DayZ Nasdara server setup: PvP warzone or slow survival

DayZ Badlands came out on 15 October alongside the free Update 1.30, and with it Nasdara: 267 km² of desert, the largest official map DayZ has had. Water is scarce and the heat drains hydration. There are sandstorms, territorial dogs guarding the military sites, Morse code signals leading to underground bunkers, and around 5,000 ruined houses, wells and irrigation tunnels that players can rebuild.

It’s also brand new, which means hundreds of Nasdara servers went up in the same week running the same vanilla mission. If yours looks like everyone else’s in the server browser, players have no reason to pick it, and less reason to stay.

The fix is to decide what your server is for and tune it to match. This guide covers the two directions most Nasdara owners are heading in, an all-out PvP warzone and a slow, atmospheric survival server, and which settings get you there quickly.

Pick an identity before you touch a file

Nasdara pulls in two directions. It has dense cities, Soviet-era military bases and highways running east to west, which is everything a PvP server wants. It also has thirst, heat and rebuilding, which reward patience. Vanilla sits in the middle, and a server that tries to be both usually ends up as neither.

Write one sentence describing the server you want and keep it to hand. Every number you change should move the server towards it.

Where Nasdara’s settings live

Nasdara’s mission is dayzOffline.nasdara. It arrived with the 1.30 dedicated server update and has the same layout as the other official maps:

mpmissions/
  dayzOffline.nasdara/
    db/
      types.xml       ← what loot spawns, how much, and where
      events.xml      ← vehicles, helicopter crashes and other dynamic events
      globals.xml     ← infected and animal caps, cleanup timers, loot damage
    cfggameplay.json  ← stamina, spawn gear, map and base building rules
    cfgweather.xml    ← weather limits
serverDZ.cfg          ← time of day, first person, crosshair, server name

Each file does a different job, and between them they cover almost everything that gives a server its feel. Changes only take effect after a restart.

If you’re new to the loot file itself, DayZ types.xml explained covers every field. The rest of this guide assumes you know what nominal and min do.

Recipe 1: the warzone

The goal is simple: a fresh spawn should be armed and in a fight within the first twenty minutes, and the fights should keep happening.

More guns, in more places

In vanilla, the best weapons spawn in a handful of far-inland military sites. On a 267 km² map, that means a lot of walking between fights. Raise the counts, and let military weapons spawn one tier closer to the edge of the map:

<type name="AKM">
    <nominal>8</nominal>      <!-- was 3 -->
    <lifetime>14400</lifetime> <!-- 4 hours: churn the map faster -->
    <restock>0</restock>
    <min>6</min>              <!-- a narrow gap keeps the supply steady -->
    <quantmin>-1</quantmin>
    <quantmax>-1</quantmax>
    <cost>100</cost>
    <flags count_in_cargo="0" count_in_hoarder="0" count_in_map="1" count_in_player="0" crafted="0" deloot="0"/>
    <category name="weapons"/>
    <usage name="Military"/>
    <value name="Tier3"/>     <!-- added -->
    <value name="Tier4"/>
</type>

The numbers here are an example, not a recommendation for every rifle. The pattern is what matters: higher nominal, min close behind it so loot never dries up, and one more value tier.

Ammunition has to follow

The most common mistake on PvP servers is tripling the guns and forgetting the ammunition. Every weapon you raise needs its magazines and rounds raised to match, and it’s worth raising quantmin on magazines so they don’t spawn nearly empty. A rifle with nothing to load is just weight.

Take water off the table

On Nasdara, thirst is the main thing that slows a fresh spawn down. That’s great on a survival server and a nuisance on a PvP one. Two settings fix it:

• Spawn gear. cfggameplay.json can point at spawn gear preset files (spawnGearPresetFiles), so every player starts with a full water bottle and something to eat.
• Water containers. Raise the nominal of bottles and canteens in types.xml, so a player who loses everything can drink again quickly.

Faster rotations

In events.xml, raise the nominal of the vehicle events, including the moped and enduro motorbikes 1.30 adds, so groups can rotate across the map. More helicopter crash sites (StaticHeliCrash on the other official maps) give players fights to head towards. Each event has nominal, min and max, which work the same way as in types.xml.

Less in the way

In globals.xml, lower ZombieMaxCount so infected don’t give away every position, and lower LootDamageMax so the gear players find is in usable condition. In serverDZ.cfg, raise serverNightTimeAcceleration so the night passes quickly.

Recipe 2: the long walk

The goal here is the opposite: the map itself is the enemy, finding a rifle is a story, and a group that rebuilds a house and restores a well has made something worth defending.

Make water the story

Lower the nominal of bottled drinks and water containers, and give them a longer restock, so the CE waits longer before topping them up. Players will start hunting for wells, and repairing one becomes a reason to settle somewhere.

Rare guns that stay rare

Lower the nominal of military weapons, restrict them to Tier4, and turn on more of the count flags:

<flags count_in_cargo="1" count_in_hoarder="1" count_in_map="1" count_in_player="1" crafted="0" deloot="0"/>

With these on, a rifle in a backpack, a tent or a player’s hands still counts towards nominal, so the CE won’t spawn a replacement. The more players hoard, the scarcer the item gets for everyone else, and owning one means something.

Make rebuilding the progression

Rebuilding is Nasdara’s best idea for slow servers. Raise the counts of the construction tools, brick, mortar and sheet metal that 1.30 adds, and lower the military loot that would let players skip it. The code lock needs a charged 9V battery, so the batteries are worth making a little scarce as well.

