DayZ: Frostline is out now

Greetings, Survivors!

The wait is over! We are happy to announce that update 1.26 and DayZ Frostline are now live on all platforms! This article dives into what DayZ Frostline is and what you can expect once you get into the game.

DayZ Frostline is all about fighting the cold. But the most important part of it is a third official map called Sakhal.

Sakhal is a frozen volcanic archipelago located in the far east. With its windy hill tops, snowy forests, messy settlements, vast ice fields, and a massive naval base, it will certainly test the limits of your survival skills.

The temperature on Sakhal is usually below zero degrees Celsius. Food supplies are scarce and mostly found frozen, forcing players to thaw them out. The landscape’s volcanic nature, meanwhile, poses additional contamination challenges.
With food in short supply, many players will resort to hunting. We wanted to make sure this part of the game feels unique, so we’re introducing three new animals to hunt for and two new fish to try and catch.

For those who want a more in-depth look into DayZ Frostline’s development, take a look at our unique series of dev blogs. If you’re interested in buying DayZ Frostline, you can do so on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.

While access to servers running Sakhal requires a purchased copy of DayZ Frostline, we’re providing all the assets we built Sakhal with, as well as supporting features and assets, free of charge to anyone in the community for personal use on their servers and maps. We don’t want to hamper our community’s creativity, and look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Even if you resist the urge of getting DayZ Frostline, there are a plenty of things changing in the base game. If you’d like to dive deep into what update 1.26 has to offer, then you should definitely check out this article.

One thing that isn’t mentioned in the article is the introduction of boats. Yes, you read that right - we are adding small rubber boats to the game! They are the easiest vehicle to get running by far, and can be used to traverse large bodies of water. The boats can be very handy on Sakhal, though they can also be spawned on any map.

Another big change is your character’s decreased carrying capacity thanks to smaller cargo spaces for jackets, pants, vests, and backpacks. While that may strike some of you as being unpleasant, we listened to the feedback we received during the experimental period and believe this is a healthy change to the game. You’ll have to be a lot more thoughtful while scavenging as it will no longer be as easy to pick everything up. Naturally, this also means that you’ll end up leaving more loot behind for others.

A number of changes were also made to the fishing mechanic, hunting traps, the player’s heat comfort, temperature simulation on items, and more. The in-game server browser saw a lot of upgrades as well, thanks to the addition of better filtering and a new server description field.

On top of all this, the official hive experience is changing with the introduction of a regional loot economy. Loot on different maps is divided by climate and regional themes. Sakhal offers warm clothes and mostly eastern gear. Livonia spawns mostly summer clothes and western made gear. Chernarus remains a mixture of both in order to preserve its original feel. Due to these extensive changes, as well as those to cargo space, we decided to wipe the official servers and recommend that community server owners do the same.

Monitoring stability and your feedback will be extra important to us in the coming weeks. Most of our focus will be on player behavior on Sakhal, as well as on the distribution of loot. We received valuable feedback from our streamer event (thanks to everyone for participating!) and are already looking into applying some of that feedback in the upcoming 1.26 patch.

These are exciting times for DayZ! We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved, and truly hope that you’ll enjoy all of your new adventures on Sakhal!