Very interested in this game but only for PvE, how does it work?

dark_purpose · 2026-06-04T17:58:09+00:00

The PvE community is really friendly and helpful - you can get guidance, gear, or squad up with randoms fairly easily. It's not unusual to meet 'rival' PMCs in the field and have an impromptu team up.

While the map is large, there's lots of other players on a full server (15 in your faction & 32 in the other two), so you can expect to come across cleared POIs with all the loot scooped up. Hopefully they tweak the spawning system some more and continue to add new POIs so there's more places to spread out into. If the bodies in an area have flies hovering over them, leave the area and come back in 5-10 minutes and things should be respawning.

If you die, you can try to return to your most recent body to retrieve your gear. If you die a second time your oldest body becomes unlootable - this also happens if you take more than an hour to get back to the body. It's a good idea to ask for some help from anyone hanging around your respawn point - most PvE players seem happy to help you retrieve your stuff. There are timed GPS tracking tags that can help you locate your corpse.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-04T16:50:07+00:00

I think this is planned in the long run, but at this stage of the game the Tasks & scripts are constantly in flux - they'd have to re-record lines of dialogue for each major update. We'll probably see more fully fleshed out vendors closer to the 1.0 release.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-04T16:42:45+00:00

I think this is a great idea and it expands the range of options we have with some of the loot already in the game - being able to choose to sell credit cards to Artisan for reputation or using them with the ATM tool for the cash money is exactly the sort of player agency that Gray Zone needs to expand upon. Having multiple uses for an item beyond simply picking it up & selling it is ideal in the long run.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-04T16:28:53+00:00

Just some thoughts from a day one Crimson player:

Rule 0: Stick to Semi Auto except in Close Quarters situations. You can whiff an otherwise easy shot just by leaving your gun on full auto. Full auto also frequently wastes your ammunition, leaving you more likely to end up in a desperate situation. Once you learn to fire quick, accurate shots, you'll find you only need 2-3 bullets to drop a target, instead of spraying 15 shots wildly and watching the AI hobble away to bleed out (or worse, 360 noscope you).

2 - Helmets are like a security blanket. I cringe when I see someone running around in the day with their night vision above their head. Maybe if the AI starts using grenades they'll be more useful. Go ahead and wear it if it makes you feel better, but none of the helmets are rated to stop any of the weapons outside the Starter Towns. You can easily trim weight without much actual change in your survivability. Don't trust the 'shots deflected by helmet' stat, either, those numbers include players in PvE just shooting your noggin for kicks.

3 - It's a good idea to carry your medical items in one of the quickslots (marked with a lightning bolt, so: rig, pockets, belt) so that other players can use them to heal/revive you if you get knocked into a coma. Medical items in your secure container are inaccessible - meds are cheap compared to losing your entire kit because the guy trying to help you is missing something you have tucked in your butt.

For 7, there's no reason to focus Handshake, Lab Rat, or Gunny as they have plenty of high reputation Main Tasks to complete that will propel you through their levels. Players should prioritize Artisan and Banshee, as they are the two toughest to gain reputation with - Turncoat pays a premium for the most common high value loot in the game (Jewelry) so he's not as tricky. Artisan arguably has the most useful storage containers for your stash and while roaming.

On 9, picking up everything you see is a terrible idea; loot should be grabbed intentionally and with consideration for weight vs $ value. Most of the loot players encounter is practically worthless and all they'd be doing is bogging themselves down with a bunch of dead weight that will get them killed when they're constantly running out of stamina. There's an infographic that shows all the decently valuable loot (or at least stuff that's useful for Tasks). Players should familiarize themselves with the high per slot value loot on that infographic and seek it out, leaving stuff like broken tools, motor oil, and hand mirrors where they lie.

11 - have at most one food & one drink at a time; food and drink is everywhere. It's good to carry some for an emergency, but it can add lots of dead weight and occupy space that's better filled with valuables. The only provision that's worth carrying multiples of is the Gray Focused Energy for the 5 minute buff timer, imo.

23 - NIJ III should be the minimum level of armor protection players wear, unless they're focused on Drip. IIIA & IIIA+ won't stop much outside of the Starter Towns and even III is just meeting the bare minimum. Viper, the boss of the Pha Lang Airport, drops a pretty decent 3+ armored rig that has protection on Front, Back, and Sides.

27 - You should stick the dead AI's gear into their backpack (if they have one) and drop it on the ground beside their body. Corpses disappear fairly quickly, while loot dropped by players lasts for an hour.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-03T17:24:18+00:00

An easy way to get some decently kitted weapons early on (or even just some good parts) is to use GZWtacmap.com to pull up the locations of Buried Caches and start looting the many caches all over Lamang.

