DayZ is a multiplayer post-apocalyptic open-world survival game set in the fictional post-Soviet Republic of Chernarus. The only objective is to survive. DayZ was originally a mod made by Dean Hall in 2012 for the 2009 tactical shooter Arma 2. Arma's creators, Bohemia Interactive, hired Dean and started development for the DayZ Standalone shortly after major success of the mod. After 5 unproductive years in early-access, the DayZ Standalone released in 2018, while the original Arma II DayZ mod is still played on to this day. Despite the initial developmental period being over, it remains extremely broken and janky.

I have, at the time of writing this, 800 hours of meeting many different people, and dying with them, by them, or never knowing their fate. Lots of people will accept you as a teammate purely to increase their chances of survival, keeping you alive and healthy to have their back. Player interaction is a surprise at any time, and you have no true way of knowing anyone's intentions. Some survivors will attempt to rob you on sight, knocking you out and taking whatever they please from your inventory. You always have a rare chance of meeting someone you've teamed up with before, anywhere from your next life to months or years after you ran together. I've experienced amazing and genuinely harrowing stories with complete strangers, never to see them again.

DayZ has 2 official maps that come with the base game, which are originally Arma II maps that are based off of real-life regions in the Czech Republic: Chernarus (irl: Ústí nad Labem) and Livonia (irl: Chřiby mountains), while the third official map is the paid DLC Sakhal, which is modelled after the volcanic jungle map Tanoa from Arma III. (irl: Fiji) Though unlike Tanoa, Sakhal is set in the bitterly cold far east of Russia.

There are also a ton of modded maps, but my favorite is Namalsk. Every survival aspect of DayZ is amplified as points of interest are few and far between and survivors are more desperate due to the scarcity of items to keep you alive. Namalsk has no cows or chickens, while reoccuring EVR storms and blizzards force players into houses to survive the anomaly's blow out and the harsh climate alike.

Before You Play

* I talk about game price, how to navigate the launcher and finding a server to play on, server restarts and how to fix data mismatch errors, HUD and User Interface, your inventory, how to use ingame voice chat (VOIP), and all of the ingame keybinds in this first section. Chapters after this will mention to read this initial explanation for context on the workings of the HUD, UI, and keybinds, so if you want context, read this! If you aren't planning to play and just want to know about the general gameplay and flow of necessities that a life on DayZ entails, feel free to skip this prologue. Please keep in mind I've never played on console so none of this is adapted to that.

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* Is It Worth It? - When I got DayZ in 2022, it was 30 dollars. It went on sale for 20 bucks on Steam when I snagged it, thinking it was still a high price for a game made from 2009's Arma 2 (which at the moment runs for $12 - and on sale for $3). Recently, they upped the price to include the optional DLC map Livonia and the soundtrack. Players agree neither of these were worth combining into the base game. Always buy it on sale, this game is NOT worth 50 dollars. It is made from an outdated engine and has relentless cheaters and bugs, many of which will end your life prematurely, and will have to be something you accept as part of the game.

Is Sakhal worth 30 dollars? No. I only got it because I was very excited for an official winter map, but I still play Namalsk more than Sakhal. Save your money, Bohemia makes enough profit off of its other games, like Arma Reforger. Support modded winter maps before deciding to purchase Sakhal. Sakhal's bunker quest is no different than Cherno's or Livonia's - and the scientist's briefcase is always a pain in the ass to find, not even including the times other players will kill you on sight for it. Be smart with your money. Nobody who has played this game will tell you it's worth 50 dollars, and nobody will tell you Sakhal is worth 30 dollars.

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* Player Names, Choosing a Model - In the DayZ Launcher, select "Parameters" and then "Profile name" to change your ingame name. Other players won't be able to see it unless there's a party system mod, or you talk in the ingame textchat. Admins will be able to see your name always - "Survivor" is the default name for someone who hasn't changed their in game name. If you want to play as a specific character model, you can only change it by going into the game. Press the big red PLAY button in the bottom left to open the game without loading into a server. Find the "Customize Character" button on the lower right-hand HUD (you might have to use the arrow buttons to flip through until it's there) and then press Save once you're finished. Lots of people use the "Random" spawn button to load in as a different model each life. But you deserve that choice! Use the "Custom" spawn button when you load into your server to use your chosen model.

