Los Muertos

GTA V's story mode turned into a DayZ survival run, using your own copy of DayZ. You wake up somewhere in Los Santos next to a wrecked car. Nothing drives any more, half the people are gone, and the infected are out: in GTA's silliest costumes, groaning with DayZ's own voices.

Survive like DayZ

• DayZ's rules: food, water, stomach, blood, health, bleeding and shock use DayZ's own numbers. Infected hits can open wounds that bleed until you bandage them.
• The infected: the film studio's green aliens, with the odd clown, mime, Space Ranger, Pogo the Monkey or Bigfoot. When they hear or see something they shamble over to check before they chase, so walking slowly or crouching past them works.
• DayZ's loot: search cars, police cruisers, ambulances, work trucks, shop shelves, gun store racks, toolboxes and bodies. Everything comes from DayZ's loot table, with DayZ's names and descriptions, and wallets, tills and glove boxes hold cash.
• DayZ clothes and carrying space: every item takes its DayZ size. Your pockets are what your DayZ top, trousers and vest hold, and a DayZ backpack adds its own space. Helmets, vests, jackets and boots carry DayZ's armour: what covers the spot an infected hits takes the edge off the hit and the bleeding.
• Random spawns: every survivor wakes up at a random spot anywhere on the map, from Paleto Bay to the docks.

A new inventory screen

Press I: what's nearby on the left (a search, a container, the ground at your feet), your gear on the right (what you wear, your bag, your pockets), and the item you point at shown large in the middle as GTA's closest look-alike, slowly turning on a dark backdrop, with its DayZ name, description and numbers. Press Space or click it to inspect it like in DayZ: drag to turn it, wheel to zoom. Pages for crafting and tailoring; mouse or keyboard. Vendors keep their own menus.

Manuals

Three manuals, each the prize of a hard mission. Carry one, or keep it in a container at your base and craft there, and its recipes open on the inventory screen:

• Builder's Manual: DayZ's three-level Watchtower (posts, walls, floors, stairs and a roof, built part by part by DayZ's rules), a wall, a floor, stairs, a pool to drink from and fill your bottles at, a flag pole that stops infected appearing near your base, and a construction light that comes on at night.
• Engineer's Manual: a sawed-off shotgun, nailed and barbed bats, Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, DayZ's improvised explosive, a noise lure that pulls the infected away, a combat stim and a shovel.
• Tailor's Manual: tear anything you carry into fabric (the rarer it is in DayZ, the more fabric you get) and sew any of 54 DayZ clothes from it with a sewing kit.

Money, vendors and missions

• Cash in dollars: find it, sell what you find, or earn it. When you die it stays on your body with your gear.
• Vendors on your map buy and sell their own kind of things (they pay half): construction suppliers, gun dealers, general stores (food, medicine, bags and clothes) and car dealers. Vendors can't be hurt and the infected leave them alone.
• Army checkpoints: every gun dealer is guarded by soldiers who shoot down any infected that comes near.
• Bounty jobs: any vendor can send you to clear an infected nest, marked on your map, for cash and XP.
• Hard missions: after three bounties, construction suppliers, gun dealers and general stores give a hard mission: a bigger nest far off with armoured brutes in it. Clear it and a supply crate drops with that vendor's manual, military loot and cash.

Cars

No traffic at all. Parked cars are locked: search them, but they won't start. Buy a car from a car dealer, from a rusty Emperor ($2,500) to a Banshee ($40,000): it's yours, saved where you leave it and shown on your map.

Build anywhere

Build as many bases as you like, anywhere outdoors, DayZ's way, one part at a time: a shovel and logs for the posts, planks and nails with a hammer for frames, walls and floors, sheet metal for metal walls, wire and pliers for a gate. Scavenge the materials from pallets, lumber and log piles, saw planks from logs, or buy them. DayZ crates, sea chests, barrels and tents keep your gear (and your manuals) through death.

Your first survivor

You start as the story character you're playing, with the heist duffel bag on his back and two perks nobody else ever gets:

• Heist Bag: holds twice as much as DayZ's biggest backpack.
• Loot Sense: press Caps Lock and GTA's sniffing vision lights up all the loot within 25 m for 10 seconds, with the best item named.

Keep him alive: when he dies, both are gone for good.

Death and respawn

When a survivor dies, their body stays where they fell with everything they carried and their cash, and it's marked on your map. Press Enter: three random Los Santos locals line up, each with a name, a background (hunter, drifter, paramedic, cook, hiker, construction worker, gang member, jogger) and a starter perk. Pick one and start again at level 1, somewhere new.

Levels and perks

Killing infected, searching, building, crafting, bounties and surviving each day all give XP, up to level 10. Every level-up offers three perks and you pick one (K):

• From level 2: Light Feet, Scavenger, Field Medic, Iron Stomach, Deep Pockets, Handyman, Brawler, Marathon
• From level 4: Thick Skin, Hush, Pack Mule, Marksman
• From level 7, with GTA's own effects: Adrenaline, Dead Eye (Michael-style bullet time), Sixth Sense and Second Wind

Controls

E search, build, open storage, trade, climb stairs, drink at a pool · I inventory (Enter use or take, Delete drop or store, Space inspect, Q/E crafting and tailoring pages, T take all) · K perks · Caps Lock Loot Sense or Dead Eye · Left/Right in a vendor's menu: Buy, Sell, Job · F10 switch the outbreak off and on (your story character and his GTA weapons come back)

Good to know

Single player, story mode only. The outbreak pauses during missions and cutscenes and never runs in GTA Online. You need GTA V Legacy 1.0.3889.0 and DayZ installed. Nothing from DayZ is copied: the mod reads it from your own install while you play. Your progress, cash, cars, bases and bounties are saved between sessions. (Called Los Santos Outbreak up to version 0.3.0; its safe-house ranks are paused now that bases can go anywhere.)