Beginner's guide

Day r beginners 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 out what that means.

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 potentially fatal radiation.
• Some items or gear cannot be used if your limbs are injured.
• Searching at night does not work without a light source.
• Level up to unlock new recipes and perks.
• 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Here is a list of helpful guides (keep in mind some information on these might be out of date) :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, gain perks, 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 retrieve it swiftly when you will pass by again (possibly in a long long time!)
• For the first few weeks, search for food, medicine, ammunition, etc and be sure to take the normal clothes from the tailor shop in the starting town. You should check every building, loot almost everything that is not in a house, ruins or a crater, unless the house has a pot (very valuable early game). Go to Murmansk and 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 dirty/toxic water. Cooked food reduces more hunger and provides other stats like for example later on you will be able to make food like sushi it will give hearty food which reduces hunger, thirst, increases health, etc (while uncooked foods have risks of disease and illness). You can purify dirty water by simply boiling it with a can/saucepan and fire. In order to purify toxic water, you will need activated charcoal, can/saucepan, and fire. However, with activated charcoal handy, rotten vegetables may be helpful to quench 10 hunger and 10 thirst. Just watch your health and radiation gauges. Also note that poisoning and parasites can be prevented with the "raw diet" perk, but it should be noted that you will then take 5 times more damage from starvation.
• Avoid food contaminated with radiation. Some food found has a radiation symbol on it. Eating this food will dose you with 1 point of radiation. avoid eating this food unless you are desperate and can manage that radiation but even then you should have a fish rod to use unradiated rusks to fish.
• When you obtain your Makorov handgun near 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, the brick house and repairing the wooden house at save points, save insulating tape because it is need to build guns, armor, houses, cars, repairing the items like armor, weapons, and cars and instead use bone glue when ever you can, save pasta, canned goods, rice, buckwheat, and pickled vegetables because these are really good food items very important later on, and finally save rope and threads you need rope foe drying racks, wells, certainly gear, (all though once you get the tent and the tourist backpack and/or a base with drying racks ropes near useless) the tourist backpack, etc you need threads to craft, repair, maintain armor/certainty gear, also a few more tips: save your gas masks/filters, use the motorized raft instead of cart because it carries over 800 kg more than the cart and there's a lot more rivers in game, save TT, AK, Mosin, and PM ammo, save F-1s and instead use gunpowder grenades.
• While searching cities, keep an eye on your radiation levels to avoid radiation sickness. Do not let your radiation counter exceed 30, 50, 75 or 100. Do not sleep in cities in order to avoid radiation exposure (only the first few cities near your starting point have no radiation).
• Beware, lighting a campfire in a building and searching may end up burning it down, destroying all goods inside and leaving a bit of charcoal.
• Bringing a light source while searching decreases search time and lets you search at night
• Drink generally any alcoholic drink to reduce accumulated radiation as necessary (but be aware that this 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 as little as three shots.
•  make a weapon. This is very important to defend 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, Chlorcystamine, and byrocarm (trust me we have all done it.....100 times) Drugs are not abundant around the map, unlike food and water (though the devs really limited the amount of food btw).
• Level up as often as possible by obtaining experience points. You can do this by: killing all enemies on a battlefield, looting a building completely (except ruins), crafting some items (see experience though once you pass on to the next level and unlock new items trying to grind the old items like crossbolts don't do anything) opening doors (if you can spare the tools/axe/shovel/etc)  but you really shouldn't because if you use any tool to get rid of a obstacle it will take 5 uses of the tool that was used (unless it was your fist, or some kind of explosive.)
• Think ahead, make calculated decisions. Something as mundane as riding a bike for long distances nonstop can have disastrous consequences (like when using the bicycle and cart to search cities and go back to bring the loot to your motorized raft) like breaking your cart by searching far distant cities.
• When you decide to finally make a base you need these.   1 dugout/wooden house, 1 water purifier, 5 drying racks, 1 work bench, 2 or 5 greenhouses, 1 chemistry lab, two or 4 barrels of fermenting liquor, 1 cellar, and a forge (if on a outdated version like 1.462 build a sewing machine)
• Do not attack bandits if you are not certain to beat them (they have good loot, but without proper equipment, they can be potentially fatal and/or crippling but you should have at LEAST a shotgun and military clothes by the time you'll start facing them)
• Do not carry more common goods than you need: food, weapons, items for repair, etc. You can always find more later down the road.
• If you drop items on the map and outside cities, they will be marked with a special symbol so you know where to look when you come back for them later.
• Avoid Radioactive biomes. These are often hinted by a darker green for forests or red waters for swamps. However, note that they generally have certain otherwise hard to obtain resources. Water, coasts and roads do not have a radioactive variant.
• Take into account the info protected from objects.
• Many objects have a limited durability and will eventually break from usage. 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 the fuel gauge. Best to use motorcycle until you reach survivor camps for fuel consumption efficiency. Do not wander with motorized vehicles, have a clear objective and plan ahead to save fuel.
• Rafts do not break down, but only work on bodies of water such as rivers, oceans and swamps. It is usually best to construct a new raft when needed rather than carry one over land, unless you are ferrying over a small road (or drop, pickup, move, drop, pickup, the drop items until you reach another body of water like a lake or swamp also take into account your surroundings you may see a swamp that looks cut off but may lead to another bigger and longer river that may cut off to a few towns you can scavenge)
• Beware of weather effects and natural disasters such as earthquakes, blizzards, dust storms, acid rain, lightning 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 in order 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 counter, better not to let it fall below 25 unless you know what you are doing.
• ~25 health can be rectified easily with a good meal and a good sleep. Health values below 25 will force you to stay in a safe area for longer to avoid dangerous encounters. Use this off-time to craft.
• If health increases too slowly, you may consider taking some medicine, such as healing salve (but really don't do this you'll run out of meds before you can tell from your head to your ass no offense but don't instead eat bread, pasta with forced meat, ushka, shaslik, or pilaf and/or sleep this is a more effective way to regain health all though on super hard mode sleeping doesn't no longer restore health)
• 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 carrying capacity and over-carrying, sorting your inventory by Weight can help you see if there is anything in particular causing an issue (such as why are you carrying 2 tires before you even have a bicycle??)

