Day Z - A Sandbox Zombie Survival mod for ARMA II. (Currently in ALPHA)

Welcome to New Chernarus
Day Z is a independently developed modification for the often loudly touted realistic military sim ARMA II. Players are dropped into the 225kmВ Chernarus map from the original ARMA II, now revised to suit a zombie apocalypse. The entire map is free to explore, with the only limitations being your skill as a player, and the zombies and players opposing you. Most if not all landmarks from the original map can be found for those who are already familiar with it, such as the radio tower on Green Mountain, the small city of Chernogorsk, and Devil's Castle - unfortunately all of which are now fraught with danger, whether by zombies or players changes with time.



Survival is Key
Players begin the game on the southern coast of Chernarus, on a beach not too far from the city of Chernogorsk with very little equipment to their name - A Makarov PM pistol with 6 mags (read: horrid gun), a water bottle, some medical supplies, 2 tins of food, 10 road flares, and a small backpack to put it all in.
If a player wishes to survive for long, they must locate and obtain more supplies, and above all, a decent weapon. Food, Weapons, and other items are found in loot piles, hidden in various buildings or structures around the map. The game likes to put a lot of weight behind the idea of risk versus gain - the riskier a place is to loot, the better the equipment you'll find. Many players will have to start out looting farms and small villages for their first scraps of equipment, and slowly progressing to riskier and riskier locals is key unless the player wishes to die an untimely death.
The player must also always be on the lookout for Bandits - players who murder others for fun or profit - who are always roving about the lands in search of easy victims to rob or murder. Needless to say, one must always be wary of the Zombies as well, who will flock to the sounds of gunfire and chase the player until one or the other falls.


Trust No One
In this game of dogged survival against odds, one may naturally turn to others for help and companionship. Teaming up can be a great way to survive in a land full of vicious zombies and ruthless bandits who will murder you over a can of beans. However it can also be a good way to get yourself killed. One should never trust any random survivor completely - who's to say they won't shoot you in the back for that fancy new weapon you found in a barn? Or lead you into a bandit trap under the pretence of going loot hunting?
As a general rule, one should only trust his friends outside of the game if he plans on not being butchered at any possible moment. The problem that comes with this is that their inevitable deaths will be made all the more traumatic (or lucrative...)

Communication is generally achieved through VOIP used in Direct Communication chat - that is, your voice can only be heard by those nearby. Text chat is also available but only for server-wide chat at present, meaning that if you reveal your location over text, every bandit in the country will make you a target.
The common way to enquire whether someone is going to shoot you or not is to ask whether they're "friendly". Another way for those without VOIP is to use the "salute" command (default key: /). Unfortunately this could still all be a ruse by bandits looking to rob you, but in general it works for big groups.



Persistent Characters, Permadeath and Real-Time
All your character's items, equipment, status and so forth are saved into Day Z's persistent data server, meaning that whenever you quit the game your location and items are saved for the next time you log in - no matter what Day Z server that may be. For instance, you could log off from a North America server in the middle of Chernogorsk with a shotgun, and then login to a European one to find yourself shotgun in all in exactly the same place. Unfortunately, this is offset by Permadeath.

Permadeath exists in this game in its purest form: You get killed, and you're dead. Your character ceases to exist. Everything he did was in vain. All his items and weapons are lost to whoever stumbles across his rotting corpse. You're dead and that's all there is to it. When you start again, you're restored to being a newbie survivor with a puny makarov once more, and once more unable to fend off sudden robberies from other players.

One other interesting thing incorporated into Day Z is real time. Day and Night operate on a 1:1 cycle; if it's dark where the server is, it's dark in-game. If the sun's rising by the server's location, the sun's rising in game. This, coupled with the fact that night is almost pitch-black makes night time all the worse. Since the zombies rely less on sight than their other senses, they have less trouble navigating and butchering players than the players themselves have trying to find somewhere to hide. It is highly recommended that you only play the game during daytime, unless you have the balls to (or NVG...)


Sickness, and the Health System
Day Z features a detailed injury system, rather than a simple health bar that replenishes with first aid kits. If you are shot, bitten, or otherwise maimed by an enemy, you will begin to bleed. Your health is measured by your Blood Count which is displayed on your HUD. If your blood count drops below zero, you will die (usually). Bandages must be applied quickly to any gushing wounds to stem the blood flow immediately, although waiting long enough will allow the wound to close by itself (after you've lost a lot of blood no doubt). Having a low blood count will render a survivor vulnerable to falling unconscious - being hit by a zombie with a low blood count has the possibility of knocking the survivor out, whereas having an extremely low blood count causes the survivor to drift in and out of consciousness. Whilst in this state, the survivor cannot move or talk, and is rendered vulnerable to attack. Use of adrenalin pens by a friend can bring a survivor instantly back to consciousness.

Blood can be restored by eating, which also contributes to staving off hunger. Hunger and thirst must both be addressed at regular intervals with the consumption of food and beverages. Failure to do so will result in death.
There are several types of consumables, the most common being cans of food and soda, which are also oddly enough highly prized by many bandits. Cans are quite common in loots piles at present, meaning that no survivor is likely to die of starvation as of yet.

Sickness is also an issue, although not quite built upon yet. Becoming sick is more likely when you get too cold, and his body temperature drops below a certain threshold. When you're sick, you will begin to cough and splutter, which also causes the sickness to spread to others nearby. Currently sickness does not do much other than make you cough and infect people, but this may be built upon in future.

Other statuses are also in place, such as shock from heavy injuries and being too cold will cause your aim to become shaky, and taking a bullet to the legs or falling from too high a height and breaking bones will force your character to crawl.

I've been wanting this for so long.... but need to raise some money for ARMA II.
It's really good, had a go at it when I slept over at my mates for the weekend, played for 6 hours (not long in this mod) and man it was great

Note to new players; don't go anywhere near Elektra or Chernogorsk unless you want to die. The amount of people who spend hours at a time camping in the best spots is ridiculous.

Although you tend to find some nice stuff there, like tents and backpacks. Probably should get better weapons from smaller, more inland towns to fight off bandits in the bigger towns with supermarkets.

Holy shit, congratulations on convincing me to buy this. That video is the definition of what I want in a game. Thanks man.

EDIT: this is a huge pain in the ass to do, finally got the dayz mod installed but now when i join servers it usually boots me out

Yeah, logging in is quite problematic at present. They have to rely on servers that are donated to them, and people always pack into them as soon as they can

coca, the battleye client that is installed with ArmA for steam is outdated. You should go check out this website for the new version.
http://www.battleye.com/download.html

Im able to play and everything its just that spawning in take ~5 mins.
When i logged off i was on top of this factory building where sooooo much stuff was inside and i found and akm on a dead guy

oh yeah I remember seeing this game, actually I only saw it yesterday :P btw guys ARMA 3 in E3 anyway see it?

Just raided elektro and cherno and killing bandits and stuff,....
gonna head to the NW airfield. Found a bike. Just need to check some groceries.
Ahhhhh its a good day to kill zombies.