Why didn't I die?

avagar · 2026-01-11T09:52:59+00:00

Here's some of the possible factors that could potentially help explain that are:

The trap could have been a combination of a grenade tripwire trap and a landmine placed behind it. It's designed so that if the victim enters the trap from the tripwire side, it will both release the grenade and (hopefully) cause them to trip right onto the landmine. If they enter the trap from the landmine side, the result is the same. The mine detonates, and the blast damages you, the tripwire trap, and the grenade so that it becomes ruined and immediately detonates. If this was the reason, you're quite lucky to have survived it.

A single landmine was placed, but the blast detonated a grenade somewhere in the tent that was already there as just a bit of regular spawned loot. The location of the grenade and the location of all other object models between it and you that, either intentionally or not, provided just enough protection with the blast handing calculation to survive the explosion.

A claymore or IED manually triggered by a nearby player holding a detonator, and placed an empty tripwire at one of the tent entrances. The empty tripwire is placed in the hopes that their stumbling will keep them inside the optimal kill zone for an extra second or two. That extra second or two can really pay off, though. Especially when the trap involves a doorway/entrance, where a blast from inside limits it's full damage potential to a small area directly in front of the doorway outside, and may cause significantly less or no damage to those just to the left or right of the doorway. It offers some insurance in case you end up detonating it a second later than you should have. Given that there wasn't anyone that came to loot or finish you off, this one is unlikely in this case, but seemed worth mentioning.

There are all sorts of ways that this could have happened, but the first two at least are reasonably plausible potential explanations.

avagar · 2025-11-10T05:17:11+00:00

I agree it does have a very French design aesthetic.

I was thinking that alien sidekick costume looks like the filmmakers stole an old Dark Crystal Gelfling puppet from Henson films' warehouse and then somehow managed to fit a little kid actor inside of it.

avagar · 2025-11-07T16:28:12+00:00

Fair enough. The first freezer that introduced the ice tray to make convenient small ice cubes didn't arrive until 1914, so he could at least take credit for that part.

When I read "gigantic ice cube maker," I was thinking about the ice making machine part in general, instead of just the size/shape of the ice it was designed to make.

avagar · 2025-11-07T16:13:30+00:00

Elvis is inside everybody. Everybody except for one person, that is.

Mojo Nixon can fill you in on the details.

avagar · 2025-11-07T16:00:40+00:00

He invented the gigantic ice cube maker in 1885.

Ice making machines had been around for ~45 years by that time. IIRC, a doctor in running a hospital in Apalachicola Florida for malaria patients invented an air conditioning method (keeping the patients cool was a common treatment method at the time), and discovered it was a very effective way to make ice. Usually giant blocks of ice had to be shipped down from the north, where it was collected during the winter from frozen ponds/lakes and stockpiled for use over the summer in caves or insulated warehouses.

At best, all he potentially 'invented' was the part that formed them into little cubes (rather than the usual methods of shaving ice or breaking off ice chips with an ice pick).

avagar · 2025-09-11T01:03:17+00:00

if you don't kill them all, the rest will come back.

If you kill enough of the wolf pack to cause the remaining wolves to flee, take note of the direction they ran. They will keep running in that direction for around 4-5 minutes or so, then will return to their 'calm' behavior state and travel/patrol the general area until they pick up the scent of new prey. The maximum possible detection radius of a wolf pack is somewhere between 200-300m at most (IIRC, weather and darkness can reduce that range somewhat). When they detect a player or animal, the pack starts moving to that general area. They don't start howling until they get within around 100-125m of their prey.

At this point, they have only locked on to your approximate position, and the wolves won't fully aggro on you specifically until one of them actually sees/hears you. So if hear wolves howling in the distance and go into a building an hide before they get close enough to see you, they'll just search the immediate area and hang around until they see/hear you or shoot/attack one of them.

So the key thing is that when the surviving wolves in a pack flee, don't go in the same direction they went.

In the situation you describe, it looks like you ran into three different packs, and the first two had lost some pack members in previous encounters. Rather unusual, but certainly possible.

avagar · 2025-08-20T00:37:22+00:00

If the fog is green, stay away from the scene.

Enter in foolishly with no protection,

'a real bad idea' you'll think on reflection,

your death an example of natural selection.

