u/ArielTheCreator_

I did a lot of Stary Sobor runs as a freshy and died to countless snipers that chilled in the woods around the military base. Yesterday I copied their play style to see how much fun it really is. I only have screenshots, as my pc would melt while recording footage. I hope my words make up for it. Enjoy the slideshow!

I played on an official german sever with 30-40 players and picked Stary Sobor, since it is the first tier 3 military camp for a lot of new players. Also it acts as crossroads between the major spawn towns like Chernogorsk, Ekeltro and Solnechny. Most players at least past through Stary Sobor, a lot of them loot the camp.

Stary Sobor military camp

My setup:

AUG AX with 6x ACOG, 60 round mags and silencer

I chose two sniper positions and rotated between them every 30 minutes or constantly during engagements. Position B was under a tree near a bush, while Position A was at the edge of the forest.

my vantage points

I planned to play until I get one kill. I picked up a cup of tea, turned on a WW2 documentary on my second screen and waited patiently. It took 40 minutes for the first survivor to arrive:

first encounter (looking from point B)

This guy made it very difficult for me (a total sniper noob) to get a clean shot. He moved constantly, never stoppen and only paused when inside tents or containers. Furthermore he ran every time no infected where near him. So I only had very brief windows of opportunity to shot at him and even then he was moving. I did not fire a single shot and watched him run away with minor military loot.

After another 45 minutes two guys arrived at the truck located between the military camp and the big red barn south of it. They were both geared and came with a small car. One of them started to put tires on the truck while the other covered him (you can see both dudes, dude one carried the tires, dude two has an assault helmet with visor on):

second encouter (looking from point A)

I waited until he started the working animation and shot him once from ~205 meters. He went unconscious, while his friend tried to hide between the truck and the red car they arrived with:

first shot

I immediately shifted positions from point A to point B, the second guy moved from left to right, to make it more difficult for me to hit him. Since I was literally sideways from him, I had no problem to connect my second shot:

second shot

It took two shots for him to go down. The other guy came back to life, ate another 5.56 and died. I finished off the other guy before he came back up with two additional shots. A dynamic gas event occured and I was not able to loot the bodies - due to the exposed location I probably wouldn't care to do it either way.

Those were my very first kills with a range above 200 meters. I totally get the thrill of being the bush camper and waiting for somebody to kill. It is however a rather boring way to play, as you basically wait for 40-60 minutes for something to happen.

How was your first sniping experience in this game? Did you like it?

For some of us it might be the very first player kill we got, for others a spectacular gunfight.

My memorable kill was after the wipe that occured due to the new update. I started as a freshy in Elektro and was super frustrated. I lost my very first okayish geared survivor to the wipe and had to start over after playing the game only for a week or two before the update.

So I run through Elektro und nearly every house I try to loot is either empy or has some sh*tty gear left by players that already took all the good stuff. After four or five houses I only had a P1 with 8 shots in it's magazine, no food, no water bottle, not even a knife. Suddenly I hear sombody near me fighting an infected. I take out my P1 and rush to him, I jump over high fences and basically sprint in the direction of the comotion. In front of a big barn, there is a guy fighting one infected, I aim with my pistol and try to put three rounds into his body. Two of them hit, then he sprints away, two infected are following him, non is paying attention to me. I sprint to follow him, but chose the path that leads behind the barn, where he runs right into it. Once I enter the barn I see one of the doors to the rooms inside closed. From there I hear him using a bandage. I rush inside, shot him from the hip and get the kill.

He had two knifes, better clothing, a full water bottle and even some food on him. He had everything a fresh spawn needs but no weapon. I had nothing, but a small pistol. What makes this so memorable to me, is the realization, that you don't need to loot, when you plan to kill and rob somebody who already did. Also I was aksing myself how it was for the other player. I mean he had a good start and was pretty much ready to leave his spawn town. Being shot and chased by another survivor while almost making it, had to feel bad.

from left to right: main survivor, backup survivor, mule/repair station survivor

I cheesed DayZ progression with 3 characters/accounts on an official server. I know this is a sorry way of playing the game and using its mechanics but honestly… it worked and I really wanted it to happen. I wanna know, how you feel about this. Don't hold back, give me your honest opinion.

First I want to say, that this strategy is very cheesy and also unfair when compared to a playstyle normal people play, my sorry excuse is that I am 37 yerars old, work a full-time job and have a girlfriend and a doggo at home. I am able to play 2-3 hours a day max, when I'm not on PTO or Holidays. During my initial 200 hours of play I never reached the endgame (I got killed by other dudes, sometimes coming very near my goal) and used my PTO to finally make it happen. I play PvE 99% of the time and only join low pop official servers. I do not server hop to more poulated ones, once geared.

