Day Z

[Clavus]

Day Z is a zombie mod for Arma 2 (that military simulation game). Rock Paper Shotgun does a way better job about what makes Day Z so amazing so go read their articles. It's like the Minecraft of zombie games: it allows you to experience your own stories in a large world that you can explore. Since it's build upon Arma 2 it has a huge map.

HOW TO GET AND INSTALL DAYZ (now stop asking)

And now time for my own story.

This is actually my second character (first one spawned during the night and that SUCKS. Got raped by the horde). Took me long enough to log in (since the mod is still in alpha and Arma 2 isn't a beacon of stability either).

Time for some images:

The town where near I started. Didn't have any activity or loot, so I made my way to the forest inland.

Found myself a CZ 550 rifle. Not much ammo but the scope is very handy for scouting areas.

After a long hike in the woods I finally found a town. Of course zombies started appearing once I got near. Stealth mode engaged...

Got myself surrounded while in a barn. If you're sneaky enough it's not hard to go around zombs, just don't let them pop up behind you.

You'll find yourself in this position a LOT.

Here is where shit started to get real. I wanted to get to the red building (it appeared to be enterable) but I never got near it. Got chased out of town by a horde of zombies. PROTIP: to shake of a horde of zombies, run up steep hills under such an angle that you're still running, but since zombs are zig-zagging they'll get slowed down by the steeper part and you can outrun them. You really can't outrun zombs anywhere else it seems.

That cursed barn... now this is a story you'll have to sit down for. The first time I got near this barn I sneaked in quite easily and found some nice loot. There was even a Winchester rifle, but I didn't want to trade my CZ 550 for it. When I sneaked out, there was a water pump so I refilled my canteen. At that moment using the magic of fuckingh4cks a zombie somehow noticed me from behind a fence and charged at me.

And so I ended up running up a hill again with 4 zombies behind me and wasting the last bit of pistol ammo I had. They were too close to shoot with my CZ 550. Took me almost 10 minutes but I managed to shake them off after running in a very large circle, and ending up back at the barn with the Winchester rifle. I immediately switched it for my CZ 550, since I prefer having a gun with ammo than a nicer gun with just 4 bullets. Again, I sneaked away from the barn.

But just as I got past a nearby cow which was still happily eating grass between the zombies, I heard shots behind me. Someone else. Note that up till this point in the game, I had not encountered another player yet. I circled back around the barn a bit to see what the guy was doing. He was in the barn, where I left my CZ 550. I was anxious to say the least. Then I spotted him, and he spotted me. He had a bandit skin.

I should've shot him but I didn't. I stood up, and ran. And he started shooting at me with MY GUN. 2 missed shots. I was zig-zagging like a motherfucker over the field but then it hit me. The bullet that is. I started bleeding everywhere and by the time I managed to dive behind a tree and bandage myself up my blood level was at 2500. Yeah, 9000+ is normal. My screen started seeing white (as shown in the screen shot) with the occasional blur. Also I passed out.

When my character got back up on his feet I had two choices: either keep running or go back. I decided for the latter. I circled further around the barn so I ended up coming from the direction I originally came from. I still heard a few shots but then it got quiet. I tried to peek inside the barn and right at that moment I passed out AGAIN. When I came back to the world of the living a few seconds later, I finally saw the guy. He was making a dash for the field.

Here I was, with a blurry uncooperative screen, and a target over 50m away. I fired.

It was a Winchester alright. The guy was in blind panic and once he went prone in an attempt to get cover, I finished him off. Paypack motherfucker! I looted his body but he didn't have much on him. Some pistol ammo but that was it. I was low on blood and starving too.

And thus my great journey started in an attempt to survive. My screen was blurry, had no colour, and I passed out every few minutes. The problem with the screen is that I ran into zombies a few times because I could barely see anything at all. Luckily my Winchester proved to be a faithful companion.

I must've traveled around for over half an hour. And by around I mean round because I ended up back at that fucking barn. Que headdesk.

And then, I again, heard firing. Shit, deja vu. But I didn't have much choice. I didn't want to be in this state forever so I once again, entered the barn. It was full of dead zombies. Maybe they were killed by that bandit I offed earlier but then again, the new guy I was staring at had an AK-47.

