After committing to buying Arma II: Combined Ops off steam, i've gotten deep into the DayZ mod. The servers have been fairly stable and i've had plenty of adventures. I've been playing solo, which is great fun, although i'll need to find some teammates if I want to maximize my time alive. Today I began my best run yet... but i'm starting to regret some choices i've made.

I began in the small town of Novy Sobor, prior to this all my games had begun along the coast, but Sobor is deep inland, adjacent to the primary Airfield in the gigantic world of Chenarus. I creeped around and collected some things from the nearby church, while avoiding another survivor (or possibly bandit) who I only was aware of due to a few distant pistol shots from the other end of town. Maybe that survivor needed help, maybe they were looking for me, or maybe they died, it's hard to say but i was too concerned with crawling past various undead townsmen to bother.

After collecting some minor supplies, I jog to the outskirts and began moving across the fields towards where I thought the airfield was, going off a static map i found online without a compass and not having an ingame one to compare to made the journey long and confusing despite being only a few Kilometers from the landing strip. I tried to keep away from roads as it would be too easy to get caught walking down one, i stayed in the brush alongside. I kept my distance from structures and the zombies who guard them and booked it through a series of farms and orchards. 20 minutes later I reached the edge of the airfield.

I found the place abandoned, except for a few shuffling zombies who i was able to get around quite easily, having not fired a shot, i reached the end of a row of hangars and began crouch walking past each of them, checking inside for anything i could use, I found some leftover cans of food, a few soda bottles, and in the 3rd hangar, something exciting, a M1014 shotgun with a dozen slugs. I grabbed it and holstered my handgun. It was then that I heard gunfire, and it was close.

Shotgun pointed, i moved my way slowly to the next hangar, leaned around the corner, and spotted something frightening. A survivor, searching through a pile of loot he found, a DMR on his back, he faced away from me. I didn't bother to negotiate, i fired a slug into him, and he dropped. Shocked, i moved towards the body to check if they were alive, a bullet wizzed by, another survivor, i assume his buddy, had been in the back corner covering the entrance, his bolt action sniper rifle failed him up close and before he could fire another shot i sent a volley of slugs towards him. He dropped and i began grabbing whatever gear i could from the hangar, the first survivor popped out of unconciousness and took one last shot at me, missed (Luck was on my side) and i fired more rounds at him and made sure he stayed dead.

At this point my character model changed to that of a bandit, no longer was I simply an innocent man trying to find his way after the world has ended, i was a killer, a prolific one, who slayed two innocent players without receiving a scratch and without bothering to approach things peacefully. Someone in chat swore at a bandit who killed them at the airfield, I knew they meant me. Fortunately they wouldn't respawn for some time. I grabbed an M16 that had been in the hangar and ignored the corpses. I was too shaken from the encounter to bother, which made the killing all the more worse, i didn't even want their stuff. A group of zombies had been stirred up by the gunfire and came looking for the shooter, with my new found assault rifle I quickly dispatched them.

At this point i made my mistake, i grabbed some more M16 magazines that were in an adjacent hangar and booked it away from the airfield. 10 minutes later a survivor reported several bodies in a hangar at the airfield, and warned others of a possible sniper. However the "Sniper" was long gone.I glanced at the stat screen and noticed that despite shooting two enemies, only one murder was registered, my second victim had fallen and played dead rather than fight back like his buddy, who i had put down. The second man must have crawled off after I ran from the airfield. I regretted clearing the zombies that were in his way. WIth my new found gear I set my sights on a nearby mountain top, turned my back on the airfield, and never looked back.