DayZ update 1.1 brings a raft of fixes and a server wipe

DayZ just got its first update of 2021 in the form of patch 1.11, and as Bohemia Interactive warned back in January it involves a complete wipe to official servers and character progression. So unless you tend to stick to community servers where the wipe is not mandatory, a new dawn has come to the miserable zombie apocalypse.

The update is mostly focused on bug fixes and stability, though there are some neat treats for the dedicated, such as the SVAL "badass" rifle which will now spawn at helicopter sites in both Chernarus and Livonia. There are also new flags for the winners of the game's recent base building contest.

But the fixes are the priority, with one of the most noteworthy changes being to collision. Infected will no longer clip in and out of the player character during close quarters combat, and exiting cars will no longer put the player at risk of teleporting onto the car's roof. "This has been fixed and your feet now remain exactly where you'd expect them to be after leaving your vehicle," reads the update post. Ah, the tyranny of realism.

Fireplaces have been tweaked: they're slightly less dangerous ("players should no longer receive damage when moving out of the area") and you'll no longer need to stand so close in order to get the maximum heat bonus. 

While the update post linked above gives a decent overview, if you're into the granular details there's also an exhaustive changelog over here. It's a nice mix of useful-to-know ("the player can no longer dance with a broken leg"), amusing ("it was possible to sometimes light a fireplace underwater") and surreal ("It was possible to sometimes place objects inside furniture of buildings").

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.