* Choosing a Server - Now, in the Launcher, go to "Servers". Your two options are the Official tab and the Community tab. The official tab is official Bohemia servers for vanilla Cherno/Livonia/Sakhal. There is a problem with cheaters on Official servers, especially full servers. You can only unlock Steam achievements on the official servers, but besides this, there's not much of a point to choose them over community servers. Community servers are modded servers on any map of any kind, hosted and paid for by a community member. There's an infinite amount of mix and match with maps and mods on DayZ, so choosing a server for you can take a bit of looking.

Please keep in mind some servers will route you to other servers, trying to direct traffic into different servers than the original title entails. This is uncommon but can happen.

* Server Restarts - Every few hours, your server will restart. It's different depending on how the server owner sets the schedule, but the most common times are 12:00, 4:00 or 12:30, 4:30, etc. The server will periodically send out a few restart warnings before you'll be kicked from the server.

If you are in a vehicle, you will spawn back in outside of the vehicle. If you're driving a car/humvee, boat, or helicopter, prepare to stop or land it for the restart once you receive the first warning message in chat. You have a large chance of losing your vehicle or even your life if you're in the air when you are kicked for the restart.

Objects on the ground will not disappear. Any dead bodies will disappear along with the loot inside of them. This makes combat near a server restart very risky, though dragging clothing off a body onto the ground will save the loot from disappearing.

* DZSA - First off, the DayZ Launcher is extremely slow, but enough for a solo player to find a server. If you're looking for a server by name - or barely any servers are loading - the DZSA Launcher is an external application that does a way better and faster job of finding specific servers. You can join directly into the servers through this as well, it's not just a search engine. The only downside is the lack of the ability to copy and paste server names. The default launcher lets you do this, so I tend to use the default launcher to find a server for my group, and they use DZSA to find it faster.

* Notes on Ping & Mods - Look for servers that have between 20 to 150ish ping for a normal experience. It's definitely possible to play on EU servers from a NA standpoint, with a little lag, but if your ping or internet is particularly shitty, lag is a common way to go out due to DayZ's horrible unescapable packet loss. You won't be able to move items in your inventory, or block yourself from zombies if you're lagging horribly. Around 230+ ping is where this starts to threaten your life. The server will kick you automatically if you go above 300 ping. Your character gets killed when you log out of the server while uncon or tied up, so this can mean unavoidable and immediate death. Please keep this in mind while choosing a server.

Please also check out the modlist of a community server intensely before putting time into the server. The DayZ Expansion mod comes with AI. These AI kill on sight, and are freakishly good at knowing where you are. They will hide in corners and mag dump you. Please also watch out for modded creatures, especially on PVE or PvPvE servers, and extra-especially on Namalsk. Bloodsuckers, Snorks, Alligators, etc. These mods are actually loads of fun with a group, but for your first time playing, try to give yourself a chance to live. Mutants are extremely hard to kill to the point where it's better to trap them in a shed than actually deal with them. Custom gun pack mods will fill the loot table with a bunch of useless modded ammo and unusable mounts/etc. If you're overwhelmed by all the mods, just search for vanilla or vanilla plus servers and you'll find your perfect match of community servers without a shit load of mods.

Another thing to keep in mind while browsing a server to play on - servers can be password protected despite showing in the server list and will be unplayable without the code.

* Server Keywords: 1PP is first person only, 3PP is third and first person. PVP is Player v player. PVE is Player v Environment. PvPvE is a mix of both.

Mods I recommend for utility: SchanaModParty, SchanaModGlobalChat, UStamina, sGunplay, VanillaPlusPlusMap, Just Gasmasks, Earplugs.

Mods I do NOT recommend for your first time: DayZ Expansion, dbo creatures, Ajs Creatures, TerjeMedicine/TerjeRadiation/TerjeSkills, ZenSleep

Mods I recommend for fun anytime: Windstride clothing, Dogs, Horses, AirRaids, Cannabis.