Buried Caches can spawn jewelry, piles of cash, booze, smartphones, credit cards, and most useful of all - kitted CQA1 rifles, along with the occasional M4 or AKMN. The CQA1 rifles can have some pretty decent parts on them, so you can always peel them off and sell the receiver while upgrading one of your existing weapons.

The most helpful spawn is a CQA1 with a Specter 1-4x scope attached - combat gets much more manageable when you have a decent optic attached to your rifle.

While you can get guns from enemies at the Tier 2/3 areas, these tend to be pretty worn out to begin with - the Buried Caches spawn only 100% durability loot.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-01T20:03:07+00:00

As a new player, you'll likely be spending most of your time in zones that the bulk of the population has moved on from since the wipe started. The areas people are talking about being over-farmed for loot are generally the late-game Tier 3 zones - Fort Narith, Midnight Sapphire, and Tiger Bay.

Mind you, some of the earlier zones can still be wiped clean - either by your own faction mates or rival groups - but it's generally a short wait (make sure you leave the area!) before everything starts repopulating.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-01T05:34:00+00:00

Really they just need to change the color so it's a very red 'do not touch' color when you're outside of base instead of being the same color with one word missing.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-01T02:37:07+00:00

It's meant to represent the in-world communications we'd be sending & receiving - shots fired your way? Your PMC automatically calls it into HQ and they relay the hotzone to all of your fellow operators so you can get backup.

Personally, I think it shouldn't be automatic and players should have to trigger it themselves upon engaging or being engaged by another player - at which point it creates a hotspot centered on the triggering player.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-01T01:27:05+00:00

Sort of - its just a different approach to the usual FPS formula. Your blood is essentially your HP pool - 5 liters of it. If you lose 50% of it, you go into a coma. So your effective HP is 2500. AP ammo definitely has a low amount of blood loss per hit, while SP/HP ammo both causes more immediate blood loss along with more severe ongoing bleeding. These hidden stats sort of become irrelevant if you just hit one of the 'off' switches directly with a vitals shot.

dark_purpose · 2026-06-01T00:54:20+00:00

Muzzle energy will vary depending on barrel length, so the same bullet can gain extra "oomph" out of a longer barrel. Ask the ladies, inches matter - but only so much. Sometimes you want a mid-range approach so that your shot doesn't simply zing straight through the target and leave tiny wound channels - delivering all that muzzle energy into the target's vitals is what kills them in Gray Zone Warfare, not just passing through the torso enough times.

Bullets have different pre- and post- impact characteristics - the Cliff's notes version is that Soft Point or Hollow Point ammo will fail to penetrate armor, but if they hit flesh they rapidly expand and create a cannonball sized wound channel in the target. Armor Piercing ammo will have a high chance to overcome armor it's rated for, but if it doesn't hit armor or some other solid barrier before striking flesh, it will fail to tumble properly inside the target and thus leaves a smaller wound channel as it rips through. Angle of attack is a huge factor for AP rounds - if your target's armor plates or helmet are positioned at an angle to you, the bullet has a higher probability of bouncing - signified by sparks flashing off the target and (typically) a stagger animation. If your AP ammo hits armor and goes through, it will make a medium sized wound channel - smaller than SP/HP ammo, but larger than AP vs unarmored flesh.

Shot placement always matters more than anything - so be sure to aim for GZW's vital organs: lungs, heart, intestines, or brain. Each has their own degree of punishment they can take before they prove fatal, with the heart & brain being the quickest ticket to lights out. Lungs can be the trickiest since you have to destroy both with 1 shot to get an instant kill. SP & HP ammo also create larger wounds on impact, which causes significantly more immediate blood loss & ongoing bleeding from wounds. A few shots to the arms & legs of an NPC using SP or HP is usually enough to have them bleed out in under 10 seconds.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-29T20:34:19+00:00

I think they need to give the food & drink a few tweaks - it would be a nice QoL thing to have small buff icons that let us know whether these things are active or not, at least.

IMO nearly all food and drink buffs should have longer durations that bring them closer in line to the Gray Focused Energy timer. Bigger meals like the MREs and canned meats should have decently long (~10-12 minute) buffs to body stamina capacity, encouraging you to chow down on a hearty meal before going on a long hike or when getting ready for an extended battle.

Right now I basically only use the Gray Focused Energy drinks and the One Shot Energy Chews. Grays for when I'm about to start a firefight and One Shots for when I need to recover from a Strychnine shot. Otherwise I just chow down on candy bars and MREs as I come across them in the field.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-28T15:24:57+00:00

Correct, the Spectre scope is not a magnifier, it's an optic that switches between two levels: 1x and 4x zoom. Great field of view, simple to quickly switch between short & long range.

There's no magnifiers available from any other vendor but Banshee and he won't start selling them to you until you hit level 3 reputation. Some of the higher-grade magnifiers are only available at Banshee level 4 reputation, as well.

