DayZ Presets: Ready-Made Setups, and What Each One Really Does

What a Preset Is, and When It Takes Effect

Most of the DayZ tools ask you for a lot of numbers. A supply crate has eleven dials before you have decided where it goes; an area has a purpose, a colour, a priority, who can see it and a set of rules. A preset is all of those filled in for you, under a name, with a sentence saying what your server will feel like afterwards.

Choosing a preset copies its settings onto the thing you are making. It does not link to it. If we improve one of these next month, nothing you already made changes — your crate keeps the dials it was given, and your trading post keeps its colour. That is deliberate: an owner who placed fifteen areas last month has not asked for fifteen areas to change under them tonight.

The same is true of the presets you make. Your own preset list on the Areas page works the same way, and this library is what seeds it: pick a ready-made area and it becomes one of yours, to rename and change however you like.

Which brings us to the part worth reading before anything else. DayZ is unusual: most of what a server owner changes lives in files the game reads once, when it starts. So "applied" does not always mean "happening". Every preset carries one of three verdicts, and the panel shows it beside the name:

Why a preset that cannot work is still listed. If a preset were simply absent, you would reasonably conclude GameGrid does not do that thing. Shown greyed out with the one sentence naming what it waits on, you know exactly what is being waited on — and you can ask us where it has got to.

Thirty-four of the fifty-nine work now, and the other twenty-five land at your next restart. Nothing in the library is waiting on anything, so the third verdict is the one you are least likely to meet. It is described here because the panel still uses it the moment a preset needs something you have not set up.

Areas — 10 Presets

On Game Tools → Areas. Choosing one adds it to your own preset list; you then draw the area on the map and apply the preset to it. A preset carries no place, which is why the same one works on Chernarus, Livonia and Sakhal.

The one thing to be clear about. "Trading Post" is handed to your server mod, which cancels damage between players inside it about ten seconds after you save. It does not stop the shot being fired. We do not use the words "safe zone" for it and we would gently suggest your server description does not either: a player can always walk in, and a shot fired at them still looks like it lands on the shooter's own screen.

Two of these need a name out of your own files and will ask you for it: an event position needs the name of the event to place, and an infected territory needs the name of an infected group your map already defines (open env/zombie_territories.xml on your server and copy one). We deliberately do not invent those names. A name your mission does not know is written into the file perfectly and then spawns absolutely nothing, which looks exactly like a broken feature.

What Goes in the Container — 11 Groupings

On Game Tools → Zone loot, and used by the crates below. These are the one family built entirely from your own server's files: your mission's db/types.xml and the item list your server reports while it runs.

So "Top tier" means every class your economy marks Tier4 or Unique. It is not a rarity ladder of ours — DayZ has no such thing, and a preset called "legendary" would be us inventing a word the game does not know. Your loot economy and types.xml explains where those markings come from and how to change them.

• Top tier only, High tier, Military weapons, Medical supplies, Explosives, Food and drink, Tools and building supplies and Cold-weather clothing all read your types.xml.
• Magazines and ammunition and Weapons read the item list your server reports, which is useful before your types.xml has been read.
• One item, in quantity is a single class you choose, stacked — the building block for "find the marked thing" events. It is the only grouping that asks you a question first, and it checks your answer against your own server's item list rather than taking your word for it.

A grouping whose source has not been read yet is shown greyed out with the sentence that says what would fix it — usually "start the server once". A class with a nominal of zero in your types.xml is left out on purpose: it never spawns anywhere, crate included, so including it would build a perfectly spelled table that produces an empty container.

There is no "vehicle parts" grouping, and there is a reason. Neither source has one: DayZ's own category list has eight categories and none of them is vehicle parts, and the item list's "vehicle" category means whole vehicles, which will not go in a crate. Building it would mean us hand-writing a list of class names, which is the one thing this whole family refuses to do. Add those classes by hand from your own item list instead.

Crates — 9 Presets

On Game Tools → Supply drops. Choosing one fills the whole form in, including its loot, worked out from your own server. You say where it goes and press Save.

These sit beside the events your map already ships, which vehicles, heli crashes and dynamic events covers — and the difference between the two is worth knowing before you build one.

