[p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/4458811/16c854ac7a595ceac88ea3bcc173f5b025eebe93.jpg"][/img][/p][p]Greetings, Survivors![/p][p align="start"]We’re about to enter the public testing phase of update 1.29 on Steam and Xbox! Let dive into the content it offers, and what to keep an eye on while playing on the experimental servers.[/p][p align="start"]We would like to use this experimental as an opportunity to gather feedback on balancing changes within the central economy on Chernarus. This setup is meant to investigate gameplay that leans slightly more towards the survival side of the game. It will only be active during 1.29 experimental and will not be released on stable. We’re hoping to use the feedback we collect while working on the economy for update 1.30, as well as on our Badlands expansion. To ensure the feedback is unaffected by the previous state, we’ve decided to wipe the experimental servers, as well as the characters.[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/4458811/d1a207dbc4666dcf0a13e3369215855bbc794451.jpg"][/img][/p][p align="start"]We’re also introducing the largest pack of clothes ever introduced in a single update. A total of 9 clothes (excluding color variants) will be available in the world spawns (or crafting). We won’t go into detail here, but we will say that most of the clothes are aimed at enriching your experience on Sakhal. There is also a piece that will be pretty unbearable to obtain.[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/4458811/8c91da90472f8dff0c819bd15f69d11d9cd30b92.jpg"][/img][/p][p]Speaking of Sakhal, some of you said the underground bunker felt a bit too small. We agreed and ended up adding a new section to it. Just like with the previous one, this new section is accurately modelled after a real object: the Monolith-type bunker (a.k.a Javor 51) - a Soviet nuclear warhead storage that was built in the former Czechoslovakia and in the Warsaw Pact countries. We even visited one ourselves earlier in the year![/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/4458811/e3d75039dedcbbd3a9c8d63968aa9c01ff2701d1.jpg"][/img][/p][p align="start"]While it’s a relatively minor addition, it’ll make encounters around Sakhal's underground storage a lot more interesting, as it offers a third entrance into the underground space.[/p][p align="start"]Our environment designers have been dealing with imperfect terrain surface blending for years. It’s resulted in blocky transitions, which often look very broken. This was most painfully visible on Sakhal, where the contrast between the snow and dark ground clearly showed the issue. For this update, we were able to enlist the help of our Enfusion team, and implement better blending of terrain surfaces into DayZ. The results are pretty impressive, as you can see:[/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/4458811/b5f036b8370e3262d2a9e2530be3bd2aee3488c5.gif"][/img][/p][p align="start"]The changes aren’t just visible on Sakhal, however. We also revisited Chernarus and Livonia. Since this blending requires changes in data, it is turned off by default. Mod makers who are interested in switching to this blending will have to enable it manually on their mods. We hope this change will improve your immersion while travelling through our environments.[/p][p align="start"]While this update is certainly lighter on the content side (most of the team is hard at work on the content for the recently announced DayZ Badlands expansion), we hope these new goodies will make it more interesting to explore the world of DayZ. Thank you and see you on Sakhal![/p][p align="start"]On behalf of the DayZ team,[/p][p align="start"]Adam

P.S. For more details, you can find the patch notes here. [/p]