Beginner's guide

Introduction

The wasteland survivor guide is divided into different chapters, each one detailing a specific topic that will turn you into a full fledged survival expert in no time.

This is the first chapter of the wasteland survivor guide. It will serve as an introduction to the world of Day R Survival. For more detailed explanations, be sure to read every chapter of the guide.

Advice from the Developers

The Survivor is not alone in his travels, the development team from TLT studios have some words of advice for you:

• Loot is generated randomly for the Survivor.
• He can trade in survivors' bases.
• He can make a knife and an axe from flint.
• He can get firewood fast.
• Diseases and injuries are very dangerous.
• He can get gasoline from broken cars.
• He can get firebricks from destroyed brick ovens.
• The map supports multi-touch.
• The map is displayed in fragments. To see a new map fragment, the Survivor needs to go toward the edge of the current one.
• Towns are contaminated by potentially fatal radiation.
• Some items or gear cannot be used if the Survivor's limbs are injured.
• Searching at night does not work without a light source unless he is in broken buildings or outside because the moonlight guides him.
• Level up to unlock new recipes and perks.
• The Survivor needs a raft to travel faster on the water.

These tips can be seen in the loading screen when the game is opened.

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. 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, and combine it with a cart to get a bike with cart, a great vehicle that has good storage and speed for beginners.
• Do not consume uncooked food or dirty/toxic water. Cooked food reduces more hunger and provides other stats like hearty food from certain foods, which reduces hunger, thirst, increases health, etc (while uncooked foods have risks of disease and illness). Keep an eye on your rag usage, since it is required to craft bone glue, a very important material even until late game. The Survivor can purify dirty water by simply boiling it with a can/saucepan ,water purifier and fire. In order to purify toxic water, he will need activated charcoal, can/saucepan, and fire. However, with activated charcoal handy, rotten vegetables may be helpful to quench 10 food and 10 water. Just watch his health and radiation gauges. Also, note that poisoning and parasites can be prevented with the "raw diet" perk, which is a very powerful perk as of v670 (since the 5 times health decrease when hungry rarely ever applies).
• Avoid food contaminated with radiation. Some food found has a radiation symbol on it. Eating this food will dose the Survivor with some point of radiation. Avoid eating this food unless you are desperate and can manage that radiation. It is always recommended to keep extra food to avoid this situation.
• When the Survivor obtains a Makarov handgun near the start of the game, keep it until he 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. Save insulating tape because it is needed to build guns, armor, houses, cars, repairing the items like armor, weapons, and cars. If you can, use bone glue, as the Survivor can make an infinite amount of it. Save food like pasta, canned goods, rice, buckwheat, and pickled vegetables because these are really good food items very important later on. Save rope and threads; the Survivor needs rope for drying racks, wells, gear and backpacks, (all though once he gets the tent and the tourist backpack and/or a base with drying racks ropes near useless). He need threads to craft, repair, maintain armor/certainty gear. Some more tips: save gas masks/filters, use the motorized raft instead of cart because it carries over 400 kg more than the cart and there are a lot more rivers in-game, save TT, AK, Mosin, and PM ammo, save F-1s and instead use gunpowder grenades.
• While searching in cities, keep an eye on the Survivor's radiation level to avoid radiation sickness. Do not let his radiation counter exceed 100,200 or 300. Do not sleep in cities in order to avoid radiation exposure (only the first few cities near his 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 may decrease search time and lets the Survivor 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, he can get a hangover from as little as three shots.
•  Make a weapon. This is very important for the Survivor to defend himself. A homemade pistol does far more damage than many early game weapons, and until he gets enough axes, a handmade spear is the highest damage melee weapon he can get in early game, enough to kill a rat in one hit. Once he has more than 2 axes, you can switch to use an axe instead, which has the same damage per AP as a spear, but you can better control the AP usage since it only requires 1 AP.
• Limit the use of medicine, especially alcohol. Pick up and keep all medicine the Survivor finds, including components and survival items used to stitch himself up (alcohol, needles, thread, bandages, etc.). Avoid abusing drugs like Metocaine, Chlorcystamine, and Byrocarm. Drugs are not abundant around the map, unlike food and water.