A crate is a crate on the ground. DayZ has no aircraft drop without a mod your players would have to install, and on GameGrid players install nothing. There is no plane, no parachute, no smoke and no flare — a server-side mod cannot create a light, because lights are drawn on the player's own computer. The most popular server-side drop system anywhere hits the same wall and says so in its own documentation. What you get instead is an announcement with a 100 m grid square, which is deliberate: exact coordinates hand the crate to whoever reads chat fastest.

The two ways a crate reaches your server. Writing it into your mission files takes effect at your next restart. "Drop one here now" is the exception and the only one — it puts a single crate on the ground through the GameGrid mod straight away, with nothing restarted and no file changed.

The rates you set are your game's own economy dials, and we write them faithfully. What your economy then does with them is decided by your own restock and nominal values, not by us.

Infected Pressure — 6 Presets

On Game Tools → Areas, applied to a circle you have drawn. Light pressure, Standard hot spot, Heavy, Horde Night, Town ambience and Objective defence, from "noticeable" to "you are not clearing this alone".

All six can be applied. The mod fills the circle on a running server, with no restart and no file written. The one number to know: replacing a killed infected takes about five minutes, because the circle waits for your server to remove the body. That wait is CleanupLifetimeDeadInfected in your own db/globals.xml — lower it and they refill faster.

Two things worth knowing. Per-player hot spots are empty when nobody is there, so they cost your server nothing and suit "this town should be dangerous when somebody goes to it". Fixed ones hold their number whether or not anybody is inside, which is what a timed raid needs — a per-player target collapses the moment the first player dies and leaves, which is exactly when it should be at its worst.

The number that stays yours. ZombieMaxCount in your own db/globals.xml caps every infected on your server — ours and DayZ's own together. We read it from your file at the moment you apply, never assume it, and leave half of it to the Central Economy by default. A preset sized against an assumed cap would empty the rest of your map.

What Your Server Says — 9 Presets

On the Event Manager's Command Manager, which is the one clock this platform has and is covered in full by restarts and scheduled messages. All nine can be set up today.

Six of them are a scheduled command you fill in once and leave alone: Restart warning sequence (warnings at 30, 10, 5 and 1 minute before a restart time you pick), Rotating tips, Event countdown, It starts now, A crate has landed, and It is over, and here is who won.

It is over, and here is who won is the one worth setting up first. Its line carries {lastEventWinner}, which is filled in when the command runs, from the last event your server recorded — so one saved schedule reads out whoever won this week instead of a line you retype. A schedule knows nothing about your event, so set it a few minutes after the close, or put the line on the event itself as a timed step, which moves when you move the event. With no recorded result to read it says "nobody yet" rather than leaving a gap, and a shared first place is read out in full.

What tonight pays announces a prize; it does not set one. The prize itself is on the event. It is paid into the wallet behind the winner's linked Discord account, and a winner who has not linked one has their prize held against their name with the reason, and paid the moment they do.

Two of the nine are set on the thing itself rather than on a clock, and neither is in the template list on purpose. Contested. Captured. Lost. fires each of its three lines from what just changed on the objective — set it on the area, and schedule Score Your Objectives to decide how often we look. A line that said "captured" on a timer would be your server lying to your players.

This area is open / this area is closed is set on the area too. The closing line is the one that matters: an area that quietly stops applying is how somebody loses their gear to a feature we shipped, so it is never optional once announcements are on.

The honest limit on the countdown. It runs on its own clock, not on the event's. Nothing in this build can make an announcement fire because something else started, so set the countdown to the time you intend to run the thing, and change both together if you move it.

Keep announcements short. A title is 64 bytes and a message 256, and a BattlEye chat line is plain ASCII. Your players read it over the top of whatever they were already doing.

Settings for an Evening — 9 Presets

Hardcore week, PvP night, Long night, Endless day, Open house and Voice off are sets of settings applied for a window and then put back. Show your position is ready too, and it is the one that writes to your mission’s cfggameplay.json rather than serverDZ.cfg — DayZ reads that file when the server starts as well, so it costs the same restart at each end. High-loot weekend is ready, and it is the odd one out: it changes no server setting at all. Back to normal is not something you apply — it is what already happens at the end of every window, and it is listed so you know it is there.

