Out of Pod Experience

Last night, I had one of the best experiences of emergent gameplay and I really wanted to share it in hopes that CCP might take note.

Dayz is a zombie apocalypse MMO which now features several maps generated and support by the growing community. Last night I looged onto a server and started my usual scavenging routine, hitting the north east side of the island looking for guns, food and vehicles. I ran into a guy who was in the middle of repairing a helicopter with a buddy. Typically I'm KOS any time I approach another player, but since I was a fresh spawn with no expensive or valuable gear I decided to team up and see what happens. It's rare to have a friendly in a ghuille suit and fully loaded, most people are too paranoid and will just shoot anything that moves to protect their loot. But not these guys, they invited me to team up with them and help fix the chopper, we scavanged the area found the rotor assembly, the scrap metal and a tool box and all of us worked together to get this thing up in the air, we even took turns fueling the chopper with jerry cans. It takes about 50 jerry cans to fully fill a chopper and typically you can fit 2 or 3 in your inventory, so as you can imagine having others helping is a huge time saver. We got the chopper up and running, and we started flying around. First stop the old hospital, we got some medical supplies, then flew over the town and blew up the entire complex, this prevents anyone else from getting medical supplies at this popular spot. Next we flew to the army base south east of the old hospital to stock up on guns and ammo. As we approached the base we noticed a truck and a player running around next to the truck. We started firing out guns from the air and took out the poor guy, death rained metal shells from above. We landed next to a helicopter wreck next, usually these spawn randomly on the map and are hard to locate but from 150m above ground it's much easier to spot wrecks. We landed and began looting the heli wreck. Found some nice guns with a scope and rounds of ammo. however, my friend did not notice that I was not inside the chopper and took off. Then I hear a sound, kind of like an animal, and footsteps. I'm on high alert, I'm looking around but I don't see anything, the footsteps are getting closer and closer, and I hear a growl almost like a tiger or a predator noise. I'm looking around 360 but nothing in sight, I stop to type to my heli buddies to come back and get me when suddenly a bloodsucker appears out of thin air. It scared the living **** out of me as it punched me and growled, so I start running away, and gunning right ata him, however as soon as I move 5 meters away he again dissappears, but I can hear him chasing after me and growling. Luckily my friends are on their way back in the chopper while I'm running around trying to avoid the bloodsucker. They land 50m in front of me and I run back to the chopper as fast as I can and we take off....

Next we head toward the army base like our plan origianlly and on approach we see a another heli on the landing pad. Awesome!!! Maybe we can get more rockets and ammo and switch into this new helicopter. However after we land we find that the heli is damaged and has no fuel, so we decide to once again look for heli parts and get it fixed up. We take off and start heading toward an industrial complex near the army base. As we approach we begin to slow down and descend. As we are about to land we hear gun shots. Then metal hitting against metal. Our helicopter is taking hits but no one is on the ground. We look up and in the distance is another heli!!! This pilot also has a team and is gunning for us in the air.

We start to ascend and try to get out of the line of fire. We are flying at full speed now and the other helicopter is chasing us and firing, we actually try to use an eve tactic and orbit so he can't track us, trying to get "under his guns" but this is all happening in real time while flying the helicopter. If you want to orbit you actually have to orbit. This works for a bit but he aligns his helicopter and aims and we start taking hits again, so our pilot starts to fly lower to the ground and under a brigde trying to avoid the gun fire. I honestly felt like I was in an episode of airwolf or blue thunder, we are shooting back at the heli, they are shooting at us and everyone is having a really great time. The pilot is flying fast now, taking sharp turns making it difficult to hit us, but we notice our fuel is getting low.... When a chopper is damaged in dayz, it leaks fuel faster. So now we know we have to land or crash, the little fuel icon is blinking red. We decide to land and get our guns ready from the wrecks we found earlier, we are going to shoot this chopper down from the ground.

