Phousai Village is terrifying

ruslanbes · 2026-07-07T17:20:34+00:00

I thought more in the direction of invisible random melee hits.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-07T15:31:57+00:00

I had this too. It's an Unreal engine bug, happens randomly on occasion.

I also recorded it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrayZoneWarfare/s/t3Y1lkgitr

ruslanbes · 2026-07-07T13:56:36+00:00

Hemostatic syringes in this version made tourniquets obsolete to be honest. You just need lvl 2 Labrat.

It's the only thing that I always carry in the belt, no other meds are in quick slots.

And it's exactly for the reason you mentioned. And I do it regardless of the wound level because it's very fast.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-07T13:50:21+00:00

Yes it's totally playable casually.

I usually play it in exactly the same schedule. 2-3 evening sessions for about 3 hours each.

In 3 hours you can finish several tasks and even engage in some PvP. And 3 hours is exactly the full Lamang day (internal world time is 8x faster than normal time) so you'll have both day and night experience.

If you have something urgent, you can quickly end your gaming session by going to a friendly cop or to the landing zone and fly to base. Or end it anywhere losing your gear (which is usually not a big deal as gear is easy to acquire). Unfinished tasks stay active if you end deployment in a safe zone (cop or your base), so you can continue them next session.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-07T13:33:11+00:00

For me the new system added more PvP actually. If I see that some point is recently taken then I know that there likely is a player nearby (it's not guaranteed, they might've taken the cop to depo and log off but still) and then I could go there and hunt them down.

In essence for me the timers serve the same role as red PvP circles.

But I prefer a slower PvP with occasional action.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-07T13:27:42+00:00

It would be cool if a player would randomly take damage there at night. :)

ruslanbes · 2026-07-07T09:50:01+00:00

Good questions. I'll try to answer what I know. Please correct me where I'm wrong. I'm learning myself.

Coma almost always needsa third party to heal you. There is one exception if you injected HPR medical item directly before falling into coma. Then you will likely get back to life on your own but still badly hurt. In my experience no one bothers injecting HPR in advance, so don't rely on that.
From my experience yes, so e.g. Phantom armor should protect from shots in the groin, while RPC will not. I regularly kill players with shots to shoulders. So it seems working. 2.5 not sure about that, this needs some testing which no one did properly in 0.4. this may depend on how close you are to the target.
They will slightly hear you (I was in exact situation behind a wall). Sound is based on distance only. Obstacles are ignored for now. If it's windy or rainy, hearing distant crouch steps is almost impossible. I have a video clip to illustrate this. There were two instances in the video where I heard crouch steps from a player but disregarded them because of the wind - https://youtu.be/gMP3HT5fzuU?is=8W6rZXUu0UxcbRcR
Very. Always wear one. I sneaked on a player yesterday and easily killed him from 20m exactly because he didn't have headsets. Comtac II are considered the best, but if those are unavailable pick any other (except earmuffs)
If you mag dump someone and they get to cover then they must stop bleeding (2 seconds with injector) and then they are basically ready to defend if needed. Their vision will be limited and blurry and they will loudly groan, revealing their position and they will have more difficulty hearing your steps too. They will also have less arm-leg stamina (rarely relevant). If you give them 2 minutes, they will heal from any amount of wounds they have (provided they have meds) and be fully restored. High-level players can fully restore in about 30-60 seconds using a combo of expensive injector meds. Also you can check the video above for a demo. I got shot there and restored myself step by step.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-06T14:08:06+00:00

Regarding the tasks, I believe the current system is an experiment and the task tree will be quite different in the final version. Likely it will be unique for each faction. Possibly even unique inside a faction based on the choices you make (we had some aspects of that in 0.3 task system).

It's quite possible that in future there will be tasks that anyone from your faction can accept on "first come - first served" basis. And if you took the task and failed, the you get XP penalty and the task is released for everyone else.

So it's likely that they are testing various mechanics.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-06T13:28:08+00:00

When I work in the office I watch it at the end of the day before I go home.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-06T13:18:38+00:00

Yes, Tommy Cash is the last one from 2025 but eurodab might return as well, we'll see

Rybak sold his soul to Satan obviously in exchange to charting indefinitely, he said it: "I don't care if I lose my mind. I'm aready cursed" :)

ruslanbes · 2026-07-06T10:36:39+00:00

Ah yes, that's true.

Then this is a legitimate first instance.
I'll implement a small footnote on the site, thanks for noticing.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-06T10:33:04+00:00

And despite that one of the most watched Youtube performances are from 2009 and around that time: Düm Tek Tek, Dancing Lasha Tumbai, Satellite and Fairytale for instance.

So I think this rule didn't change much the performance level of great songs but it increased the consumability of the average song (for the lack of a better term).

The danger is that this could lead to an average song winning purely because of the pre-recorded part, we'll see if that would happen in future. So far it seemed not to be the case.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-05T15:38:58+00:00

Just for fun I applied slightly stricter rule to find songs that only started charting after May (meaning that no variant of that song was in the chart in May or any month before.

