How to create custom zombie and animal spawns on a DayZ server

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Oneleg
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How to create custom zombie and animal spawns on a DayZ server

Post by Oneleg »

You can create custom spawns for zombies on your DayZ server, and the same logic applies to creating custom spawns for animals. Overall the process is fairly simple, and mostly a matter of figuring out how coordinates translate in-game.

This guide assumes you have an FTP(S) client for viewing the files of your server. We talk more about FTP in our FTP FAQ
  1. Log in using FTP/FTPS to your DayZ server using the login credentials on the File Manager tab of your control panel.
  2. Inside the root folder of your DayZ server, click into the “mpmissions” folder.
  3. Open the mission folder that your server is currently using. For instance, the default is “dayzOffline.chernarusplus”. You can see (and choose) the current mission on the "Easy setup" tab of the control panel.
  4. Navigate into the "env" folder. You should see a list of available territory files. Choose one of these to copy, by right-clicking it and selecting "Copy". Then right-click an empty spot on the FTP, right-click, and select "Paste". Call the new file "my_territories.xml" (or another name that doesn't match one that is there). If you wish to edit Zombie spawns specifically, copy "zombie_territories.xml".
  5. Open your new file to edit it. You can do this in WinSCP by simply double-clicking it. Otherwise, you may need to drag-and-drop it onto your desktop and edit it there.
  6. Delete all of the territory sections except for one. These start with

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    <territory color=”somenumber”>
    and end with

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    </territory>
    .
  7. Delete all but one of the "zone" entries in the territory section you kept.
  8. Edit that one remaining "zone" entry, and create any others that you desire, to define new places where you want the animal/zombie to spawn. The "x" and "z" mark a point, and the "r" represents the radius of a circle centered on that point within which they may spawn.
    Tip: A common way you can find coordinates in-game is by using a mod such as Community Online Tools, going to the area in the world you want the spawn area to exist in, and checking the coordinates of your player via the COT menu.
    This is an example of a new zombie spawn point you might create:

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    <zone name="InfectedCity" smin="0" smax="0" dmin="8" dmax="12" x="11024" z="14300" r="100"/>
    This would add a new spawn point for the city type of zombie, with a 100m spawn radius, creating a minimum of 8 zombies and a maximum of 12.
  9. Save your file back to the FTP.
  10. Restart the game server.
If you want to edit existing spawn points, you may do this by editing the corresponding x_territories.xml file directly. But, if you do edit an existing file instead of making a new one, always make a copy (backup) of your final version. For instance, make a copy in the same folder and call it x_territories.xml.backup. This is important because any game update, server move, or repair will reset the regular file back to the default version. (If you do lose your changes in one of those operations, you may still be able to retrieve it from our last server backup, but it's not guaranteed.) This won't happen if you are only adding spawn points in a separate file.

This is a full list of the possible zone parameters and what each one means:

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<zone name="InfectedCity" // ID name for infected type that will be spawned
smin="0" // static minimum amount that will always exist in the zone
smax="0" // static maximum amount that will always exist in the zone
dmin="8" // dynamic minimum amount that will spawn in the zone
dmax="12" // dynamic maximum amount that will spawn in the zone
x="11004" // the x coordinate in the world for the spawn zone
z="14391" // the z coordinate in the world for the spawn zone
r="100"/> // the radius for the spawn zone in the world, measured in meters
This is a list of the default infected types you can define in zombie spawns:

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InfectedArmy
InfectedArmyHard
InfectedCity
InfectedCityTier1
InfectedFirefighter
InfectedIndustrial
InfectedMedic
InfectedNBC
InfectedNBCYellow
InfectedPolice
InfectedPoliceHard
InfectedPrisoner
InfectedReligious
InfectedSanta
InfectedSolitude
InfectedVillage
InfectedVillageTier1
This is a list of common animal ids (you can also find these in the X_territories file for each type of animal for the mission):

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AnimalPig
AnimalSheep
AnimalRoeDeer
AnimalWildBoar
AnimalWolf
AnimalCow
AnimalBear
AmbientHen
AmbientHare
AmbientFox
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