So last night we went on a big trek through the countryside heading North away from the big cities (or fucking deathtraps as I like to call them). To give you an idea of the scale of the world, this took about four hours including time taken to raid towns along the way. "You sad bastard!" I hear you cry. Fortunately it's not as boring as you'd think, when alone you still have your comrades on voice chat, you have to navigate, keep an eye out for zombies and other players. Trekking is even more atmospheric at night. After about an hour's jog from the coast (the game had respawned us again, grr), I met Strategos and Plums in a small town, and we continued north.
Out in the rural areas it's very quiet, but there's still plenty of zombies around settlements. You have to be careful because even small isolated buildings can have a number of zombies in the vicinity. At night it's really hard to see them, often they make sounds giving away their position but some are silent (until the bloodcurdling yell when they see their walking dinner: i.e. you). Sometimes you just spot a silhouette against the skyline at the last minute and have to rapidly step away. The great thing is, if you crap yourself and start running, you'll just make more noise and increase your chances of being zombie a la carte. As soon as there's zombies in the area you have to walk instead of run to reduce your noise, so you tiptoe through towns dodging them just like a goddamned ninja. Thankfully at night you can get really close to zombies without them spotting you but they still shamble surprisingly fast. They like to aimlessly wander around which makes it impossible to predict where they'll go next, we almost got trapped a few times by zombies cutting us off.
Zombies roam the countryside
We passed through at least three or four villages and small towns on our trek, plus a few farms. We stole weapons and supplies from farm buildings and houses (I doubt drooling Farmer Giles will need his binoculars any more...) Our sneaking went pretty well, only alerting zombies a few times. Despite some Rllmuk standard "SHIT! JUST SHOT THE GUN BY ACCIDENT!", and "IT'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU! TURN AROUND NOW! FUCK!!!!" we never attracted a horde too big to handle, but picked up some injuries in the fights. We're out of painkillers so those of us who are hurt are shaking, making aiming harder. I've also got an infection from the other night when it constantly rained and my temperature dropped. Although there's no health penalty, I keep coughing and it's audible to those around you. It's pretty funny because it actually gets really annoying - including for the others, and would be a dead giveaway in a stealth situation. Thankfully it doesn't alert zombies. The only cure is antibiotics which you can only get in hospitals, if I survive long enough I need to go and find some.
Strategos defiles a church with a chemlight. I'm staying away from him, I don't like lightning.
Seeing each other in the dark is another challenge/pain in the arse. Even with only three of us, it was quite easy to lose each other. The server had player tags so if you hover the crosshair over someone, even in the distance, their name appears. That helped a lot. But still we'd sometimes be directing each other when we got separated, only to find that the person was only about three meters away! Strategos would sometimes carry a chemlight so we could stick together. The advantage of a chemlight is that the light range is quite low making it less likely for people to see you. They also last about half an hour compared to flares which last around five minutes. It's quite cool coming into a town and finding a chemlight and wondering just how long ago that someone's been here. Are they watching you even now...?
Strategos leads the way with a chemlight. Like a bloody christmas tree.
In towns we used the occasional flare or chemlight to light up building interiors. This far into the countryside it was unlikely anyone would be around, and even if they did see it and investigate, there would have three or four of us to contend with. Safety in numbers (and sniper rifles). I had a flashlight too but it wouldn't work. To my delight I found another one en-route and proceeded to blind my teammates and alert everyone in a ten mile radius to our position. This is what a flashlight looks like to the user, but to everyone else it's like a bloody lighthouse visible from space. I only used it sparingly even though everything in my heart screamed "The Light! The Liiiiiiight!"
Maybe Plums will post the photo that shows what this looks like from his view
Flares create a cool atmosphere. I feel like bleeding just to colour-co-ordinate.
Navigating required our elite Scout knowledge using maps and compass. The compass glows green at night which is a cool touch. The maps even have contours which helped us figure out where we were when we inevitably got lost a few times. Our embarrassment was complete when we got beaten to our destination by Cheeko who legged it there by himself. We started to try to pitch tents, but an annoying bug wouldn't let us anywhere around. We turned in for the night in some bushes, my final elite maneuver was to accidently throw a flare giving our position away to anyone nearby (hopefully noone!). And so ended a very enjoyable and atmospheric journey to the north.
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