ZA-Z update, 30 September 2026: Smoker's Pack, Tracers, mythic world loot and the tattoo parlour

Released 30 September 2026 | 6 min read

The biggest ZA-Z update so far went live with the 13:45 SAST restart on 30 September 2026, Day 105 in Knox County. Two new ZA-Z mods joined the server, ZA-Z's Smoker's Pack and ZA-Z's Tracers, and both spawn as ordinary loot. The mythic bags, boots, gloves and guns of ZA-Z's Gear and Clothing now turn up in about one container in ten thousand, ground you already explored got a one-off seed of the new finds, Rosewood became a quarantined safe zone with no PvP and no zombies, the Rosewood tattoo parlour opened its doors, and the Huey got faster and easier to board. The server now runs 24 Workshop items, five of them our own.

#ZA-Z's Smoker's Pack: grow your own

Five strains, from seed packet to smoke: Durban Poison, Swazi Gold, Malawi Gold, Kush and Purple Haze. They grow exactly like hemp in a plowed plot, only a quarter faster. Harvest the fresh buds, dry them for two in-game days (about 6 real hours) on the large plant drying rack, grind them with a Herb Grinder, then roll a joint, roll a blunt from a cigar, or pack the Glass Bong. Each strain calms, cheers and feeds you in its own mix: Kush takes 40 off panic per joint, and Durban Poison is the only one that wakes you up.

Seed packets turn up wherever hemp seeds do, and at half a tomato seed packet's chance in farm and garden stores, homesteads and glove boxes. The rest of the kit sits next to the tobacco, cigars, pipes and rolling papers it resembles. One warning: it is October 1993 in Knox County, a risky month to sow, and the safe window reopens in March. The full guide: ZA-Z's Smoker's Pack.

#ZA-Z's Tracers: coloured tracer rounds

Tracer rounds in eight calibres (9mm, .45, .44, .38, .357, 5.56, .308 and 7.62x39), each in green, blue, red, gold and pink. They spawn wherever plain ammunition of the same calibre does, roughly one find in ten, and hit exactly like the plain round they copy. Load them through the Load Ammo menu of Gunworks, and every shot draws a streak in its colour that everyone within 80 tiles can see. Details on ZA-Z's Tracers.

#Mythic gear is now world loot

Until today only admins handed out ZA-Z's Gear and Clothing. Now, every time the game fills a world container (the first time someone opens it, and again at a loot respawn), the server rolls 1 in 10,000 for a mythic. A hit gives one of 22 at random: 12 bags with 90 to 100 % weight reduction, 3 pairs of boots and 4 pairs of gloves with real powers, the Gold Desert Eagle and 2 shoulder holsters that carry 30 magazines. Any one named mythic is about 1 in 220,000.

A second roll at the same odds, kept separate so it never thins out the mythics, hands out a piece of rarer ZA-Z kit, the hydration packs among them. Corpses and bags inside containers never roll. The full odds are on the loot page, and what each mythic does is on ZA-Z's Gear and Clothing.

#Explored ground gets a one-off seed

Containers roll their loot only once, so everything opened before today held none of the new items. To make up for it, the server seeds explored ground as you move through it: each explored container in a map room gets one fresh roll, and only the new mod items from it are kept (Smoker's Pack items, tracers, the Micro Torch, and a mythic or kit piece if a 1 in 10,000 roll lands). It happens once per container, ever, and skips safehouses and anything player-built. Your old haunts are worth a second look: see the loot page.

#The M134 Minigun joins ZA-Z's Gear

ZA-Z's Gear 1.3 adds the M134 Minigun, the heaviest gun on the server. It is not part of the random loot, the mythic roll or the explored-ground seed: a handful have been placed by hand around Knox Country, waiting for someone to find them.

Six spinning barrels fire the game's .308 round (7.62x51mm) on full auto, well over ten rounds a second. There is no magazine: the gun holds 100 rounds and tops itself up from the plain .308 rounds you carry anywhere on you. Raise it and the barrels spin up with a whirr everyone nearby hears. Each round can pass through up to 3 zombies, it never jams, and it makes 300 tiles of noise. Its kit is a pair of Crossed Bullets Bandoliers and the M134 Ammunition Pack, both for .308 only. More on the Gear page.

#ZA-Z's Ink 5.0 and the Rosewood tattoo parlour

At 14:06 SAST the tattoo parlour opened in the old Haircuts n' More salon in north-west Rosewood, under the lit TATTOO 42 sign; the street door is at 8096, 11547. Walk in, right-click a barber chair or a tattoo bed, and choose Get inked.

Ink 5.0 came with it:

30 new designs, 81 in all (131 pieces once left and right versions are counted), in black and grey or colour.
A seventh body area, the neck, beside the arms, legs, back and chest.
Several tattoos per area, picked together and inked in one go, about 10 seconds each with a progress bar.
A preview on your own character, in underwear, before you commit.

Tattoos are free and now permanent: no removal or swapping, in game or on the website, whose Tattoos tab (The ZA-Z website) stays as a second way in. Everything else is on Tattoos and the Tattoo Parlour.

#Rosewood becomes a quarantined safe zone

Rosewood is now ZA-Z's quarantined safe zone. Nobody can hurt another player anywhere inside the town, zombies that get in are cleared out, and with zombie respawn off server-wide nothing grows back. A quarantine fence is going up all the way round, with watchtower checkpoints on the six main roads in. It stays that way: Rosewood is Knox County's protected, zombie-free gem. The rules, and the one relog you may need, are on the Rosewood safe zone page.

#ZA-Z's Essentials 1.5: a faster Huey and a roomier seat panel

Speed: the UH-1B Huey pilot's top forward speed goes from about 65 km/h to about 119 km/h.
Map warning: when the ground ahead has not loaded, an alarm sounds and the screen shows STOP THE VEHICLE! MAP NOT LOADED! Stop and hover until it appears.
Seat panel: all eight seats on their own spots with names, and one exit per seat down each side.
Firebombing: drop a Molotov from any helicopter seat onto ground up to 30 tiles away.
Welcome back: the welcome line now greets you by name.
Elevators reach every floor Build 42 allows, basements included.
Radio fix: pressing a car radio's power button twice no longer crashes the game.

Each has its own switch under Options > Mods: ZA-Z's Essentials, and for flying, Vehicles and driving.

#ZA-Z's Gear and Clothing 1.3

Gold Desert Eagle: every zombie it hits now goes down for good, boss zombies included, with up to 3 per shot out to 60 tiles.
Half Mask Respirator: Wear > Around Neck hangs it under your chin with its filter kept, and found respirators come in sixteen skins.
Ankle holster: the vanilla one also takes a knife, a screwdriver or a wrench.
Micro Torch: a tighter beam, 20 tiles long and about 57 degrees wide. It spawns wherever angle-head flashlights do, at a quarter of their chance.
Hydration packs: hold 40, make their contents 90 % lighter and carry 3 litres of water. They come from the kit roll, about 1 container in 26,000.

#The ZA-Z wiki goes live

This wiki comes with the update, at wiki.zazomboid.com: a survivor's field manual written from the live server's own files, from joining and every setting that matters to the Knox Antidote, loot odds, every mod and Troubleshooting. From now on every update gets its own page here.