High-loot weekend and Heli Crash Plus are loot profiles. A loot profile changes four numbers — how much spawns, the floor it refills to, how often it refills and how long it lasts — inside your own db/types.xml or db/events.xml. We store a described difference, never a copy of those files. Your types.xml is close to a megabyte, and a copy taken in March would put March back over six months of your own tuning and delete whatever your mods added. The difference is worked out against your files as they are at the moment it is applied, so what you approve is what gets written. A loot type your file does not contain is refused by name, so a profile never quietly changes less than it said. At the end of the window the exact numbers that were there go back, and a number we added is deleted rather than left behind holding some default. This is a restart at each end too, and for the same reason: DayZ reads those files once, when it starts. Loot already lying on the ground does not change either way — the new rates decide what spawns from then on.

Each of these writes settings your server already has — the full settings reference lists every one of them. What matters here is one fact that is true of all of them.

Every DayZ setting needs a restart, in both directions. All 142 of them live in serverDZ.cfg, which the game reads when it starts. So a PvP night is a restart at eight and another at eleven. That is not a limitation of GameGrid; it is how the game works, and we would rather you knew it now than at eight o'clock in front of thirty players.

The machinery that makes this safe is worth knowing about, because it is the part you would otherwise have to build out of a settings page and a calendar reminder. When a window opens we stop the server, take a checksummed snapshot of the real bytes of your config outside your own folders, write, verify, and start. At the end we restore surgically — putting back exactly what was there, and deleting a setting the snapshot proves was absent rather than leaving ours behind. If a snapshot was never taken, nothing is reverted and you are told, because a guessed revert is worse than none.

Voice off silences handheld radios along with proximity voice, which is a real loss on a roleplay server and usually the whole point on a tournament one.

Battle Royale Rounds — 5 Presets

Chernarus standard, Short round, Livonia standard, Sakhal standard and Practice round. Choosing one fills the settings in and redraws the schedule so you can see the shape of the round; it requests nothing.

All five can be run. Choosing one is a shape rather than a request: the round itself is asked for on the Battle Royale page, and starting it builds a second DayZ server beside your own, opens a join window, closes the ring over the length you set, scores the result and then deletes the whole instance. Your own server keeps running on the same address the entire time, and nothing on it is touched. The one thing a preset cannot supply is on every card: a host with room for that second server while the round runs.

The circle is sized on land, not on the map's width, and that is why each map has its own: Sakhal's terrain grid is the same number as Chernarus's, but most of it is sea, and a round centred on the middle of it would put a third of the players in the water.

Every one of these ships with a prize of nothing, including the practice round. A prize reaches a player through the wallet on their linked Discord account, and there are three ways to get one: the player runs /link in your Discord and types !link CODE in game, you mint the code yourself on the Customer API, or you link the account by hand from the Economy page. A prize won by a player who has not linked yet is held against their name with the reason, and paid on the original claim the moment the link exists — so it is owed, not lost, and it cannot be paid twice. A preset ships no prize because the amount is yours to choose, not because there is nowhere for it to go.

Reading the Library From Your Own Software

Everything above is on the Customer API as one read:

GET /api/public/v1/servers/{serverId}/dayz/presets
GET /api/public/v1/servers/{serverId}/dayz/presets?family=drop

It needs the settings:read scope, and it is the one DayZ route with nothing upstream to fail on: no agent call, no mod, no running server. It answers while your server is stopped, which is when you are most likely to be setting one up.

Every preset comes back with status (the three words above), applies (when it takes effect, in plain words), caveat (what it does not do), still_needed (what a preset cannot supply for you) and, when it is blocked, blocked_by naming the one thing that is missing. values is what you would copy onto a zone, a crate or a settings preset through that thing's own route.

If you are building something that lists these for other people, please carry the verdict with them. A list of fifty-nine things this platform can do, with the verdict stripped off each row, would promise tonight what half of them do not do until a restart — and, the day one of them says "not yet", would advertise on our behalf something we cannot deliver at all.