Namalsk

Namalsk is where your all of your cumulative knowledge of DayZ mechanics will be tested. This map is small, a third of Chernarus small. The terrain, brutally cold weather/storms, and faster overall pace of encounters will be unlike any other map you've played before; hindering you every step of way. This is not to mention the sheer scarcity of available loot on the map. Smaller map + higher pop tends to favor the early bird. 

POI'S:

Vorkuta

The island's only real city, and where most early loot is. Food, water, warm clothing and starter weapons. Three parts are worth singling out:

• The military installations around the city edges — the better weapons and equipment.
• The fire station in the north-east — axes and firefighter clothing, and that clothing is genuinely warm, which matters more here than the stats suggest.
• The city centre — school, grocery stores and a hospital, all densely looted. The school has a well, which is fresh water without needing a fire, and there is a military tent by the hospital.

Northern Army Base (BK-M06)

Close to the spawn beaches, which makes it the natural first stop. The base itself is decent, but the real argument for it is the lake beside it: fishing works far better in a lake than in the sea, so this is a renewable food supply with somewhere to shelter when a storm rolls in. There is a second, smaller base, a village and a shipping area a short walk west.

Athena Research Institute

South, high-tier, and the island's most notorious PvP ground. The two big buildings hold medical gear, there are military barracks scattered through the complex, and underground tunnels with the best loot in the area.

It is also the front door to the endgame — the portal chain to Lantia starts here. Expect the people you meet to be better armed than you, and expect the rooftops to be occupied.

Sibirskiy-2119, the marooned ship

Far west, and you will have to swim for part of it. The ship is not the prize — the lighthouse and the military base around it are, with a better-than-usual chance at marksman rifles, night vision and high-tier optics. There are fire barrels nearby, which is the only reason the swim is survivable in both directions.

Do not attempt it without the means to make a fire on arrival.

Sebjan Dam

One of the few land bridges between north and south, so it is a traffic funnel and it is camped. Mid-tier military loot at best; in practice the loot here is whatever the last person to die was carrying.

BK-T12

A small base south of the marooned ship, tucked in trees. Clothing and thin medical supplies — better than the early game, well short of Athena. Its real value is the static helicopter crash uphill to the south-west. Crash sites are randomised on other maps; on Namalsk this one is always there, and it is reliably worth checking.

Namalsk's loot tables are not like the others

If you have read spawn tables for Chernarus or Livonia, the Namalsk ones will look broken. They are not — the island is configured in a genuinely different way, and the wiki shows it as it is.

Every other map uses usage flags. An item says it belongs in Military, Town, Village, Industrial and so on, and that decides which buildings it can appear in.

Namalsk uses tags instead. On this island only three item entries carry a usage flag at all; over twelve hundred carry tags. The tag does the same job — it decides which containers an item can turn up in — but it is written on the other side of the relationship.

The tags actually in use, and roughly how many items carry each:

There is a second difference that matters just as much: loot tiers are set on the buildings, not on the items. On other maps an item declares which tier it belongs to and the wiki can show you "Tier 3". On Namalsk that information lives in the map's own building definitions, so an item page will show you a tag and a dash where the tier would be.

That dash is not missing data. It means "this island decides tiers somewhere else".

Item pages carry a footnote saying so wherever it applies, so you do not have to remember which map you were looking at.

Categories, including two you will not see elsewhere

Namalsk also sorts items into categories, and two of them are unique to the place: lantia, covering the portal-chain equipment, and lore, covering the readable documents scattered around Athena and the Phoenix rig. Neither is loot in the useful sense — but the lore documents are the only place the island's story is actually told, and they are worth reading once.

Practical notes on scarcity

• Most food spawns in the north. Going south means going hungry unless you carry supplies or fish.
• Almost everything edible is frozen and needs a fire before it is food.
• Animals are rare, and a fair share of the ones you find are wolves or bears, which is a different kind of encounter.
• There are no dynamic helicopter crashes to chase in the way there are elsewhere — the one at BK-T12 is fixed.

Two things that only exist here

• The EVR storm. Hourly-ish, island-wide, and it will knock you unconscious and take half your health if you are caught in the open. It has its own guide and you should read it before your first long walk.
• The portal to Lantia. The longest quest chain on the network, starting under Athena. Also its own guide.

Everything else — bunkers, keycards, travel, base building — works here the way it works everywhere else on DayZed. See Namalsk on DayZed for the feature page.