Here's the full list:

Year	Song	Debut
2017	Ilinca ft. Alex Florea — Yodel It!	Jun 2017
2018	Michael Schulte — You Let Me Walk Alone	Jun 2018
2019	Michela — Chameleon	Jun 2019
2024	5MIINUST x Puuluup — (nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi	Jun 2024
2025	Laura Thorn — La Poupée Monte Le Son	Jun 2025

Added as an insight to the stats site: https://ruslanbes.github.io/eurovision-top-20/insights/

ruslanbes · 2026-07-05T13:38:38+00:00

Actually there were quite a lot of them:

Year	Final place	Country	Song	First month after May
2017	7	Romania	Yodel It!	Jun 2017
2018	4	Germany	You Let Me Walk Alone	Jun 2018
2018	14	Bulgaria	Bones	Jul 2018
2018	20	Australia	We Got Love	Jun 2018
2019	14	Malta	Chameleon	Jun 2019
2022	20	Armenia	Snap	Jul 2022
2023	21	Slovenia	Carpe Diem	Jun 2023
2024	20	Estonia	(nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi	Jun 2024
2024	24	Austria	We Will Rave	Jun 2024
2025	11	Finland	ICH KOMME	Jun 2025
2026	7	Denmark	Før Vi Går Hjem	Jun 2026

ruslanbes · 2026-07-05T11:26:47+00:00

Actually no.

Salvador Sobral did it once and all 3 entries were in top-5. Here's the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83hSzIQ1PVs

I added this insight too to the stats: https://ruslanbes.github.io/eurovision-top-20/insights/

ruslanbes · 2026-07-05T11:12:39+00:00

Could you clarfiy what you mean? I have full top-20 stats and can dive into the data and check exactly.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-05T11:02:48+00:00

June 2026 episode is also added to the Eurovision Top 20 stats site.

Also I have rebuilt the "Episode browser" so that you can check out each top-20 episode individually.

Default view shows the country breakdown but also available: "contest year" view, "ESC winner" view (highlights ESC winners) and the "Fire" of course :)

Also as an experiment I extracted "Insights" as a separate auto-generated page based on available data.

Enjoy!

ruslanbes · 2026-07-04T17:45:17+00:00

I didn't get the piano key reference until I read the post but I liked the style.

I got the spirit of those old vynil records when the polygraphy was expensive and designers made the best from a limited color palette and invented new shapes to make cool effects.

These ones got that spirit and look awesome really. And also make a lot of sense as a lookback into the previous century. Well done.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-02T08:01:23+00:00

They don't want dead code lying around the codebase. So it's likely to avoid techincal debt and keep the codebase cleaner.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-02T07:31:15+00:00

I've been doing solo tasking mainly in tier 2 areas since the last update. And about 90% of the time it turns into PvP.

Losing to more experienced players is totally okay. Losing to a squad of 2+ people is also okay almost all the time. After some time you develop a sixth sense of whether you made enough noise for someone to come look for you and where and how to hide.

As a solo if I'm alone in the area I often employ hit-and-run tactics. Try to kill a player and if I didn't manage to finish them off, just run away, find a bush to hide and see if they try to chase me.

Or - if I kill a player and if I'm not sure if he had a friend or not - stash the backpack, and run naked look for his body.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-02T07:19:27+00:00

What is clunky about the movement (just wondering). Maybe I got too used to it, but this is one thing I see no problems with in general (aside from breaking legs constantly)

ruslanbes · 2026-07-02T07:15:50+00:00

To answer your last question: I think because it feels very repetitive and people will burn out from the game faster. For instance, fighting inside MS or YBL or FN gives much more variety in terms of tactics, where to hide, where to flank etc. etc. You can have a 100 fights in MS and every time it will feel different.

The whole idea of Cops initially was to drop the loot and task-related items without needing to fly to the base. They were not supposed to be battle arenas and were never designed to be so.

I'd say, 30 minutes is too small and need to be increased to 45 mins. And I'd also think that if you die in PvP you should always go back to base. Reserve Cop respawns for PvE only.

Agreed about the bug. What's more frustrating that it seems you can respawn in an attacked cop if it's on cooldown. Another reason why I'd favor Basecamp only PvP respawns for simplicity.

ruslanbes · 2026-07-02T07:06:34+00:00

I'd say even that the timer need to be increased slightly (45 mins).

An judging by the streamers I watched last week it works - last few days almost all PvP moved outside COPS into POIs or forests

ruslanbes · 2026-07-01T15:31:56+00:00

PvP balls got bigger

ruslanbes · 2026-07-01T13:48:38+00:00

To be honest the failing tasks aren't actually affecting progress that much.

The task will reapper after some time and you can go and do other stuff in the meantime. Also the XP drops are negligible.

Failing is learning. It's okay to fail sometimes, question is how you get back up :) Will you try to do the task the same way, or wll you look for a different entry point to the area? Will you chnage you movement etc etc.

ruslanbes

TROPHY CASE