• Level up as often as possible by obtaining experience points. The Survivor can do this by killing all enemies on a battlefield, looting a building completely (except ruins), crafting some items (see experience ) opening doors (if you can spare the tools/axe/shovel/etc)  but you really shouldn't because if the Survivor uses any tool to get rid of a obstacle it will take 5 uses of the tool that was used (unless it was his first, or some kind of explosive.)
• Think ahead and make calculated decisions. Something as mundane as riding a bike for long distances nonstop can have disastrous consequences like a broken cart. Keep extra food and water so the Survivor isn't forced to consume toxic/infested foods; consuming these foods can give him fatal diseases.
• When you decide to finally make a permanent base, it is recommended to have these. 1 dugout/wooden house, 1 water purifier, 2 or 5 greenhouses, 1 chemistry lab, two or 4 barrels of fermenting liquor, and a forge.
• 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 the Survivor should have at LEAST a shotgun and military clothes by the time he starts facing them)
• Do not carry more common goods than you need: food, weapons, items for repair, etc. The Survivor 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 red trees for forests, red waters for swamps, and a greyish area for wastelands. However, note that they generally have certain otherwise hard to obtain resources. Water, coasts and roads do not have a radioactive variant,and they are everywhere.
• 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 the Survivor uses a motor vehicle, always keep an eye on the fuel gauge. It is recommended to use motorcycle until the Survivor reaches survivor camps for fuel consumption efficiency. Do not wander with motorized vehicles, have a clear objective, and plan ahead to save fuel.
• Rafts and boats do not break down, but only work on bodies of water such as coasts, 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, in which case you may need to make several trips.
• 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 the Survivor's possessions. 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 he needs rather than carrying it. Rat infestations have been reintroduced, as well as bear attacks if carrying honey, while sleeping.
• Watch his 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 your health increases too slowly, you may consider taking some medicine, such as a healing salve or Bryocarm. If you can, use foods rather than medicine to heal the Survivor. Foods like pasta with ground beef or pickled vegetables can help.
• Health will slowly decrease when your hunger and thirst levels 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.
• You can receive injuries if your armor falls below 40%.
• 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 100 .
• To lower radiation, use one or more of the following options:
  • Vodka/red wine/moonshine/ other alcoholic beverages. Alternatively, drink tea, hot or cold(can be reheated).
  • IR-190
  • Detoxifying potion
  • Chlorcystamine
  • 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 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 a 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 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 in 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 travelling on water uses no extra fuel. However, note that swimming is much slower than walking on land.
• 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 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 hard enemies such as bears, which can cause injuries that will set you back for 4-10 days. Fight them only if you are ready. Use the wiki to gain for info about their attacks and health.
• Some items will help you evade enemies: craft a ghillie suit before reaching Moscow, if necessary. (Use a ghillie suit unless you have better armor).
• ALWAYS read the statistics from weapons and armors and equip the proper equipment before battling.
• The steel armor offers the best protection, followed by the chitin armor. You can get steel by destroying bandit camps/forts. However, you can no longer get steel from military bandit city bases/camps.

Diseases

• Be careful. If you have raw meat, you can get food poisoning. . It is recommended to select the Raw Diet perk as soon as possible.
• 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.
• Some diseases are much more deadly than others. For example, Blood Poisoning can kill you if not treated periodically. Some other diseases are an only minor inconvenience, such as reducing max energy and HP (thus reducing the time you can explore), or moderate inconvenience such as HP reduction per hour (thus requiring you to stock up White man's foot). So read the disease description carefully.
• 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.
• 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. You can eat something like honey to gain health instantaneously.

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, 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 Petrozavodsk)
• 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 depending on your playstyle. For example, for those who use the trading path of completing the game, sugar is a very useful item, from making wine to synthesizing medicines. 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 much more than bicycle 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.