Namalsk is a lore-heavy unofficial map and mod solely made by respected ArmA modder and now Creative Lead of Bohemia Interactive, Sumrak. 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 a mostly barren wasteland with little life. Namalsk is covered mainly by coniferous forests while mountains in the South are covered by permanent snow cover. A very large portion of the map is covered by desolate ice sheets. It has only one major city, located in the central North, Vorkuta. Spawn zones are spaced out on the Northern coastline, and following any road South will take you to the bottlenecked crossing of where the map is split North and South. The Sebjan marsh crossing is to the east, while the Sebjan dam crossing is to the west. The dam is considerably more dangerous than the marsh crossing, with many more zombies - and more military loot. The marsh crossing is a single military guardshed and tower with zombies on a long road surrounded by water that's commonly sniped upon due to high traffic.

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 (and updated!!!!) guide!

Choosing a Server

I. Basics of Namalsk

Frostbite - 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. The sea will be on your left if you're going east. Your very first line of action is to use some of your starting rags create face, hand, and head wrappings to prevent one of Namalsk's unique features: frostbite. It's a permanent health debuff depending on which part of your body receives it. Keep in mind it will also permanently give you the sick symbol, so don't waste your pills on it. While you need rags to bandage yourself if you get cut, zombies will never cut you if you're blocking their attacks. Getting shot by someone is a different story of course but what can you do really? Once you find a knife, you can cut up anything for some rags for the future. But for now, your first thoughts should be to warrant frostbite the moment you spawn in, by mouse-wheel scrolling through the rag's crafting options while it's in your hand to make different wrappings. You can see the progress of frostbite in your inventory by looking at your clothing slots. White at first to show you your skin is exposed, and bluer means further progression, but you do have time if you don't spawn with rags automatically - it's ultimately up to the server owner what you spawn with.

Another extremely important Namalsk starting point is to find shelter to make a fire. This will often be a house with a fireplace, or a fire barrel in industrial areas. Usually 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.

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. Points of Interest

VI. Loot Runs

Loot runs can vary incredibly different from each other within the 3 tiers of loot on Namalsk. Starting with the easiest and working our way up, let's start with northern tier one loot.

VII. 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, and shacks - as well as summer camps on Cherno. 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 Boy to life... what then... partner... Don't you want revenge... where's your rage... where's your rage......