Namalsk

Namalsk is where all of your cumulative knowledge of DayZ mechanics will be tested.  It is significantly smaller than Chernarus, being only a third of its size. 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 the 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 only major city on the island, located on the middle, northern tip of map. Tall towers, rooftops, and large buildings ranging from industrial, generic, and medical make it a great spot to gather essentials. Be weary, however, those same towers and rooftops are can be occupied by other players who may have gotten a scoped rifle before you. Focus on these three areas in particular for optimal loot pathing:

• The military tents around the edges of the city will usually contain better clothing, or if you're lucky, ammo and magazines. 
• The fire station just northeast of the city is where you'll find the warmest clothing, a fireaxe for both defense and survival, and some tools. 
• The center of the city is where the bulk of all the essentials are located. Here you'll find the school, a hospital, and multiple grocery stores. The school has a well to fill up on water, grocery stores for food, and the hospital for bandages. It is worth checking out the rooftops in the surrounding area as well. That is where you'll find your starter weapons and ammo.

Lubjansk Military Base - (BK-MO6)

A high traffic base located southeast of Lubjansk harbor and directly north of Lub Bay, here is where you'll find the same kind of loot as Refugee Camp I, albeit with a bit more loot spots to pick from. The many barracks offer a variety of clothing, ammo, and starter gear. The two guard shacks on both sides of the entrances is where you'll most likely find flashbangs and stab vests, along with the occasional helmet. 

Refugee Camp I - (RF1)

Just southeast of Vorkuta, this is either a first stop or second stop for most players' runs. Here you'll find your low level bolt actions rifles, ammo, sub machine guns, and if you're really lucky, a plate carrier zombie. Other than that, you're looking at stab or press vests, with random bits of ammo, higher insulation clothing, and magazines. 

Athena Research Institute

Directly south of Lub Bay and southeast of Sebjan Dam, this is a high traffic, high risk area.

The layout is as follows:

Two main buildings, both interconnected via a skybridge, both holding medical loot, with the basement of the larger being where you'll find some of Namalsk's quest items, including the Muon Detector and Lantia Pulsar Locator. The rooftops also have a good chance to spawn higher tier guns, such as SV-88s and AUGs. There are two military barracks on both sides of the main buildings, along with a static heli-crash just south of the main buiilding. The two key areas to loot here would be the basement within the main medical building, as well as the bunker, the entrance to which can be found just outside the main entrance of the larger medical building. 

We weary of the 360 degrees of trees surrounding the entire complex, all of which are on an slight incline. This means that looting any of the roofs will be extremely risky. Not to mention anyone already inside the building, basement, or bunker. Make sure you're clearing those corners...

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:

Tag	Items
civilian	585
military	506
hunting	176
industrial	159
police	83
farm	81
medical	61
firefighter	41
fishing	33

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.