Unturned

Okay so really this should be under survival but alas no general discussion forum for it!

I've been playing this game for the past week or so and had quite a bit of fun with it. Essentially somewhat like Minecraft meets DayZ.

It's free to play but still in development. As far as I can tell it's being made by just one guy so it's pretty impressive considering. He is pretty good with communication as well so he gives updates on progress and what he's currently working on. With all this in mind, I've put together a little summary of the gameplay below to persuade you all to start playing - except @Saiboogu who apparently doesn't like it...

Game Modes

1. Tutorial: teaches you the basic controls, gives you some target practice at the end. Simple stuff.
2. Singleplayer: Currently only one character so this world will always be as you left it until 3.0 when there will be the option to create extra characters.
3. Connect: At the moment you have to connect directly to a server hosted by someone else so you'll need the IP and password for a server.
4. Host: Goes hand in hand with connect for now until they introduce any form of dedicated servers (some people do run dedicated servers I believe but I haven't checked). When you host it uses your current singleplayer world. You get some basic options such as the option for PvP and for sync which when on allows people to join with their character geared from their own singleplayer game.

HUD
They HUD is pretty simple, consisting mainly of a series of status bars along the bottom:

1. Health: if you need this explaining then gaming isn't for you.
2. Hunger: You start out at 0, when you reach 100% you start to lose health. Solutions are fairly obvious.
3. Thirst: As with hunger, but you need to drink stuff duh.
4. Infection: You get infected when taking damage from zombies or eating the wrong thing. Find a pharmacy to deal with this.
5. Stamina: You have 100% but use it up when running, jumping or using a power attack. Automatically regenerates after a brief pause from strenuous activities, but consuming certain foods and drinks or drugs will also give you a boost.

Starting Out
You start off at a random point on the map - naked - and have to find yourself gear, pretty much exactly like DayZ. As I'm sure a lot of you have played DayZ you'll be familiar with the concept of startng out and being like 'where actually am I?' Well with the current map that's not really a big issue as it's tiny and you'll quickly learn where everything is so run to the top of a hill and look for places worth looting for some clothes, weapons, and supplies.

Experience System

You will notice that whenever you kill a zombie or wild animal, cut down a tree or mine a boulder, you gain some experience. This can be used to up your Skills - accessed by hitting tab to bring up your inventory:

There are 8 skills to level up:

1. Survival: reduces speed at which your hunger and thirst meters increase.
2. Endurance: Increases stamina.
3. Sneakybeaky: Makes you a bit stealthier.
4. Marksman: Increases gun control (this time for a 'thanks Obama' joke?)
5. Warrior: Increases melee damage done, reduces melee damage taken.
6. Outdoors: Reduces amount of times you have to smack a tree or boulder to make it explode into resources.
7. Craftsman: Increases the variety of things you can craft - just level it up soon as you can because building a base is complicated enough without dancing around whether you can build certain parts.
8. Immunity: Increases your health and decreases the speed at which your infection level rises.

Resources
The backbone of starting a base is locating an Axe (or better still a Fire Axe) and cutting down a load of trees (ideally while singing) to get Sticks and Logs. Ideally you want to find yourself a bag before doing this as you'll want some space to hold food, drink, and resources. A good one to start out with is a Travel Pack which is relatively common and has 12 slots.
You can also mine boulders using a Pickaxe to obtain Stones and Rocks but these are heavy and it will take years to collect enough to build a base from, so best to make a wooden one first. The most useful thing you can craft with stones is a camp fire which you can use to cook meat with.

Crafting
Probably the most frustrating thing is crafting stuff. It's simple enough but takes a lot of getting used to and is still a bit of a clunky process. Below is an example, the top two squares are components, the bottom left is for a tool (for example cooking food you need to stand near a camp-fire then click the little fire icon below the squares), the bottom right is the item you will create.
Here I'm combining two Wooden Supports with a Wooden Board to create a Wooden Pillar which is a vital part of early base-building. Theoretically you could just experiment a lot with crafting but it's easiest to make use of the wiki (link below) for how to make things. You'll quickly learn how to make the most common items anyway.


Weapons
I won't go into a huge amount of detail here as there are a lot of different weapons to find. Some of them are quite entertaining (like the Crowbar) and others really useful (like the Katana). As well as melee weapons there are plenty of guns to use, with a wide variety of ammunition to go with them. Most guns can be modified, including scopes/sights, tactical lights, silencers, and stocks - I managed to get me a 20x Zoom Scope which is silly long-range as the game does not have travel time or bullet drop, and aim is steady when standing still.
There are also explosive weapons which are fun to play with. Just don't try be smart by throwing a grenade down a hole at some zombies and bouncing it on the rim of the hole and blowing yourself up. That would be silly and nobody would be dumb enough to do that...

Vehicles
There are a surprisingly wide variety of vehicles in the game, and unlike DayZ, Gas Cans are easy to find. Vehicles vary in top speed and stability. They also vary in health but that is not so noticeable with no PvP as it takes some doing to smash a car up yourself. Unlike in DayZ, you can repair a car by simply having a Blowtorch and left clicking with it equipped to repair the car.
Note: cars do blow up - see image below - and they hurt (kind of like grenades) so don't try kiting zombies around a car that's about to blow because you might just hit yourself and die. Again...nobody's dumb enough to do that right?


Now get playing, I'll hopefully be able to host a server once I get a steady internet connection - in 8 days - so would be cool to play with some of you guys. Maybe my uber-base will be done too.

Useful Links

• Steam Store
• Steam Community
• Smartly Dressed: Unturned
• Unturned Wiki
• r/unturned

Edit: Comparison of the current PEI map with the upcoming 3.0 map:

 

Ah, didn't see it in the news section. Oh well, this can count as more of a basic tutorial to get people started.

Having gotten into the game I'm now stupidly excited to see the next update. Sounds like it'll be bringing some really cool stuff, especially the larger map which will just make everything more fun. The Unturned subreddit is full of interesting suggestions, including designs for helicopters which would be really useful in the new map.

 

The Super Troopers reference made me chuckle. Gramps and Supp can you guys go argue about which of you is the biggest noob (ask my five level 90s...) somewhere else? Thanks.

 

Keep your heels on and return to topic (hint: it's a game called Unturned).