DayZ Livonia Map Guide — Every Location, Military Zone & Survival Tip

Livonia is the second official DayZ map — a dense, forested, Polish-inspired 168 km² region that plays completely differently from Chernarus — and since Update 1.25 (May 27, 2024) it is free with the base game, no DLC purchase needed. The short version of how it works: you spawn in the north, follow the Biela River for your first day, grind through the ruined central towns for mid-tier gear, then push into the southern military ring for the best loot — most of which now sits inside toxic gas zones. The map hides one of DayZ's most famous secrets, the underground bunker at Dambog, and it is the map where water and mushrooms, not bullets, kill most newcomers.

This guide is the full Livonia breakdown: the terrain and its history, every spawn-adjacent early-game location, the complete town and military-POI list with grid references, the Dambog bunker and its punched-card puzzle, the PO-X toxic zones and the NBC gear you need for them, dynamic events, wildlife, and navigation tools.

Official resources: DayZ on Steam · DayZ on Wikipedia · Bohemia Interactive — DayZ · DayZ Wiki: Biela Valley · DayZ Wiki: Dambog Bunker · WOBO interactive Livonia map · Nitrado Livonia guide

Livonia at a Glance: Size, Setting and How It Plays

Livonia is set in the fictional, Polish-speaking country of the same name, a landlocked Baltic nation bordered by Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, Lithuania, Belarus and Poland. The playable terrain — the region Bohemia calls the Biela Valley (Dolina Biela), also known as the Topolin-Nadbór Region — is the southern subdivision of the country, roughly 163 km² by the DayZ Wiki's measurement; Steam's current store page lists 168 km² (older materials and most community guides use the 163 km² figure, and one launch-era article cited 162 km² — treat "about 165 km²" as the honest answer). Chernarus, for comparison, is about 225–230 km², and the Frostline expansion's Sakhal map is roughly 80 km².

Where Chernarus is a post-Soviet coastal landscape of cities and coastline, Livonia is a late-summer, inland wilderness: dense mixed forest, rolling hills, open farmland, winding rivers, lakes and murky swamps. It rains and thunderstorms frequently, which drags body temperature down fast. The map has fewer big cities and more small villages — many of them ruined — so the community describes it as quieter, wilder and more PvE-friendly than Chernarus, but the reduced city count means player encounters concentrate harder at the same hotspots.

Per the official DayZ Steam store page, the base game now ships with two terrains: "legendary Chernarus and the mysterious woodlands of Livonia." Livonia is no longer a paid DLC — the store page's description of Livonia notes it "may seem more habitable with its lush, dense forests, but looks can be deceiving. Beneath its surface lies a deep secret."

Chernarus vs Livonia vs Sakhal, quickly:

A Short History: From Arma 3 to Paid DLC to Free Base-Game Map

Livonia did not start in DayZ. The terrain was originally built for Arma 3's Contact expansion (2019), and Bohemia reworked it for DayZ as the game's first premium DLC, launching December 3, 2019 with Update 1.06 for $12.99 on PC. Update 1.06 also introduced bears, fishing and four new firearms to the whole game. The DLC stayed paid for four and a half years; consoles received it with the same 1.06-era update and it was sold as a separate purchase there too.

The big change came in Update 1.25 (the "Redux" update, May 27, 2024). Bohemia merged the Livonia terrain into the base game: the DLC listing was removed from stores, every existing DayZ owner received Livonia free, the base-game price adjusted to $49.99, and owners who already had the DLC were gifted the official soundtrack as a thank-you. From that date forward, Livonia is simply part of DayZ — you can find Livonia servers in the browser without owning anything extra.

Since then Livonia has kept receiving content through the normal update pipeline: Update 1.29 (April 8, 2026) touched its static gas zones, changed the bunker's loot table, and rebalanced plate-carrier spawns on the map. A third official map (Sakhal) arrived with the paid Frostline expansion in October 2024, and Bohemia has announced a fourth, the 267 km² arid Nasdara Province, in the upcoming DayZ Badlands expansion (2026).

Where You Spawn and the Northern Early Game

Fresh spawns on Livonia appear in the northern half of the map, not on a coastline like Chernarus. The northern region is the most populated and the easiest start, but the catch is that many of Chernarus' staple early food sources are rarer here — so the opening hours are about water and foraging, not sprinting to a town.

