As you've no doubt discerned by now, I am sort of in love with the "DayZ" mod for "ARMA II." Still, like many of the more intricate gaming experiences that I tend to gravitate toward, I am conscious of the fact that getting up to speed with it can be a real chore for those who aren't intrigued enough by the premise to dive into the various web sites, message boards and YouTube channels that have sprung up to help new players fill in the blanks.
Of course, with "DayZ" still in Alpha and changing once or twice a week in significant ways as the development team hits its stride, it would be impossible for me to produce and maintain a definitive guide, but I certainly don't mind sharing a few key tidbits from my experiences with it that I think most newcomers will find useful:
The Basics
There are a few key concepts at work in "DayZ" that serve to differentiate it from not just other zombie/survival-horror games but most first/third-person shooter games in general.
First and foremost, in "DayZ" death matters. If you die in the game, your only option is to start over with a new character. There is no re-loading from a save, no way to be revived by another player. If you die, you're dead and that's it. This adds a level of drama and impact to the gameplay that is rarely seen in gaming and almost never seen in mainstream or casual titles. "DayZ" is the hardest of the hardcore and that's part of what makes it great.
This is accomplished by all the data regarding your character being kept on a centralized server that tracks your position in the world, physical wellness and inventory of items. Because all the individual "DayZ" servers pass data to and from the global server, you can start playing on one server and move to another without losing any progress. This is especially handy if you find yourself on a server full of bloodthirsty player killers or stranded in the middle of the night with no means to light your way. Because each "DayZ" server's time of day is based on the server's clock, you can almost always find one where the game is at the time of day you'd prefer, be it dusk, dawn, midday or midnight.
In true survival-horror fashion, resources such as food, water, weapons, ammunition and medical supplies are a rare commodity in "DayZ." Even more problematic is the fact that you'll be competing for said resources with any other players who are on the server with you. As such, it can be a good idea when you're first starting out to choose a server that doesn't have many people on it and only supports a low total number of players. This will minimize your odds of running into unfriendly players looking to kill others and take their stuff or finding that the areas you search have already been picked clean since it can take a while for new items to appear in the world once a particular part of it has been looted.
Your First Character
Surviving in "DayZ" takes a combination of skill, experience and luck. As a result, you should go into it expecting to die at any moment, be it by zombie onslaught or via a nefarious player. The key to success in the game is to learn as much as you can from each of your initial, typically-brief lives. While it's true that being careful and concealing yourself while moving slowly through the game world will generally extend your life, such tactics don't do much to prepare you for situations when you inevitably are discovered and have to fight for your life.
Given all that, I recommend focusing on building a few key survival skills with your first few characters. These activities will almost certainly get you killed but they will also give you a deeper understanding of the game world and its mechanics that will make it much easier for subsequent characters to live longer.
Task 1: Learn How to Engage Zombies
While the other players on your server represent the greatest potential threat to your character, zombies are the most common enemies you will encounter and you will have to deal with them to access areas of the game world that contain supplies vital to your survival. Things to know about zombies:
- There are several different types defined by their movement. There are walkers, which walk relatively upright, hoppers that hop along in a lurching crouch, crawlers, that belly crawl along the ground and a few other subtle variations.
- The default pistol (Makarov) will kill any zombie in three body shots or one headshot. Because ammunition is extremely limited, headshots are the preferred way to dispatch zombies.
- If you back away from a zombie as it attempts to hit you, it is far less likely to land a hit or cause bleeding if a hit does land. This technique involves a bit of timing, so you should practice to get a feel for it. Also, keep in mind that zombies attacking from the rear or sides will still be able to hit you. As such, it's a good idea to run away from the zombies and get them all following you from the same direction before turning to face them and beginning to back away while shooting.
- Zombies can NOT run or move quickly indoors.
- Zombies can NOT step over waist-high obstacles that you can.
- Zombies CAN climb stairs and ladders.
- Zombies will generally not react to you if you are hidden (crouched/prone) and silent (still/slowly moving) unless they come into direct contact with you; however, some will occasionally, randomly detect you simply by getting close.
- Zombies will react and be attracted to loud noises such as gunfire or players running through an area.
I recommend using your first character or two to seek out large groups of zombies and engage them to get comfortable with scoring headshots on the various types. Just keep going until you run out of ammo and let yourself get eaten. You'll be able to respawn with a new character, a fresh batch of ammo and a better sense of how to deal with the undead.
I also highly recommend taking some time with these initial characters to learn and embrace some of the keyboard commands unique to "ARMA II." For example:
Left Shift - Double tap to toggle walk/run. Hold for opposite of current default.
Left Alt - Hold to turn head independently of body and weapon aim. Double tap to toggle.
z, x, c - prone, crouch, stand
q, e - lean left/right. Double tap to toggle or double tap while prone to roll
v - Step over waist-high objects (fences, etc.) - There is no jump.
g - Inventory (Gear)
o - Watch (if you have one)
b - Binoculars (if you have them)
mouse wheel - contextual action menu (includes weapon switching). Use mouse wheel to choose action; left mouse button to perform action; right mouse button to cancel.
right mouse button - double click for iron sight, single click to toggle, hold for zoom
, - previous chat channel
. - next chat channel
/ - chat
Needless to say, there's a lot to learn or re-learn if you're used to the conventions of most other military-themed shooters.
