Bohemia Interactive has published the next entry in its DayZ Badlands developer blog series, and this one is all about the wildlife players will meet in the desert region of Nasdara. Three new animals are on the way: a mouflon, two breeds of territorial dog, and what the studio calls possibly the first reptile in DayZ.
The mouflon, a wild sheep native to the mountains and steppes of Central Asia, slots into the landscape as an ambient animal that fits Nasdara’s arid setting. The more consequential addition is the dogs. Bohemia describes them as a new animal type that does not fit neatly into the existing predator-or-prey categories. Instead, they are the first territorial animal in the series: they stay tied to specific locations rather than roaming the way wolves do.
Two breeds are included, the Doberman and the German Shepherd, with several variations. The studio is direct about one point: these dogs cannot be tamed or kept as companions. In the fiction, they remained loyal to their previous owners after the events of Day Zero and now linger near them in packs. In practice, those packs act as guards for places like military zones and will attack anyone who enters their territory. Bohemia notes that more complex behavior is planned later, though it has not shared a timeline.
The desert monitor lizard rounds out the trio. The team frames it as each terrain having a representative animal, with Chernarus getting its buck, Livonia its brown bear, and Sakhal its white wolf, and Nasdara now gets the desert monitor. The lizard will mostly appear around the Dasht-e Sarman Desert, and it behaves like the game’s other ambient creatures: it scurries away the moment it spots a player. Teasers indicate it can be hunted for food, and Bohemia says there are other items to obtain from it that it wants players to discover on their own.
The blog also walks through the making of the lizard, crediting artist Václav for the modeling and designer Jana Unzeitigová for the research. The team focused on believable scale, coloration, and camouflage so the reptile reads as an authentic desert varanus rather than an oversized monster. Bohemia says the expansion’s release is just around the corner, with the team in the final stretch before launch.
Sources
- Reporting source: GamerHeadlines
- Primary source: DayZ Badlands | Dev Blog (Week 86)