The Biela River is your lifeline and your compass. It runs from west to east across the northern half of the map (the DayZ Wiki describes it as "bisecting" the region and flowing west to east), and local lore calls the fertile area around it the "Valley of Blossoms." Its course, plus the road network, is the most reliable navigation reference on the whole map — if you are lost, find the river and follow it east or west.

Early-game priorities on Livonia:

• Boil or purify your water. River and lake water is not safe to drink raw — the community consensus is blunt about this, and Nitrado's guide states plainly that "raw water needs boiling to prevent illness." Water-purification tablets are worth more than most guns in the first hour. Find a water pump (every major village has one, marked by the pump model) or boil water in a cooking pot, canteen or bottle over a fire before drinking.
• Forage mushrooms. Livonia is the mushroom map — mushrooms spawn around hay bales and farm buildings, so check every barn you pass. They are a reliable early calorie source that Chernarus players often forget to look for.
• Spawn-adjacent towns: Topolin (the largest city on the map, in the northwest, with dense residential streets, canned food and medical supplies), Brena (a riverbank town good for civilian clothing and melee weapons), and Tarnow (a smaller settlement east of Topolin with basic tools and the only fire station in the eastern half of the map). The lakes — Jantar, Grabinskie, Sitnickie and Wolisko — sit along the river and offer water (purify it) and fishing (the fishing mechanic arrived with Livonia's launch update).
• Wolves and bears are real threats from day one. Update 1.06 added bears to the game alongside Livonia, and they roam these forests; wolf packs spawn around many settlements (Polana is notorious). Do not fight either without a weapon and an escape plan.

The Central Ruined Towns and Mid-Tier Gear

South of the river the forest thickens, the towns get smaller and more ruined, and PvP concentration goes up — squads routinely lock down police stations here to ambush travelers. This band is where you graduate from sticks to rifles.

• Nadbór — the largest southern city, south-central on the map, and the capital of the Biela Valley region. Medical clinics, hunting-rifle spawns, general stores, and a police station ringed with improvised barricades from the outbreak. High traffic, so treat it as a combat zone.
• Gliniska — a village just north of the river between Topolin and Brena, with a medical center and two water pumps; the closest settlement to the airfield. Great early-medical stop; its wiki page lists it as prone to dynamic gas attacks.
• Karlin — the industrial hub near Nadbór: heavy-metal production facilities, cargo containers, tools and vehicle parts. Also home to a mid-size industrial area that PvE-friendly players use to gear up quietly.
• Branzów Castle — a ruined medieval castle near Bielawa in the central-west. No loot of note, but it is the highest vantage point in the region and a classic sniping/observation spot.
• Lembork — a half-destroyed village between Karlin and Radunin, inside the military training zone, with an adjacent military base. Loot is mixed civilian-military; expect competition.
• Sitnik — a small city in the northeast with a barricaded police station, two water pumps, a campground and military cargo containers; "jack of all trades" looting.
• Grabin — the biggest northern-eastern city, a meeting point between Kolembrody, Tarnow and Sitnik, with lakes and the river nearby. Survived the outbreak longer than most, so buildings are intact and lootable.
• Kolembrody, Dolnik, Lukow, Adamów, Zalesie, Bielawa — smaller villages filling out the mid-map; Lukow gives its name to the airfield and is worth checking for its proximity to military spawns.

Every Military Location on Livonia

Livonia's endgame is its southern "military ring" — a huge swathe of countryside south of the Biela River that the pre-outbreak military used as a training zone (signs are in both Polish and English, hinting at foreign forces). The ring holds the map's military bases, most of them concentrated on the southern half. Grid references below are the (X Y) kilometer-grid coordinates listed on the DayZ Wiki — cross-check any raid plan against an interactive map before committing, because the wiki's coordinate templates have known errors and one or two are stale.

The tier pattern: the closer to the southern border, the better the loot — and the more likely the site is a gas zone. The classic Livonia endgame loop is: gear up in the north → push to Kopa/Borek for mid-tier military → assemble NBC gear → hit Radunin and the airfield → run the bunker for the crown jewels.

