After over 2,000 hours and 10 years in DayZ, Guided-Survival expert Kevin Willing has created the ultimate food guide for DayZ. The article covers everything about finding food, farming, hunting, and fishing, as well as preparation and its bonuses.
All methods to find/make food in DayZ:
Often, you already have some food. On vanilla servers, this is usually a fruit. On community servers, you might find canned goods or meat. Just check, maybe you're in luck!
You spawn on the coast, so use this to your advantage. Not only do you find food and tools in the small nutshell boats on the beach, but also water- and weatherproof clothing and backpacks. A good first stop – pun intended?
The coasts are often picked clean by numerous newcomers like you. There's not much left to find. Your best chance to find food in DayZ is inland. Especially small villages, ignored by most players, still have some supplies stored. To find your way, you can use this interactive map.
All over Chernarus and Livonia, there are forests and gardens. Here, you can find various food sources. Some require nothing, others require a firearm:
From hunter-gatherer to farmer. This has not only proven itself in human history but also in the zombie apocalypse. In DayZ, you don't have to find food, you can simply grow it. This requires a pack of seeds and the following tools:
Tomatoes in DayZ are ripe for consumption after 8 minutes with perfect cultivation.
Zucchinis in DayZ are ripe for consumption after 6 minutes with perfect cultivation.
Pumpkins in DayZ are ripe for consumption after 7 minutes with perfect cultivation.
Peppers in DayZ are ripe for consumption after 6 minutes & 20 seconds with perfect cultivation.
You can watch your plants grow and thrive over time. After you've plowed your vegetables, you can naturally eat them. But save one or two fruits and cut them up. This way, you get new seeds, and the game starts all over again.
In addition to a vegetarian life or living off canned goods, you can also go hunting actively and passively. In doing so, you hunt animals that fall into four different categories:
You can catch fish in two different ways, with traps and fishing rods. As a trap, you can use a plastic bottle as a fish trap for small fish. Or you can build a large fish trap to catch big fish. You can find or even make a fishing rod yourself:
You can set up both fish traps in both fresh and saltwater and then bait them with a worm. You can dig worms out of the ground. With bait, you increase the catch rate of fish in DayZ. The same applies to the fishing rod with a hook. You attach a worm to the hook, thereby increasing the catch rate again.
Fish you can catch: With the small fish trap, you can only catch small fish like sardines. With the large fish weir, you can catch mackerel or carp. The actual fish you catch also depends on whether you fish in fresh or saltwater.
Pro Tip from the Author: While carp and mackerel offer more meat and therefore more calories, they must be gutted and cooked. The two small fish species that you can catch in DayZ are edible and fresh out of the water. So, you save valuable time and remain more inconspicuous.
In the lands of Chernarus and Livonia, there are different hunting methods. Small animals like rabbits can only be caught with a trap. Large animals such as cows, deer, wild boars, etc., must be actively hunted.
Where do you encounter predators? Be careful up north and in the west of the Chernarus map. Around the Devil's Castle, you might encounter bears. In Livonia, be cautious in the southern forests for wolves and bears. Wolves and bears are cold-blooded killers but can also be hunted for meat, fat, and fur. Find hunting tactics and survival strategies in our Predator Guide about bears.
Now you know how to find, grow, and hunt food in DayZ. The next part is about preparing it. Fish, meat, vegetables, and mushrooms can be cooked & prepared in various ways in the game. Sure, most food in DayZ doesn't need to be cooked. Vegetables, rice, snacks, or canned goods can be consumed as is. However, carp, mackerel, and meat must be heated. Not only does cooking increase the caloric value of the food -- making it more satisfying -- it also makes food last longer.
Meat and fish spoil in DayZ after:
Condition/Storage | Raw | Cooking | Baking | Drying |
---|---|---|---|---|
Inventory | 1.66 hrs | 20 hrs | 28 hrs | 56 hrs |
Storage | 7 hrs | 3 days | 4 days | 8 days |
Fruits, Vegetables & Mushrooms spoil in the game after:
Raw | Cooking | Baking | Drying | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Inventory | 5 hrs | 14 hrs | 20 hrs | Infinite |
Storage | 14 hrs | 2 days | 3 days | Infinite |
How do you survive? Have you found other reliable ways to obtain food? Our methods are summarized here:
Author and founder Kevin Willing, with over 2,000 hours in the DayZ Standalone, has gathered a lot of experience and created this guide with the help of the Guided editorial team. He has also been actively reporting on DayZ since 2016, as confirmed by his author profile. If you have questions or comments about the topic, write a comment or personally contact the author via Community-Discord.
Thank you for the explanation, most people just write
"Go play COD if you dont like it."
You just need to look at food in game differently. Thank you, well done.