* Data Mismatch Errors - Sometimes, getting into servers will feel impossible. If you encounter a data mismatch, look in the error code for the specific mod's name(s) and go to the Steam workshop and remove and redownload them. If you get the latency kick for taking too long to load in, just keep trying to load in. If you're out of options go to DayZ's game page in your Steam library and look for the cogwheel in the far right corner of the main option bar. The main option bar is the one with the logo, time played, achievements and etc. Click on it and press "Properties..." and click Installed Files on the nav bar. Click "Verify integrity of game files" and wait about 5 mins for the game to verify itself. I usually do this in combination of redownloading Steam workshop mods if I can't get a data mismatch error to fix itself. You might have to do all of these things multiple times for it to work. When in doubt, just look on Reddit, people love complaining there and others love to be smart and answer them.

Keep in mind, when major updates come out each and every server owner has to update the server themself, along with mods. Immediately after major updates you're going to have to find servers to play on that are updated. You won't even have the option to connect to outdated servers, so any servers that have players on them are updated.

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* HUD + Inventory Basics - Load in, and take a look around your screen - your character's stats are in the bottom right. They're all very straightforward so you can figure it out. You'll find that temporary indicators will appear to the left of these cores, like the sickness symbol to let you know you've contracted something, the full stomach icon which lets you know if you eat/drink anymore you'll vomit. Other icons include leg pain from falling from heights (multiple stages - if you keep on damaging your legs while seeing this icon you will break your leg) and the fracture icon, which can be accumulated like I said, but it's much more common to break your leg from direct damage like a beartrap, gunshot, landmine, etc.

Your stamina, noise indicator and stance are on the bottom right of your screen. As you pick up items it will accumulate to losing your maximum stamina, but stamina will stay the same "drain" rate and it won't physically slow you down no matter how heavy you are. Your noise indicator will change as you get heavier as well, making zombies hear you from closer, but it's not a big change, sprint-crouching (and crouch-walking at around ~10 meters) will always be a pretty good option for stealth killing and avoiding zombies.

First, press tab to open the vicinity and your inventory. Your inventory is something you'll have to get used to with time because it can be finicky - sometimes items you pick up will automatically go into containers in your inventory. You can also click the arrows to open and close the dropdown to show everything in a clothing item's inventory space. Keep this in mind if an item you're looking for goes missing! Most of the time, it's within an item you're not checking, or you've closed out of the view of the clothing item you're looking in. The vicinity is everything you can physically see, so the best way to use it is by tapping tab to quickly check an area you're looking at, tapping it to close it and looking somewhere else and tap it and so on.

With your inventory open, drag items found in the vicinity to your hand slot in the center to equip it, and drag or double click items to put it in your inventory. Specific items can be combined with others to craft items. There is no ingame way of seeing all of the crafting combinations, so it's something you'll have to look up and memorize over time. Hold F on an item you're looking at to automatically put it into your hands. Drag large melees (fireaxes, baseball bats, pipes, sledgehammers, etc.) or guns to either of your shoulder slots to keep it on your back. Drag clothing items to one of the matching slots (at first, you'll have to learn the hard way by brute forcing items to your slots to see what goes where - some clothing like shemaghs and bandanas can be worn in different ways - on your head, face, etc) at the top of your inventory. Double click items in your inventory to equip them, and CTRL + left click to quick-drop items into the vicinity.

* Hotkeys - In your inventory, you can either drag an item to your hotkeys at the bottom, or hold down a number key on your keyboard to assign that item a hotkey. By pressing the ` key you can toggle the visibility of your hotkeys. By holding the ` key, your stats, stamina, stance, and noise indicator will toggle. As you learn the game, you'll feel more familiar with toggling both of these to your liking. Personally, I permanently keep my hotkeys off, because I've kept the same mental system of what type of item is which number on my hotkeys. I highly recommend this, it can save your life! Here's my system as a suggestion/example: I always use 1 as my zombie melee. 2 is bandages/rags, 3 is my handgun, 4 is my rifle. From 5-9, it depends on every life and what I've gotten. As a rule of thumb, if you have a weapon like a melee or a gun, if it's not hotkeyed you will barely ever use it. My zombie melee is specifically an item I want to solely use to melee. It won't be my only blade, please use your blades wisely as cutting up rags, opening cans, and gathering bark are absolute life-savers.