"What do you mean by "endgame" bro? This game ain't got no endgame..." Yes, I agree "the endgame" ist rather a personal goal than a game state that is set in stone. I think everyone has an individual idea of what an endgame character means to them.

For me, an actual endgame all-rounder build (not sniper-focused) needs:

• Plate Carrier with Pouches
• Assault / Ballistic / Tactical Helmet
• Field Jacket or Tactical Shirt (weight to insulation ratio is goated)
• Cargo Pants or high insulation Hunting Pants (Cargo has the best insulation)
• Combat / Assault / Jungle Boots (Combat boots are most stealthy)
• Tactical or Combat Gloves
• Hunter Backpack (best weight-to-carry ratio IMO) or Combat/Tactical Backpack
• Food, water, medicine, repair items (burried away in a stash or with the mule)
• Utility items (knife, compass, GPS, chlorine tabs, vitamins, etc.)
• Night Vision Goggles
• A small suppressed SMG for infected or at CQC at full auto (UMP45 or MP5)
• A true Tier 4 mid-range rifle (AUR AX, M16, M4 or LAR) with suppressor + ACOG + backup sights

Normally I would try to achieve this by looting Zelenogorsk, NWAF and the northern-western part of the map. Once I got initial good gear I try to get all the NBC gear and do the permanent gas zones. Here I find the tier 4 weapons and once I get these, I am done with the character and start a new one or take a break from the game.

My problem was, that everytime I got near finalizing my NBC gear for the final loot runs, another survivor killed me. I had a week of PTO and really wanted to have one endgame character that has all the mentioned equipment. After two previous non-cheesy attempts this is how I finally made it happen:

I bought 3 copies of the game and played all three survivors on the same server. One for my main survivor, one for a secondary main survivor and one for a mule/maintenance survivor. I'm from Germany and played on an Singapur Asian official server, because it had 2-3 survivors max while I was online and to me a very low pop server makes it easier not to die while looting. I played each of the fresh three survivors until I reached the woods western of NWAF. The main focus was to get my two main character kitted out for loot runs and to get two big backpacks (54 slots) for my mule. Obviously you can use the "offline" suvrivors as stash until you get your mule sorted out.

Than I played the same pattern for days.

• Survivor 1 loots the northern part of NWAF, then goes north to Bashnya, Novaya Petrova, Topolink and Vavilovo. His Focus is military gear and food/repair items. Once done, he returns to the forest where the mule character has basically 120 slots of free space.
• Survivor 2 loots the southen part of NWAF, then goes south to Grishino and Kobanino. His Focus is NBC and Hunting Gear (which includes weapon cleaning kits and leather repair kits).
• Survivor 3 is the mule and maintenance station. He has 3-4x of each of these items: Sewing Kit, Leather repair Kit, Weapons Cleaning Kit, Epoxy Putty. Also one set of Electrical repair kit and Duct tape. Furthermore he will receive any NBC gear that I collected.

After a couple days of this exact pattern I got all three survivors kitted out, doing the two mentioned loot runs with my main guys over and over again. I never lost any gear, because I logged out with my mule, once he collected or donated items. I did not die to players, because of the very low population.

Once I got all the NBC gear together I looted Rify a couply of times and finally found a tier 4 weapon with a a combi-scope and 60 rounds mags. I reached "my endgame", my main survivor has the following gear:

• Plate Carrier with Pouches
• Assault Helmet
• Olive Tactical Shirt
• Olive Cargo Pants
• Beige Jungle Boots
• Beige Tactical Gloves
• Beige/Olive Hunter Backpack
• Full survival supplies
• NVGs
• Suppressed MP5 (infected + close quarters on full auto)
• Suppressed AUR AX with ACOG + backup sights + 60 rounds mags

I also have further loadout options on my mule:

• Tundra with Huting Scope and Bottle Silencer
• KA74 with PSO-1
• VSS Vintorez with 20 round mag and kobra sights
• UMP45 with silencer and combat sights

Finally I also collected a shovel, saw, a hatched and nails to burry crates, however my stashed got raided at shortly before completing my main character, so even on a low pop server with 3 players, they will find your stuff smh...

Some thoughs from my side:

- Now that I have my very first Tier 4 super duper operator guy, the current game stopped being fun. After 300 hours I reached my goal and now I don't know what do.

- I don't want to join a high population server with my kitted out guys, since I don't want to lose the gear and also I don't really enjoy PVP. My endgame dude is stuck on an Asian low pop sever.

- Are other people with similar time schedules able to reach this game state without using exploitative strategies that I used? Are they just better and more experience than me? Why was I never able to pull this off the legit was?

- Once I recover from the extensive play time I will start an fresh game without cheesing on Livonia. Maybe the journey was the actual goal all along...