While we are by no means expert players, in our ineptitude, we have learned a few basics to pass along to the community.This Day Z Guide will help keep at least some of your 12000 points of blood within your veins, and alive long enough to grab some decent loot along the way. Survivors craving incessant boner-inspiring action may find following this guide a bit of a challenge, but they will live longer if they do.
Server
To start, pick a server with a decent ping and as few players as you can find. This will give you the best odds of avoiding marauding bandits looking to humiliate you and pillage your precious baked beans. Don’t worry about losing your stuff if you hop servers; Day Z has a master server which stores all player data, so when you leave the game, your gear and location is saved for when you return.
Spawn
Watch the bottom right corner text to read the name of the area you spawn in. This is important for the navigation section.
You will spawn somewhere in thesouth end of the Zombie infested island of Chernarus, likely right by the beautiful Ocean. If everything is dark as the inside of your ass, then it’s night time. Press Z to go prone and then head into your graphics settings again and turn the Gamma all the way up so you can see. Everyone does this, don’t feel bad. If it’s day instead and you are fond of sight then lucky you. Day Z has a true day/night cycle and, if you can bear it, night time is far safer, allowing you to quickly cover ground unseen.(Update- You now start with a flashlight in your toolbelt to deal with increased darkness levels, see ‘Gear’ below for access instructions).
View Distance
You wont be able to survive very long if threats see you before you see them. Head into your in-game video settings menu and turn up the view distance as far as your computer’s hardware will allow. For other graphics settings tweaks see the helpful links section at the bottom of this guide.
Indicators – On the right of your screen you will see indicators providing you with information on your current well-being and stealth level. For well-being, Green is best, flashing red is worst. For stealth, more bars = less stealth and more getting yourself killed.
Replenishment - To return these to nominal the following actions can be performed.
Body temperature – Stand by a fire or inside certain larger buildings to warm up.
Thirst – Drink water, (from your flask), or Soda cans.
Blood level – Eat tinned food for 200 pts and cooked meat for 800 pts or get a friend to give you a blood transfusion to restore 12000.
Hunger – Eat food….
After you have checked out the HUD to your satisfaction, press the X key to enter a more stealthy crouched position, and cautiously move into the trees/cover. Press and hold left shift if you need to walk extra stealthily or go prone with the Z key.
Inventory (Gear)
Press the G key to bring up your gear.
At this point you will have just enough kit to get you to a town or farmhouse to get more. To interact with an inventory item either right-click on it in your inventory, or when it can be used it will appear in your scroll menu using the mouse scroll. To pick up items look at them until a gear icon appears then press the G key, the items will appear in the inventory item list with the number on the left instead of the right indicating they are on the ground. Click the arrow key to transfer them into your inventory.
What many beginners don’t realize is that you can also transfer stuff to your backpack. When you look at gear on the ground then open your inventory, you can highlight your pack and click the open pack button to view the space in your pack instead of your clothing/person and put stuff in there instead.
A related tip – Don’t go for a swim because if you go too deep you’ll lose all your gear.
Navigation
Figuring out where to go is half the fun of Day Z. The other half is walking for hours and hours to get there. Priority number one is to find a good online map since you wont have one in-game yet. Whiterazor’s is a good beginner map and the one wasder uses for locating all the zombie brothels hidden around Chernarus. Once you are semi-comfortable you can look at dayzmap.info also. Now, if you followed the instructions in the spawn section and read the text in the bottom right of the screen during spawn you will have the name of the place you spawned near. Look for this name on the map index then head to the grid reference on the map. Once you know where you are roughly, you have to use landmarks such as the coast, roads and power lines unless you have a great sense of direction. If you are on the south coast then keeping the coast on your right as you move will be East, etc.
The coast is Noob alley and is very dangerous. If you are using it to travel stay in the woods alongside it and try to stay as hidden as possible. Understanding contour lines is very useful when you find yourself lost in the forest. Basically as contour lines get closer to one another the terrain is getting steeper. Alternatively, if you find a watch you can use it to tell whether the sun is rising or setting and navigate by the sun.
Priority number one should be finding food,ammo and bandages. (Update- Since you no longer start with a sidearm, arming yourself is now paramount). These and other supplies spawn in buildings which are unfortunately where zombies also spawn and bandits hang out. In general, the better the loot point the more dangerous the area. If you want to survive, avoid Chernogorsk city, Balota airfield and the Northwest airfield like the plague until you are a stealth pro because these are extreme bandit areas. The market and office buildings within any large city are particularly hotspots for happy Bandits-gone-postal.
First Contact
After walking, crouching and proning around for a bit there will inevitably come a time when you run into an Ooi. Say it, Ooooeeee, kind of like the sound you would make during an enema. Anyways, your first Ooi, or object of interest, could be a building, zombie of some sort, player character – either survivor or bandit, or, if you are very unlucky, a bullet that you never saw coming.
Building- First ensure you are in a reasonably well-hidden area, and then hold down right-click to zoom in on the building a bit so you can see whether it is enter-able or not. The majority of buildings In Day Z cannot be opened, and thus not worth approaching, however, if you see a door ajar, or you can see textures through the windows then it is a ‘real’ building. After playing a little you will be able to spot which type is which quickly. Assuming the building is enter-able weigh the risks before approaching. If there are zombies crawling all over a single lonesome potty,(outhouse), it may be best to just avoid it altogether. Tall buildings can be the most deadly entities in the Day Z universe, many first time survivors have spent hours cautiously avoiding zombies and keeping out of sight of bandits only to fall to their death after a careless step on a roof or failing to mount a ladder successfully, leaving all their hard-won items on their motionless corpse. If the sever allows it, make sure you press Numpad Enter to use 3rd person mode when doing any building acrobatics; you can watch your steps and gauge distances better. Note that you shouldn’t be on a roof unless absolutely necessary because it makes you highly distinguishable from the background and an easy target for bandits.