Basic tips

• Watch your radiation levels. Avoid going over 30|40|50 (depending on your difficulty level).
• To lower radiation, use one or more of the following options:
  • Vodka/red wine/moonshine/ other alcoholic beverages. Alternatively, drink tea, hot or cold.
  • 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 you to cut wood faster.
• Avoid eating uncooked food (The time cost to cook is worth the time you are stuck resting for days or months to recover. You can spend that time in sleeping or looting!).
• Avoid eating rotten / radiated foods.
• Use a handmade raft or bicycle with a cart; a 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 but 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 them. Use preferably raft + bicycle + motorcycle + minimal inventory.
• Kam AZ is needed to complete the moving town quest. Save diesel for this purpose or use the Kam AZ for NPC Trading. (Electric car is best for light trades).
• Try to guess how much workload you will need and use the right vehicle. For example, there is no point using a GAZ-24 if you are just rushing survivor quests. Do not use a UAZ-452 if you are 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 (Be aware that the game limits the total number of markers allowed so do not put markers on every building!)
• 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 than walking on land. Better use a raft.
• Remember to keep your eye on your Fuel gauge. You can also distribute fuel in key locations for refill purposes. Carrying all required fuel at once is the best, if you have the carrying capacity. You can get more from gas stations and by 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 as they are useful and very light. Take the food you need to stay alive for a week or two and take more if it does not overload you. If overloading, do not be afraid to drop some food, water and other non-perishable items in camps. You will be able to restock when you come back to visit cities near those camps.
• Food rots even if you are not carrying it, eat it before it rots! (if possible, bring food that is non-perishable, so you do not have to watch for expiration time.)

Fighting

• Do not underestimate enemies! There are many serious enemies, such as bears which can cause injuries that will set you back for 4-10 days. Fight them only if you are 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.and you can get steel by destroying bandit camps/forts but you can no longer get steel from military bandit city bases/camps but still can find them in forts.

Diseases

• Be careful. If you have raw meat, dry it on a drying rack. You should have at least ten drying racks in a base at late mid to early late game. 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 perk allows you to consume raw meat without getting sick.
• Be ready to treat any wound or disease. Always keep ~10-20 of each medicine. Medicine is very light; it should not 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 are struggling to survive a disease, stay at a nearby survivor camp for a couple of days/weeks/months until it heals. It is especially helpful against radiation poisoning, which can be lethal otherwise.
• Take the info from everything. You never know from who, where and when you will receive the stab.
• Treat your wounds immediately; do not bleed out.
• It really helps to apply a white man's foot when you are at super low health; you can die during the healing process (so instead if you have like lets say honey or pickled vegetables you cat eat some to regain ten points of health which should be enough to heal your injury because there's no time needed to eat so you can. Increase your survival This way that's why there so damn important)

Items/Food

• Scavenge everything. With more items discovered and places you are able to find them, your survival chances increase. Do not bring everything with you though, keep only valuable items (Sulfur, saltpeter, pots, meds, steel or iron tools, sulfuric acid, batteries, sugar, salt, coffee, gasoline, diesel, rubber parts, rusted hacksaws/crowbars/tools, colodial sugar and potassium nitrate, ammunition and grenades, any form of loot box (example: wooden crate or package), gunpowder, machine oil, cigarettes, vodka etc and make camps around cities to come back later to pick up stuff you could not take immediately (this is good to do when searching nearby cities with motorized raft before leaving to Petrozadvsk)
• If you are searching a building and the remaining items to be found are not that interesting, do not complete the search (unless you want the XP). This would use up more of the durability of your tools.
• Do not make unnecessary items unless you want to level up and have extra crafting materials.
• Be resourceful. Items found in cities and bandit camps do not 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 to 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, 15-20 bottles of pure water + some cookable food (example: rice, buckwheat, pasta, etc) + portable oven is enough(example: handmade primus stove). 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 by stopping less.
• Refrain from hoarding commonly found heavy items like scrap, wood, useless auto parts (unless in late game)  These items can take a toll on your load; you can easily find these items everywhere. 
• In early game when you get to Murmansk make a bicycle and cart and a raft then start gathering gasoline you will need it later on once you get the motorized raft that can carry one ton start gathering diesel you can make a motorized raft as early as Belomorsk which is right down southwest about 200km of Murmansk on the way search every city.
• This should keep you alive if you actually follow it because only YOU can save your butt from the wolves and bandits in game.