Ambient spawns such as fruit/mushroom/stones.

[WumboWise]

So these can spawn in if a player stays in an area for a while. But almost never seem to spawn if you sprint around constantly. Is this intended or just a limitation of the system?

[Nhika]

The spawn "starts", and takes 5-15 minutes (as everything does in dayz it seems, even zombies).

The idea is if you see fresh food/mushroom, an enemy player is nearby or you are "tracking" them.

Usually after I finish cooking my normal food -> the trees near the house are full of fruit.
Or if it rains and I need to chill somewhere for a bit -> bam fruit.
Sometimes you gotta take a piss/♥♥♥♥ and are in the forest in a bush -> bam mushrooms when you come back.

[WumboWise]

Originally posted by Nhika:

The spawn "starts", and takes 5-15 minutes (as everything does in dayz it seems, even zombies).

The idea is if you see fresh food/mushroom, an enemy player is nearby or you are "tracking" them.

Usually after I finish cooking my normal food -> the trees near the house are full of fruit.
Or if it rains and I need to chill somewhere for a bit -> bam fruit.
Sometimes you gotta take a piss/♥♥♥♥ and are in the forest in a bush -> bam mushrooms when you come back.

Tracking people based on if mushrooms are nearby is such a uniquely DayZ thing. DayZ has some of the most fun/silly idiosyncrasies I have seen in a video game. Gives it a unique charm for sure.

[HolyRustedMetal]

The interval might be longer sometimes but generally more mushrooms and other such items spawn every 90 seconds about 100m from you. The reason for not seeing them when traveling is that there's very few of them around you, so it's lot less likely to run into them, compared to after standing still for 5-15 minutes.

[emmietiie]

Each mushroom and fruit spawn spot will periodically check for a player in the vicinity, and the item appears when the condition is met.

Sometimes they spawn instantly, and sometimes it takes 15 minutes.

[_KC76_]

Originally posted by HolyRustedMetal:

The interval might be longer sometimes but generally more mushrooms and other such items spawn every 90 seconds about 100m from you. The reason for not seeing them when traveling is that there's very few of them around you, so it's lot less likely to run into them, compared to after standing still for 5-15 minutes.

This is the closest to a complete and accurate answer .. My only disagreement is the "15 minutes" part mentioned in several comments .. I've never had to wait that long for dynamic spawns to happen, in all of my nearly 4k hours .. 1 to 3 minutes, and things are spawning all around you, up to 100 meters away.

The reason you won't find them when sprinting, is because you have left the area that they spawned in .. you can cover a lot of distance in 2 minutes of sprinting, but if you double back on your own path, you will find stuff has spawned where you were 2 minutes ago .. The game does not do "periodic checks".. a player simply being in the area of a spawn point is the trigger, and it triggers every time a player is in the trigger radius.

[FoolMonty]

Spread spores
would be a nice option/touch

[WumboWise]

Some good answers here. Thanks everyone!

[Humpenstilzchen]

This might help. It explains how the spawning mechanics of fruit and mushrooms work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UW1NPLgI5o&t=168s

[HolyRustedMetal]

Originally posted by _KC76_:

The game does not do "periodic checks".. a player simply being in the area of a spawn point is the trigger, and it triggers every time a player is in the trigger radius.

If you watch them appear with admin tools that show them on screen, it certainly looks like a timed spawning. Every 90 seconds, like clockwork, few more pops up around you. It seems that on a crowded server the time is longer, possibly because some limit on their count or that they're waiting in queue.

[_KC76_]

Originally posted by HolyRustedMetal:

Originally posted by _KC76_:

The game does not do "periodic checks".. a player simply being in the area of a spawn point is the trigger, and it triggers every time a player is in the trigger radius.

If you watch them appear with admin tools that show them on screen, it certainly looks like a timed spawning. Every 90 seconds, like clockwork, few more pops up around you. It seems that on a crowded server the time is longer, possibly because some limit on their count or that they're waiting in queue.

There is a limit in the "Apple" event of 140 apple spawn events, which can produce between 2 and 4 apples each .. note, this is just the Event of spawning Apples, not the number of Apples allowed to exist at any one time. The Apple spawn Event lasts for 180 seconds once triggered, but there is no "delay of trigger" value. Once an Event occurs, it resets, and can be triggered again. Essentially, there can be up to 140 "events" of 2 to 4 apples spawning at any one time .. 280 to 560 apples all at once, and then 3 minutes later, it can happen again. In reality, not all 140 allowed events will trigger all at once, but each will trigger in-turn, as you move around an area, which is what you might perceive as a "wave" of spawns one after another (every 90 seconds), rather than just the random spawn within that 180 second window of time.