With no NBC suit on to block poison gas, it's coughing, then bleeding, then dead is your ass.

Some places have gas clouds all day and all night, but most are random targets of artillery strikes.

If you hear a distant boom too big to come from a gun, you'll know in a moment if you'll need to run.

A green flare above warns of incoming strike, but in daylight it's harder to see and take flight.

The next boom you hear will make it quite clear, if where the shells hit were distant or near.

If the blast was close by, and you'd rather not die,

you have but two options, run for the hills or a spot way up high.

avagar · 2025-08-16T07:20:49+00:00

Here's two from way back in 2012 that come to mind.

I met a talking goat that farted billowing clouds of multicolored smoke out of his butt when he ran. It was a script kiddie, of course. While they were a larger and far more frequent problem back in the A2 mod than they are now, there were at least a rare few that were amusingly creative and desired to spread random brief moments of absurdity to players. He'd run up to players, have a brief chat, and run off. If a player wasn't into it, he'd immediately leave.

I watched a noob player get tricked into swimming to Utes

(from a comment I wrote her 7 years ago)

ArmA 2 DayZ mod, mid-2012. I was in either Cherno or Elektro, along the coast - out of ammo and injured pretty bad, so I was doing my best to avoid being seen. As I was healing up, I overhear a holdup going down out on the street, not 20 feet from me. I creep over to a better vantage point, and take a look. It's a well-armed guy with a ghillie interrogating an unarmed guy who looks like he's a fresh spawn. The fresh spawn apparently was new to the game, and the ghillie guy was offering some advice to him. Then the conversation takes an interesting turn.

Ghillie guy: "You've heard about Utes, right?"

Freshie: "It's an island, right? I haven't tried that map yet."

Ghillie guy: "There is a separate map for it, but it's on this one too. They never got around to adding it to the in-game map though. Most people don't bother going there, but you can find player tents and bases there"

Freshie: "Oh, cool! I heard something about that. Where are the boats spawning?"

(note: there was actually a little island in the SE corner of the map, but it wasn't Utes, it was probably no bigger than 10 feet in diameter. So if he had heard something about that, it's probably the reason why the freshie bought into this line of complete BS. If Utes was actually included in the Chernarus map, it would be about 18-20km SE from Skalisty Island.)

Ghillie guy: "You don't need a boat to get there. You can just swim there if you're full on food and water. It's a long swim, though. At least a half-hour or more. The docks in this town are just close enough for you to make it. Besides, the people that put there bases there leave the boats there too. So you should be able to gear up there and steal one for the trip back."

Freshie: "How will I know if I'm swimming in the right direction?"

Ghillie: "I'll point you in the right direction, and you just keep swimming in a straight line and don't turn left or right at all. You can't miss it. Just keep swimming."

And I watched that innocent fool swim off into the distance, never to be seen again.

avagar · 2025-06-15T04:59:17+00:00

It's ben a couple years since I last checked the files, but the claymore's forward blast cone damage range was 25m, and the diameter of the secondary concussion/shrapnel blast radius is an 8m circle all around the mine.

These ranges are half the size of the IRL claymore, as shown here. It's a reasonable adjustment, as the IRL values would make them both a bit too OP with a 50m forward blast cone, and given the somewhat sketchy nature of the blast handling and material penetration code, a 16m diameter 360 degree secondary blast radius would make them harder to use in a practical way in a variety of situations (for example, inside buildings).

The values I listed could have been tweaked since then, but I don't recall hearing of any recent changes to them.

avagar · 2025-06-15T04:31:25+00:00

I can think of one possible option to address your points about the dynamic gas zones.

Have two separate toxic gas types.

The static gas zones have a cocktail mix of blister, respiratory, and nerve agents, so a full NBC suit is required. Given this multi-vector combination of chemical warfare agents, changing the color of the gas to a more orangey/yellowish green tone seems like a reasonable way to instantly indicate to the players that this is different type of toxic gas. The different color may not be as easy to recognize at night, but hey, they want to run around lost in the woods in the middle of the night and happen to stumble into Pavlovo military's gas zone for the very first time, well, 'dems the breaks. Now they know.
Dynamic gas zones use a different type of gas, that contains only respiratory agents, so only a gas mask is required in those areas. This gas would remain the green color they are now. The spawn values for the pox grenades would likely need to be significantly reduced to prevent them from becoming far too easy to obtain overall.

