Why doesn’t the Day Z inventory save on only one of the computers

dayz-2012

We have two computers in the house (and two Day Z "accounts"). On one of these computers, it is not possible to save items past a certain point in my inventory. After playing around with it for far too long, it seems that once I pick up more than one pistol magazine (or possibly bandage), my inventory becomes "stuck" such that any additional stuff I get disappears when I logout and any items I consume re-appear on login. My health and location save as expected. Dying clears the condition, but new characters run into the same problem.

On the second computer, Day Z works perfectly for both accounts. In other words, the character whose inventory is stuck on one PC has no problem collecting things on the other PC. This fact makes me think I can do something about it rather than chalking it up to a buggy alpha. Here's what I've tried:

  • dying
  • lots of different servers
  • updating the game, including the latest 1.7.2.4/95417 beta
  • "verify integrity" of the Steam downloads several times (this is what I use to switch accounts)
  • I bought a third Arma key, and a fresh character under that key had exactly the same problem (again only on the buggy computer)
  • deleted everything Arma/DayZ-related I could find and reinstalled
  • waiting several minutes on the server before logging off (thinking it might only save my game periodically or something)

One more bit of info: on the buggy computer, my character seems to get "desynced" often such that my friends think I'm stuck in one place when I'm actually far away. Both computers share an Internet connection, so it doesn't seem to be typical lag.

Needless to say this was very frustrating the first couple times it happened. Does anyone have an idea as to what might be wrong?

Best Answer

If you have a high desync with that computer, it suggests a problem with networking/firewall on that machine. Do you have antivirus scanning packets going in/out? Maybe try adding the arma2 executable to an exception list (do not scan things that program sends out / receives).

Otherwise I have noticed I keep items sometimes if I use them and immediately logout. Similarly, I have lost items that I have found by logging out shortly after finding them. Make sure after looting / using items you wait five minutes or so before logging out. It may also be a problem with the dayz server you are playing on (or dayz version, or arma2 beta patch version).

Have you tried using Dayz Commander and updating arma2/dayz to the most recent versions? It is pretty painless to do so through Dayz Commander.

If none of this fixes your problem, I would seriously consider asking this question with more detailed technical specifications on the official dayz support forums. You may have found a legitimate bug in the game.