§ 01Start Here
Start Here
What the server is, how a raid works, and your first hour without losing everything — ten steps from installing the launcher to your first extract.
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Escape From DayZ is Escape from Tarkov's loop running on Chernarus: you gear up in a safe hub, deploy into the map, take what you can, and get out through an extract. Die and the kit you carried is gone — but your reputation, your tasks, your stash and whatever is inside your secure container all survive. Everything else on this site hangs off that one sentence.
Your first hour, in ten steps#
- Install the launcher and find the server. You need DayZ on Steam and the free DZSA Launcher. Search for Escape From DayZ in its community server list, press join, and it installs the whole mod collection for you. Details, and what to do if it won't connect, are in How to join.
- Read the three rules that get people banned. No cheating, duping or exploiting. Maximum 3 to a group and no teaming with other groups. No combat logging — and the server enforces that one itself, so it isn't a judgement call. The full list is short and worth five minutes: Server rules.
- Reach the hub. The safezone is the base of operations: every hub trader, their task boards, your stash, the workbench and the deploy point are all inside it, and nobody can hurt you there. Your first task — handed to you automatically — completes the moment you arrive and gives you an Alpha secure container.
- Understand the container. Whatever is inside your secure container comes back with you when you die. Keys, keycards, medals, cash, the valuable small things — that's what it's for. It refuses explosives, grenades, other containers and magazines, on purpose. Secure containers explains the bigger ones and how to earn them.
- Take a couple of tasks. Every trader has a board in the hub (Mechanic and the Lightkeeper keep theirs at their own outposts). Prapor's and Therapist's first tasks are the easy ones. Tasks pay roubles and reputation, and reputation is what unlocks the market. The whole board is on one page: Task Board.
- Buy the basics. A weapon, ammunition for it, a bandage or two, food and water. Reputation gates what you can buy but not what you can sell, and the starting tier has everything a first raid needs. Traders shows who sells what.
- Deploy. Interact with the deploy point at the hub and pick where to land from the map — 25 choices, coast towns to the interior. Everyone in your group standing within 60 m of you drops with you. Deploy & extract.
- Do your tasks, and watch the map. Infected, scav patrols and other players are out there, and so are airdrops, bosses and locked rooms worth a key. Your extracts are marked on the map; their names are hidden, so learn which marker is which.
- Extract. Walk into an extract marker and stand still. After 7 s you are back at the hub with everything you carried out. Taking damage doesn't cancel it. Logging out is not an extract — your body stays behind.
- Hand in, sell, stash, repeat. Turn tasks in at the board that gave them, sell what you don't need, put the valuables in your stash, and go again. Do this and the reputation ladder climbs on its own.
What survives a death, and what doesn't#
| Survives | Lost |
|---|---|
| Reputation, trader access, finished tasks | Everything you were wearing and carrying |
| Whatever is inside your secure container | Whatever wasn't |
| Your stash in the hub, and your base | Vehicles you were driving, where you left them |
| Your skills | Anything you'd left in a vehicle or a tent outside a territory, eventually |
Reputation never goes down on death. That is a deliberate choice: the server punishes the raid, never the account, so a bad night cannot lock you out of a tier you already earned.
Dying, logging out and restarts#
Your body stays in the world after you log out, and it can be killed and looted while you're gone. There is no way to shorten it. The server restarts every three hours:
- 00:00
- 03:00
- 06:00
- 09:00
- 12:00
- 15:00
- 18:00
- 21:00
Daily tasks change and completions reset at the 6:00 restart. Restarts and resets has the detail.