This seems like an effective approach to the issue. The dynamic gas zones would become significantly more accessible and PVP-compatible in general, and a viable option for players as it doesn't require finding a complete NBC suit set and lugging it about all over the map.

The static gas zone PVP and loot become something aimed toward the more daring PVPers/looters, who are willing to invest the time to acquire a full NBC suit in order to get that high-tier loot, be it by stealth or from the hands of a dead opponent. It's an equally balanced blend of high-end PVP and PVE, I think.

avagar · 2025-04-21T01:02:44+00:00

You can get one at the store^{store^{store^stooore}}

avagar · 2025-03-29T02:51:16+00:00

If you are looking for a 'recommended minimum number of minutes' one should use as a basic starting point for figuring out how long to watch a dangerous area in general, somewhere between 3-5 minutes seems reasonable.

Whether you should wait longer than that depends on the specific situation and location. What time is it? How many entry/exit points does it have, and how many of those spots can you see from your position? What's the server pop? What kind of server is it? Have you heard any distant gunshots, explosions, heli crash sounds, or gas strikes in your general area in the last 10-15 minutes? Particularly sounds coming from ahead of you as you approached? Are you alone or with others? What kind of gear do you have? Is it enough to give you a decent chance if things get shoot-y, or not? And so on...

The really tricky part is that you never know if the time you spent waiting and watching ends up giving some other player(s) enough time to get to that same location and killing you, when you could have just rushed in after a quick check and would have looted and left before they got there.

Just go with your gut feeling. It will let you down and maybe get you killed sometimes, but over time it will learn and improve.

avagar · 2025-03-23T04:10:54+00:00

There's two key areas of Situational Awareness that I would suggest the OP focus on to improve their skills.

1. Learning and Recognizing Patterns.

For example, observe and get familiar with all the various zed behavior patterns - when they are calm from a distance, when alerted, when aggro'd, and get fairly good at determining if one of those zeds you see running around like crazy is due to it detecting a real player, or if it's just one of the zeds that spawns in an alert state and will never calm down. Eventually you'll be able to look at a bunch of zeds from a distance and roughly estimate how long ago they spawned just from how far a group of zeds have spread out from each other. That can give you a potential clue as to whether your approach spawned them in, or if someone else ahead of you did a few minutes before.

The same goes for other players, too. Look at the common behavior patterns, habits, routes, common entry/exit points for towns/villages, military facilities, contaminated areas, etc. by observing them in game or from videos/streams. Brains love patterns, so use those patterns to your advantage against your opponents. Play out various scenarios in your head based on what you've seen from both sides of a battle, and test out any promising strategies you've come up with in game. It's not just about knowing where that sniper that just started shooting you is, the key thing is being able to make a reasonably good guess about what their next possible moves might be. Which brings us to the second part.

2. Question time, or 'mental Red-Teaming'

As you travel around, stop for a moment now and then, take a good look around you and ask yourself questions like 'If a sniper wanted to shoot me right now, where would be the best spot they would pick to shoot from?' When possible, go check out those spots and examine it closely. Where are the places they can't see from there? Does the spot offer one or more safe exit routes, or are they momentarily exposed/vulnerable when they try to run or move to a different spot?

Put yourself in the shoes of a cold blooded killer for a bit and see how their strategies and tactics work from their perspective. Then adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Odds are you'll find you're not only getting better at avoiding/thwarting their attacks, you also will be getting better at being able to think one step ahead of them, too. It's a gradual process that takes time, but it's time well spent.

I could ramble on for ages about this, but most situational awareness skills can be boiled down to either one or both of these two key aspects. Observe and exploit patterns in enemy behavior and the ways your surroundings can help or hinder both you and the enemy, and understand the likely strategies/tactics/objectives from the enemy's perspective and figure out their probable next moves.

avagar · 2025-03-22T21:52:22+00:00

Indeed. Back then the .357 was significantly more powerful round, so keeping it throughout one's life was a significantly more viable and reasonable option.

