I’ve been talking a lot lately about the developments regarding the DayZ Standalone project, on one hand because there’s a community hungry for information out there, and on the other because, well, there have been a lot of developments to talk about. But the thing is, Christmas is right behind the corner, and most of us will have some extra time to kill, so I’ve figured I’d make a friendly suggestion for all the DayZ fans out there that need that tiny bit of a fix to get them through the holidays without a standalone on their hands.
So, I’ll be talking about Day Zero today, a spin-off from the original DayZ mod, created by very dedicated (and talented) fans of the game. The reason I really felt like recommending Day Zero is because it’s one of the highest quality DayZ spin-offs you can get your hands on. It has a lot of new content, it managed to solve a lot of the core issues with the basic DayZ mod, and most importantly, it’s extremely well balanced. Added to this, there are some really safe and secure servers to play on, so you won’t have to worry about hackers and the sort.
Okay, let’s go over some features of Day Zero. First, the weapons. Day Zero is not about finding extremely strong weapons everywhere you look. It did manage to create a larger variety, but it has removed most overpowered weapons from the game. The Winchester and Lee Enfield got some serious nerfs in terms of damage for instance. On the other hand, weapons that were utterly useless in the regular mod are now actually viable – and here I’m referring mostly to the shotguns (namely the Double-Barreled Shotgun, the Remington and the M1014). Previously in the mod, shotguns were lacking on fire-rate, damage and magazine size. The double-barreled was arguably the weakest weapon in the game. What the creators of Day Zero have done however, is to change how pellets work. Basically, pellets fire off 8 individual projectiles, which now do 2.000 damage each. That means that in close-range, where the spread of the projectiles is limited, these weapons do a whooping 16.000 damage, which makes sense. I mean, I wouldn’t expect to survive a shotgun blast from 10 meters away in real life either. To balance it out though, the spread, just like in real life, gets extremely high as distance goes. So while the shotguns are monsters inside buildings and tight spaces, killing someone with an M1014 at more than 100 meters is already challenging, and you won’t be hitting nearly as hard.
Furthermore, the devs have removed previously overpowered sniper rifles too, such as the M107 and AS 50, as well as drastically reduced the availability of the DMR and M14, to the extend that these are now among the rarest things in the game. Which makes sense – these guns had virtually no recoil in the mod, and were fairly easy to find. As a last note on weapons, there are a lot of changes in terms of damage, and there are quite a few new additions (Colt Anaconda revolver, G36C Holo SD, SKS, and these are just to name a few). The variety is increased, but it’s still very hard to get some good weapons. And, none of them feel overpowered anymore.
Next, the devs managed to fix something that was bothering a lot of players, and that was un-enterable buildings. While not all the buildings in Day Zero are enterable, there are a lot of new building types that you can explore, from the small Police Stations (spawning low-medium tier weapons such as the UMP 45 and the M1014) to residential houses and even hospitals. A lot of work went into making these buildings accessible, and it shows. There are also reworked areas on the map with new buildings, with several small NATO encampments that hold medium-high tier loot. Balota Airfield, the NEAF, the NWAF, Elektro and other places got pimped, and in a way that preserves immersion perfectly.
There’s a larger variety of vehicles too, including mountain-bikes and old armored infantry vehicles, but they all have weaknesses and strengths, and they are still not that easy to fix up and find. You’ll need toolboxes to fix them up (which are quite rare), and zombies will be drawn to you if you start attaching wheels for instance. A new weapon management system has been introduced as well, allowing you to detach attachments from certain weapons and attach them to others. For instance, you can take off the CCO scope from an M4A1 CCO and create an M16A4 CCO, and then continue pimping that weapon out by adding an extra grenade launcher. Not every attachment can be removed and not every weapon can be tinkered with, but for the most part, you can create some interesting combinations. Need a silenced side-arm? No problem! Just detach the suppressor from your Mp5 SD and attach it to your M9. Voila!
There are of course a lot more changes and details I could go into, but I’ll stop here. To sum it up, I really had the best time playing DayZ in Day Zero. It’s the same game, with less problems, and with a better community. The guys at zombies.nu host some very stable Day Zero servers (for Chernarus and a new map, Podagorsk, which is more PvP oriented), and run a white-list system that prevents hackers from joining. They provide Day Zero for free (as long as you own Arma 2 CO of course), and offer users a possibility to donate funds for their website. Donators get reserved server slots and some cool custom skins in-game. They even go as far as providing a free DayZero Launcher, which works really well and helps you install the mod without much of a hassle.
So, if you do want to play some quality DayZ until the standalone hits Steam, I strongly urge you to give it a try. I loved every moment spent in DayZero and while I lack the time to play it much at the moment, I would always return to it gladly.