Beginner's guide

If you have never played a game in which the style of survival can influence your role, stay calm. Yeah, seriously, follow this beginner's guide and soon tell other beginners where to go.

Day R Survival is a bit harder to get started in and to have fun with. If you are a MMORPG veteran, this guide should help you get up to speed quickly. In addition, this handy online overview guide will give you a general idea of what to expect in the game as you begin playing.

If you find some of the terminology a little daunting, there is a glossary (ext. link) that should help explain some of the more common terms. There is also a list of acronyms (ext. link) out there that you can go through to find one that you may not know.

Advice from the Developers

The game will provide tips during loading screen :

• Loot is generated randomly for every player.
• You can trade in survivors' bases.
• You can make a knife and an axe from flint.
• You can get firewood fast.
• Diseases and injuries are very dangerous.
• You can get gasoline from broken cars.
• You can get firebricks from destroyed brick ovens.
• The map supports multi-touch.
• Waiting time for getting a package is five times shorter for premium players.
• The map is displayed in fragments. To see a new map fragment, you need to go toward the edge of the current one.
• Towns are contaminated by radiation.
• Some items cannot be used if your limbs are injured.
• Searching at night does not work without a light source.
• Level up to unlock new recipes
• You need a raft to travel faster on the water.

List of guides

Here is a list of helpful guides : (keep in mind some information on these might be out of date)

• Reddit famous "how to get an electro car and general tips"
• Playvisor guide
• Twaist1 Guide

General

• It is advisable to progress slowly at first and to visit every town to loot lots of supplies, to level up, etc... It is not a problem not to carry everything from one town to another, just leave extra loot outside of towns to be able to gather it swiftly when you will pass by again (possibly in a long long time!)
• For the first week, search for food and medicine and be sure to take the Schoolbag from the School in the starting town. You should check every building, loot everything that is not a house, ruins, or a crater, unless the house has a pan (very valuable early game) . Go to Murmansk, search the garage to get tools and bicycle spare parts, then disassemble the broken bike in the garage to get a fully functional bike.
• Do not eat uncooked food or unpurified water. Cooked food reduces more hunger and provides other stats. (While uncooked ones have risks of disease and illness). You can purify dirty water by simply boiling it, in order to purify toxic water, you'll need activated charcoal. (Although, with activated charcoal handy, rotten vegetables may be helpful quenching 10 hunger and 10 thirst. Just watch your health and radiation gauge.) Food poisoning and parasites can be prevented with the "raw diet" perk, however it should be noted that you will take 5 times more damage from starvation.
• Avoid food contaminated with radiation. Some food found has a radiation symbol on it, eating this food with dose you with radiation. Try to avoid eating this food unless you are desperate and can manage that radiation.
• When you find your Makarov Handgun at the start of the game, keep it until you can repair it as this is cheaper than making a new one. Keep cloth as it is a valuable component for armor and the Brick house and repairing the Wooden house at save points.
• While searching cities, keep an eye on your radiation levels to avoidradiation sickness, do not let your radiation counter exceed 50, 75, or 100. Don't sleep in cities.
• Beware, lighting a campfire in a building and searching may end up burning it down, destroying all goods inside and producing a bit of charcoal.
