Beginners Guide to DayZ

DayZ is the open-world survival PC game that has become notorious for the fact that the zombies are generally less of a threat to you than other players are. The game has already sold over a million copies in early access, despite coming with a very clear warning on its Steam store page (pictured below left).

As a game centred around survival in a post-apocalyptic world, loot is very important and do not be mistaken in thinking that other players won’t attempt to take that loot from you if they can. The sooner you can defend yourself in this game, the better, so read on to find out what you’ll need to do to get there.

Before you think about getting yourself a weapon, let’s cover some of the basics to ensure that when you get your weapon you’ll be able to keep it.

Staying hydrated is essential.
One of the first things you will have to do in DayZ is to find yourself a water container. Once you have it, look for water pumps in urban areas to fill it up (ensure it is in your hand before attempting to fill the container). Staying well-fed and hydrated means that you will regenerate health, whereas if you become too dehydrated, you will pass out. If this happens, a friend can revive you by hooking you up to a saline bag (some saline bags require an IV start kit to be used on them first; some will come ready to use).

What if I’m injured or wounded?
If you’re wounded and have no bandages, you can remove your shirt and right click to tear off a rag. Note that this only works if your shirt is dry. It’s also worth noting that you can clean your wounds with alcohol to help prevent infection. What follows is a list of ailments and their cures:

Bleeding: Use bandages or rags if you have nothing else.
Low Blood: Hook yourself up to a blood bag or saline bag. You must ensure that any blood bags used are the same blood type – the easiest way to do this is to draw your own blood and then eat plenty of food afterwards to recover. You can also use a blood test kit.
Broken Limb: Morphine or form a splint out of sticks and bandages
Unconscious: Get a friend to hook you up to a saline bag or use an Epi-Pen on you
Food Poisoning: Eat charcoal tablets. You can get food poisoning from eating rotten food, so make sure the food is fresh before you eat it and discard anything rotten. 
Infected Wound: Use an Alcohol Tincture or take antibiotics if you have any.

How do I find my bearings?
The best way to find out which way is North in DayZ is of course to locate the North Star. There’s a very simple way to do this, pictured below.


Furthermore, the wind ALWAYS blows east in DayZ, so watch cloud movements to determine East and West, and if the sun is rising or setting you can also use that to help you out (it rises in the East and sets in the West). Finally, most urban areas (particularly towns and cities) have road maps that will help you find out which direction you should be heading in.


General Survival tips

There are many things to keep in mind while playing DayZ: so much so that listing them all would take a long time indeed, so here are the highlights of the more useful things you’ll want to be aware of:

Carry an extra pair of shoes: if yours get wet or damaged it will hinder your ability to run, which is essential for survival.

At night, you will need your torch. You start with the torch and a battery in your inventory, and have to drag the battery to the torch to power it up. With the torch in hand, press Space to aim it (this reduces movement speed).

Go into settings and turn up the gamma and brightness if you’re having trouble seeing at night.

If you’re running away from something, you can hold Alt to lock the direction of your movement, enabling you to look around whilst maintaining your course.

Switch into third-person view to look round corners.

You sprint faster with your firsts raised (while unarmed, press space to raise your dukes).

Buildings with open doors are very likely to have been looted already. Look for closed doors to increase you chances of finding decent loot, and decrease your likelihood of running into another player and getting mugged.

Do you have any DayZ tips that we should know about? Leave them in the comments section below and we’ll add them to the article!

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