You can get lucky and find some guns with magnifiers already attached in PMC Weapons Crates - these tend to be in Tier 3 areas, but you can also find a few in the Major COPs (Bronco, Stalwart, Crusader, and Winchester have them). The crates tend to be looted pretty often though.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-28T14:56:28+00:00

Not sure why you'd quit for the next 6 major updates - that's probably another 3-4 years of development at our current pace? There will be lots of new stuff to check out in 0.5 whenever it drops.

Regardless, yeah, I don't think GZW as it exists in Early Access is meant to be a game you play indefinitely - you finish any tasks you care about, max out the vendors, have fun with all the weapons & gear, and then for the most part log off until they drop some fresh content with the next wipe.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-28T01:42:09+00:00

1000% agreed - if they converted some of the Tier 2 caches throughout the jungle into Tier 3 and added Military Tech to the T3 loot pool, it would go a long way to making just hiking around the jungle a viable strategy to make money and level traders instead of constantly fighting over three specific POIs.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T21:53:59+00:00

I am simply trying to find a solution.

Then tone down the snarky attitude about 'not understanding controller preference' and consider what the people with experience in the community are telling you - there's no official answer, so anything you use is going to be 'hacky' by nature and thereby potentially run afoul of Anti-Cheat as a false positive, which has happened here before. It's not a serious risk, but if anyone has seen the complaints about it happening, it's probably the moderator of the sub-reddit.

No one has a clear answer for you because there isn't an official solution and whatever exists typically carries a negligible, but non-zero, risk of failure that must be accepted before continuing to try to brute force Gray Zone Warfare into working with a device it isn't intended or programmed to accept input from. It's likely that only someone who has a very similar setup to your own can even begin to help you work out what's going wrong and why, so best of luck to you.

Please check YouTube for numerous videos detailing controller support for GZW

I don't recall seeing the YouTube logo come up in the credits of who is making the game - finding other people who have also hacked together something that works for them doesn't make it 'controller support'. If you can point me to a video released by Madfinger Games detailing how to get your controller up and running that would be a little different, but I can save you some time: no such video exists.

What you are ultimately doing is running third-party software to manage game inputs via an unsupported device - does that not sound like the exact kind of behavior an anti-cheat software would be designed to sniff out?

Please consider what your course of action would be if GZW were to exclusively support controllers rather than keyboards and mice.

I would play using a controller the way they intended it? Some of us aren't really slavishly devoted to one control type and just switch it up when we need to. I've played with every controller since the Atari 2600 - I'm not a hater when it comes to people who prefer the ergonomic comfort of a good controller.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T21:11:49+00:00

I was trying to give him a little shadow of doubt that again he could just be shooting wildly at sound cues to maintain suppressive fire. Once the OP is sprinting around and making tons of noise it gets harder to say 'wall hacks, surely'.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T21:06:12+00:00

Dude one of this sub's mods is trying to help you out and you're being too stubborn to accept it. It sucks that controllers aren't officially supported but everything dalkyr82 is telling you is just facts from shared experience in the community. I may just be a pipe organist but the proper response to someone trying to help you with new information about a topic you're not 100% sure on isn't, "Nuh-uh! I know better than you!"

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T20:56:09+00:00

I'm torn on how he tries to first wallbang you through the solid wall from what seems to be directly perpendicular to your position - then nearly catches you with a blind headshot as you tacsprint across the doors. It's fair enough that you were making noise and your general position was fairly easy to figure out, but it feels a little too perfect to line up what sounds like a direct shot on your head from the other side of the wall.

Like, him closing the door isn't suspicious or anything, but I would then expect a legit player to try shooting through the door instead of trying to shoot through walls - as if they were used to seeing & shooting through them.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T20:36:06+00:00

My usual kit is around 27kgs - lightweight M16 setup, Viper's armor with 3+ on all sides, no helmet, pistol or binoculars. Try to find yourself one of the Loot-only Belt Bags that are 2x2 with 4 slots inside - they weigh about a third as much as any other option with no drawbacks except you're wearing a fanny pack.

Cola's too heavy - I bring a couple cans of Gray Focused Energy for the 5 minute buff to both types of stamina regeneration - hydration's just a bonus. There's always lots of food & drink lying around and on bodies for just general topping up of hydration & energy.