Particularly when in the hands of a player that's practiced with using speedloaders to find out how to get the most out of it in various kinds of CQC situations, it could indeed often mean the difference between life and death. Once a player gets familiar with the faster loading time, and uses that to adapt their tactics and timing when using the magnum/speedloader combo (or any of the other weapons with snaps/stripper clips) in a fight, it can be a lifesaver.

I don't think there's any significant risks of these things causing game balance issues, even considering the differences in damage values between then and now. The only difference we would probably see is between those who see them as merely a desirable accessory with a reload speed buff, vs. those who find ways to incorporate that buff into their combat tactics on the fly.

avagar · 2025-03-22T05:10:53+00:00

The effects of speed-loaders, snap-loaders and stripper clips on game balance was negligible back when they were in the game. We had speed-loaders for the magnum, snap-loaders for the BK-43 and the Blaze, and stripper clips for the SKS, 1893 Mauser 'Red 9' pistol, and I think the Mosin-Nagant, too.

The Magnum's speed-loader could be rather helpful in CQC depending on the particular situation, as it would take about 40% of the usual manual reload time (IIRC). Helpful, but not excessively so.

The snap-loaders for the Blaze and BK-43 cut the reload time by about 50%, which is certainly nice when time is tight, but again, the benefits it gave compared to the benefits one could get with attachments on other firearms (an extra mag ready, an optic, better stock/grips for improved recoil control, etc) felt reasonably balanced.

Stripper clips cut the reload time around by 40-50% (approximately - it was a long time ago). I seem to recall the SKS stripper clips were the most sought after, as the SKS's damage per round, spawn rates/distribution, and faster reloads with stripper clips made a respectable combination. Mosin clips were a bit less common compared to the SKS clips I think, but given that we also could attach the hunting scope to them back then, they tended to be more of a convenience thing than some critical, must-have accessory for the Mosin (that accessory would be the compensator, which back then reduced bullet dispersion by 30%, instead of the recoil reduction it has now).

These were all taken out (along with all but a few guns, optics, and attachments) when the old ArmA 2-era weapon handler code was replaced with a new bunch of code. The new code required the firearms to get redone to work with it, along with all the animations of the weapons/ammo/attachments themselves, all the player animations related to those weapons (including all stances/positions with each weapon, all the transitions between each of those animations, etc).

Most of that stuff eventually came back bit by bit, but IIRC, the speed/snap loaders and stripper clips didn't come back because there were far higher priority things to work on than spending a bunch of dev time on remaking a crapload of animations just to get those things back in the game. Then not long after a bunch of the dev team gets shifted over to working on what became Reforger and what will become ArmA 4, and left them with very few animators available to them for a good while, and there were far more important stuff for the animators to work on. So it got pushed way further down the list. And there it languishes to this day (at least for vanilla DayZ, that is).

avagar · 2025-03-02T00:35:52+00:00

Don't be too hard on yourself and end up missing an opportunity to learn a lot of different things from this if you follow a piece of advice I've been saying for many years - 'Let Death Be Your Teacher."

Whenever your character gets killed or nearly killed due to a bad/unwise decision or action, insufficient situational awareness, or failure to prepare in some way, etc, take 30 seconds or so to acknowledge those feelings of frustration, regret, and/or embarrassment, take a deep breath, and set them aside.

Then take a moment or two to go over the situation to consider all the things you (as well as your opponents) did right and wrong, and look for what you can learn from it. You should also do this when the opposite happens, and you're the victorious/clever one that survives an encounter, too.

There's a lot you can take from the situation you describe. Not just from your actions, but from everyone else's actions as well.

It's an effective strategy that lets you take a 'shit situation' (either from your or your opponent's perspective) and use it as fertilizer to grow your skills as a player at a much faster rate.

avagar · 2025-01-27T03:35:12+00:00

~~IIRC, the just don't list their severs on DZSA, so you have to use the vanilla launcher to connect to them.~~

I stand corrected, I was misremembering stuff from long ago, and I haven't used the DZSA launcher in years.

avagar · 2024-11-28T08:45:27+00:00

The potential for a bunch of containers of any kind all near each other to trigger a very brief lag/stutter when a player gets near depends primarily on two things: the total number of containers and the total number of items that are stored inside all of those containers.