* Important Keybinds
WASD to move
Space to jump, vault, and climb ontop of things
Hold middle mouse wheel to zoom in
Press middle mouse wheel while hovering an item in your inventory/vicinity to open a zoomed view of it
Hold Q to lean left
Hold E to lean right
Press shift to sprint
Press C to crouch/uncrouch
Hold C to go prone
Hold left CTRL to slow walk
Hold right click to raise your hands
Raise your hands and walk backwards to melee block
Raise your hands and press left click to light attack. Press shift during to heavy attack.

If you're playing on a server that has 3rd person, press V to switch in and out of it.
Hold left alt for freelook
Double-tap left alt to lock free look in place
Press ` to hide your hotkeys, and press it again to bring them back.
Hold down ` to hide your entire HUD, and hold it again to bring it back.

Note: There is a bug ingame with your HUD becoming permanently off. There is another one with the bleeding icon permanently staying. Relog to fix both of these.

Scroll through item crafting/interactions using the mouse wheel
If you have a map in your inventory, or the server has a map mod, press M to open it.
If you have a headlamp on your head with a working 9v battery, press L to turn it on.
If you have NVGs, hold L to flip them over your eyes. If they don't have a battery, it won't do anything. But you'll look sick as fuck tbh.

Tap G to change your stance into throwing the item in your hand. The longer you charge your throw by holding left click, the farther the item will go. Release left click to throw, or press anything else to cancel.
Hold G to drop the item in your hand onto the ground where you're standing.

When it comes to throwing grenades, keep in mind you can't prime a grenade in this game anymore (holding it in your hand unpinned to shorten the detonation time before throwing). Please note that the center of your screen/crosshair is NOT a good indicator for where your item will go to, it's off-center. Throwing items accurately is absolutely a skill you will understand with practice only. Get to throwing!

* Emotes
To emote, press one of the Function buttons. Press the same button to stop emoting. Some emotes are slightly longer than others, and you can't animation cancel. There are a TON of emotes in this game and I highly recommend assigning your own emotes to the function keys. Like my favorite - called Silent. Your character will hold a finger to their lips as if they're going shhhh...

Hold . to open the radial emote wheel and click on an emote to confirm
F1 is to put your hand up in a greeting
F2 is to SOS wave
F3 is to make a heart with your hands
F4 is to flip someone off
F5 is to surrender. you can't access your inventory with this one
F6 is to do a chef's kiss
F7 is to point in the direction you are looking in
F8 is to taunt with your elbow
F9 is thumbs up
F10 is to tauntingly slit your throat with your thumb
F11 is to commit suicide. You'll need a sharp tool of any kind or a loaded gun to do this. It's not a taunt like F10. To get out of this pose you can press any other button to cancel at any time. To confirm, press left click after your character has finished the animation of kneeling on the ground. A similar emote that's actually an action is the vomit option. This will empty your character's stomach, so I don't recommend binding this.. unless you're a comedic genius


* VOIP - Hold caps lock to talk in-game. Double tap it for constant pickup instead of push to talk.
Use the up and down arrow keys to go through the three speaking volumes.
One is whisper, two is normal, and three is shouting. Though it's labelled like this, you won't be quieter on whisper or louder on shout. It's only distances.
Roughly the distances are ~7m, 25m, 45m.
Players can hear you speak clearly in these ranges no matter if they're above or below you.
Gasmasks and biker helmets will muffle your speech incredibly. You won't be understood easily but the voice effect is very entertaining.

* For gun and vehicle HUD/Keybinds check them out in the respective category.
* You'll have to be loaded into a server to see/change keybinds and other game settings.

