It has been a while since the last update, and we have been quietly polishing in the background. This time we are shipping everything that piled up: brand-new systems, visual upgrades, a reworked UI and hundreds of improvements and fixes. Here are the highlights.
Seasons — Winter and Spring are here, and you can pick one when starting a new game or in the settings. Winter brings snowfall and biting cold, Spring brings mild rain; seasons affect precipitation, snow cover, ambient temperature and vegetation.
New grass system — Grass rendering has been rewritten. Grass now sways in the wind, and both performance and visual quality improved.
Volumetric fog and light — Believable light shafts and fog, with adjustable density, or turned off entirely.
Reworked character shadows — Character shadow casting has been rebuilt from scratch, and zombies now cast shadows too.
Night vision gear — Two new items, a low-light night vision scope and a head-mounted night vision device, so you can see in pitch-black conditions.
New enemy: Military Zombie — Gun-toting military zombies have joined the fight.
Refrigerator — Once powered, it keeps food cold and fresh (cut the power and food spoils as usual).
New recipes — 10 new food recipes and 10 new canned food recipes.
The weapon modification panel has been completely redesigned.
The building and interaction / tool selection panels now use a card-based layout, with double-click to build directly, plus number keys 1-9 and arrow keys for quick selection.
The crafting panel has new craftable indicator dots (green: materials are already in the workbench; yellow: materials are in your backpack) and a button to craft the maximum amount in one click.
The hotbar can be reordered by dragging, and items can be removed by dragging them out. Carry weight and hotbar counts now refresh instantly, with no need to reopen the backpack.
The equipment panel now shows the actual damage reduction for each body part, and item details include smelting output, primary / secondary weapon slots, ammo names and more.
Bandaging improved: click a body part to apply or remove a bandage. Combination locks can be entered by clicking the dial. After repairing, lockpicking and similar actions, the previous screen is restored automatically. The HUD and the map now show the day count.
Graphics: resolution, render scale, V-Sync, frame rate cap, volumetric fog and light density, and a toggle for ambient decorative particles.
Performance: reduced vision update rate (line-of-sight occlusion refreshes every other frame, lowering CPU cost).
Gameplay: season selection, zombie respawn rate, hit detection range on objects, looting corpses from a distance, pause while the backpack is open, temperature unit (°C / °F), interaction tooltip toggle, and the weight of nested containers.
Safe zones: areas you have built in now count as safe zones and zombies stop spawning nearby. Enemies and NPCs now path around them instead of tearing down your walls and structures.
Continuous placement when building: after placing one piece, you automatically continue with the next.
Vehicles: overall power and top speed increased by around 35%, acceleration and reversing are now consistent across frame rates, and tire grip feels better.
Survival details: a lit torch is no longer put away or extinguished while sprinting; warming up at a fire now only restores normal body temperature instead of giving you a fever; cooked fish restores twice as much.
Production: the furnace stops smelting when its output slots are full, so no materials are wasted, and it shows progress in real time; the Stirling generator now produces charcoal while burning fuel.
Combat: open wounds from the Bleeding status now drain health slowly over time; bows and crossbows can land critical hits; rolling lets you vault over railings and similar obstacles.
Companion AI: smarter behavior overall. Companions no longer eat spoiled food and actively avoid dangerous tiles such as fire and acid.
Greatly reduced the number of cameras, smoother frame rates with large numbers of enemies on screen, faster map loading, and fixes for memory leaks and stutter during long sessions.
Improved zombie death visuals (bodies now fall to the ground more naturally); zombie eyes glow at night; flames on burning corpses now burn out on their own (faster in the rain).
Much better tolerance for damaged saves and missing modded items, which means fewer crashes. Cloud save syncing has been upgraded so an old save no longer overwrites newer progress.
Fixed item loss caused by backpack sorting or crafting output overflow (excess items now drop at your feet and can be picked back up).
Fixed combat issues such as bullets and arrows failing to hit deployables like explosive barrels, and explosion damage passing through walls.
Fixed issues where wiring had power cables but no electricity after loading a save, street lights stayed at a constant brightness instead of following the day and night cycle, and road vine textures disappeared.
Plus hundreds of other fixes covering AI, audio, vehicles, UI freezes and mod compatibility.
【How to Join the Public Test】
In your Steam Library: Right-click Zed Zone → Properties → Betas → Select the publicplaytest branch (no password required). After Steam finishes downloading the update, simply launch the game. To leave the test branch, switch back to “none — Opt out of all beta programs”.
It is recommended to manually back up your save files before testing major updates, in case undiscovered bugs still exist.
【Feedback】
If you encounter any issues during gameplay, you can report them through the built-in feedback center, Discord or by email.
For localization or translation-related issues, please use the in-game feedback center or contact the developer directly by email. Or perhaps you would like to contribute to language localization.
Please feel free to provide feedback via our Discord or email.
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