Namalsk is a lore-heavy unofficial map and mod solely made by respected Arma modder and now Creative Lead & Senior Map Designer of Bohemia Interactive, Adam "Sumrak" Franců. Originally a personal project for Sumrak, Namalsk's age outdates the Arma II DayZ mod entirely, created in 2008 as a modded campaign for Arma I called "Namalsk Crisis" with an additional mod named Nightstalkers: Shadow of Namalsk. It was fully rereleased for Arma II in 2011, and for the third time released for the DayZ Standalone in 2020.

Namalsk is a fictional island presumed to be set in the Russian Bering Sea. Intended to be a hardcore map, it's mostly barren with little life or civilization. Namalsk is covered mainly by coniferous forests while tall mountains in the South are blanketed by permanent snow cover. A very large portion of the map is covered by desolate ice sheets. It has only one major city on the whole map, located in the central North, Vorkuta. Spawn zones are spaced out on the Northern coastline. The map is naturally bottlenecked into North and South, where predators only spawn in the South.

It is a completely original experience uncomparable to any other DayZ map. I've spent almost a thousand hours wandering this wasteland, and have watched others play on it for a thousand more. I can't recommend it enough to anyone who has this game.

Namalsk is an absolute homage to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007). Home to an extremely perilous mission to reach the Alien planet of Lantia, I've spent countless hours studying vague knowledge on what seems to be a 50-step process of going there. 95% of Namalsk playtime is freshie fun and getting shot in Vorkuta, while the adventure down South can take a turn at any time due to the dense population of predators and zombies around military areas, not to mention geared players with the same mission as you. The journey to Lantia can take days to weeks to accomplish fully, across many lives. The good news is, I've compiled it all into a comprehensive guide ^_^ the site below is Sumrak's website on Namalsk.

* Choosing a Server

I. Basics of Namalsk

* This chapter goes over spawn tasks, basic navigation around the North, landmarks, how to identify towns and the city, as well as necessary stops in your journey to survive for a long time.

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* Spawning In - So, you've woken up on the coast. What now? You always spawn facing North, so you can always use this to orient yourself a little. The sea will be on your right if you're going west and the sea will be on your left if you're going east. Heading straight into the trees is your best option to not starve and find food and clothing. The only two towns on the coast are Lubjansk to the very far western side, and Nemsk to the very far eastern side. Beached boats will sometimes grant you fishing hooks, wellies, boonie hats, and raincoats.

 Frostbite - Your very first line of action is to turn on your heatpack and use 2 of your starting rags create face or hand wrappings to prevent one of Namalsk's unique features: frostbite. It's an incurable permanent debuff to your max health depending on which part(s) of your body receive it. It can be lightly fended off by staying warm using fires or heatpacks, but ultimately your task is to wear any clothing, regardless of insulation or condition, on all of your slots. It will also permanently give you the sick symbol, so don't waste any pills on it if you're frostbitten. While you need the wrappings, don't use them all up as you always need rags to bandage yourself if you get cut. Once you find a knife, cut up some thin clothing for rags. Mouse-wheel scroll through the rag's crafting options while it's in your hand to make a wrapping. I recommend hand or face wrappings first, but don't make both unless you have rags to spare. You can see the progress of frostbite in your inventory by looking at your torso, legs, head, face, hands, and feet clothing slots. Blue at first to show you your skin is at risk, and white when you've succumbed to frostbite. Most, if not all, Namalsk servers give you rags to fight against frostbite. If you have none, you'll need a knife to cut clothing up. By finding two stones or at least two bones you can craft a stone knife or a bone knife.

* Don't Run Around The Coast! - Running along the ocean's coast is a bad decision due to your need of finding warm clothing, food, and a knife to make a fire or a gun to protect yourself. Going instead straight into the forest, soon enough you'll find yourself at a road, powerlines, or a clearing where you can see landmarks in the distance. All roads and powerlines will lead you to civilization. Specific tall buildings through the woods will slowly become more and more recognizable. No town shares the same landmark, so pay attention to their individuality early on. Radio towers are the only landmark that occurs in multiple places, but they're worth climbing up to if the visibilty is good so you can see buildings in the distance.