* Notes on Items - DayZ is an extremely janky game in many different aspects. One of the most annoying and unsalvageable ones are items not dropping on the floor correctly, teleporting upwards, downwards, into nearby walls and the above roof, etc. If you put an item down and it disappears, before accepting that it's gone to the void, check interior and exterior walls, and don't forget to look up and under nearby objects. Most of the time, stuff can be salvaged by searching weird places and finding the right angle on the item for the option to hold F to put it into your hands. It happens to the best of us, so keep it in mind to hold your items close, and sometimes when this happens there's nothing you can do if you can't find it and you will have to leave it behind. This will happen most commonly when you directly drag an item from the vicinity into a clothing slot, making the item you're already wearing in that slot bug out when it is forced to exit your inventory. Instead of swapping things like that, drag the item you're wearing into your hand, and then hold left ctrl while clicking it to manually drop it to the floor. Drag the item you want to try on into your empty clothing slot. It's hard to remember but after losing multiple items you will start to develop the sense for doing this. Good luck, happy hunting.

I. Basics & Zombies

* In this chapter, I go over what to do when you spawn in, understanding basic combat, and where to look for loot like clothing, food, water, and medical supplies.

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* Spawn Checklist - Make sure to read the prologue if you're looking to play for the first time. Spawning in, you’ll always face north. On Chernarus by putting the ocean to your right you’re heading east. By your left, west. If you feel extremely lost, it can help to know the cloud skybox travels east to west. Pulling up your map on iZurvive will be the best way to learn. Search for town signs to find out where you are, they're located on the main road on either side of the town. Go into towns and into houses to find food, water (you can find soda - water found in containers has a chance to make you sick, so water pumps are the only reliable source of replenishable water), clothing, tools, and guns. Police stations have guns, ammo, mags, and armor such as press vests. Hospitals, medical tents and random civilian buildings have multivitamin pills.

* Basic Zombie Combat - While you're trying to search your first town, zombies will be everywhere in and around the town. Being in their general view will aggro them, and they can also hear you (unless crounched) in about a 20m range, making them scream and run towards you. The absolute first thing to know is blocking while facing a zombie's attack will 100% prevent any health damage. Player's light attacks can also be blocked, but heavy attacks from a player cannot be blocked. Both zombie and light player attacks will only be blocked if you're facing where the attack is directed! To block, you have to have your hands raised and walk backwards with S. To raise your hands, hold right click.

Zombies always attack in patterns of two, with a second of gracetime between them. First, they swipe at you once they're in front of you, and then they do a bash animation. These two attacks do the same damage, but since these two animations will always play, it gives you the upper hand if you block for both of them, then attack them by left clicking with your hands still raised (right click for hands raised + left click to attack). This is called a light attack, and it gives the zombie time to get in another hit because it doesn't make them stumble back. Holding shift during right + left clicking will turn this attack into a heavy attack, the heavy attack stumbles the zombie backwards and you can easily stunlock them by heavy attacking, walking forward to fill the gap they've stumbled back on, and heavy attacking again, moving forward again, and so on. Using this stunlock technique combined with blocking every time the zombie attacks you means you'll be a zombie killing master.

An extra note - DayZ has limb hitboxes meaning if you have a sharp or blunt object, aiming upwards for the zombie's head or neck has a chance to crit them. Aiming high while attacking a zombie is the way to go, and this works against other players as well.

* Looting - Chernarus has a ton of coastal towns up and down the coastline. Going into houses and looking on surfaces and the floor, you should find some food and clothing. Starting out, visiting one or two of these towns will hopefully get you a gun and some food. Water pumps are extremely hard to find starting out, so finding a town sign and finding it on iZurvive is genuinely going to save your life. Thirst and hunger onsets as you sprint long distances. It's best not to "conserve" your food by eating half and saving half for later - if you're yellow or red hunger, slam any food you have. It gives you back way more energy and health regen this way.

