for deer stands which can contain some really nice guns. Barns are also great for finding lower level guns like the winchester and enfield and churches are good for general gear.
That’s what we’re doing tonight actually Gary, exploring the wilderness for the first time. If you fancy joining us, we’re on ts 🙂
A cracking evening of gaming , synchronized leg braking , myself nearly fucking everything up by not knowing how to epi pen in the dark with zombies trying to eat my brains and Alzir managing to survive with just 200 health after this event .
Tonight we respawn in Cherno and have the joy of trying to get out of there without being shot or eaten . fun times.
sounds a great game, are the zombies AI controlled or other people? Also i assume from the write up that you can play as a small squad together like you have done or a lone wolf; maybe befriending peeps then killing them etc.
@=XDC= wild egg tamer wrote:
sounds a great game, are the zombies AI controlled or other people? Also i assume from the write up that you can play as a small squad together like you have done or a lone wolf; maybe befriending peeps then killing them etc.
Yeah, all the zombies are AI controlled, the towns are pretty packed and if you get seen, you will quickly end up with a horde on you. You can run and attract more, you can fight and lose valuable blood (life) or shoot and waste ammo and attract more zombies. The consequences of being seen by zombies are severe enough to make you go to great lengths to sneak by them.
Other than that, it’s totally free form, you just have to survive. You spawn with nothing, you want to find a weapon (normally an axe as it’s silent) and a few bits of food and water to keep you alive. It’s your choice who you kill, obviously you can all join the same server (max of about 50 players) and meet up and choose not to shoot each other. Anyone else you see it’s a good idea to kill so they don’t kill you. Also when you die, you lose everything and spawn again.
There is also a great tool matt mentioned called “direct communications” It allows you to communicate with anyone in a certain radius of you. So if you can see someone, you can talk to them verbally and plead with them not to kill you/ransom them/threaten them etc.
It’s still in alpha stage but it’s one of the better game I’ve played in recent years, can’t wait til it’s finished. The situations are so tense. I can’t count how often I’ve nearly shit myself playing it, hearing a russle in the bushes etc. What matt described above took place over 2-3 hours. We’ve played much more together since then and it’s been an absolute blast. We’re slowly getting kitted out, I’ve been alive for almost a full day, I’ve got a sniper rifle, a few medical and food supplies and the tools needed to survive from the land (such as axe for wood, matches for fire, knife for gutting animals etc).
You need
ArmA II: CO (got mine on steam)
DayZ Mod Files http://www.dayzmod.com/Worth adding that if you already have arma 2, then all you need is the mission pack operation arrowhead, then the mods files.
Day 2 – Fail
Ok this won’t be as long as yesterday’s marathon but given the interest shown so far there are likely to be one or two others considering getting this so I’m trying to give as accurate a feel for what you’re getting into, including all the negatives. I’ll start where we left off after my last post, as it’s a short story 🙁 It’s also worth noting this was on Wednesday night, and the marathon post actually took a couple of days to produce so any reference in it to “yesterday” was Tuesday – not that it really matters, but last night was Day 3 and has been referred to already by CC above :)…more on that to follow but that was awesome.
Ben has been off this week so when I got in from work on Wednesday evening, he’d already been on for an hour or so and had managed to equip himself even better than the night before. He was however off galavanting in the hills, and while he was still fairly close Cherno, where I was spawning, I would be on my own for a while. Streff was due on later, so we couldn’t wander too far, however we had discovered from some research overnight that there was an airfield a couple of km to the west of Cherno which was a good place to pick up some military gear and prepare ourselves for the big test of an expedition across the wilderness. That was the target for the day.
Given the night before had started late for me, I’d had little experience moving in daylight, and even though I was quite well equipped, I hadn’t really used a gun before in the game, and I was perilously short of medical supplies. I started moving as I had the night before, but zombies could see me much easier and I was jumped on within the first few minutes. I fought them off, but I’d been injured by the attack and was losing blood. You need to apply a bandage fast if you’re to survive, and while bleeding can apparently stop randomly, in this case I didn’t. I made it as fast I could therefore across town to the supermarket, in the hope of finding a bandage, but instead passed out and bleed out on the floor. Game over, for that survival attempt anyway, so back to the respawn screen I go to start again from scratch.
This was the beginning of a difficult relationship with the respawn screen for the night, as I was struggling to cope with zombie aggro in daylight. I did eventually get the hang of it, but I’d always do something careless and get myself killed, especially since I was quite often trying to enter some high value loot areas, which spawn harder zombies, and a lot more of them. I did make it to the airfield a couple of times and met my first friendly survivor unaffiliated with XDC, who ran out of the bushes and on seeing I had an AK, shouted he was friendly over the direct comms channel. I was curious so I indicated I was also friendly, and we had a wee chat and went about our business with me covering him from a couple of zombie attacks. Unfortunately our affiliation ended prematurely when the server crashed, but I have him on steam friends now and plan to meet up again sometime.
In the meantime, Ben and Streff (who was now online) were not having any better luck, and while they’d occasionally get themselves equipped, they’d end up killed by either players at Cherno hotspots, or from careless zombie aggro. Ben met a couple of friendly players, but a few hostile as well, and on this particular night I was unable to survive long enough to meet up with either him or Streff. We were also all experiencing regular connection issues with us having to reconnect to multiple servers, multiple times, and enduring long loading times while the central servers appeared to be suffering another attack, but this could possibly be normal performance as pc gamer had warned us about this. It wasn’t all frustrating, but it certainly wasn’t as good as the night before.
It ended up on a fairly positive note with me able to skirt around Cherno to the hospital in the North, where I was halted for a while by a sniper in one of the apartments covering the hospital entrance. It looked initially like I might be able to sneak into his building when he had turned his gaze, though I only had an axe to chop him with, but Streff will attest to my axe wielding skills in close quarters. I also felt it would be worth the risk given my recent spawn and the fact he was clearly equipped with a nice rifle. So I creep up towards the building, keeping to the shadows and was half way across the road when I saw his silhouette move back into the stairwell of the building overlooking the street I was on, so I went prone in some bushes. It was pitch black again, but I’d seen him using flares as I’d moved up here, so I thought I was surely done for. I then saw him make a move and climb up the ladder onto the roof, which gave me my chance, and I ran to better cover. As the guy was on the roof and I was relatively safe, I called it there for the evening since it was getting late.
Next day will see me respawn in a very nice but high traffic area which sees a lot of bandit action, where risk is high alongside potential high rewards. In the meantime Ben and Streff managed to equip themselves well at the airfield and are about a kilometre out from me. If I can secure some good medical supplies from the hospital, we should be able to find me a weapon at one of the military outposts in the hills to the north, then we can hunt some bandits…..
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