* Warmth - Another extremely important starting point is to make a fire, to postpone the common cold and frostbite if you haven't found clothing for all your frostbite-risk slots. During a blizzard, conditions will be cold and wet, which quickly kills you once you've hit dark blue for too long. All canned food and drinks found will be frozen and will need to be thawed to at least drenched to consume. Common fire spots are houses with a fireplace, a fire barrel in industrial areas, or you can make a fire right underneath a tree. In blizzards, it can be increasingly hard to get a fire to light outside due to the wind and wet conditions. Wind direction is important, so use something big to use as cover such as a building's wall or a pine tree. Wet sticks, bark, and matches won't be usable until they dry out naturally. For how to make a fire, check out the fire section in the first part. If you can't start a fire in a fireplace, make sure the fireplace itself isn't wet. If it is, you'll have to relocate. Finding a knife is an important starting task as you need something sharp to gather bark off of trees.

Most likely you'll spawn with a heat pack. The sooner you use this the better, because they aren't that powerful and the 2 slots should probably be taken up by something more useful since you have no inventory space as a freshie. You will need at least a few sticks to fuel your fire, and something sharp to gather a single dark bark from a tree for your tinder. You only need one tinder per fire. Use your starting flare to light the bark of your fire, put your sticks in the fire, and stay within 10m to slowly gain the heat buff (the ++ on your temperature stat is the buff). Don't forget to defrost any frozen food or drinks.

Depending on what time it is, and what weather, being able to see Vorkuta should be another goal, it's extremely hard to miss on a clear day with the tall apartment buildings and cranes. If you see a large water tower, and/or a large farm-type building, that's Jalovisko. If you're still near the coast and you see cargo crates by the sea, that's Lubjansk. If it's a military with a single house nearby the sea, this spawn is above Jalovisko, so you can travel straight into the woods with the sea to your back to find Jalo. Nemsk is a small town by the sea, and the dirt path leading out will eventually take you to Jalovisko. If you've spawned next to a few broken buildings with a fenced-in area, you're near Lubjansk. If you spawn in with nothing around you, just head straight into the woods, you'll come across a point of interest at some point. Roads and powerlines will lead you to civilization. If you see anything up on a hill, it's usually a good bet to get a bird's eye view of the area if the weather permits.

TLDR: Prevent frostbite by making hand, face, and head wraps. Keep yourself warm by using a heatpack or making a fire to prevent getting the flu (recently, the flu was given a third stage - pneumonia. Preventing sickness as a fresh spawn will make your life much easier). If you spawn in a blizzard, you have to dry off or you will start to freeze to death.

Find a town and get food, water, clothes, and guns.

The only towns in the north are Lubjansk to the northwest, Jalovisko and Nemsk to the northeast, and Vorkuta Outskirts, right outside the city. Northern military zones are scarce, two are far east near Lubjansk, while Vorkuta is lined with military checkpoints offering very few tents. There is one base up the hill and down the road from the eastern side of Vorkuta Outskirts.

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* Vorkuta's staples are the tall apartment buildings and 2 yellow cranes. Most of the gunshots you will hear throughout your time in the North will come from Vorkuta. It's absolutely the biggest hotspot for PvP in the North, and honestly a fucking cesspit as there's almost always nothing to loot. The school in Vorkuta is extremely dangerous due to the one waterpump in the city being in the courtyard of it. I never step foot into Vorkuta specifically for food or water but it is a necessary stop in your journey for pills (to fend against colds with multivitamins and advanced sicknesses with tetracycline) and alcohol tincture (to clean your rags and treat blood infections) from the hospital, but even popping into the hospital is extremely dangerous as lots of snipers will keep an eye on the windows facing the apartment buildings. There are no other hospitals anywhere in the North, but alcohol tincture and pills can be found in houses and cars.

I genuinely cannot stress to you the fucking amount of roof snipers in Vorkuta. Limit your time standing still next to windows, roofs, don't walk in the middle of the street, and listen out for footsteps or talking on the roof of your building. Don't use doors as cover as they're penetrable by high caliber bullets, don't peek anyone to figure out where they are. The best option is to use cover and relocate. Vorkuta is by far the most aggressive Northern town due to the amount of survivor activity, lack of food, and excess of guns and ammo found on roofs and in military checkpoints. And the cannibalism.

Vorkuta's military checkpoints are on the roads going around the city. Necessary clothing like warm jackets and pants, armor and helmets to protect yourself, ammo, and sometimes even a gun can be found on the zombies and in the tents. The firestation is a hotspot due to the extremely warm, durable, but very heavy firefighter clothing, along with gasmasks, firefighter helmets, and the powerful fireax. Apartment buildings are probably looted already, but if you do find stuff it's worth checking them through. If you can't find food, then you'll need to find your way to Jalo or Outskirts. I can't recommend cannibalism so early on into your run as it's a dead giveaway to your location from your laughter and a massive hindrance to your aiming from the twitching. Ontop of that you should not stick around in Vorkuta for longer than you need to, as there are people who live off of killing other survivors to sustain themselves. Following the road that runs outside of the city will lead you to Outskirts.

