As you probably guessed by the title I'm gonna list a bunch of things that will hopefully help out new players, feel free to comment more tips for me to add.
~ The first thing you'll probably think when you get into the game is 'where the f*** is the pistol i saw ___ on youtube starting with', the answer is that you no longer start with a gun, which personally I think is a good thing.
~ Guns are usually found in barns and military areas, they can be found in residential houses but not as often and will likely be worse.
~ http://dayzdb.com/map#3.064.131 - I'd highly recommend new players to check out the map before playing, some people think of using a non-ingame map as cheating but each to their own. You can click on the icons to see the chance of finding each type of loot
~ At night time it's VERY dark (think, can't see your own hand infront of your face kinda dark), by upping the brightness and gamma slightly it becomes much more bearable (again some people think of this as cheating)
~ Zombies can't hit while they are moving and run at the same speed as you, meaning if you keep running you're safe
~ To escape chasing zombies try running up a steep hill, you will walk for a couple of seconds (the zombies wont hit you because they have to stop to swipe) but then you can run fine, they will continue to walk and be left in your dust
~ You can also escape zombies by weaving between larg'ish bushes, this works best if you run through a bush and crouch straight after so they can't hear you.
~ Zombies move very slowly in buildings, if you have a weapon and are being chased simply run inside one and get ready for some easy kills
~ If someone sees you be prepared to be shot at, many people follow a kos (kill on sight) policy, if you're going to try to communicate I'd recommend using the mic, stopping to type is very dangerous
~ Many people suffer with 'artifacts' (weird shapes/colours blocking the screen) appearing when looking at military areas, a potential fix that works for me is to hold LEFT SHIFT and press KEYPAD MINUS then type FLUSH (nothing appears on the screen until you have typed flush, after doing this the screen goes black for a second then back to normal).
~ Some items like your flashlight need to be removed from your toolbelt to be used. Presuming you're using default controls open the gear menu with 'g', right click on the item on the right hand side of the screen and click 'remove from toolbelt'. It can be added back to your toolbelt by reversing the process. To use the flashlight once it's equiped press 'L' as default.
~ Be very careful when dropping things, try to only drop things you want back on flat surfaces as they have a habit of disppearing into inclines.
~ Your blood level (shown in the top right box) is essentially your health, max blood is 12000 and can be lost by being hit (by a zombie or being shot), bleeding (after being hit by a zombie or shot) and from extreme hunger/thirst (if the food or drink symbol is flashing red). You can bandage yourself to stop bleeding by right clicking on a bandage in your gear menu and selecting 'bandage self' - you can also bandage other people.
~ Blood can be regained either by eating or from having a blood transfusion using a blood pack, this must be done by another player (obviously you can't give yourself a blood transfusion). Eating canned foods increases your blood by 200, cooked meat recovers 800 and a transfusion restores you to full blood.
~ By far the best way to get food is by killing animals and cooking the meat. You'll need a means to kill the animal (a weapon), a hunting knife to gut it, a hatchet (axe) to get a pile of wood and a box of matches to light the fire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45QKf0KHK-0 - this video shows the whole process. http://www.dayzwiki.com/wiki/Raw_Meat - this page shows how much raw meat you get from each animal.
~ Hospitals are found in the larger cities and contain everything you'll need medical wise such as blood packs, bandages and morphine. They have glass windows all along the front side and glass doors in the middle, to get into a hospital you need to smash a window (be sure that it's a window, the doors are bullet proof as far as I know). There is a glitch that sometimes you shoot a window, it makes a smashing sound but doesn't actually break, your best bet is to whack it with an axe to avoid wasting ammo and attracting unwanted attention.
~ http://www.dayzwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page - this is a great resource
~ Not all buildings can be entered, those that can are recognisable by windows that you can see through (rather than being solid colour/reflection), to open a door look at it, scroll down on the mousewheel and select 'open door' on the left hand side of the screen.
~ You should use your gun as a last resort against zombies, shooting with anything more than a pea shooter (the makarov) will attract zombies from your area not to mention bandits (other players who will kill you on sight). The best option is usually to escape using the techniques mentioned above.
