So I am live recording my attempt at securing the DayZ world record for hours lived by a single character, and I thought I could maybe blog a little bit about it as well.
This entry will be about my strategies so far, the near death experiences I have encountered, and the reasons I have chosen to play the game in a way that is most likely to achieve the WR.
[Hour 0]
This is my third attempt to live for 200+ hours in DayZ. The first attempt I was just starting to learn the game mechanics and how the loot spawns worked. I ran up and down the coast finding only industrial loot but figured if I stayed at the ocean I would be relatively safe from pros with big guns.
At first I planned on hiding at the top of a lighthouse but realized it would make me an easy target for stream assassins. Thus, after collecting a small backpack full of soda and canned food, I set up camp inside a generic warehouse cordoned off from the inside out with barbed wire and tank traps (high spawn rates in ind. loot). 11 hours passed and I thought I was cleverly safe from any intruders knowing I could log off before they made it through my barbed wire. 20 minutes later someone spawned in behind me and capped me with a pistol.
[Hour 1]
Since then I have learned, that the best spawns are inside supermarkets and residential housing. Once I find an alice pack and basic camping supplies (matches, hunting knife, hatchet) I also try and stop at a hospital to secure two to three morphine packs. It is also extremely important to secure as many canteen water bottles as possible! You want minimize the need to refill at ponds in order to minimize the chances of randomly encountering a bandit. These are all the supplies I will require, all of my food comes from hunting and cooking wildlife.
[Hour 10]
My original plan was to stick to the west and north land boarders of the map and only go inland for water, but you would not believe the tent cities people stick in the middle of nowhere. I liked to steal cars full of gas and cruise to the ponds to fill up my water bottles.
However! After almost being sniped to death a few hours later, I have since decide it is more important to stay silent and conserve energy in places where I am least likely to be targeted. I have spent the last 30+ hours hiding under rocks and living off the land.
[Hour 44]
As the opening line of this blog describes, I am now out of all ammo and will not risk a bandit encounter in order to secure more. I have not yet hunted with only a hatchet, but the next patch is going to fix the infinite ammo bug anyways, so it is high time I learn.
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Here is my Twitch VOD archive if you want to see the recordings of my progress. I will provide further updates when appropriate.
http://www.twitch.tv/chriscras/videos
EDIT: I should add that this is the website I am basing my "best guess" at the current World Record:
http://www.tacticaladvance.co.uk/dayz-leaderboard-190612/
The DayZ leaderboards crashed due to overloads of user records, but I believe they are still tracking in-game hours and would be able to confirm my character's "/played" if I hit a high enough playtime