I'm seeing a lot of posts asking the same questions about feeling anxious and fearful with PVP

I'm not by any means an expert here. I have around 800 hours clocked on DayZ over the course of about six years. It's easily one of the best games I've ever played.

I've killed a lot of people in this game over the years. Geared, freshies, groups, duos, factions, you name it. I watched one guy through my scope for nearly an hour once just waiting for that perfect shot. I still remember killing him.

When I was brand new PVP scared the living shit out of me 😂 It's because it's so sudden and abrupt.

The best advice I can give is to practice and sharpen your skills on PVP servers. Join one, find all of the guns you can and take a crash course on getting killed. Over and over and over again. You're training your brain how to react in these high tense situations without putting anything on the line like losing your gear, but you’ll eventually reach a point where even that won't bother you.

You'll have the opportunity to practice with really dangerous stuff like hand grenades as well.

The problem with PVP in this game is that you're never expecting it. You could run into an adversary five minutes into you session or after hours of base building. You'll want your mind to be sharp and to react with muscle memory so that when this happens you'll go into autopilot and not have to think.

Thinking gets people killed in fights. Just relax and breathe. Even if he's spotted you first and you no longer have the element of surprise, the first one to make a mistake is generally the one who dies. Take your time and outplay these jokers. In groups they'll do stuff like call out to you in English 😂

I won't go too far into detail here but always make sure you're doing things like keeping a round in the chamber and keeping magazines in your vest. They are easier to grab from the vest because of where it's located on the inventory screen.

Consolidate partial magazines into full ones after every single fight once you get to safety. But most importantly: don't think, shoot!

Happy hunting out there guys.