• Bringing a light source while searching decreases search time and helps make searching at night easier.
• Drink generally any alcoholic drink to reduce Radiation levels as necessary (but be aware that it increases fatigue and can cause Hangover or Alcoholism if consumed excessively) Limit alcoholic beverages to two shots per 24 hours, depending on the type of drink, you can get hangover from just three shots.
• Try to find or make a weapon. Its very important to guard yourself. A homemade pistol does far more damage than many early game weapons, and a Handmade spear is the highest damage melee weapon you can get, enough to kill a rat in one hit.
• Limit the use of medicine, especially alcohol. Pick up and keep all medicine you find, including components and survival items used to stitch you up (alcohol, needles, thread, bandages, etc.). Avoid abusing drugs like Metocaine and Chlorcystamine. Drugs are not abundant around the map, unlike food and water.
• Level up as often as possible, you can do this by: hunting out all of the animals in a given area, looting a building completely, and crafting some items (see experience), opening doors (if you can spare the tools/axe/shovel/etc.
• Think ahead, make calculated decisions. Something as mundane as riding a bike for long distances nonstop can have disastrous consequences.
• Do not attack bandits if you aren't ready to beat them (they have good loot, but without proper equipment, they can be VERY dangerous).
• Do not carry more than you need, food, weapons, items for repair or important. You can always find items down the track.
• If you drop items on the map and outside cities, they'll be marked with a special symbol so you can come back for them later.
• Avoid Radioactive biomes, they're often hinted by a darker green for forests or red waters for swamps, however they generally have otherwise hard to obtain resources. Water, coasts and roads do not have a radioactive variant.
• Take into account info from objects.
• Many objects have a limited durability and will break . Repair items that you want to keep, cook meat before it rots, eat it before it goes bad, etc.
• If you use a motor vehicle, always keep an eye on fuel. Best to use motorcycle until you reach survivor camps for efficiency. Don't wander with motorized vehicles, have a clear objective and think ahead to save fuel.
• Rafts don't break down, but only work on bodies of water. Note that not all rivers are water, swamps are included. It is best to construct a new raft when needed rather than carry one over land, unless you are ferrying over a small road.
• Beware of weather effects and natural disasters such as earthquakes, blizzards, dust storms, acid rain, etc. Details about these effects can be found on the top right corner by tapping the time and weather symbols.
• Kindle a fire before sleeping to avoid rats stealing your food. This has the added benefit of resting faster and having less hunger points deducted. Make camp in forests and use an axe to get the wood that you need rather than carrying it. Rat infestations has been reintroduced, as well as bear attacks if carrying honey while sleeping.
• Watch your health count, never let it fall below 25 unless you know what you are doing.
• ~25 health can be handled easily with a good meal and a good sleep. Health values below 25 will force you to stay in a safe area for longer. Use this off-time to craft.
• If health increases too slowly, you may consider taking some medicine, such as Healing Salve.
• Health will slowly decrease when hunger and thirst reach 0. You can fast for a while to save food, let health dip, then eat, drink, and sleep to recover health.
• Health will decrease when fighting, if your armor points reach 0.
• If you are having issues with carry capacity and over-carrying, sorting your inventory by Weight can help you see if there's anything in particular causing an issue. (why are you carrying 2 tires before you even have a bicycle??)