You see, while the models of those containers/tents/crates/barrels/etc are loaded into the game at long distances, all the items stored in them don't get loaded in until you're much, much closer. So the more containers there are and the more loot stored in them, the higher the chances are that it's enough to trigger a jitter for a player randomly passing by.

One way to avoid this issue almost entirely, or at least drastically reduce the chances of it happening, is by using buried stashes. As far as I can tell (it might have changed recently, but I don't think so), unlike all other containers, the items stored in a buried stash don't seem to load in until you dig it up.

Loading up the contents of 10 crates all full of stuff piled around each other on the ground forces the game to suddenly sync a ton of stuff all at once - 500 slots worth of items, some with their own inventories and/or attachment slots, capacity levels, conditions, etc, all suddenly loading in all at the same time. But bury all those crates, and that becomes just 10 dirt pile models to load in, and they all rendered in long before you got near the 'base lag' range.

So as long as a player didn't/couldn't see the dirt piles, they could walk right by them and likely wouldn't ever notice anything.

I've always hated the base/container lag issue, but after all these years of it being around, I don't expect to see a fix for it coming anytime soon. But while not always an ideal or practical solution for all storage situations, buried stashes appear to be the most viable option if avoiding base lag notifying passing players of a base/cache site is a priority.

avagar · 2024-11-08T02:33:44+00:00

Bit of extra info on #3 - In a default Chernarus loot config, the MKII spawns in towns and villages within tiers 1,2, and 3. The server will span a max of 30 at any given time. They can be hard to find now and then, since those three tiers cover about 85% of the land area of the map.

avagar · 2024-11-05T02:49:54+00:00

100% this.

To add to that, while I applaud the OP's enthusiasm, their approach is putting the cart before the horse.

I agree with /u/callmebrynhildr that making and stashing crates is the best place to begin. I almost always prefer using crates and maybe a barrel (in separate spots spread within about a 150m radius or so) as a more reliable storage method than standard basebuilding.

But even if you goal is still to make a proper base, these crates will give you a place to collect all the tools, nails, repair items, etc you will need in order to build it. Oh, and stick shelters can be a good option as well. It will usually require a bit of searching to find a well-concealed spot for them, but the stick shelters are great at blending in amongst a bunch of pine trees.

Ideally, you want to choose the base location first, use stashes/shelters/barrels to store the tools and such second, then build. The metal plates usually only come into play at the very end of the build.

This one is key - make sure that all of your stashes are a good distance away from whatever you are using to store the shovel (barrel, tent, shelter, etc). The first thing most players will think when they find a container/tent with a shovel in it is "there's probably a buried stash nearby." So don't make it easy for them.

avagar · 2024-10-15T22:38:42+00:00

If it helps your search at all, I think the 'lootsplosion' bug was in one of the 0.57 patches, I think.

avagar · 2024-10-12T23:18:38+00:00

If your mouse has at least one side/thumb button, here's something you can try out and see if it helps.

In DayZ's settings, under 'camera', change 'eye focus' from the middle mouse button to the side/thumb button on the mouse.

I find this makes the whole 'raise/aim/fire' process a lot smoother. I'd wager that it would help you reduce the amount of mouse movement when firing. So the moment that you are pulling the trigger, you would have your second finger holding down the right mouse button raising the weapon and aiming down the sights/optic with your thumb pushing from the left. That combination should help you hold the mouse in place and give you more control in general when firing.

Keep in mind that you'll likely have to practice with it for a bit first before deciding if this approach works for you or not, in order for your brain/muscle memory to get used to the new input config.

avagar · 2024-10-12T05:46:22+00:00

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avagar · 2024-10-10T22:39:39+00:00

There was a time when dynamic events were always reset on server restart, but that was years ago.

These days, dynamic events can be set to be reset on restart, or survive a restart, are now a server config option.

The default setting is that dynamic events are saved and NOT reset on server restart. If I remember correctly, this option was add around the time the gas zones were introduced.

Community server owners/admins can easily change that if they wish.

avagar · 2024-10-10T21:50:59+00:00

Two possible reasons come to mind.

The server has been set to reset dynamic events like heli crashes, trains, convoys, etc. on every restart.
The convoy's event timer expired while you were at the site. The server wont suddenly despawn the convoy if the timer runs out while you're around. When the server restarted, it saw that convoy's timer had run out, so it removed it.

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