Weather

Weather plays a very important part in DayZ Standalone. The game is designed to simulate real weather conditions, time of day, seasons, position of real life constellations, and temperature, all of which impact the world you play in.

Although the weather in Chernarus can be unpredictable at times, rarely does it change abruptly, and it generally stays consistent throughout the course of a day as it would in real life. There are many factors that go into the current weather situation you may find yourself in, including (but not limited to): ambient temperature, wind, cloud density, precipitation, and visibility. Most notably, it effects your personal level of humidity, which can in turn have effects on the health of your person such as your temperature.

Weather conditions are server-controlled and synced across all clients such that all players on the same server experience the same weather conditions.

So the DayZ night cycle is about the same time as your time in real life.

Precipitation (Rain)
Whenever it rains, ambient temperatures drop (because clouds hide the sun), and players exposed to the rain will get their clothing and gear progressively more wet (usually at a fairly rapid pace). As a result, player temperature may drop, resulting in adverse effects to their health. This can be avoided by seeking shelter inside of houses, underneath trees, or by wearing water resistant gear such as the Raincoat.

Rain can pose a significant survival challenge to those who are ill-equipped, as staying dry and travelling are typically counter to each other. Luckily, short bursts of exposure (such as running from building-to-building) have little effect on the humidity level of the player. Prolonged exposure is necessary to become wet.

Precipitation can make it hard to start a fire when building a Fireplace, and also serves to muffle firearm shots to some degree. Rain water can be be collected to drink in certain containers such as a Canteen or PET Bottle.

Cloud Density
This particular factor has little effect on the players in a direct sense, but it does change the level of light being cast on the ground just as in real life. Therefore cloud density has an effect on visibility regardless of precipitation or time of day.

Day-Night Cycle
Time of day can have an effect on visibility and ambient temperature. As the sun sets, the temperature can drop and the world will be enveloped in darkness. At night, the moon will provide a natural light source, and real-life star constellations will be visible in the night sky. Both the stars and the sun-moon cycle can be used to aid in your navigation during your adventures.

Night will make it harder to see and to be seen, and while the moon might provide some light, in order to explore safely a light source (e.g. Flashlight, Headtorch, Torch, or mounted tactical flashlight) might be be necessary to see properly. However, you run the risk of attracting unwanted attention from zombies or other players. A set of Night Vision Goggles is very useful for exploring during night time without running the risk of exposing your location.

DayZ servers recognize time of day and can be configured to either use actual time (based on their location in the real world) or a time set by the server owner. The day-night cycle itself is also configurable, based upon a multiplier: by default, a day lasts exactly 24 hours in real life using a value of 1x, but could be cut down to 1/8 of that cycle using an 8x multiplier for example (resulting in one in-game day per every 3 hours of real time). The balance of day-to-night can be altered as well, meaning that the day-night cycle can be weighted towards primarily daytime with only a very short night for example.

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Seasons
Server configuration recognizes the time of year (either set by the owner or using real-world data) and simulates weather conditions such as wind, ambient temperature, and precipitation. This means that the weather in Chernarus will change automatically throughout the calendar year.

Visual representation of different seasons is not currently present in DayZ because of the challenges involved in developing such a feature. This may be added at some point in the future.