The Dambog Underground Bunker: How to Get In and What's Inside

The "deep secret beneath the surface" the Steam description teases is the Dambog Underground Bunker, added in Update 1.19, the "Secrets of Livonia" update (October 18, 2022). It is the map's signature endgame location: a massive three-level underground military complex with very high-tier loot.

Getting in requires a Punched Card. The card is a 1×2 paper item with a durability of 15 that degrades one condition level per use and is consumed when ruined — meaning a single card gets you only a handful of visits. The spawn rules, per the DayZ Wiki: only five punched cards exist per server at any given time, found in the static contaminated zones (Lukow Airfield and Radunin) and with a 40% chance on the bodies of military infected officers wearing a hip holster at military convoys. They are tiny and easy to miss — and easy to accidentally burn as kindling, so stash them carefully.

The bunker itself: two outside entrances on the Dambog hill (the main eastern entrance past two military barracks and a rail depot, and the western tower entrance past a control tower and radar dish), both guarded by military infected. Inside are three main levels of corridors, storage rooms and a large central complex. Loot is military-tagged and very dense: weapons, ammunition, clothing, containers and tools. Two specifics the community tracks closely:

• Level 2 is where the AUG AX spawns — Update 1.29 shifted the AUG AX into the bunker's second level, taking two spawn points away from the KA-101, which still has a near-guaranteed spawn in the level's "prison room."
• Level 3 is the night-vision-goggle room — NVGs are the reason most groups run the third level at all.

Because the card supply is capped at five and the site is the single most contested point on the map, expect fights at the entrances, camping inside, and raiders who wait for you to walk out loaded. Solo players can and do run it (there are even Workshop mods to make it soloable), but the standard advice is a two-to-three-person team: one holds the door, one runs loot.

Toxic Gas Zones: PO-X and How to Loot Them

Update 1.14 (September 2021) added contaminated zones to Chernarus and Livonia: areas filled with toxic PO-X gas that kills an unprotected survivor in minutes. There are two kinds:

• Static (permanent) zones — always gassed. On Livonia the big ones are Radunin and Lukow Airfield (the airfield's permanent zone arrived with 1.19).
• Dynamic zones — artillery strikes release gas over an area temporarily, and Livonia's mid-map villages (Gliniska, Borek, Polana and others) are flagged as dynamic-attack sites. The gas appears, lingers, then clears.

Inside the gas: you start coughing every 6–10 seconds and take cut-style injuries every 13–18 seconds; the deeper you go the faster it kills, and no healing can outpace it. The only protection is a full NBC suit (jacket, pants, gloves, boots, hood — partial coverage still lets damage through) plus a gas mask with a working filter, and the filter degrades with use, so you carry spares and time your runs. The payoff is the best loot in DayZ: Radunin alone spawns SVALs, M4-A1s and night-vision goggles, and the static gas zones are the guaranteed punched-card spawn sites.

A practical gas-zone run: assemble the NBC set first (it spawns in military and medical locations), check your filter's condition, plan a route to the specific building you need (Radunin's medical block is the famous one), sprint in, loot, sprint out, and do not linger to fight — everyone inside is either fully geared or dead.

Dynamic Events, Wildlife and the Loot Economy

Livonia's dynamic content keeps the map alive between player fights:

• Military convoys and police situations spawn as dynamic events across the map (the convoy spawns were expanded significantly in the 1.19 update). Convoys are prime punched-card hunting grounds — check the officers.
• Helicopter crash sites appear as dynamic wrecks with high-tier loot and guaranteed infected guards, same as Chernarus.
• Wildlife: bears (added with Livonia in 1.06 and found in the dense southern forests), wolves (pack spawns around many towns), deer, boars, chickens and fish. Hunting and fishing are genuinely viable food loops here, and the community rates Livonia the best map for PvE-style living off the land.
• Vehicles: cars are reported as more common on Livonia than Chernarus (community consensus), and Update 1.19 added the drivable M1025 military vehicle plus reworked vehicle physics — keep an eye out for M1025 wrecks, which can spawn their parts.
• Loot economy quirks: Livonia has fewer total loot hotspots than Chernarus, which pushes players toward the same bases (Kopa, Borek, the ring) — expect traffic. And a 2026 balance change made plate carriers much rarer on Livonia (30% chance on heavy infected, down from 100%), so armor is a bigger flex here than on Chernarus.