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* Jalovisko's (yalo-visko or yalo-vee-sko) staples are the tall farm type building and the ball-shaped watertower building. All of its roads connect directly to Nemsk and Vorkuta. Jalo is also a hotspot due to the large civilian housing area that spawns lots of food, clothing, and weapons. If you come up on the two-way split, both roads will take you to Vorkuta as they run parallel to each other.

II. Blizzards and EVR Storms

Another one of Namalsk's unique features are cold weather events, and any blizzard can turn into one of these. A good rule of thumb is to try to think out where you can hunker down if it begins to snow lightly. During light snow the sooner you get to a high place to see out the better. Snow flurries can turn into a blizzard very fast, and the visibility gets terrible ontop of your clothes getting freezing wet, making travelling very dangerous at times. Fires will blow out if you don't tuck them in a tree or in a building with wind resistance. Cold weather events can be visibly seen, turning your vision tinted blue. It's just an event that makes the global temperature drop even more during a blizzard. These aren't an automatic death sentence, but for a new player, it definitely could be one.

III. Food & Water

* Food - is extremely scarce on Namalsk. Searching spawn town homes and Vorkuta’s apartment buildings are your only source of canned food, so you’ll find hunting and fishing is something you will have to prepare for fairly quickly. Hunting is possible as long as you have a loaded gun and you hear animals. If you haven’t heard any, there’s a large chance you’ll find goats and sheep in the fenced fields outside of Jalovisko. Deer, foxes, boar, and hares spawn scattered across the entire map. Up North, you can either fish along the coast or fish in ponds, though as you go South, all inland ponds are frozen over forcing you to the ocean.

Down South, your only reliable source will be saltwater fishing along the coast. Hunting is always an option but sometimes you can go hours without hearing any animals. When in doubt remember that Tara has plenty of animal spawns. As long as you bring a rope with you, you can make an improvised fishing rod by combining it with a long stick. Find some grass and put a knife in your hand to dig for worms. Every interaction circle equals one worm, by far the most tedious part of fishing. Hoes and shovels will yield more worms. Then, using a sharp blade on a short stick or some bones, you can make an improvised fishing hook to put your worms on. Improvised fishing gear yields small calorie fish. By finding an actual fishing rod, or hook, this will greatly increase the calories in the fish. Find fishing rods next to beached boats on the shoreline, and search any boonie hat found for a chance to find a hook inside the hat’s hook slot. Fishing jigs are a rare item, along with not much benefit, so don’t worry about them.

Before update 1.26, you could eat cooked wolf and bear meat without any consequence. When Sakhal was released, bear and wolf meat became infected with Salmonella. If you’re starving down South, you can eat the steaks, along with any raw meat or fish, by taking a multivitamin pill. You should only eat while you have the pill symbol, if you digest the food (when your arrows go down you’re “digesting” it) while it’s gone, you have a chance to vomit it all back up. This should only be used as a last resort, and you should save your pills as much as you can for colds. Untreated colds will kill you after you progress to stage 3. See more on eating raw food and why it works, colds and salmonella in Basic Medical Care.

Cannibalism is an extremely viable option on Namalsk for these reasons. Besides the loud and obvious laughing, the only real drawback are the twitches while ADSing. In combat against players and predators, along with hunting for food, your hand will periodically twitch. It’s a pretty hard jerk so it will fuck you over eventually. Players will be quick to assume you’re hostile if they hear your laughter before seeing and talking to you, but since some players will kill you on sight anyways, I wouldn’t worry about the laughter too much. But sometimes, your options are extremely limited, so you may have to eat a dead player or find someone to eat. Sticking someone up to steal food from is also extremely common on this map, but I’ll talk about this more in Player Interaction.

* Water - is going to be a huge issue for you if you’re new to the map, so study where the pumps are found in the spawn towns, along with the pump at Vorkuta school and the pump at Vorkuta outskirts. There are only TWO pumps down south, so bringing a cooking pot to boil snow for water is a huge help in the long run. Always take any waterbottle and glass bottle to fill up at these pumps. You’ll drink much more water and faster through filling and drinking them at the pump compared to sipping the water from your hands.

