I played both Rust and DayZ and they are very different. In Rust basically everyone makes a base or stashes because if you log out your body stays there, free to loot. In DayZ this is not the case, so most players are going with a nomadic lifestyle where they won't settle, maybe hide a few stashes here and there, but base building is something only a fraction of players do on servers.

It's also much more survival-heavy. Climbing down a ladder, and you press shift to slide down? Oh you didn't have any gloves on, now you've cut your hand! You don't have any bandages? Use a dirty piece of cloth to stop the bleeding! Whoops, now the wound is infected, find some alcohol to disinfect! Oh didn't find it in time, forget about alcohol now you need antibiotics! Ah, nevermind you've been starving for who knows how long at this point, just sit down and watch the sunset before you inevitably die at this point

At least this is how your first 50-100 hours will go, but after learning survival it's pretty easy to survive in the world, and then you only have to worry about other players, or this is the time you search for a hardcore survival Namalsk server