He didn't notice me. I was literally 5m away from him and he was just staring at the ground like a dog sniffing a trail of loot. He wasn't a bandit so that was comforting at least. He went outside and ran in the direction of the forest. I decided to follow him. Luckily he seemed to be in crouch-sprint so I managed to overtake him and get his attention. I offered to trade him some stuff (mostly bandages and some ammo) for food. He could only provide me with a bag of cheetos but at least it was better than nothing. I was no longer starving and my faith in the playerbase of this game was restored. However my blood level was still barely enough to keep a hamster alive.

And thus, after saying goodbye to my trading partner, my journey through the forest continued. I decided to run in a straight line in the hopes of ending up somewhere (I still have no idea where I am). Eventually I ended up at a few houses at the top of a hill, where I managed to attract a lot of unwanted undead attention. End of the line I thought. My Winchester disagreed. With my last pellets I offed about 8 zombs. The 9th zombie tasted the pistol ammo I took from the bandit's body.

I crawled into one of the houses. Tired. And there it was, a big czech backpack. With nothing in it. Oh well. And so my story for today ends. I'm in the middle of nowhere. With a screen that looks like someone's rubbing yoghurt over it all the time. I've passed out about 14 times by now, with my bloodlevel being around 1300. One clip of pistol ammo. No food. Last canteen of water.

But very much alive.

[Clavus]

Also I totally found out where I am now. The 6th screenshot was taken at Solnichniy. However when I spawned today I was no longer on the brink of death (blood level 11000 wooh) and I was in the top right corner of the map at Willow Lake. Still have my stuff though.

[BlueYoshi97]

Day Z = Daisy = AWESOME

[Guest]

I'll buy it for myself later, I can see Clavus and NECROSSIN are having fun :3

[Baron Baconeer]

Dear lord this looks amazing.

[Hundred2]

I should try this, I sure hope Arma II's terrible netcode won't get me gangraped by zombies.

[Silver Dot]

i want arma now

who am i kidding i've wanted arma forever

[Silver Dot]

i want arma now

who am i kidding i've wanted arma forever

[Raptor]

Amazing! Will try it out tonight, after installing Arma 2

[Clavus]

DE2 is the most stable server I've found yet.

Also my 8 hour character with enough blood for a nest of mice just got killed when I entered a city and some douchy noob came up behind me.

Me and Necrossin have been trying to meet up for hours now but we keep spawning across the map from each other

[Clavus]

Found binoculars.

Damn handy

I've also become the god of fire.

[Clavus]

Was doing great. Until I got ambushed by a sniper at the church in Pogorevka. Dead before I could react. Lost my matches, watch, toolbox and hunting knife

[NECROSSIN]

Found bandit's tents with Clavus and stole all their meat. Feels good

-----------------------------------------------

And few hours later, while trying to get away from zombies - we entered huge military base full of idiots with sniper rifles on roof, so they started shooting at us. That was some intense shit and server crashed after that.

Edited May 26, 2012 by NECROSSIN

[Navo]

The funny thing is that that red building actually isn't enterable.

[rui_troia]

This gamemode sounds interesing. Opinionons anyone?

[NECROSSIN]

This gamemode sounds interesing. Opinionons anyone?

You buy it

[Clavus]

Today I've been murdering. I've tapped into sniper skills I didn't even know I had. It was an amazing day. Sit down tight because this is quite some text

Holiday picture I made of Necrossin on our trip to the north west. Wish you were there!

So first our situation. Me and Necro left off from Elektrozavodsk after a few failed attempts at surviving. We headed north west until we reached Novy Sobor, were we briefly met up with Gordon Fleeman (username 'Gebruiker' ingame right now), he had to go afk so couldn't follow us right away. From there we headed to Stary Sobor and that's when all hell broke loose.

A little drawing of our situation.

Actually we didn't just 'head' to Starry Sobor. We ran because Necro managed to attract a zombie horde of about 12 zombies (1). I ran with him to attract some of the zombs away from him so if you saw some idiots with a whole posse of zombies running behind them on the FR2 server saturday afternoon, that could've been us.

But now for the fun part. We had heard shots coming from Stary Sobor. So I did what any full-on retard would do: I ran right into the thick of it with the horde hot on our heels. It appeared some Russians were looting the military camp at Stary (2). They did not look very pleased when we came in and ruined their party. Necro and I ran around their location, trying to stay out of their fireline but close enough to make them panic from all the running zombies. They did start shooting at us at some point and someone hit Necrossin in the leg, but there were no more zombies on his tail at that point so he had time to bandage up and get away safely. Meanwhile I got out in the field and managed to drop the last 3 zombies that were still chasing me.