How to Navigate Livonia

DayZ gives you no minimap and no markers — navigation is the game. Livonia's dense forest makes it harder than Chernarus to read the terrain, so use every tool:

• The GPS receiver (added in 1.19) pairs with the paper map item and gives you live grid coordinates — the single best navigation upgrade on the map.
• Compass + paper map: the classic combo; learn to read the grid references (each map square is 1 km) and you can walk to any POI in this guide.
• Road signs and landmarks: every village has a sign at its entrances; the Biela River, the north-south rail line and the border of the military ring are the big orientation lines.
• Third-party map tools: the community-standard WOBO interactive map and the iZurvive app both plot every town, military site, water source and loot icon on Livonia with searchable coordinates — load one on a second screen or phone, cross-reference the grid in this guide, and your "is it 042 023 or 049 028" problems vanish.
• Pick a landmark-based route: because spawns are in the north and the best loot is south, the standard mental map is "river in the north → ruined towns in the middle → military ring in the south." If you can find the river, you can always reset your bearings.

DayZ Livonia FAQ

Is the Livonia map free in DayZ?

Yes — since Update 1.25 (May 27, 2024) Livonia is part of the base game at no extra cost. It launched in 2019 as a paid DLC, but Bohemia merged it into DayZ and removed the separate purchase. You just need any Livonia server in the browser, or any DayZ copy including the free trial version on consoles that bundles it.

How big is the Livonia map in DayZ?

About 163–168 km² depending on the source: the DayZ Wiki lists 163 km², Steam's store page says 168 km², and a launch-era article cited 162 km². It is smaller than Chernarus (~225–230 km²) but bigger than Sakhal (~80 km²), and its dense forests make it feel bigger than the raw number suggests.

Where do you spawn on Livonia?

In the northern half of the map, along the belt of villages around the Biela River (Topolin, Brena, Tarnow, Gliniska area). Unlike Chernarus, there is no coastline spawn — you wake up inland and need to secure water and warmth first.

How do you get into the Livonia bunker?

You need a punched card to open the Dambog Underground Bunker. Cards are capped at five per server at a time, spawn in the static gas zones (Lukow Airfield, Radunin), and have a 40% chance to drop from military convoy officers with hip holsters. Each use degrades the card by one condition level.

Can you drink water from rivers in Livonia?

Not safely. Livonia's river and lake water needs boiling or purifying with tablets before drinking — raw water causes illness. Find a village water pump for clean water, or boil everything else.

Is Livonia or Chernarus better in DayZ?

It depends on what you want. Chernarus is bigger, more familiar, and home to the modded server scene and classic hotspots; Livonia is denser, wilder, more PvE-friendly, with more wildlife and the bunker endgame. Most veterans describe Livonia as the better survival map and Chernarus as the better DayZ map — play Livonia for hunting, building and the bunker; play Chernarus for the classic experience and mods.

The Bottom Line

Livonia is DayZ's quieter, harder, more organic second map — free since 1.25, roughly 165 km², spawned in the north and played south. Master three things and you own the map: boil your water and forage mushrooms in the early game, respect the toxic gas zones with full NBC gear in the mid game, and run the punched-card bunker at Dambog for the endgame loot. The grid references and POI table above give you every named location; load the WOBO or iZurvive map next to them and you will never need another Livonia guide.

If you are still deciding who to play it with, note that server pools matter on Livonia exactly as they do everywhere else — see our DayZ crossplay guide for which platforms can share a Livonia server. For how this compares to other survival sandboxes, our Rust beginner guide covers the closest PC competitor, and the ARK Survival Ascended maps guide shows how another survival giant structures its map roster. If map-selection questions brought you here, the Valheim biomes guide is the closest sibling in our library — a procedural world where biomes gate your progression — and Terraria's platforms guide is worth a read if you are shopping cross-platform survival sandboxes generally.

Related Guides

• Is DayZ Crossplay in 2026? Full Cross-Platform Guide
• Rust Beginner Guide — How to Survive Your First Week
• ARK Survival Ascended Maps Guide
• Valheim Biomes Guide
• Terraria Platforms Guide

Last Updated: August 13, 2026