In the North, here are the pumps from left to right.

At Lubjansk behind the large tower in the civilian house area,

At Alakit outside the fenced in military area,

At Vorkuta schoolyard,

At Vorkuta Outskirts up on the hill between the two sides of Outskirts,

Near Jalovisko’s long red building and the frozen pond,

and behind two houses at Nemsk.

In the South, you’ll find one pump right at the crossing right next to some large military towers and one at the front of Norinsk.

You’ll need to find snow on a mountain to collect it into a pot or bottle. You can’t boil out sickness in any kind of bottles, only pots. To purify water collected from snow in bottles, you’ll need to combine it with chlorine tablets. By eating snow straight up, you’ll get sick right after and start vomiting your stomach contents, so if you’re low on food and water, vomiting is a death sentence.

Please keep in mind saltwater is not consumable.

IV. Player Interaction, Death

V. Loot Runs

* North - You'll need to thoroughly loot the northern zone before I can recommend heading south. As long as you visit Lubjansk, Outskirts and/or Jalo you should have enough food, water, and ammo to head to a few of the 4 military bases in the north. Heading to the crossing when you're geared enough, hop on something tall and whack the zombies to clear the area for you to loot.

* South - In the South, there are lots of military bases spread few and far between with static heli crashes. Athena Research Institute, BK-L01 (Hillitary/Mountaintary), BK-L02 (Candycane/Seraja), and Athena-2 are the hotspot military zones of the south. The heli crash sites and plane crashes spawn a few pieces of loot for you.

If you're wanting to get super stacked I recommend heading to A3. You need a light source (more than one glowstick, or a flashlight, NVGs), a gas mask with a few filters, and an epi pen or two to stabilize the orb in the orb room at A2, then run to A1, and jump through with your mask on to head to A3. For more information, visit the Lantia section.

The specific items (besides a light, and a gas mask) you'll need to go to Lantia are the NAC access card and the Lantia Pulsar Locator. While you can find these on people you kill, the journey starts up North to go to the submarine on the ice sheets for a chance to find these two items.

VI. Traps & Explosives

There are 6 different types of traps and explosives that can be used in many different combinations in this game. Traps that don't require a detonator are bear traps, land mines, and trip wires. Explosives that require you to attach a detonator or a tripwire are improvised explosives and plastic explosives. Claymores also need a detonator to work, but they spawn as a kit and give you the trigger of the unit. You can attach detonation triggers to tripwires to trigger explosives, or attach the explosive directly to the tripwire. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) do not spawn naturally, requiring you to craft it, using any grenades or explosives in a combination of 2 and requiring one of the 4 detonation options to explode.

* Bear Traps

...are the most commonly encountered trap. They generally spawn in hunting areas, such as hunting stands, cabins, shacks, and summer camp buildings. Survivors will often place them in town doorways/pathways as well as commonly used patches of grass, outside of random shacks, near gaps in fences, and at the top/bottom of ladders. Bear traps do not make you pass out unless your shock is already low, dealing only -20 shock. Bear traps are only fatal if you're on red health, as they do -28 health (only 8 points more than a close-range flashbang's minimal damage). They always break your legs. People don't usually take the time to combine traps, but bear traps are perfect for trip-wired explosives, since triggering the tripwire makes you stumble into the trap, and tripwires are easy to run from without the trap. They will ruin freshie pants and send other pants to damaged/badly damaged. They can be disarmed (a long stick is the easiest disarming tool, but you can also use some long melees) or even completely avoided by crouching. Despite the name, bear traps do not kill bears (4 or 5 will though), so their only use is harming players. Keep in mind zombies and animals can also trigger them, with the zombie's legs being broken and damaging/killing animals. Once placed, they remain on the ground for 7 days if nobody steps in it or disarms it during this time.

* Landmines

... are found in high tier military areas. Landmines are commonly used due to their convenience, inconspicuousness, and the insanely long 50 second unconsciousness timer. They're commonly covered up with clothing, placed within doorways of military barracks and hotspots, as well as gaps in fences and grass patches. When normally dropped on the ground they're not immediately active, so you can take your time to cover them up before arming it. When initially armed, a clicking noise will start, audibly showing the 10 second grace period, allowing you to move freely over the mine until the grace period is up. You can attempt to disarm a less than badly damaged landmine with a lockpick. There's a 10% chance it will explode, you could also use either a screwdriver (20% chance) or a knife (40% chance) I guess...! Every disarming will make the landmine lose a durability tier, making badly damaged landmines have a 100% chance of exploding when disarmed. You can only tell a landmine is set or not by looking at it and seeing if it has the disarm option available. Land mines will explode in your inventory when you take damage, making it a necessity to carry it in another container. Once placed, they remain on the ground for 7 days if nobody steps in it or disarms it during this time.

