The road to Zaruun

This is the longest thing on DayZed. It runs across four maps, needs the deepest keycard room on the network, and ends with a portal to a world nobody can reach any other way.

It is also not a private quest. When someone finishes it the portal opens for the entire network at once — every map, everyone online. Finishing it is a gift to the server as much as to yourself, and it is the reason people watch for it.

This page will not tell you what is live right now

That is deliberate, and it is the first thing to understand about the whole quest.

A meteorite is down somewhere or it is not. A pyramid is standing or it is not. No page on this site will tell you which, because the answer is meant to be earned in the world rather than read in a browser. There are exactly two ways to get it, and both of them are in the game.

The world announces that something has started

Neither event is quiet, and neither one needs any equipment at all.

• A meteorite takes a full minute to come down. It comes in burning from the north-east, and everybody online on that map watches the same descent — you can hear it from most of the way across the map, well before it lands. Take a bearing off it while it is still in the air and you will beat everyone who was indoors to the crater.

• A live portal parks a thunderstorm over the pyramid. Lightning strikes every few seconds, and the strike is drawn larger the further away you are standing, so instead of shrinking into the distance it reads as a beacon. You can pick it out from around five kilometres. Anyone more than a kilometre out also gets one deep boom at the moment it opens.

Both of those only help if you were online when they happened. Log in an hour later and the sky is just sky.

The device tells you which event, and where it is

That is the entire job of the Nexus Hacking Device, and it is why the first step of this quest is getting one rather than collecting anything.

What you are collecting

Five things, and it helps to be clear about them early because two of them have confusingly similar names.

What	Where it comes from
Fragmentum Reliquiae CH-S03	the Chernarus meteorite
Fragmentum Reliquiae LV-S04	the Livonia meteorite
Fragmentum Reliquiae NM-S01	the Namalsk meteorite
Fragmentum Reliquiae SA-F02	the Sakhal meteorite
Arca Primaris	the Tier 4 keycard crate on Stuart Island

The four fragments seat into the Core. The Core is what you carry to the pyramid.

Do not confuse the fragments with Meteor Fragments. Both come out of the same meteorite. The meteor fragments are Zaruunium — bunker-wall material — and have nothing to do with getting to Zaruun. The artifact fragment is the one with a map name in its title.

Step 1 — get a Nexus Hacking Device

The Nexus Hacking Device is the instrument for the whole quest, and it is worth more to you than anything else on this list. It is your event tracker, and later it is the tool that opens Stuart Island. Get one first.

Where they come from

Where	How often
Namalsk, as ordinary loot	the only map whose economy places one at all — top tier, filed with the tools
Chernarus, Livonia and Sakhal — the Tier 3 keycard crate	roughly one crate in three
Namalsk — the Tier 2 keycard crate	roughly one in ten
Stuart Island	never — neither in loot nor in any crate

That last row is the one that catches people. Stuart Island is the map the device is for, and it is the one map where you cannot find one. Bring it with you.

Feeding it

It takes a 9V Battery, and the battery has to be attached into the device, not just carried in your inventory. It has a second slot for a keycard, which matters in Step 3.

The alarms run off the battery alone. You do not have to be holding the device, and you do not have to have it switched on — a battery in it is enough for it to flash and shout at you when an event goes live. That is the single most useful thing to know about it: keep one fed in your kit and it will tell you when to care.

Everything on the screen, though, needs it in your hands and switched on. It also switches itself off at every server restart, so turn it back on after one.

The radar screen

Once it has booted you get a rotating sonar sweep. Switch search mode cycles what it is hunting:

• Portal — the pyramid, once one has been placed.
• Nexus — the nearest Nexus station.
• Meteor — the current crater.

Reading it is simpler than it looks:

• The sweep beeps each time it crosses the bearing to your target, and lights a dot on the ring at that bearing. The ring is drawn relative to the way you are facing, so turn your body until the dot sits at the top and you are pointed at it.
• The number underneath is the distance in metres, refreshed on every beep.
• The beep rises in pitch as you close in. If it is getting higher you are walking the right way; you can navigate the last few hundred metres on the sound alone.