We land and hear the approaching helicopter , guns are drawn and ready. We hear him approaching our location getting closer and closer, we see him in the distance and begin shooting at the blades and fuel tank. All of our guns are BLAZING trying to take down this helicopter..... then suddenly the entire sky flashes, as if a bolt of lightning just struck nearby. Then it happens again and again, then the entire screen goes yellow and flashes. Suddenly we are all immobilized, was it a hacker? We pass out and a few seconds later all of us are super low on blood.... wtf was that??? Then we hear a BOOM!!! The helicopter pilot that was chasing us crashes into the ground and we see three death messages. The guys chasing us are all dead, our chopper is safe on the ground, with minor repairs needed. We decide to loot the dead bodies from the crashed helicopter. We find all kinds of rare gear and coyote backpacks, we take as much as we can carry and head back to fix up our heli....

One of the best Dayz experiences by far and he heli fight was unreal, I have not felt a rush like that in any game before. It was completely unscripted!!!!

I didn't know choppers could get rockets and I certainly didn't know that you could destroy buildings, were these both recent upgrades? Also did you ever figure out what the flashing was?

Also, obligatory GET TO DA CHOPPA NAOW!

Edit: Just answered one of my own questions by going to the forums real quick, buildings can be destroyed by satchel charges which are a rare find. Apparently a smoke grenade was capable of bringing down at one point as well (which is scary because I was hanging with a friend once who had a broken leg, and while we were waiting in a apartment he accidentally threw a smoke grenade at my head which smoked us out and attracted zombies) . The Dayz DB doesn't seem to have anything on rockets though. The only chopper with guns that I see is the Huey.

The flashing is new to Namalsk, every 30 minutes or every hour I can't tell, the flashing will incapacitate you, some sort of experiment gone wrong? Maybe what caused the zombie apocalypse, I have no idea, as far as I know it's a mystery but the effects are deadly, you lose blood and if there are any zombies nearby when it happens you are lunch.

I think the latest addition has bloodsuckers and the flashing, some people claim it's a nuke but it didn't destroy anything as far as I could see it only immobilized our team for about 30 seconds or so....

ALso Chernarus does not have rockets on helis, nor does it have the variety of helicopters, Namalsk is the other map which has rockets on the Ka-60

I have been playing it for months but I also prefer the Namalsk map overall, because

1. More military complexes = more guns
2. Less food / animals overall
3. The mysterious bunker
4. More vehicles
5. Overall smaller map then Chernarus but ideal for pvp.
6. The bitter cold will kill you.

Overall Namalsk is my favorite map, Taviana has three airports but it's too damn big of a map for me. Namalsk also has COLD as a factor for survival, you get cold, you get sick, and without antibiotics you start losing blood again. It's a tough map but very fun.

I definitely saw fewer vehicles in Cherno, even cars are rare. But I really wanted to try out Namalsk and the game style is very different but highly emergent due to size and population. Typically the server I play on has 15 players or less, which means you are likely to run into someone but everyone has a different style.

One time I found a truck abandoned near a forest on my way to A2, I got in and started heading toward A2, on my way there I saw another player and picked her up, but we needed fuel so we stopped by an industrial complex. As we were looting inside trying to find fuel someone else, probably with a jerry can, took our truck, I remember being inside the building and hearing the truck engine turn on and start to drive away.... I knew we had just lost the truck!!! Then we got hit with the flashing lightning on top of that and I somehow fell and broke my leg.... and without morphene you are pretty much dead in the water after that unless someone helps you out.

So I respawned. Then i spent about 30 minutes scavenging only to be sniped from who knows where.... finally re spawned again and everyone on the server was teleported to the famous thuderdome arena where hackers started dropping buses on us crushing us. I usually log off after hackers join a server.

The flashing lights are called "EVR blowout"


"EVR/Blowout main sequence now triggers combat mode (EVR/Blowout also contains new preparation phase"

from the official docs:

http://www.nightstalkers.cz/en_index_dn.php?menu=en_dn_changes