<event name="TrajectoryApple">
        <nominal>140</nominal>
        <min>2</min>
        <max>4</max>
        <lifetime>180</lifetime>
        <restock>0</restock>
        <saferadius>25</saferadius>
        <distanceradius>100</distanceradius>
        <cleanupradius>25</cleanupradius>
        <flags deletable="0" init_random="0" remove_damaged="0"/>
        <position>player</position>
        <limit>mixed</limit>
        <active>1</active>
        <children>
            <child lootmax="0" lootmin="0" max="0" min="0" type="Apple"/>
        </children>
    </event>

Then, in Types, there is only one timer, and that is Lifetime of 900 seconds before they despawn, with no Maximum value and a Nominal value of zero.

<type name="Apple">
        <nominal>0</nominal>
        <lifetime>900</lifetime>
        <restock>0</restock>
        <min>0</min>
        <quantmin>-1</quantmin>
        <quantmax>-1</quantmax>
        <cost>100</cost>
        <flags count_in_cargo="0" count_in_hoarder="0" count_in_map="1" count_in_player="0" crafted="1" deloot="0"/>
        <category name="food"/>
    </type>

[Amogus]

To me, this aspect of the game is one of the major downgrades from pre-1.0

Prior to 1.0, you could go up to an apple tree and an interaction would pop up to "search for apples", and the same thing applied for looking at the ground where it looked like there were rocks on it. With this, it made it so that you could go and instantly get a stone without having to wait for a spawn and, in the case of the apples, have a percentage chance to find an apple from a tree. It was also a very slow process, so it made it so that apples could be more of a "last resort" instead of an infinite food supply

From my experience, the current system makes it seem like apples never spawn since I've ran through 4 towns in a row and found 0 apples under the ~30-40 trees that I encountered across them. For a while, I genuinely thought that apple spawns were bugged/broken since I never saw them up until one time I found about 20 apples in a small patch of about 10 trees in a city up north

The whole idea of having to linger to get apples/stone/mushrooms to spawn feels awkward to me, and the previous system involving interactions feels a lot more natural since I shouldn't have to wait for rocks to "spawn" when you can visually see hundreds of stones littered on the ground

[FoolMonty]

seems like thinking too hard to me
maybe it matters to vegetarians
shrug

[WumboWise]

Originally posted by Amogus:

To me, this aspect of the game is one of the major downgrades from pre-1.0

Prior to 1.0, you could go up to an apple tree and an interaction would pop up to "search for apples", and the same thing applied for looking at the ground where it looked like there were rocks on it. With this, it made it so that you could go and instantly get a stone without having to wait for a spawn and, in the case of the apples, have a percentage chance to find an apple from a tree. It was also a very slow process, so it made it so that apples could be more of a "last resort" instead of an infinite food supply

From my experience, the current system makes it seem like apples never spawn since I've ran through 4 towns in a row and found 0 apples under the ~30-40 trees that I encountered across them. For a while, I genuinely thought that apple spawns were bugged/broken since I never saw them up until one time I found about 20 apples in a small patch of about 10 trees in a city up north

The whole idea of having to linger to get apples/stone/mushrooms to spawn feels awkward to me, and the previous system involving interactions feels a lot more natural since I shouldn't have to wait for rocks to "spawn" when you can visually see hundreds of stones littered on the ground

I vaguely remember this. Man what a throwback. I also remember being able to check chicken coops for feathers and looking for a specific stone texture to search for small stones.

[Amogus]

Originally posted by WumboWise:

I vaguely remember this. Man what a throwback. I also remember being able to check chicken coops for feathers and looking for a specific stone texture to search for small stones.

It was an overall better feel to the game because it made more sense and was far less confusing to deal with (especially for new players)

In the current system, not only do you have to know that apples/stones have to spawn in, you also have to know where the spawns are (only relevant for stones) and how much time has to pass for them to start spawning. After all, if you're only doing a quick pass through a town and are doing a check for apples, you're never going to find any unless a prior player was there and spawned them by remaining in the area. In this case, you'll end up like me who thought that apple spawns were broken for weeks before I finally found some apples in a town above NWAF

[Idaho]

They spawn strangely on my Banov server...