There is no range limit worth worrying about — if the target exists, the device has it.

The alert screen

Show Alert Screen swaps the radar for a summary, and Show Radar Screen swaps back. The alert screen shows you:

• a count — how many of the two world events are live right now, and
• for each one, what it is and where. A meteorite names the map it fell on. A portal reads GLOBAL, because a live portal is standing on every map at once.

That is the readout that used to be printed on this page. Now you have to carry it.

Two things it will do to you

• The portal alarm loops until you acknowledge it. Once a portal is live the device will keep sounding indefinitely; opening the alert screen once while it is live is what shuts it up. A meteorite alarm is polite by comparison and gives up after about ten seconds.
• It is loud enough to give you away. The alarm carries roughly a hundred metres. A device you have not acknowledged is a beacon for anyone hunting you, and a portal alarm can run for the whole window. Acknowledge it before you go anywhere near people.

All of it goes quiet on Zaruun. No alarms, no alerts, nothing on the alert screen. That is by design, not a fault — you are past the point where it helps.

Step 2 — the four fragments

Meteorites fall on four maps only: Chernarus, Livonia, Namalsk and Sakhal. Stuart Island and Zaruun never get one.

Each map's meteorite carries its own fragment, so this is necessarily four separate trips across four maps.

To find out whether one is down and which map it is on, put the device on the alert screen. To find the crater once you are on that map, put it on the radar screen in meteor mode and walk towards the rising beep. Discord will also call a meteorite when it lands, but it will never tell you where the crater is — that part is the device's job every time.

At the crater:

• Any pickaxe works — the plain Pickaxe is as good as the Reinforced Pickaxe. Hold it and use Mine Meteor on the Meteorite.

• It takes about a minute of standing still in the open at a spot the whole map watched land.

• Mining destroys the pickaxe. One pickaxe, one meteorite — bring spares.

• The meteorite spills the rest of its contents on the ground before it disappears. Sweep the crater; the artifact fragment is in there along with a random extra — Nexus Neural Bolts, a piece of alien fruit, or a Nexus Xeno Suppressant.

• The meteorite is warm. Standing close to a fresh one is a genuine heat source, which matters more than it sounds on Namalsk or Sakhal.

Step 3 — the Core, from behind the Tier 4 door

The Arca Primaris is guaranteed in the Tier 4 crate on Stuart Island. Not likely — guaranteed. It is the only source.

Getting to that door is its own job, and it is the "Hack Nexus Grid" event:

• You need a Nexus Hacking Device, a 9V Battery with charge in it, and the -. . -..- ..- ... attached to the device.

• Only one Nexus station on the island is hackable at a time. Each hack is Hack Nexus Station, a stationary action that eats a chunk of the battery.

• The chain times out. Leave it too long between stations and the whole sequence resets and you start over.

• The live station broadcasts a repeating sound at its own position to everyone on the island, so the antenna you are working on announces itself. Hacking is public.

• The weather gets worse with every station you hack — storm, rain, then fog — and when the last one falls the server forces the clock to the middle of the night. That is the signal, and it is visible to everyone.

That portal is not the road to Zaruun. It moves you to another Nexus station on Stuart Island, which is how you reach the Tier 4 door. Carry the card in with you.

Step 4 — assemble the Core

Attach all four fragments to the Arca Primaris. Each one has its own slot and only fits its own — you cannot put the Namalsk fragment where the Sakhal one goes, so there is nothing to get wrong beyond having all four.

When the fourth one seats, the Core changes appearance and starts humming. That is how you know, and it is not subtle.

An assembled Core cannot be attached to anything except the pyramid, and an unassembled one cannot be attached to the pyramid at all. There is no partial progress to bank at the altar.

Step 5 — find the pyramid and open the portal

The Pyramis Zaruun — the Pyramis Zaruun — is not something you carry. It is a structure the server places, and it appears on every map at the same time, on flat open ground away from buildings. Its position is re-rolled every cycle, so where it stood yesterday means nothing today.