Task 2: Learn to Scavenge
Beyond surviving immediate threats from zombies and other players, you will need to constantly be on the lookout for items that will help keep your character healthy and better able to survive. In general, you will need to find weapons, ammunition, food, water and medical supplies just to get by. Beyond that, there are some very beneficial if not essential items such as watches, binoculars, maps, compasses, GPS and artificial light sources that can go a long way toward making life a little easier if you're lucky enough to come across them.
For the "cheaters" among you, there are plenty of maps of the "DayZ" game world available via a quick Google search. Some of them even indicate the specific areas of the map where you're more likely to find various items. With such a tool, you can quickly identify the nearest town relative to where you've entered the game world, which most servers will indicate when you first appear in game, or you can simply find a road and accompanying road sign to get your bearings the old fashioned way.
Assuming that you're not using any mapping aids, here are some things to keep in mind while scavenging:
- Most items in the game are contained within buildings but not all buildings can be entered. If you see a building from a distance and you can't see into any of the windows, you likely can't enter it. With a little practice, you'll be able to identify enterable versus non-enterable buildings from quite far away as there are only so many building types in the game and many of them have a fairly distinctive look.
- A lot of things just make sense. You'll generally find food in grocery stores, medical supplies in hospitals, better guns and ammo in military bases and so on. Churches are also often good sources of all sorts of random items but beware as the obvious locations tend to attract the most players and those specifically looking to kill others.
- Small, enterable buildings like shacks and outhouses often have very useful items for new players such as ammo, bandages and handguns with a bit more kick than the default Makarov. Enterable outhouses can often be found amid clusters of buildings that themselves can't be entered, so keep an eye out for them.
- Barns are a great place to find decent primary weapons such as shotguns, sniper rifles and crossbows. Making your way inland from the coast with a new character to a barn is a good first step as you'll likely find some useful items along the way and end up acquiring a more effective weapon around the time you have things worth protecting.
- Larger cities tend to have more and better loot but are also hotbeds for resource competition and player killing. I recommend avoiding them unless you're in a group of friendly players or have sufficient gear to defend yourself from a distance.
- There are several larger backpacks than the default Coyote Patrol Pack available at various locations in the game world.
- Take some time to familiarize yourself with the unique and (let's face it) clunky inventory system of the game. On the inventory screen, numbers to the left of an item indicate instances of it lying nearby that can be picked up and numbers to the right indicate the total of that item you are carrying. Use the right arrow to pick stuff up and the left arrow to drop/remove it. You must also double click backpacks to open (add/remove) items from them and specifically close them to return to the main inventory screen. After other players and zombies, the inventory system is the scariest thing in "DayZ." :)
Task 3: Make Friends
Even exceptionally skilled and experienced players will find it difficult to survive in "DayZ" for any length of time on their own. Solo fights against large numbers of zombies or unfriendly players are a very risky proposition and rarely end well or prove worth the effort despite being downright exhilarating when they're happening.
In my experience, "DayZ" is a game that's best played with friends, be it an organized group of real life friends on Teamspeak/Ventrilo or a pick-up group formed by players who ask questions before shooting. With the former, you're more likely to experience success, but the latter can be interesting as well since there's always the threat of someone deciding to turn on the group or individuals within it.
In any case, some of the most interesting and compelling aspects of "DayZ" are the interactions both positive and negative that you can have with other players, so do what you can to experience those aspects of the game while still having fun with it.
Of course, the problem with trying to play "DayZ" with friends is that the game world is huge and new players can end up entering it at opposite ends. This is where having a map can be really helpful as you'll want to get to where your friends are as quickly after entering the game as possible. You might even consider letting your character die and making a new one if you start really far from where you're trying to meet up with others. You can lose hours in this game just getting from place to place, so you have to consider how valuable your time is versus whatever items you might have, which will always be the same for a new character.
Once you've found each other in game, you will note that even a party of two is much more effective at pretty much every aspect of the game. Groups of zombies become more manageable and solo enemy players are much less likely to bother with a pair or trio of players unless they have a significant tactical advantage.
There is no such thing as being "safe" in "DayZ" but being in a friendly group does a lot to add to the overall fun of the experience, assuming that you get along well enough with your "friends" that you're not constantly threatening to kill each other over cans of Baked Beans. :)
There's a lot more that I could get into but as I said in the last post, I have my own game to work on so I'm going to wrap this up. Hopefully this will be helpful to those of you who are getting started with "DayZ" and encourage those of you who are on the fence about it to give it a try. It really is one of the best, most amazing gaming experiences I've had in a long time, even in its current form and I'm extremely excited to see it evolve now that "Bohemia Interactive" (the developers of ARMA) have gotten behind it.
