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DayZ patch makes berry-pickers of bandits, ends “backpack-Inception”

DayZ standalone has received a welcome patch.

The DayZ standalone is now in Early Access; check out our DayZ review.

Welcome to DayZ Experimental Branch! You can drop the salute, son – we do things differently here. Leave your regulation rifle and canned food at the door – we’ll issue you with a sawed-off shotgun and all the berry-foraging skills you’ll need to survive the Eastern European apocalypse.

DayZ’s experimental branch is a subset of servers made accessible via Steam’s application settings. Opt-in, and you’ll be subject to its dev team’s wildest and newest ideas. Everything that standalone DayZ will eventually be comes through there first – as well as a few things that it probably won’t.

An experimental patch yesterday introduced a strange array of new features, including the chance to craft sawed-off shotguns and open cans using saws – or alternatively, to go feral and eat the fruits of the local flora.

The most far-reaching additions, however, are most likely a brand new coastal harbour town in Svetloyarsk – plus a fix that prevents backpacks from being stacked inside one another for infinite storage opportunities. That’s the sort of exploit you consider fair game if you grew up on the crippling inventory sizes of the early Infinity Engine games. O, for a Bag of Holding.

Here’s the changelog in full. Can you handle all the change, all at once? Guess we’ll find out:

Fixed:

  • Niosh mask (respirator) inventory size fixed to 1/1 slot.
  • Missing strings for BE popup for alternate languages, set to English while translations are being done.
  • Reduced dispersion of FNX45 (from 0.05 to 0.03)
  • Balanced stomach capacity,
  • Added stuffed notifier (instead of sickness when full up)
  • Eating and drinking animations properly set for tablets/disinfectants
  • Version number in server browser and details
  • Saline transfusion doesn’t refill full blood
  • Charcoal and Tetracycline tablets won’t give sick badge if you aren’t actually sick
  • Player aim run speed updated, weapon position changed and improved for first person view
  • Glitches on right hand while moving and while giving taunt fixed
  • Players can’t pile backpacks inside of another backpacks, backpack-inception style. You can only put one backpack inside of another backpack if the backpack that is being put inside is empty.
  • Magnum speedloader should be spawning now
  • Number of backpacks spawning lowered
  • Number of .357 Pythons spawning lowered.
  • Number of M4A1s spawning lowered
  • Dead character cleanup performed at 10 minutes past death
  • Removed scripted server teleporting check as now managed by engine

New:

  • Editable character name in main menu
  • Hive, mode and time columns in server browser
  • Database support for sub hives. (Sub-private, Hardcore/Regular public)
  • DayZServer.exe support for sub hives.
  • Signature verification against PBOs
  • Added shotgun speedloader into loot spawns
  • Added box of 20 pieces .357 rounds into loot spawns
  • Added color variants of all shoes into loot spawns
  • Added Hiking pants (both long and short ones) and Canvas pants including their color variants into loot spawns
  • Added hacksaw into the loot spawns
  • Added shotgun into loot spawns
  • Berry picking
  • Added Hacksaw into loot spawns
  • Saw-off shotgun recipe
  • Opening cans with saw
  • Painting Mosin now supported w/ spraypaint
  • Added spraypaint can into loot spawns
  • Coastal harbor town of Svetloyarsk (and surrounding areas)

A friend bought me Arma II over Christmas to “show [me] the ropes” in DayZ – but plenty of others have gone ahead and bought into the decidedly shaky new alpha standalone version instead. Have you? If not, why not?

Thanks, RPS.