II. Basic Medical Care

* In this chapter I discuss your health, food, water, and temperature stats with a full breakdown of the blood stat and bleeds system. I also go over your two invisible stats, shock (what causes unconsciousness) and your immune system (what makes you vulnerable to sickness). Then I mention the most common diseases - wound infection, how the common cold progresses to the flu and then pneumonia, cholera, salmonella, and chem poisoning. And finally, I'll end with what medical items to pick up and why, healing broken legs, and a warning on how you can explode yourself by carrying dangerous items like gas canisters in your inventory, or even in your hand.

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* Understanding your Health - Any time your health icon has the down arrow (one, two, or three), your health is draining. This can be directly from a recent injury, or it can be from your food or water being red, your temperature being hyper/hypothermic, or a deadly sickness like pneumonia.

All icons on your HUD have only 5 different icons it will use depending on your true stats. Temperature has 6 unique ones. The names you'll hear for them are full white, chunked, yellow, red, and then flashing.

* Shock and Unconsciousness - Losing blood does not directly drain your health stat, rather draining an invisible stat called shock. While bloodloss doesn't drain your health stat, you can still bleed out and die once you hit flashing blood - you don't have to be flashing health to die from bloodloss either.

The most common way to pass out is by being hit by another player using a weapon or from their fists. Large blunt objects like sledgehammers, pipe wrenches, and fire axes have a shock damage modifier. Heavy attacks with or without a weapon are unblockable and deal a whopping amount of shock damage while stumbling you backwards. Zombies don't deal much shock damage unless you endure multiple attacks from multiple zombies all at once.

The only indicator of a falling shock stat is when your vision goes dark at the corners of your vision. If your shock falls to the value of 0, you'll temporarily lose consciousness. Depending on the cause, it varies how much time until you wake up. During this, zombies, wolves, and bears will walk away from you, and another player can resuscitate you if they wish.

While unconscious, pressing the escape key pulls the menu up. You can exit to leave the server or respawn to end your life, but keep in mind both of these options kill your current character. The only way to wake up from unconsciousness is naturally after a number of seconds, or from a player resuscitating you. The longest uncon time is 50 seconds from stepping on a landmine.

Popping an epi-pen on anyone makes them immediately wake up, restoring their shock to full. This can be very helpful for an emergency situation where you don't have much time to resuscitate the player.

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* Starving and Dehydration - When your food and water icons eventually hit red, you'll start a slow countdown of starving or dehydrating to death. Long after hitting red food or water you'll eventually hit flashing. Keep in mind you cannot die directly from red/flashing food or water without first hitting flashing health. Periodic sound effects start happening when you've hit red. Your stomach growls from hunger and being thirsty makes your character smack their lips dryly or gulp. Your character's sound cues can be heard by other players within earshot.

Your food stat is called your "energy", and all foods have a different caloric and water value. Food can restore some of your water stat, unless it's something dry like cereal or chips. Boiled food has a slightly lower caloric value in trade for its higher water value.

The only way to raise these stats is by consuming food or water. You can eat raw food without risk of salmonella by first taking a multivitamin pill. The only exception to food that is helpful is rotten or burnt food, which have a very high chance of making you immediately vomit, sending you back to starving or dehydrated.

Unpurified water (saltwater is inedible) can be consumed without risk of cholera as long as you take a multivitamin first.

Watch out for the full stomach icon, and only continue eating or drinking after it goes away. If you continue to eat or drink after seeing this icon your character will vomit up a large portion of your entire stomach contents, making your energy and water stats plummet. Your character will not immediately vomit after receiving this icon however - you can still eat and drink a little before it will actually make you puke.

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* Hyperthermia and Hypothermia - White temperature is normal, comfortable temperature. Light blue is slightly under comfortable. Dark blue and flashing blue is freezing/hyperthermia. Your character experiences a health drain and occasionally shivers and grunts in pain when you are freezing/hyperthermic. Yellow temperature is hot and red temperature is hypothermic. Being too hot will occasionally make your character pant and wipe their forehead, while being hypothermic slowly drains your health. Your temperature is referred as your "heat comfort".

Directly stepping in or laying on a fire will not heat up your temperature stat, instead instantly draining your health until death if you continue to stay in the fire. Any of your clothes that touched the fire will likely be damaged as well. Btw with fire barrels you can lay ontop of the grate without any health loss you will feel so powerful.

