DayZ Vehicles, Heli Crashes and Dynamic Events (events.xml)
How events.xml and cfgeventspawns.xml control vehicles, helicopter crashes, animals and infected hordes on a DayZ server, and why vehicles sometimes do not spawn.
What events.xml Controls
mpmissions/<mission>/db/events.xml defines DayZ's dynamic events: anything the Central Economy spawns as a group or at chosen positions rather than as loose loot.
- Vehicles: cars, trucks and boats (event names starting with
Vehicle). - Wrecks with loot: helicopter crashes, police cars, military convoys.
- Animals: deer, wolves, bears and other herds.
- Infected: groups of infected at set locations.
The loot inside a heli crash is not in events.xml. It is the items in types.xml marked as dynamic-event loot (the deloot flag).
The Fields of an Event
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
nominal | How many of this event the economy tries to keep active |
min, max | The lower and upper limits around nominal |
lifetime | Seconds before an unused event is cleaned up |
restock | Seconds to wait before spawning a replacement |
saferadius | Keeps the spawn away from players |
distanceradius | Minimum distance between two copies of this event |
cleanupradius | Players inside this radius stop cleanup from removing it |
active | 1 enabled, 0 disabled |
children | The object classes the event can spawn, for example the vehicle variants, each with its own min and max |
To have more of one car on the map, raise its event's nominal and max. To remove heli crashes entirely, set that event's active to 0.
Positions: cfgeventspawns.xml
Where an event may appear is listed separately, in mpmissions/<mission>/cfgeventspawns.xml, as a block of positions under the event's name.
- An event needs at least as many positions as its `nominal`, preferably more, so spawns can rotate.
- Positions are map coordinates. Vehicle positions must be on flat, open ground: a car spawned on a slope or inside an object can be destroyed immediately or never appear.
- Adding a new event means adding both the event in
events.xmland a matching position block here.
Why Vehicles Do Not Spawn
Work through these in order:
1. Persistence already holds the maximum. Vehicles are saved. If the map already has as many as max allows, including ruined or hidden ones, no more spawn. This is the most common cause.
2. The event is off. active is 0.
3. Not enough positions. The event's position block in cfgeventspawns.xml is missing, misnamed or shorter than nominal.
4. Bad positions. Custom positions on slopes or inside objects destroy vehicles as they spawn.
5. The wrong mission. You edited a different map's folder from the one the server loads.
6. Broken XML. One bad tag and the economy skips the file. Check the newest .RPT log in profiles/.
7. Not enough time. Events respawn gradually after a start, not all at once.
Modded Vehicles
On DayZ, a vehicle mod's cars only spawn if the economy has an event for them, with a position block in cfgeventspawns.xml.
Vehicle mods are Steam Workshop mods, installed from the Mods tab. See Mods on Your DayZ Server. Most ship their own types.xml, events.xml and cfgeventspawns.xml entries to merge into your mission files: follow the mod's own instructions, and take a manual backup first.
You can also rebalance the vanilla vehicles with the fields above.
Applying Changes and Clearing Old Vehicles
Changes apply at the next Restart. Existing vehicles stay, because they are part of your saved world.
If you want old vehicles gone, for example after reducing vehicle counts, you need a wipe of the world objects: see Wiping Your DayZ Server. A world-only wipe removes bases and stashes too, so announce it first.
Take a manual backup on the Backups tab before editing either file.