Basic tips

• Watch your radiation levels. Never go over 30|40|50 (depending on your difficulty level).
• To lower radiation,
  • Vodka/ Red wine/ Moonshine/ other wines. Alternatively, drink Hot tea.
  • IR-190
  • Energizing Potion/Detoxifying Potion
  • Chlorcystamine
  • Drink Plenty of Water
  • Eating Honey, Pickled veggies
• Always purify dirty water with a pot and a fire before drinking.
• An axe is useful as a weapon, and allows to cut wood faster.
• Avoid eating uncooked food (The time cost to cook is worth the time you are stuck resting for days for months to recover. You can spend that time in sleeping/looting!).
• Avoid eating rotten / radiated foods.
• Use a Handmade raft or Bicycle with a cart; Motorized cart is not recommended until at least past Leningrad, when you should have enough fuel for it.
  • No fuel required (and no extra weight, if equipped),
  • Cheap to build/repair.
  • Large carrying capacity
  • Much faster than walking (sail instead of walking along a river!)
  • Many cities around water can be looted efficiently that way

Advanced

Fuel/Transport

• Gas and Diesel are rather scarce resources, so be stingy with it. Use mostly raft + bicycle + motorcycle + minimal inventory.
• KamAZ is needed to complete the moving town quest. Save diesel for this purpose, or use the KamAZ for NPC Trading. (Electric car Is the best for light trades)
• Try to guess how much workload you'll need and use the right vehicle. For example, there is no point using a GAZ-24 if you're just rushing survivor quests. Don't use a UAZ-452 if you're trading less than 2 tons. Using a vehicle with more load (for the most part) has a higher fuel consumption rate.
• Use markers to mark important places like a bandit base/fort and a camp.
• You can swim if it saves you fuel. There are no enemies on water and traveling on water uses no extra fuel. However, note that swimming is much slower compared to traveling on land if you don't have a raft.
• Remember to keep your eye on your Fuel. You can also distribute fuel in key points, so that you refill your fuel. Carrying all fuel at once is the best, if you can carry. You can get more from gas stations, and trading in survivors' camps.
• It is a good idea to carry a bicycle, a toolkit, and some basic materials (tape, wire, ...) in your vehicle. Spare parts are relatively easy to find, but other materials to repair your vehicle can be tricky to gather. The bike will allow you to go look for gas and spare parts in nearby towns.
• Use preferably the motorcycle outside of cities, and bicycles inside, to save fuel. Use the VAZ/UAZ outside cities when your fuel stocks are high enough.
• Inventory management is a key in this game. Always try to have minimum items on you. Hoard medicines, it's useful and very light. Take the food you need to stay alive for a week or two, and take some more if it doesn't overloads you. If overloading, don't be afraid to drop some food, some water, and non perishable items at camps. You will be able to restock when you come back to visit cities near that camps.
• Food rots even if you aren't carrying it, eat it before it rots! (if possible, bring food that is non-perishable, so you don't have to watch for expiration time.)

Fighting

• Don't underestimate enemies! Serious enemies like bears, that can cause injuries that will set you back for 4-10 days. Fight them only if you're ready.
• Some items will help you evade enemies : craft a ghillie suit before reaching Moscow if necessary. (Use ghillie suit unless you have better armor)
• ALWAYS read the statistics from weapons and armors and equip the proper equipment before battle.
• The steel armor offers the best protection, then comes the chitin armor.

Diseases

• Be careful. If you have Raw meat, dry it on a Drying rack. Doing so eliminates your chance of getting parasites. Because raw meat is better than fried meat, you might want to select the Raw Diet perk as soon as possible. This allows you to consume raw meat without having a chance to get a disease.
• Be ready to treat any wound or disease. Always keep ~10-20 of each medicine. Medicine is very light; it shouldn't take a toll on your load.
• You should fear getting sick with a disease. Although some diseases might be easy to treat, the recovery process can be long and you will still experience negative effects (e.g. quicker energy loss, HP reduction, etc.)
• If you're struggling to survive a disease, stay at a nearby survivor camp for a couple of days/weeks/months until it heals. It is very helpful against radiation poisoning, which can be lethal otherwise.
• Take the info from everything. You never know from who, where and when you'll receive the stab.
• Treat your wounds immediately; don't bleed out.
• It doesn't hurt to apply a white man's foot when you're at super low health; you can die during the healing process.

Items/Food

• Scavenge everything, with more items discovered, and places you're able to find them, your survival chance increases. Don't bring it all with you though, keep only valuables items (Sulfur, saltpeter, pots, meds, steel or iton tools, sulfuric acid, batteries, sugar, salt, coffee, fuel...) and make camps around cities to come back later to pick up stuff you couldn't take.
• If you approach an obstacle while searching and the remaining items aren't that good, do not clear the obstacle (unless you want XP). This uses up the durability of your tools.
• Don't make unnecessary items unless you want to level up and have extra crafting materials.
• Be resourceful. Items found in cities and bandit camps don't respawn. Wilderness locations do, after about two weeks of in-game time.
• Do not trash items without studying them. Sugar, for example, is a VERY VERY useful item, from making Whiskey, to Synthesizing medicines. Take Now or Never! If you are unsure, you could ask other players (if you play online), or join the discord, linked on the main page of this wiki, and ask there.
• Check out the trading page if you are near a survivor camp, and see if they have anything you need. This is also useful in helping you figure out which items to stock up on.
• Always bring water and food with you. If you're on foot or riding a bicycle, 15-25 bottles of pure water + some cookable food + portable oven is enough. Food is abundant around the map and will slow you down if you carry too much. When using a bigger vehicle, you may want to carry more water and food to travel faster. 
• Refrain from hoarding commonly found heavy items like scrap and wood. These items can take a toll on your load; you can easily find these items nearby.