Necro and I just lost a horde of zombies by ruining the day of a group of Russian players and firing only a few shots in the end. And we survived. We felt awesome. I circled around the back and took out my CZ 550 hunting rifle, overlooking the camp we ran through like headless chickens minutes earlier (3). I noticed one of the Russian guys trying to shake off some zombies. He turned around to shoot at them. Then I put a bullet through his chest.

Didn't count as a kill but the zombs ate him soon after. I felt like a douche

At this point I went to lunch (IRL) and after that I logged back in. Gordon Fleeman met up with me while Necrossin had some logging issues and couldn't join us further, so it was me and Gordon. He suggested we lay a trap at the camp. So he faked some distress calls saying he was at the military camp, while we positioned ourselves up on the hill again (3). We waited and waited until someone in chat took the bait.

Didn't quite go as planned. Suddenly a guy popped up BEHIND us and ducked to the ground while we quickly turned around to fire. And so concludes the story of how I got a bandit skin and Gordon Fleeman got a silenced MP5. The guy also had a load of tools so that saved me a lot of trouble looting houses. Being an asshole is rewarded well

Still there was a problem, this guy was part of a clan. According to chat, his buddies weren't too happy (especially that we stole the uber-rare silenced MP5 from his body). Lots of angry Russian in chat. We knew better than to stay where we were so we moved across the field, sticking to the bushes on the edge. Then we circled around a bit and lay down on the edge of the tree line (4). The hill where we committed our faithful murder was now just at the horizon. Somehow we knew we had to look back.

And there they were. Two guys circling around the top of the hill trying to find the body, and its killers. We were just observing them but then they did something odd. They went north, into the open field. They didn't seem to be noticing us but I grabbed my chance. They were like 300m out yet the first shot went right through the back of the head of one of the soon-to-be-poor bastards. The other guy panicked and ducked to the ground, but with the next shot I relocated his jaw.

Lots of angry Russian was muttered in chat that day.

Bandit skin is really good camo actually. Also Necrossin translated the chat text there for me: ""if gebruker (forgot the actual name) will call for some help - its an ambush, these guys have sniper rifles"

Gordon and me went further north from there on out, with a plan to loot Devil's Castle. In the end we did, but there wasn't much interesting going on. No players around to confront either. And thus we decided to circle around the north of the map and go to the airfield.

The day was running late. The server time is realtime so when it gets late in the evening it gets dark ingame. Gordon brought in a friend of his whom was wielding a crossbow. Server crashed for a moment, we logged back in and I lost my bandit skin. We were at the north of the airfield now and ready for some night ops.

Using my rifle scope I spotted a sentry holding watch on top of the radio tower. I took the shot.

That shot is in my top 3 Day Z experiences

We went up and down the airfield further but encountered no other players. Lots of sneaking around while looking like (and most importantly: feeling like) a team of badass covert operatives though.

And so, after going around the airfield twice, sitting through multiple rainfalls, and luring one poor player into a trap (less crowning moment of awesome but we still wanted to shoot something tonight), getting some awesome loot (I now have the biggest backpack and an M16A4 ACOG) we got a bit bored.

And thus we lit up the radio tower.

[JuanTwoThree]

that was awesome clavus

[Mathijs1996]

I'll buy it for myself later, I can see Clavus and NECROSSIN are having fun :3

And for me ofc.

[Navo]

You're a bandit = You're an utter and utter dick that doesn't play the game properly.

Edited May 27, 2012 by Navo

[Toxik]

Will just Arma II work or do you need Arma II: Combined Operations?

[NECROSSIN]

Combined Operations

[Dr.Minky]

This looks pretty cool, I must say..

[Clavus]

You're a bandit = You're an utter and utter dick that doesn't play the game properly.

I'm very much enjoying myself so far. Plus I got great stuff and I've survived for hours on end now.

[Silver Dot]

Is DayZ free? Dumb question, yeah, but I've seen mods like this that cost money.

Also, if I buy ARMA, will you guys play with me :3

Edited May 27, 2012 by Silver Dot