They have a small potential of instantly killing a full health survivor, since the broken neck/head stat in this game is incredibly broken. Wearing a helmet has no effect on this either. They're not the most powerful explosive, but if you're less than half full health it will wipe you out. But in comparison, you'll need 24 landmines to kill a bear, and only 4 claymores, and 2 plastic explosives.

* Claymores

... are found in high tier military areas, as well as dynamic events such as helicopter crashes, military train cars, and military convoys. Claymores come in kits, with the claymore and the separate attaching detonator trigger. You can either manually detonate it using the trigger, attach the trigger to a tripwire, or just ruin the claymore or claymore kit by shooting it to have it detonate. They work a little differently than other explosives, with a wide cone of directed health and shock damage up to 25 meters instead of a large circular radius. Though do mind, even if you're standing behind the claymore's cone, if you're within 10 meters, you will be knocked unconscious with a large amount of health taken from you. You can safely disarm claymores with the remote it came with, or with any other remote detonator for that matter. The remote will be taken from you and packed back into the claymore kit, so if you do use a different remote rigged to a different explosive, you won't be able to trigger it anymore. You can disarm a claymore using the normal disarming tools, but there's barely a point in doing this as it won't be usable afterwards, and if it's ruined by your disarming, it will explode. As with landmines, you'll need to keep it in a container to keep it from exploding in your inventory. Also, you can skip the detonation setup by dropping a claymore kit and shooting it to have it explode in the usual cone of damage it does.

Claymores have a small place in base raiding. Six will take down one wall, but bases are usually made with multiple chambers, keeping their loot behind multiple walls like a matryoshka doll.

* Plastic Explosives

... are the most explosive of the explosives in DayZ. You'll find them while wandering industrial areas with the "unique" tag, and especially in military base industrial buildings. They're rare to find, and require a detonation device or a tripwire to explode. When shot, grenaded, or otherwise damaged until ruined (even while actively armed) they will not explode. They will not explode in your inventory either. They are repairable using an electrical repair kit.

They have a massive place in base raiding, taking only two plastic explosives to destroy an entire wall, or one to blow a big breach. It also only takes 2 to kill a bear. Kabooom!!!! They are the most powerful item to use in combination with something else (or even itself) in making an improvised explosive device.

* Improvised Explosive Devices

... are the ultimate bomb that's completely customizable to your choosing. To craft this, all you'll need is a protective case and an electrical repair kit. From then you can choose your one or two explosives and detonation method. There are four different ways to detonate the IED, using a tripwire, detonation unit, or by cranking a kitchen timer or setting an alarm on an alarm clock. You can use any frag grenades, flashbangs, smoke grenades, PO-X vials, PO-X 40mm grenades, 40mm explosive grenades, 40mm smoke grenades, plastic explosives, and landmines in any combination of 2. The bright yellow case will require some conjuring to cover up from being so noticeable. You cannot ruin the IED to make it explode. Once you've put the explosives and detonator in the IED, you cannot move it around, so make sure to do it where you want it to explode. You can't directly bury the IED, but placing it into a container and burying the container, you can then place a tripwire over it with the remote trigger attached and it will act like a buried mine. IEDs are the perfect size to place inside infected, you could put it in someone's inventory while they're tied up or unconscious, there are so many options with this it's genuinely nutty and nobody really goes out of their way to make these but maybe one day you'll meet some random man's IED in a barrack in Tisy and he's brought the Fat Man to life... what then... partner... Don't you want revenge... where's your rage... where's your rage......

* Tripwires

...are both detonators and traps themselves. Causing a player to trip forward when walked through, you can rig a tripwire to explosives and grenades. Grenades have a fuze timer, meaning the player will have enough time to run away if they realize what they stepped into. This is why tripwires with bear traps are an extremely deadly combination. When the player walks into the tripwire, the tripwire unpins the grenade and then they stumble into the bear trap, causing an immediate demise with no escape. There are many different ways to use tripwires. As I stumble into them in my own time, I'll add the most common or creative ones here eventually. ; )

VII. CQB & Sniping

VIII. Ice Sheets

IX. Lantia

X. LEHS Mk3 suit

* Legacy Features

Namalsk Lore