The First Night

Welcome to my Day-Z adventures! The entries added today were originally on a forum, hence why there are so many for one day!
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I've just returned from my first night in Day Z. I woke up on the beach and in the text chat another newbie was being warned about a gang of guys flying a helicopter along the coast looking for trouble. So immediately I was wary. It was pitch black, I could only see the silhouettes of trees and swaying grass around me, and no landmarks to speak of. I figured out the basic controls with the help of an online guide and threw a flare whilst messing around. I was forced to get away in case it attracted unwanted attention, especially from the helicopter. I thought I heard it coming but then realised it was the fan on my laptop having a fit!


The music is atmospheric and unnerving, it reminds me of Amnesia: Dark Descent. So this is playing as I'm creeping around the very dark countryside. I suddenly hear concrete under my feet and realise I'm on a yard or perhaps a heli pad - there's white markings on the floor I can't make out. There's a gurgling and grunting not far off, but I can see nothing but black in that direction. I turn away to get out of there and just then I see the silhouette of a figure shambling only a few meters away! My heart skips a beat, I had no idea he was there, I didn't hear a thing from him. I hold my breath and he carries on shambling past me, they can't see too well in the dark I guess. After a safe amount of time I crawl off again, I'm going to have to be more careful.


The silhouette of a telegraph pole finally comes into view and I see it's connected, surely these poles will lead me to civilisation? Following them I discover they're parallel to a road, but I have to stay off it, my footsteps are far too loud on asphalt. The shapes of buildings loom out of the darkness ahead. It starts to pour with rain. Over the din I can hear zombies nearby and so I slowly crawl in the grass towards the pitch black buildings. I reach one and start to move around the outside, looking for an entrance. I can't even see the walls it's so dark, I'm using touch alone. A gurgling zombie approaches but shambles right past me, stay still and you're safe. I take a moment to switch to Windows to see how to open doors. When I return to the game, the mouse click causes my gun to fire! Shit! The zombie screams and in seconds he's clawing at me, I can't even tell from which direction because it's so dark! I shoot around wildly until the the light from the gun flashes lights him up. It's like a horrible strobe as I expend a clip into him. He finally falls and I quickly try to crawl away before more arrive... but I'm too late. Another two zeds, screaming, charge towards me in the grass and I shoot them down. I back up against a wall but no more zombies come, that time I was lucky. Amazingly despite being clawed, I don't seem to need medical attention. The downpour finally stops.


I can't find any way into the buildings so I'm forced to throw a flare. Red flickering light illuminates the area. It makes you feel extremely vulnerable even though the light is a godsend. I quickly skirt the buildings but it turns out they are just scenery and you can't get in the doors - disappointing! I move on to avoid any attention from the flare, crouching and running along the telegraph poles. Before long a black warehouse rises from the gloom as I can't hear any groans, I throw a few flares around. The area looks like a sub interior now. There's a ladder on the side of the warehouse and I decide to climb onto the roof to scope out the surrounding area and spy any intruders. I spy a zombie shuffling towards the flare, presumably attracted by the light. I can see through cracks in the roof that the building isn't just scenery and might have loot inside. I head back down, running towards the ladder - but in a disaster of lag, I overshoot the edge of the roof, and heroically plunge two stories to the hard floor. There's a horrible crack as my legs snap and my vision turns grey. Five zombies charge towards me, gurgling and ranting in the flickering red light, and start to rip at me. It's the last thing I see as everything goes blacker than the night... and another life is snuffed out, in a comically tragic fashion!


After this slight mishap (!), I decided to try some American servers as Day Z uses a near real-time clock. It's so much harder at night and I wanted to experience some daylight. I spawned right in a town this time and as the server was quite full, the text chat was busy with people making plans, cursing bandits and asking questions. A thriving community compared to the last one. I started to explore the surrounding buildings and found zombie bodies strewn around everywhere. A lot of fighting and looting had happened here. Any open building had been ransacked by recent scavengers, only body bags and bare furniture remained. In a garden I found the body of an unfortunate scavenger like me, whether he was eaten or shot was unclear. His body had been looted though. The tension increased as I scurried from corner to corner, expecting to run into bandits at any moment.


I was getting to the outskirts of the town when I heard gunfire back the way I'd came. Skirting behind the town sticking close to the woods, I could see zombies charging from the town towards the trees ahead. I could hear the pops of a pistol in there. A zombie, attracted by the noise ran from behind me towards the woods but he suddenly had a change of heart and turned around. I didn't want to fire and give away my presence but had no choice, this game doesn't do baseball bats... He got his claws into me before I gunned him and down. My vision was blurred and swinging around at every step, I needed medical attention. I hoped the human wouldn't come for me as I hid behind a house bandaging my wounds. He clearly had more pressing matters though: ten seconds later gunfire rang out from a big storehouse in the town center, close to his last position. I went back into the woods and climbed a small hill - from this concealed position I could see the storehouse clearly. Zombies were charging around it in a frenzy and the human inside didn't have a shortage of bullets, they kept coming and dropping. I saw occasional glimpses of him holding out and looting zombies. For some reason player tags were on this server, so I could see he was a bandit when I put my crosshair over him. I was at too far away for an accurate pistol shot so decided to observe, plus, he didn't know I was here. Eventually the zombies stopped coming and the bandit moved off. I decided to check out a small fenced quarry through the woods and found my first loot in a shed there, an empty whiskey bottle and some ammo. Sweet.


I headed back into town in the opposite direction from the bandit to find fresh houses to loot. It was broad daylight and I was crouching down, moving through gardens and running across streets. There were a few zombies around here, just shambling around aimlessly. I knew they didn't have very good eyesight, but I got careless. I got spotted by one which moves like an ape and it screeched down on me. This was bad. I managed to shoot him before he reached me but already I could see three more zeds coming my way from all directions. I managed to run into a fence corridor helping to thin their numbers but more kept coming. I was gunning them down but my ammo was running low. Hurt and surrounded, I knew I had to run for it. I pushed past the zeds and dodged through gardens onto the main road, picking up even more screamers along the way. I ran and ran, heading for a petrol station in the distance. The zombies were slavering inches away but I didn't dare look back. At the petrol station I used a wrecked car for cover and pumped the last of my bullets into the throng of about eight runners. I didn't even kill one. I ran through the petrol station shed and tried to close the back door on them but I wasn't quick enough. The last hope was a ladder onto one of the fuel tanks, but at the top I fell off into the horde. I was surrounded and they quickly clawed me down. I stayed conscious for far too long on the ground until everything went mercifully black. Game over.


That was a harsh lesson in zombie survival - if it's daytime and there's a few around, alert one and they're damned hard to stop if you haven't got a lot of munitions. I'm going to have to be more careful in future. It's testament to the game's atmosphere that even with only minimal human contact it was still tense and felt like a survival horror - the mere possibility of hostile humans being out there is a threat enough. I definitely had flashbacks to Operation Flashpoint as I crawled around in the grass inches away from zombies - except in that game it was tanks!