and so began my first few faltering steps into the immersive world of DayZ   SA(Stand Alone)

For those of you who don’t know what Day Z is, here’s the wikipedia description of the game

DayZ is a multiplayer open world survival horror video game in development by Bohemia Interactive and the stand-alone version of the award-winningmod of the same name. The game was test-released on December 16, 2013, for Microsoft Windows via digital distribution platform Steam, and is currently in early alpha testing.

The game places the player in the fictional post-Soviet state of Chernarus, where an unknown virus has turned most of the population into violentzombies. As a survivor, the player must scavenge the world for food, water, weapons, and medicine, while killing or avoiding zombies, and killing, avoiding or co-opting other players in an effort to survive the zombie apocalypse.

I downloaded DayZ about 7 days ago and have already spent about 36hrs thus far wandering around the Chernarus Map, searching for the tools needed in order to survive the Virus, the Zombies and the other players.

When you initially spawn on the map or re-spawn after you die in-game, all you have is the clothes your standing in ( a t-shirt, jeans and a pair of trainers) and a torch with battery, everything else you have to find, first thing you need to do is to dump the torch and battery (this gives you room in your clothing to store the real essentials for survival), then its time to start searching food and water, though clothing and bags/rucksack’s and any mêlée weapon should be picked up if you find them :

Food and Water are needed to prevent your player from dying of starvation and thirst, they also give your player with energy for the long runs he’ll have to take to navigate the map, it also helps with your healing factor if your attacked.

Bag/Rucksacks give you more storage slots for the loot you find

Melee Weapons are important in killing the roaming Zombies on the map and can be used to protect you from other players in the game who might want to rob you.

All new spawns occur on or near the East/Southern Coast lines and usually within visual distance of a large town or city, these are the places new spawns usually head first off to get loot, but be warned, you won’t always be the first to visit and the place could have already been picked clean and valuable time can be wasted searching the towns/city’s buildings, also if that’s not bad enough, there maybe other players (commonly know as bandits laying in wait to ambush the unsuspecting traveller (or in your case the newly spawned).

I find it always best to search for outlying barns/warehouses for loot and then in land following one of the many roads dotted along the coast road, these usually will lead to or near to town’s/city’s further in land which may not yet have been looted or if looted, still have some bits and pieces laid around, this is usually the case, as bags/rucksack’s can only carry so much loot.

Again be aware that others may also be searching these towns/city’s, so keep your wits about you, if you do come across other players while travelling or looting, you have 4 choices, avoid, communicate, kill or Rob :

Avoid :

I tend to avoid large groups of players (3 0r more) who are working together, as at least one of them will usually have a gun and there now trying to find food and water for 3 people and if you’ve got food and water, there bound to want to get their hands on it.

Communicate :

I find that newly spawned players and solitary survivors, preferably unarmed are the one’s to start saying hello to/getting directions from and maybe pooling your resources with, he may have more food than he needs and you may have more drink that he need’s, nothing like a bit of bartering to get what you both need to survive.

Kill:

Those who fire first or are seen to be bandit types, anyone who try’s to rob you.

Rob :

Think this one’s fairly obvious, you’ve got a gun and he hasn’t, he has supplies you need and he has a choice, hand them over and live, or be killed and have his body looted by you, think most of you would comply with someone with a gun in real life and this tends to be reflected in the game, though some people may well just attack in the hope of catching you off guard, after all, they’ve invested alot of hours in finding those supplies and either way even if you kill them, there still going to have to start from scratch again, so what have they got to lose.

If your still alive after getting kitted up with food/water, bags/rucksacks, clothing, medical supplies, mêlée weapons, your next goal is to head to one of the Airfields or military compounds dotted around the map to find gun’s, though civilian guns can be found in some of the bigger city’s and towns, but you have more chance finding military grade weapons at these other locations, you’ve also got a chance of finding military clothing, so you can get camo’d up, reducing you chances of getting spotted by other players/bandits.

If you’ve managed to get all the aforementioned equipment and survived any encounters, it’s now a game of survival, seeing how long you can stay alive/interact with other survivors/meet up with friends.

The game is still in the Alpha stage of development and more is being added to it all the time, so the game is constantly evolving at present, the roles of players will slowly evolve with more specialisations available, so who knows where it will eventually lead, but be ready to lose alot of time in this very immersive game.