Being wet from rain, snow, or water completely nullifies the "Insulation" factor for each clothing piece, as well as adding lots of weight to it. This doesn't mean much on hotter maps such as Cherno, but while on winter maps it will make you freeze to death much faster.

Running will make your character more warm than standing still, meaning your temperature will constantly fluxuate depending on what you're doing and how cold the world temp is. Light blue is not enough to make you catch a cold, but it is an early warning that your body temperature is cold enough to start fluxuating into dark blue. Even on light blue you will periodically shiver, so if you're trying to stalk someone close-by, popping a heatpack will give you more of a chance to not shiver. Gagging yourself will also muffle your shivers.

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* Understanding Bleeds & the Blood Stat - You will always spawn with a full 5000ml of blood in your body, indicated by the full white blood symbol in the bottom right of your HUD. At flashing red blood, you will fall unconscious persistently until you've regenerated your blood back to red blood. If you're unable to stop bleeding on flashing blood, you will eventually die of bloodloss when your blood stat hits 1500ml.

The main disadvantage from major blood loss is the vision saturation loss, making players blend in with the surroundings quite easily. Blood does not regenerate on red food or red water, meaning the only way to naturally gain blood back is food and water. You can also speed up blood regeneration with a saline bag or instantly gain blood back from a compatable bloodtype iv-blood bag.

There is instant blood loss from each gunshot or stab wound you endure, but most blood will be lost from light, medium, or heavy bleeds. If you have nothing to bandage with, after 5 minutes it will clot by itself, bringing a small risk of wound infection. Not bandaging for 5 minutes becomes riskier to do when you have multiple bleeds, or no disinfectant to treat your potential oncoming wound infection. Always be aware that bandaging makes you an easy target to other players within earshot who want to get the drop on you. You only should prioritize immediate bandaging when you have multiple bleeds of any kind.

* The Three Types of Bleeds - There are hand & feet bleeds, which we’ll call a light bleed, drain 0.6ml blood per second, and --ml per min. Arm and leg bleeds are medium bleeds, draining --ml blood/sec, and head and torso bleeds are heavy bleeds, draining a whopping --ml blood/sec. Every bleed stacks bloodloss. This is why it's important to carry multiple bandages, and the good news is that rags and bandages are not the only items you can use to bandage with as I'll mention in a moment.

To understand what kind of bleed you have, look down at your body or open your inventory and look where the blood is physically coming out from. A cut from getting punched for example will usually be a single light bleed, meaning you have an extremely long time to find bandages or find cover to bandage before it ever threatens your life.

Understanding the severity of the 3 bleed types will help you figure out how much time you have before you’ll actually need to worry about bandaging a cut. In a normal situation where you're safe, when you should bandage a cut will come naturally of course, but in gunfights or altercations, bleeding during these times will give other players a chance to bumrush you if they hear you start to bandage.

* The Four Types of Bandages - Rags and bandages are going to be the most reliable items for bandaging throughout your character's life. Whenever you've used all the rags you spawned with and don't have a sharp blade to cut up clothing into more rags, bandanas and sewing kits are commonly found and can also be used to close your cut. The time it takes to bandage with a rag, sewing kit, or bandana is 10 seconds per bleed, while bandages take 2 to 3 seconds per bleed, and have a maximum of 4 uses per bandage. Every time a rag takes damage in your inventory (from getting hit or shot) it will become disinfected, but don't worry yourself because any kind of disinfectant item lasts for a really long time, and items rarely lose quality in your pockets unless you've taken a major blow.

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* Wound Infection - Identifying, preventing, and treating wound infection is very straight-forward. It's quickly identified by a sickness icon on your HUD showing up immediately after bandaging/letting a wound close, with periodic grunting in pain (commonly called the "oomphs”), and fever (screen blurring, wiping sweat off your forehead). This is stage one. It lasts for 20 minutes before advancing to stage 2 if left untreated. In stage 1, by putting any disinfectant in your hand you’ll see an option appear in the bottom left to clean your wound using it (this does not show up when in your inventory, only when it's closed). Once is enough to heal yourself, and keep in mind the prompt will not disappear after a successful use, so don't waste your disinfectant. In stage two, this will not cure your sickness and you'll specifically need tetracycline pills.

