Finding a Kitchen Knife, Machete or other sharp object that can skin and quarter that fresh spawn Wild Boar you just killed can be a frustrating task. You could look for hours and come up empty handed, which is why we wanted to share the best-kept secret in DayZ with you, (besides where to find a gun), which is the Improvised Stone Knife. These are easy for even a fresh spawn to craft, and they never deteriorate from their pristine condition.
Search for Stones
If you spawn near the coast, head to the water’s edge and look at the ground, using your scroll wheel until you see the option to search for stones, pressing F on your keyboard to execute the command. Your character will drop to one knee, and soon after you’ll see a message in the bottom left corner that tells you if you were successful or not. If not, repeat the process until you find a Small Stone, then it’s on to the second step.
Craft Stone Knife
Once you have a stone in your inventory, move it to your hands and look back down to the ground. Again use your scroll wheel, this time stopping when you see an option to craft stone knife. Use the F key on your keyboard to execute the command, causing your character to enter into an animation. When it’s over, you’ll either have an Improvised Knife in your inventory, or perhaps nothing at all. If you come up empty handed you’ll need to start the process over again.
It’s hit or miss on whether it will work, so the process can range from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. It’s really just luck of the draw, but once you have the Improvised Knife, it can be used to open cans, skin and quarter bodies (animals or human), cut Burlap Sacks into Burlap Strips or knife a fresh spawn in the face. It’s made even more perfect by the fact that it takes only one inventory slot (Kitchen Knife 2, Machete 3) and will always remain pristine.
The 0.52 Suicide Trick
Once upon a time there was a trick where players could enter into the suicide animation in order to spam the option to search for Small Stones. The result of this was usually several stones within a few seconds, upping the chances that an Improvised Stone Knife could be crafted quickly. However, the fine folks over at Bohemia Interactive stomped this bug out like a cockroach in the kitchen (as they should have), meaning players will now need to do things the long right way. The good news is that it seems the process of finding a Small Stone and crafting the Improvised Knife is much more stable, although as of 0.54 it still remains pristine at all times, never deteriorating.