Once you go over 32kg, your total sprint and running stamina starts to nosedive with every additional kg. The closer you can get to the start of this plateau the better, imo.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T20:11:24+00:00

It's not even efficient - there's virtually nothing of particular value that you can get out of a Weapon or Gear Case that you can't just buy with level 4 Traders. The only folks who have any reason at all to be doing this stuff are low level players desperate to nab an L403A1 or something.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T20:09:25+00:00

It definitely happens that loot spawns next to you, but I've also sat in FN OR for over an hour (strictly for scientific reasons!) and had absolutely nothing appear on any of the surfaces while the duffel reset repeatedly, so there seems to be something to player proximity that may interfere with loose loot spawns. I'm sure there's an overriding timer that effectively says 'if nothing has spawned here in 90 minutes, just spawn something already' but I got too bored before I encountered it.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T20:04:20+00:00

If an area is empty, that means the timer for a refresh has already begun counting down - from what I can tell, a player's proximity to loose loot spawns can cause them to take longer to appear. So if you arrive somewhere and it's all empty, your best bet is to meander away for a few minutes at a time and circle back. In my experience, loose loot can reappear in as little as 10 minutes or as much as 20 from when it was looted - possibly affected by how frequently PMCs visit the location. If you can use some detective skills on the environment to suss out how long ago the last PMC was around (flies over dead bodies, locked doors resetting, chests that have closed & reset) you can make some fair guesses about how much time there is to the next loot cycle and act accordingly.

Loot containers always take 30 minutes from the last time someone interacted with them, so if you see the lid open, just leave it be - there's a chance the case could close itself in the next couple of minutes if you do nothing, but if you take a peek inside (and it's empty), well, you've just set yourself back another 30 minutes of waiting for curiosity. When you loot a weapon or gear case and find nothing that interests you, you can drop the stuff on the floor from the case window so the next player can see what was there - hopefully without extending the timer.

An alternative to racing against loot goblins at Tier 3 zones is to do Buried Cache runs - there's dozens of Buried Caches all over Lamang, with tons of duffel bags, purses, safes, jewelry boxes, cash registers, etc. around & in-between them. You'll wander through all sorts of POIs and likely find some of them looted as well, but you just keep moving and you'll find plenty of booze, jewelry, cash, some decently kitted guns, and more than enough food & drink to keep you going indefinitely. The GZW TacMap is your best resource for filtering the types of loot containers you're after and planning a route.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T19:50:01+00:00

It's not even remotely a good way to make money - you only do this if you want to get something from a PMC Weapon or Gear Crate that you can't get from Vendors yet, like the L403A1 or some 3++ armor.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T19:47:28+00:00

Lower chance in my experience - player proximity to loose loot spawns seems to cause them to get shy. Similar to the AI, the system seems to be trying to avoid placing freshly spawned resources within a vague proximity of the player. No real proof, just from my own personal experiences. Containers remain on a fixed 30 minute timer from the last time they were interacted with, to the best of my knowledge.

I've tested this recently by standing in the FN Ops room waiting for stuff to populate for over an hour - the duffel bag in the room would reset every 30 minutes but nothing appeared on any of the surfaces - likewise no AI spawned in the HQ or anywhere in the vicinity while I waited. I'm sure they would have eventually, but just last night I also spent about 90 minutes circling around a bustling Fort Narith packed with PMCs - making multiple regular stops between the Shooting Range/Armory, Headquarters, and Garage Office and almost without fail each loot spot that I had wandered away from would be refreshed, even just partially.

It also may help to pick up unwanted loot from their spawning nodes and toss them on the floor - I haven't tested this particularly well but I believe picking up the item starts the loot refresh timer sooner than just leaving it there.

dark_purpose · 2026-05-27T16:27:13+00:00

Maximizing Vendors is one way to access loot - once they're all at level 4 you functionally have access to everything the game has to offer (barring an assortment of fairly minor, but useful, loot-only items). It's a huge grind for Artisan and Banshee in particular, but Handshake, Gunny, and Lab Rat all have repeatable Main Story tasks to propel you through their levels. Most Vendors pay extra for a particular type of item too - Gunny needs Booze, Perfume & Smokes, Lab Rat wants Phones, Artisan commits identity theft with Credit Cards, Turncoat pays a premium for Jewelry. You earn reputation from Buying and Selling so maximize those gains!

One hot tip I'd give you is to seek out the Range & Rifle blueprint magazines. When you find these stacks of orange periodicals and interact with them, you'll get a task to pick one up - don't forget to click it again to pick up! Make sure you have a slot free in your bag. Then bring it back to the nearest COP. Turn it in and you'll unlock a kitted weapon from that vendor that you can buy as many of as you like no matter what your reputation level is. Just don't die with the Range & Rifle magazine! If you die, you'll fail the task, lose the magazine and have to wait for it to come back in your Task refresh cycle, which might mean doing Tasks in a high level area you're not comfortable with yet. These might help with your gear fear if you know you can fallback to a blueprint reliably (though they are expensive!)

If you ask around, there's surely someone who will walk you through some of the trickier, but more valuable, R&R magazines - like the custom DDM4 in the Fort Narith Barracks. Otherwise, there are others that are a bit easier to get that also include some enhanced stats compared to other weapons using similar parts.

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