DayZ events.xml: Vehicles, Crashes and Other Events

Updated 12 October 2026

Loot in DayZ comes from types.xml, but vehicles, helicopter crashes, police cars, animals and infected come from events.xml in the mission's db folder. Each event says how many should exist, how long they last and what spawns with them.

Where an event can appear is set in a second file, cfgeventspawns.xml, and objects that spawn together as one scene are defined in cfgeventgroups.xml.

What each field means

• nominal: how many of the event the economy aims to keep spawned.
• min / max: the fewest and most at once. They count when limit is parent or mixed.
• lifetime: how long a spawned event lasts, in seconds.
• restock: seconds to wait before it spawns again. 0 means no wait.
• saferadius: it never spawns this many metres or closer to a player.
• distanceradius: the distance in metres between two spawns of the same event.
• cleanupradius: it is not cleaned up while a player is this close.
• position: fixed uses the spots in cfgeventspawns.xml, player spawns near players, uniform anywhere on the map.
• limit: which min and max count: child (each child type), parent (the whole event), mixed (both) or custom.
• active: 0 switches the event off.
• children: what the event spawns, such as the vehicle types or the animals of a herd, each with its own min, max and loot amounts.

Change an event

1. Stop the server and download db/events.xml. Keep an untouched copy.
2. Find the event by its name and change the values you need. To turn it off, set active to 0.
3. For more of a fixed event, check that cfgeventspawns.xml has enough positions for it. An event can't spawn more often than it has places to go.
4. Check the file with the free DayZ File Checker, upload it and start the server.

Editing with Law's KillFeed

On Xbox and PlayStation servers, the dashboard's Server Files page opens events.xml in an easy editor on the paid plan: one card per event with an Active switch, every field explained and a table of children. On the free plan you can still download, check and upload the file there, and the last 15 versions of every file are kept.