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* Common Cold -> The Flu -> Pneumonia

* Stage 1 - The common cold is an extremely contagious sickness that survivors gain after a certain amount of time being cold or freezing. This mechanic runs on a timer that is postponed by becoming warmer. A temperature buff (the +) gives you 5 minutes of grace period against gaining the cold. Even though it's a short amount of time, it makes swimming in freezing cold water safe against the sickness as long as you continue to make fires. To prevent a cold, keep yourself warm. Being freezing cold is rare on Cherno, but after rainstorms you will need to wring your clothing out and stay warm if your temperature is light blue or below. On winter maps, colds are extremely common, so you'll need to make fires persistently. To treat a common cold, you will either need to take multivitamins or raise your immunity by being warm and dry, and consuming food and water. Keep in mind taking multiple pills (or taking tetra at this stage) will not help you get over the cold. Take pills when the pill symbol disappears on your HUD.

* Stage 2 - The flu/influenza is only gained by letting an untreated cold progress into stage 2. This will happen after you don't take pills or raise your immunity within 20 minutes of the inital cold's contraction.

* Stage 3 - Pneumonia is caused by not treating a cold or the flu and letting it progress for 30 minutes. After progressing here, you have 30 minutes left to live. Your character will start to heave and struggle to breathe. Your health will be slowly drained without a cure.

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III. Food & Water

loot houses, kill animals by listening out for sound cues and running towards them. you’ll want to stealth up to them and aim for their head. if you don’t have a good shot, try slowly rotating around the animals at a safe distance. bodyshots to animals in this game give you less meat and you’re more likely to make them run without killing them. if you have to shoot them at a bad angle, at least be ready to shoot them more than once. if you have a sporter or a MKII you’ll find yourself shooting the animal a lot. meanwhile, these guns will kill with a headshot.

IV. Fires

how to make a fire fast. how fire lighting works. mention damp fuel and tinder.

V. Weapons and Tools

list all weapons in order of short range, medium range, and long range. list tools that are helpful, and tools that have more specific uses (base making).

VI. Firearms

* Assault Rifles - list all guns in order of lowest calibre to highest. how to load mags, unjam your gun and how it even jams in the first place

* Pistols - text text text

VII. Advanced Medical Care

everything you can do with medical items, broken legs and splints, unconsciousness and shock, epi/morphine and codeine. kuru and how it isn’t a deadly disease. blood transfusions, blood bags, saline bags, and iv start kits. more descriptive terms for each sickness. broken neck stat, combined foot stress will equal a broken leg, so don’t fall straight down, even laying down and rolling could help you. don’t jump while descending on an angle, be careful around ladders + beartraps on the top of ladders.

VIII. Points of Interest

towns and cities are your go-to for looting food, water, clothing, and guns starting out. more importantly, military bases are high-risk high-reward. for a freshie, you’ll need about 20 or 30 bullets for a pistol to clear a military base. if you can’t find this, when you get there climb on top of something and while heavy attacking the zombies, you’ll lunge forward. try not to fall. provide common military areas for cherno and livonia.

IX. Player Interaction and Death

how to be friendly, how to survive being robbed or chased. how to tell the difference between dead and unconscious people. how to survive getting shot and how its important to wait to bandage in a gun fight. explosives and how to live. bullet snaps and what direction people die in.

X. Vehicles and Bases

car talk. heli talk. warnings for server restarts and unconsciousness while driving. being stuck in animations

Chernarus Lore

You play as one of the many survivors that have immunity towards the zombies. Remnants of the many military forces that swept through the area remain to this day. It's unknown exactly how long after the outbreak the game takes place in, but military force remains to keep an eye on the attempts to kill all of the infected, shown by the periodic artillery events and the random map-wide gas bombs that kill anything they touch including people, animals, and infected. Western forces are shown to have interfered due to the amount of Western guns, ammo, and military clothing.