A harsher world

In globals.xml, raise ZombieMaxCount and AnimalMaxCount so the desert feels dangerous, and raise LootDamageMax so most of what players find is worn. In events.xml, cut the vehicle events back, so a working motorbike is a prize.

Real nights, no help

In serverDZ.cfg, set serverTimeAcceleration and serverNightTimeAcceleration low, turn on first person only with disable3rdPerson = 1, and remove the crosshair with disableCrosshair = 1. In cfggameplay.json, lightingConfig set to 1 gives darker nights, and turning off displayPlayerPosition under MapData means players need to read the map. Leave the sandstorms on.

Rapid editing: change groups, not lines

Both recipes come down to the same handful of moves applied to a few hundred items: every military weapon, every magazine for them, every water container, every construction material. Doing that by scrolling through tens of thousands of lines of XML is how a weekend disappears. A few habits keep it to an evening.

1. Work in groups. Decide on the change for a whole group, such as “military rifles: nominal up by half, add Tier3”, then apply it to every item in that group in one pass before moving on.
2. Keep vanilla as a reference. Copy the mission folder before you edit it. Setting template="warzone.nasdara" in serverDZ.cfg points the server at your copy. Keep the part after the dot, which names the map. The untouched dayzOffline.nasdara stays beside it, so you can always compare against vanilla. Some hosting panels rewrite serverDZ.cfg on every start, so on a hosted server, use the panel’s mission setting instead.
3. Diff before you restart. Compare your folder against the last version that worked. A diff that only shows the lines you meant to change is the best check you have that you haven’t broken anything.
4. Change in rounds. Make one round of changes, restart, play it, then adjust. A server that changes one thing a week is easier to tune, and easier to explain to players, than one that changes everything at once.

How LootEngine speeds this up

This is the work LootEngine is built for, and each habit above has a shortcut in it:

• Groups are filters. Search and filters narrow tens of thousands of entries down to “military rifles” or “every water container” in a couple of clicks, and the whole session works from the keyboard, from the grid to search, save and undo.
• The backups keep themselves. Every save puts the previous version of each file in a timestamped .loot-editor-backups folder, so rolling back a round that didn’t work is a copy, not a rebuild.
• Diffs stay clean. LootEngine saves only the characters you changed. Comments, formatting and everything else in the file stay exactly as they were, so a diff shows your edits and nothing else.
• One undo covers every file. Edits to the vanilla types.xml and to your mods’ types files share one history, so you can undo back to the start of a round across all of them.
• It won’t save over someone else’s work. If a teammate or your hosting panel changed a file since you opened it, LootEngine refuses to overwrite it.
• Mod items start from somewhere sensible. Adding a mod item copies the settings of its closest relative already in your loot, so a new rifle starts from a rifle, not from zero.

LootEngine edits types.xml, and the mod types files your mission lists. events.xml, globals.xml, cfggameplay.json and serverDZ.cfg are still edits by hand. Weapon loadouts in cfgspawnabletypes.xml are on the roadmap, which matters for a warzone, because they decide what magazines and attachments a gun spawns with.

Tell players what you built

All of this only works if players can find it. The server name is the first thing they see, so put the identity in it: something like Nasdara | PvP | Boosted mil | 1PP or Nasdara | Hardcore survival | Scarce water | 1PP tells someone scrolling the browser exactly what they’re joining. Then put the details, such as loot multipliers, restart times and rules, in your Discord, and keep them up to date as you tune.

Before you open the server

A few problems catch Nasdara servers in their first week:

• Mods that aren’t ready for 1.30. With forceSameBuild = 1, the default, a 1.29 server turns away 1.30 players, and mods that haven’t been updated can break or cause kicks. Check every mod’s Workshop page for a 1.30 build first.
• A missed wipe. Bohemia wiped the official servers for 1.30. Each mission keeps its own world, so switching to Nasdara starts a fresh one either way, but if you’re keeping a wipe schedule, decide now and tell your players.
• Guns without ammunition on PvP servers, and no water at all on survival ones.
• Typos in usage and value names. The server still starts, but the item has nowhere to spawn. Check the logs after every restart.

Pick the server you want to run, make the changes in groups, restart, and play it yourself. A clear identity is the best way to stand out from the hundreds of other Nasdara servers that launched in the same week.

Questions

Where are the Nasdara server files?

Nasdara's mission is dayzOffline.nasdara, and it ships with the 1.30 dedicated server files. Loot is in its db folder (types.xml, events.xml, globals.xml), with cfggameplay.json in the mission folder and serverDZ.cfg next to the server itself.

Can I copy my Chernarus types.xml to Nasdara?

No. Nasdara has its own regional clothing, weapons and items, and a Chernarus types.xml doesn't list them, so they would never spawn. Start from the Nasdara files that came with 1.30 and make your changes there.

Do players need the Badlands DLC to join a Nasdara server?

Bohemia hadn't confirmed this at the time of writing. The Nasdara mission is in the standard dedicated server download, so you can host it, but check Bohemia's own notes before you advertise a server as open to everyone.

Can LootEngine edit a Nasdara server's loot?

Yes. LootEngine opens any mission with a types.xml, including dayzOffline.nasdara, and shows every item from your game files and mods as a card with its icon and loot settings. It edits types.xml and the mod types files your mission lists. events.xml, globals.xml and cfggameplay.json are still edited by hand.

How do I make a Nasdara server more PvP focused?

Raise the nominal and min of military weapons and their ammunition, let them spawn in more tiers, add vehicles and helicopter crashes in events.xml, cut the number of infected in globals.xml, and give fresh spawns enough water to reach a fight.