Out of Pod Experience

I've been playing a...

50 person-per-server, 100% open PvP, permadeath, zombie survival horror mod.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOMgm2KnSec



It suddenly occured to me that EVE players would probably love this thing...
It's called DayZ for Arma2:CO.

I have never actually played Arma2 so I can't comment on that, but the mod is a realism slanted shooter. No jumping, but you get standing/crouching/prone and a slow/fast version of each. You have a constant indicator of noise and visibility that goes up and down based on speed, position, and the surface you're walking on. Guns use iron sights.

The game is simply to survive.

You start with a pistol, a little food, a refillable canteen of water, and a pack that holds eight items on the southern costal edge of a gigantic map. You need food/water periodically, ammo is very limited, and the zombies are straight up 28 days later sprinters, though they slow down indoors and some are limited to hobbling/crawling.

You find supplies that spawn randomly inside buildings as you'd generally expect, hunting rifles and shotguns in barns, military weapons in military bases, food and handguns in stores and houses. However, the larger the urban area the more zombies!

HP is measured directly in blood, and you can be 'bleeding' to various degrees of severity that require you to stop moving and bandage yourself, which forms the basis of most combat: don't get hit, and in PvP it's good to just wing the other guy to take advantage of movement options. When below half blood your vision blurrs and hands shake, and if it's low enough your character will actually black out and fall for periods of time.

The second half of this shows you a guy who has found both a map and compass, to give you some idea of just how huge this area is (Skip to 15:00)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEpbBbU5jBA

Note: If you look up vids, they just recently upped the zombies drastically. Most times the server count shows 700+ zombies on the map.

The mod is in active development right now, so there are annoying parts. I broke my leg shutting a rickety old outhouse door the other night, and many ladders drop you to the ground also breaking your leg, which is almost impossible to recover from. Zombies sometimes step through walls with large windows or attack through the floor in multi-level buildings. Most bodies of water for canteen refills are broken and won't let you fill up, so they let you refill at the sea for now and soda is very easy to find everywhere which counts as water with no side effects even if it's all you drink. I figure those will get nerfed as water refills start working. It's very playable though, and very active. Lots of full servers every night.

Strong Russian/Military population... I killed a group of people the other night who were moving in tactical formation and covering eachother, and got cursed at in Cyrilic for the first time in my life as a nerd. I later died when I fired a looted sniper rifle near a city, and got zerged by a few hundred zombieswho heard the shot. Die and learn!

Google it!


You need Arma2:CO (29.99 on steam, maybe cheaper elsewhere if you want to wait for a box.)
Install it, and RUN ONE TIME each game in order, Arma2... OA... CO...
Then you download all the files from their site and install them under Operation Arrowhead/addons/@dayZ

E

I play at night mostly and was looking for a reverse time server (This game has realistic day/night cycles and at night it is blacker than the darkest depths of Shaniqua's empty box of newports on the 27th. Night Vision Goggles are hands down the rarest item in the game) and found I had decent ping (70ish) on FRENCH servers of all places. I went there and the server messages are in english, I get fantastic ping, the day cycle is just right for when I play, and everything loads quickly!

Very interested indeed.

I bet the game company are chuffed with that guy.

Same here. I saw some guy being all tactical and crouch-running, diving prone, and checking around rocks all carefully with his iron sights up... In the middle of a wide open field in broad daylight ... It made my brain hurt and I had to sneak up and kill him, which was of course hillariously easy.

Gained a bandit skin, wore it proudly, and never looked back. My only regret is that I feel like I have to drop the bright khaki coyote pack you start with, and all the pack upgrades are huge and khaki. The Czeck backpack is camo, but it's also tall when prone and darker camo than any area in the game. I tend to use just the Czeck vest pouch, as they are common and don't make my profile bigger or more noticable.

The servers have been wonky lately as they adjust things, so I've been playing it like a shooter and running around like an idiot blasting people and dying the last few sessions, but during my time off this week (I work weekends) I'll be trying to take it seriously and last a while.

I like to start on very low population servers and take my time finding all the tools and extra canteens so I can go into the woods and live off animal meat, and PvP at will and on my own time rather than as a neccesity before I starve/run out of ammo.

We've been talking about this on TS. I'm interested, but I expect it will frustrate me. I'm enough of a survivalist that should there ever be a real zombie outbreak, I could disappear into the woods with little preparation and survive. Everything I've heard about DayZ so far indicates it is designed to drive people into urban areas, which is exactly what I would avoid.

Woot. Patch update.
http://us.armafiles.info/DayZ_Changelog.txt



Called it.

You so can fill a water supply from the sea, you just can't drink it

How about a link?