ZA-Z's Essentials: working elevators, grab any amount and other quality-of-life fixes

ZA-Z's Essentials is the server's own quality-of-life mod for Project Zomboid Build 42. It makes the vanilla elevators work, lets you grab or put exactly the number of items you want from a stack, repeats one action across a whole selection, shows your ammo next to the aim cursor, adds an Equipped view to the inventory, gives you a few safe seconds after you log in, and makes the UH-1B Huey faster and easier to board. It downloads by itself when you join ZA-Z, and every feature has its own switch under Options > Mods.

Workshop page: ZA-Z's Essentials on Steam.

#What does ZA-Z's Essentials add?

#How do elevators work in Project Zomboid?

In vanilla Build 42 the elevator doors are scenery. With Essentials they run:

1. Walk up to the doors (within 2 tiles) and right-click a door or the call button beside it.
2. Open Elevator and pick Ground floor, Floor N or Basement N.
3. The ride takes 2 seconds a floor. A caption box over the doors reads Going up... or Going down... while you travel.

The lift needs power on the door square, from the grid or a generator in range. Without it the menu says No power. It only stops at floors that still have their doors; if none do, you get Out of service. You arrive on the same spot at the doors of the floor you picked.

Almost every vanilla elevator is in Louisville. Two to start with: the multi-storey parking garage (doors at 12661, 1606, six levels) and the mall (doors at 12760, 1618, with call buttons either side).

#Grab amount and Put amount

Vanilla lets you grab one, half or all of a stack. Essentials adds a number box:

• Right-click a stack of 3 or more in a container and choose Grab amount.
• Right-click a stack in your inventory with a container open and choose Put amount in (the container's name).
• Type how many. Up to 100 per request by default; the slider under Options > Mods goes from 10 to 100.

Each item moves with the game's own transfer action, one after the other, so a big request takes as long as moving them by hand would.

#Do it for the whole selection: the (all N) entries

Select several items of the same kind (shift or ctrl click, or a whole stack), right-click, and actions the game only does for one item get a second entry underneath:

• Open Box of Rounds (all 12) and every other right-click recipe: cartons, packs, ripping clothing.
• Load all 6 magazines and Unload all 6 magazines.
• Load all 3 guns and Unload all 3 guns.

They run one at a time with the normal animations, up to 200 items in one go. Walking or anything else that interrupts an action stops the rest.

#Ammo counter next to your crosshair

While you hold a firearm, a small readout shows rounds left and capacity, for example 12+1/15 (twelve in the magazine, one in the chamber, fifteen to a magazine). It also warns JAMMED, NO MAG and RACK.

By default it sits at the bottom right of the mouse pointer and shows while you aim and for a moment after a shot, reload, rack or jam. Options: always on while a gun is equipped; any of the four sides of the pointer or above your head; small, medium or large text; a gap of 4 to 80 pixels.

#Equipped view in the inventory

A mannequin button sits above Inventory. Click it to see only what you wear, hold, keep on your key ring and carry on the hotbar. By default those items stay out of the main Inventory list, so the list is just your loot (bags are not affected; the switch is in Options).

• Drag an item onto the Equipped button to wear or equip it.
• Drag from the Equipped list onto the Inventory button to take it off or detach it.
• Right-click works as usual: Unequip, Take off.

#Safe login: no bites while you load in

Logging back in next to a crowd is a classic death. For a few seconds after you join, zombies that already target you, or stand within 6 tiles, lose track of you and cannot bite. A countdown, Safe for N s, shows above your head.

The shield ends after 12 seconds, or 4 seconds after you first move or attack, whichever comes first. You can set the cap between 5 and 30 seconds and the after-move time between 1 and 10.

#Helicopters: a faster Huey and a roomier seat panel

These apply to the UH-1B Huey helicopter, which flies on Aviation Core.

• Speed. The pilot's top forward speed goes from about 65 km/h to about 119 km/h, as fast as a car. Backward and sideways speeds stay stock. That is faster than the map loads: when STOP THE VEHICLE! MAP NOT LOADED! appears, stop and let the ground catch up.
• Seat panel. The seat picker shows all eight seats on their own spots with names: Pilot, Co-pilot, Left door (front and rear), Right door (front and rear), and the bench (left and right), with one exit per seat down each side. The pilot sits on the right.
• Firebombing. From any helicopter seat you can drop a Molotov or other thrown weapon: hold it with a lit lighter in the other hand and click the ground. The target must be within 30 tiles and far enough from the helicopter that the fire cannot reach it (its fire radius plus 2 tiles). It bursts after a short fall. Cars keep the vanilla rule: no throwing from a seat.

#Welcome message and a radio crash fix

• The server's welcome line greets you by name: Welcome back, (your username)., or Welcome, (your username). on a brand-new character.
• The car radio from The Real True Music could crash the game to desktop when you pressed its power button twice. Essentials stops that.

#Boss zombies

The two ZA-Z boss zombies, the Knox Heavy and Patient Zero, are part of this mod. They do not wander in on their own; they turn up at events. Everything about them is on Boss Zombies.

#Settings and single player

All switches live on one page under Options > Mods > ZA-Z's Essentials and are saved per player, so changing them never affects anyone else. The mod also works in single player. The other ZA-Z mods: ZA-Z's Gear and Clothing, Tattoos and the Tattoo Parlour, ZA-Z's Smoker's Pack and ZA-Z's Tracers.