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ZA-Z update, 18 October 2026: the Louisville death zone, padlocks, vehicle salvage, the substation map and something for Halloween

Released | 3 min read

A big ZA-Z's Essentials update lands on 18 October 2026, and it downloads by itself the next time you join. Louisville is now a death zone where PvP is always on. You can padlock the doors and gates you build, and build the map's own doors and windows. Any car, van, truck or trailer can be cut up for its parts and metal. A South African flag hangs on your wall, the safehouse terminal sorts food by state, the help desk answers chat commands, and the big map shows which substations are running. The bakkie bed seat and the turnstiles are gone. And from 19 October, for two weeks, something is coming to Knox County.

#Louisville is a death zone

Past the checkpoint, PvP is always on. Everything inside the military wall round Louisville, the Knox Boundary Camp and the river along the north of the city is a death zone: the safety toggle is locked, your safety button turns into a red skull, and DEATH ZONE: PvP forced shows over your head as you cross in. On the way out your safety goes back to how it was. Faction mates still cannot shoot each other, and safehouses inside the wall still keep strangers out. Details: Death Zones.

#Padlocks, and the game's own doors and windows

Any door or gate you build takes a padlock (its keys stay with you) or a combination padlock (share a three-digit code), from the Door menu on the closed door. Locks keep people out, not in, so padlock your gate and your outside doors. The build menu also lists 32 of the map's own doors, glass ones included, and five more window styles. How it works: padlocks on doors and gates and building the game's own doors and windows.

#Salvage any vehicle

Right-click any car, van, truck or trailer and pick Salvage Vehicle: a welding mask, a propane torch and Welding 3, twice as long as a wreck. Every fitted part drops on the ground whole, then the same pile of metal a wreck gives. Empty it first; there is no undo. Details: vehicle salvage.

#The South African flag

A big South African flag, the size and drape of the game's large US flag, to hang on a north or west wall. It spawns where the large US flag does, at about half its odds. See the South African flag and Loot.

#Terminal: food by state

Type fresh, stale, rotten or frozen in the Safehouse Management Terminal's search line, alone or with a name, and TAKE fetches only those items: clear out the rotten food and leave the rest. See the terminal.

#Help desk chat commands

Type /unstick, /flip or /zaz <what is wrong> in chat and the help desk takes you out of a stuck seat, hops you out of a wall, rights your car or answers a question about the server. No Discord needed. See Still stuck? Ask ZA-Z.

#Substation status on the map

Open the big map: each of the seven substations carries a tag with a green, amber or red dot, its running generators and the hours of fuel left, and a banner says whether the grid is live. Hover or click a tag for the full box; the lightning bolt button next to Marks hides it all. See which substations are running.

#Fixes

  • Put it back now restores your hands and bag tools reliably on a busy server, where a late packet used to leave the tool in your hand. See put it back.
  • Jeans colour. Light denim no longer shows a pale, washed-out patch over the belly when worn over a dark top: the vanilla fade is gone.
  • Gun rates. The vanilla M16 fires three-round bursts or single shots again, bursts run at their gun's real rate, the SCAR-H fires 500 rounds a minute, and the M134 and XM214 hold about 1,200 and 1,500 rounds a minute on any PC. See the Arsenal.
  • Helicopters. The Huey flies on the helicopter mod's own controls again: same controls, same height limit. The speed, seat panel, firebombing, zoom, rotor volume and windows stay. See helicopters.

#Removed

  • The bakkie bed seat. Riding in the back of a pickup is gone; the trucks themselves are unchanged.
  • Turnstiles. The gear-stays-here edges at marked places are gone. Nothing else changes.

#Something is coming

From 19 October 2026, for two weeks, Knox County will not be quite itself after dark. Keep your eyes open and your radio on. No more than that for now.