Find it with the device in portal mode. That is what portal mode is for, and it is the only marker you get before the storm starts.

Then attach your completed Core to it. That is the whole trigger — one action, and:

• The pyramid locks the fragments in place, forces night, and rises out of the ground.
• A ritual runs around it — five pillars, in sequence, taking a couple of minutes end to end.
• A sphere forms above where it stood.
• The storm starts, and from that moment anyone on any map can see roughly where you are. The thunder is not a meteorite and not an EVR storm; it will not hurt you. It is the announcement.

The sphere is the door. Walk into it — the trigger is a small box right at it, so you have to actually step in — and it puts you on Zaruun.

The portal is open for everyone, not just you. Anyone on any map can now reach it, and it stays open for a while before closing again. If you want company, this is the moment to say so.

If nobody completes a placed pyramid within several hours, it gives up and schedules itself for the next day.

Step 6 — surviving Zaruun

Zaruun is contaminated everywhere. There is no clean air.

• You need the Advanced Nexus Gas Mask. A normal gas mask will not do, and the atmosphere eats filters far faster than an ordinary contaminated zone — bring spares.
• A full NBC suit is not required. People assemble one and never use it. The mask is the part that matters.
• Nexus Xeno Suppressant is the counter if you get dosed. It also turns up in meteorites.
• Nexus Fiber Repair Kit spawns only here, at the statues and obelisks, and it is the only thing that repairs the space suit (Zaruun suit repair and medicine).

There is alien flora growing here, and some of it is edible if you cut it — a small mercy on a map with no ordinary food.

Getting home is the same mechanism in reverse: there is a permanent sphere on Zaruun that puts you back where you came from.

The reward

Four pyramid altars stand on Zaruun, and each one carries a different prize:

• a Space Helmet
• Nexus Nano-Tech Gloves and Nexus Nano-Tread Boots
• Nexus Nano-Composite Jacket and Nexus Nano-Fiber Trousers
• the Nexus Neural Rifle, loaded and scoped

Those four suit pieces exist nowhere else. They have no loot spawn on any map, on any tier — the altars are the only way anyone has ever got one, which is why a full set is the clearest status symbol on the network.

The rest of the set fills in separately. Nexus Suit Pouch 1, Nexus Suit Pouch 2 and Nexus Suit Holster spawn as ordinary military loot on Zaruun only, so they are a reason to look around while you are here.

Three further pieces exist in the files and cannot be obtained at all: the suit's mask, the Stealth Suit Headstrap and the Nexus Nano-Optic. None of them is in an altar set, and none has a loot entry on any map at any tier. Do not go hunting for them.

The altars restock on server restart, so a set is not a once-ever thing — but you have to be on Zaruun to take it, and getting there is this entire article.

What goes wrong

• You went looking for a status page. There isn't one. Carry a fed device or watch the sky.
• You carried the device with no battery in it. No battery, no alarms — it will sit silently in your bag through the whole event.
• You crossed to Stuart Island without a device. That map does not drop them.
• Your device would not stop screaming. Open the alert screen once while the portal is live and it stops. Until you do, everyone within a hundred metres can hear you.
• You are waiting for a meteorite on Stuart Island. They do not fall there. Four maps only.
• You mined the meteorite and left. The fragment was in the pile it spilled on the ground, not in your hands.
• You brought one pickaxe. Mining destroys it.
• You hacked two stations and wandered off. The chain resets if you are too slow, and you start from the first station again.
• You took the Tier 4 card out of the device before going through. Attach it, carry it, and do not unpack on the far side.
• You carried three fragments to the pyramid hoping to finish there. An incomplete Core will not attach at all.
• You went to Zaruun without the right mask. A normal one is not enough, and a single filter will not last.
• You are hunting a pyramid that moved. It re-rolls its position each cycle. Use portal mode.

The short version

Get a Nexus Hacking Device and keep a battery in it — that is what tells you an event is live and which map it is on. Mine four meteorites on four maps. Hack Stuart Island and open the Tier 4 door for the Core. Seat the four fragments. Find the pyramid on the radar, attach the Core, and hold on.