Skip to content
ZA-ZWiki

"ZA-Z update, 29 October 2026: traps for your base, spike strips, a yakuza kimono and face tattoos, and the Huey goes back to carrying people"

Released | 3 min read

A big ZA-Z update lands with the restart of 29 October 2026: both ZA-Z's Essentials and ZA-Z's Ink update. Close Steam completely and open it again before you join, so it fetches the new versions. You can now set traps round your base and lay spike strips on PvP roads, find a black kimono and yakuza masks, get face tattoos and the front of a yakuza bodysuit, hide the sidebar, and saw or drop exactly as many items as you want. The Huey goes back to carrying people, and the Road Train, vehicle armour, the Pantry and Halloween get fixes.

#New

  • Traps. A Motion Alarm that calls your friends' walkie-talkies, a bait cache that goes off when a stranger takes from your box, and a Tin-Can Tripwire that calls every zombie for 50 tiles. They never go off for you, your safehouse or your faction. See Traps.
  • Spike strips. Nail a board full of spikes from planks and nails, lay it across a road inside a live PvP danger zone, and the next car over it loses a tyre. See Spike Strips.
  • Kimono and masks. A Black Kimono you wear closed or open to the waist, an Oni Mask that is a working gas mask, and a white or black Kitsune Mask, all as world loot. See Kimono and Masks.
  • Yakuza tattoos and face ink. Three chest pieces and two sleeves that make the front of a Japanese bodysuit, and a new Face area with six designs, at the Rosewood parlour. ZA-Z's Ink now has 97 designs on eight body areas. See Yakuza Tattoos and Face Ink and Tattoos and the Tattoo Parlour.
  • Auto-hiding sidebar. Tick it under Options > Mods > ZA-Z's Essentials > Sidebar and the icons on the left fade away while your mouse is elsewhere. Off until you switch it on. See Auto-hiding sidebar.
  • Saw Logs (amount) and Drop amount. Saw as many logs as you type, or all of them at once, and drop part of a stack. Every recipe on 3 or more items gets an (amount) entry. See saw how many and Drop amount.
  • Scrap car parts. Cut spare hoods, trunk lids, trunks and mufflers into sheet metal, scrap and pipe, and strip car seats for cloth and a sponge. Broken car doors, trunk lids and hoods now cut into sheet metal too, not only intact ones. See Scrapping Car Parts.

#The Huey carries people, not weapons

  • Transport only. Nothing fires, is thrown or shoves from any helicopter seat: no guns, no Molotov drops, and the rocket pods are off.
  • Back to about 100 km/h. The Huey eases off by itself when the ground ahead has not loaded yet, and speeds up again once it has.

More in helicopters.

#Fixes

  • Road Train plough. At speed the plough now bats parked cars and burnt-out wrecks aside instead of slowing the truck, and the crew is no longer hurt when the rig rams a car. See the War Plough.
  • Tail minigun ammo. Rounds left in the cistern's tail minigun go back into the ammo box when the gunner climbs out, and the box is its only feed. Other players now see the tail gunner's tracers leave the barrel, not the bumper.
  • Vehicle armour. Armour protects the parts it covers again in multiplayer, and a crash into the front of the car hurts nobody aboard while a working bullbar is fitted. See the bullbar.
  • Old food weighs and fills again. Food from the old food mod that still had its old numbers gets its proper weight, fill and calories back within about a minute and a half of picking it up. See Pantry.
  • AFK kick. Coming back after the server sat empty starts your AFK clock at zero, so you are no longer kicked the moment you join.
  • Night vision goggles. Insert Battery and Remove Battery show a battery icon, not a radio.
  • Less stutter. A few of our own mods do less work every tick, so busy nights should stutter a little less.

#Halloween

  • Zombies that lie down at dawn are gone for good: no doubled crowds and no fake corpses left behind.
  • The bats bite hands and forearms only, and lightly.
  • No more skeletons.
  • Headless riders turn up half as often, at most two at a time.
  • The mist rolls in at 21:00 and is gone by 04:00 game time, with normal weather the rest of the day. The blood moon is unchanged.