Zombie of some sort (Zed)- You will probably hear him before you see him, making grunting noises, coincidentally also similar to the sounds of forced enema, that get progressively louder with proximity. I say him, because for some strange reason, all walking dead in this game are male… Not a single she-Zed, not one. There are no hot nurse zombies, no playboy bunny zombies, washing-my-underwear zombies or doing-the-dishes zombies. Shame on you developers for your blatantly exclusive sexism! Maybe they will have zombies that just inhabit the kitchen areas of buildings in a future update… Regardless, when you meet Zed don’t underestimate him because it will get you killed.
WTF!? Wait…This isn’t the kitchen!
There are three varieties of Mr. Z.
Walking Zed doesn’t just walk, he runs like a stallion. He isn’t your typical hobbling-along, dead-grandma style zombie. He is your, ZOMG!-I-havent-had-sex-since-all-the-women-died, 28 days later-style zombie. And he will rape you. So beware.
Crawling Zed is the ninja of the Zombie crew and crawls through the grass in complete stealth,well almost complete stealth; he still sounds like he’s getting enema’d, but he may catch you unawares. So don’t underestimate him either.
Hopping Zed, well hopping Zed hops, and is shit. Underestimate him all you like.
If you agro a bunch of Zeds, immediately crouch run to the nearest open door, stairway, or if you must, ladder; Zeds can only walk when in buildings or on stairways, which gives you a much greater chance to head-shot them.
Zombies will chase you to the very edge of Chernarus, so have a better plan than just running. Either use another survivor as a sacrificial lamb in your stead, or run up a very steep hill to put some distance between you and Zed.
Player character -It used to be easy to tell a bandit and a survivor apart, bandits just looked way more intimidating dressed in camouflage with a cool scarf-looking-thing around their face. Survivors look kind of like the pedophile you picture hanging around Chuck E Cheese trying to look subtle. In the more recent versions of Day Z however, players can pick up clothes/skins that they find and dress however they please, making the two classes virtually indistinguishable. As far as I can tell with most, if not all, of the skins bandits still have face masks on. Unfortunately if you are close enough to spot the mask, you’re probably about to die.
Basically unless you really need a blood transfusion, you should avoid other players at all costs, because unlike Zed, a player’s intentions are very hard to discern. A survivor who initially comes across as friendly and trustworthy may back-stab you at an inopportune moment if you manage to acquire good loot along the way.
If you manage to get close to someone you think is friendly,(within radio distance), you can communicate with them by pressing the period key repeatedly until direct communication is selected and then hitting caps lock for mic chat. Alternatively you may press the ? key and type your query.
If you find yourself under fire, don’t run. Drop immediately to the prone position and vigorously hit the Q or E keys to roll away to safety. Sounds idiotic, but it really is your best shot at surviving once you’re in this situation.
Bullet you never saw coming -If you die I’m dreadfully sorry about that but hopefully it just grazes you. Assuming the latter, the first thing is to get rolling like a donut into the nearest bush as described above. Once in safety bandage yourself as soon as possible. If you lose too much blood the following occurs-
- < 9000 – Susceptible to one shot knockout from zombies
- < 8000 – Color and sound begin to fade
- < 5000 – Random ‘falling unconscious moments’
- < 4000 – Black and white screen, loss of much hearing capability
- 0 – Player Dead
As you can see bandages are extremely important and can often be undervalued in favor of ammunition. Always keep at least one bandage in your direct inventory. Not in your ruck… YOUR INVENTORY.
Other damage effects include shaking/shivering which indicates pain, take painkillers for that, and if you find yourself unable to walk, you should take morphine from an auto injector. If you take damage you will see an icon on the right that looks similar to a broken bone. This is letting you know there will be a penalty if you disconnect. Basically to discourage rage quitting after being damaged by something, if you disconnect while the indicator is still up, the next time you join the server you will be unconscious and highly vulnerable for 3 minutes. Make sure you spawn in a different server and get to a safe area and bandage up before re-entering your ‘rage-quitted’ server to serve your penalty.
Zombie Economics 101
When you first meet Zed you may be inclined to fill him with lead. This is the wrong mentality to have. For starters this comes off a little rude, but more importantly it helps no-one. At it’s core Day Z is a lesson in Zombie economics; if you wanna be a ballin Day Z thug rolling in your Dubbed-out Gaz one day, you always need to maximize the return on your post-apocalyptic investment. You’re putting bullets in, what are you getting out?
Zed is an avid aluminum collector and since tin cans are pretty much all he carries 95% of the time, when you shoost him you’re basically trading valuable ammo for tin cans.
Rounds are precious, expend them wisely.
When you meet military zombies you may be able to justify their shooting as they aren’t as obsessed with tin cans and carry better stuff.
Well that’s basic survival down. We hope you have a great time playing, and if you need company in game and Zed just isn’t cutting it, join our steam group. We play almost every night 2130 PST.
Helpful Links
DayZ Wiki
Graphics Settings
Android Map App
Vehicle Spawn Locations
Building Loot Probability Cheat Sheet
BrokeBack Mountain
More Tips
Helpful Site
Tents
How not to play Day Z
