DayZ Update 1.30 and Badlands: Motorbikes, Nasdara and What Your Server Needs on 15 October

DayZ Update 1.30 and the Badlands expansion both launch on Thursday 15 October. Update 1.30 is the free base-game update, with motorbikes on every map, redrawn inventory icons and reworked infected attacks. Badlands is paid DLC that adds the Nasdara map. Every DayZ server has to update that day, including servers staying on Chernarus, Livonia or Sakhal. Bohemia hasn't published a release hour, said anything about a wipe, or named the Nasdara mission folder.

What's in the update

Motorbikes, on every map

Update 1.30 adds two motorbikes, a moped and an enduro, and Bohemia's Dev Blog 7 says they "will not be limited to Nasdara. You will also find them across all terrains, albeit in lower numbers."

• The Jana moped comes in three fixed colours (blue, red and yellow) and tops out at about 70 km/h.
• The enduro reaches about 130 km/h. It has four base colours (red, yellow, green and blue), with plates in those colours that can be swapped and mixed.
• Each bike carries one rider. Neither has a passenger seat or any inventory space.
• Upkeep is lighter than a car's: there's no separate battery, repairs take a blowtorch, and the tyres can be replaced. Push the speed limit and you can damage the spark plug.
• You can walk a bike with the engine off or in neutral, which is how you move one that won't start.
• Crashes use ragdoll physics. Come off at speed and your character briefly falls unconscious, and every other player sees the body land in the same spot.

There's no air control "for now", although Bohemia has placed ramps around Nasdara for small jumps.

Redrawn inventory icons

Bohemia went through "more than 150 icons" because the old set was inconsistent from one item to the next, in a mix of art styles that had built up over the years. The new set shares one capture angle and one outline weight, so items are easier to tell apart at small sizes.

Infected that aim their attacks

Infected used to swing downward whatever you were doing. In 1.30 they choose "between upward, centered, and downward attacks" based on the height of your head, so they hit differently when you're standing, crouched or prone, and when the fight is on stairs or a slope. There's also a new running heavy attack.

Also in 1.30: select firearms get back colour variants from the alpha days, with new textures.

Nasdara and the rebuilding system

Nasdara Province is the Badlands map: 267 km² of arid borderland that Bohemia calls "the largest and most ambitious terrain we have ever created for DayZ". The expansion is sold on Steam as DLC for DayZ at "approximately $24.99", with regional pricing. On 2 October Bohemia said every core feature was still on track for release, a list that also counts the motorbikes. The detail below is from its dev blogs:

• Rebuildable houses. More than 5,000 ruined houses, in about 20 variants of mud and stone, can be rebuilt or barricaded. A new trowel works with brick and mortar, alongside the logs, planks and metal sheets you already use. You can restore a whole building, or fit a door and a window to one room. Broken wells can be repaired too, and ordinary base building still works next to all of it.
• Heat and water. Bohemia describes "water scarcity and oppressive heat" that keep your hydration low. The heat favours lighter clothing, and lighter clothing tends to carry less.
• New wildlife. Mouflon, desert monitor lizards and two breeds of dog, Dobermans and German Shepherds. The dogs are DayZ's first territorial animals: packs guard places such as military zones and attack if you cross into them. They can't be tamed.
• Radio gameplay. Morse code signals lead to underground shelters. Bohemia held this back from the creator preview, so nobody sees it before release.
• Also listed: sandstorms, regional firearms, clothing, loot and diseases.

The underground facilities rely on a new terrain-hole system, which Bohemia says "will also be available for other maps and to the modding community".

The official code lock

The code lock arrives "along with the update", and Bohemia has confirmed "it will be available on all other maps", although it hasn't said outright whether the lock needs the DLC. It fits the new rebuildable doors and existing fences.

• It needs a charged 9V battery, and it unlocks itself when the battery runs out.
• Attached to a door it can't be destroyed. Loose, it can be damaged and is repaired with an electronic repair kit.
• After a number of wrong PINs it refuses new entries for a while, and the lockout grows with each further failure.

What your server needs to do

Before you update: take a backup and keep a copy somewhere other than the server. Your world is the storage_1 folder inside your mission folder. On a self-hosted server that's mpmissions/dayzOffline.chernarusplus/storage_1 for Chernarus. On a LOW.MS server it's under config/mpmissions, as the tip below explains. Write down your mod list as well.

Once 1.30 is out:

1. Update the server. DayZ servers normally run with forceSameBuild = 1, so once players' clients are on 1.30, a server still on 1.29 turns them away.
2. Update your mods, then start. Bohemia's warning to modders: "you might encounter problems with animation-related mods." Anything that touches animations is the first suspect if the server won't start or players get kicked. If you run a community code lock mod, check its Workshop page first: Bohemia hasn't said how it behaves alongside the official lock.
3. Bring your mission files up to date. Loot and vehicle spawns come from the economy files in your mission folder (db/types.xml, db/events.xml and the rest). What an update does to them depends on where that folder lives. A self-hosted server on the stock folder names gets the new files from SteamCMD, which can also overwrite edits you made there, so copy your edited files out first. A renamed or separately stored mission folder keeps running the copy it already has, and the new entries have to be merged in from Bohemia's Central Economy repository. Our server configuration guide explains each file.
4. Leave the switch to Nasdara until the folder name is public. We're updating our guide to switching your map to Nasdara on launch day.

Tip: If your server is in the control panel, each of these is there:

• Backup: Create backup on the Backups tab.
• Step 1: Update on the Game updates card of the Overview tab. The server stops, installs the new files and restarts. Press it even if the card says your game files are up to date, because the control panel checks for new builds about once an hour.
• Step 2: the Mods tab.
• Step 3: your live mission folder is inside config/mpmissions on the Files tab. It holds your world (storage_1) and the economy files (db). A game update leaves it alone, so the 1.30 economy files have to be merged in by hand. Don't delete the folder to get a fresh copy: your world is inside it.
• Step 4: the Mission field under General on the Manage tab. Don't change the map in serverDZ.cfg, because the control panel rewrites that file on every start.

Self-hosting? The dedicated server is Steam app 223350, downloaded with a Steam account signed in:

steamcmd +login <your Steam username> +app_update 223350 +quit

If you don't have a server yet, DayZ server hosting with us includes backups and Workshop mods in the control panel.

What's coming next

• 15 October: release day. Bohemia's 31 August post says Badlands "is coming to all platforms on October 15".
• After launch: Bohemia's 22 September recap says "We will continue to monitor performance, optimize the terrain, and improve DayZ Badlands after launch based on our data and your feedback." The 2 October post adds "upcoming updates and patches".
• No date: smarter dog behaviour ("no ETA on the timeline for now"), and more dev blogs on terrain holes and the music.

This post gets the release time, the Nasdara folder name and the wipe answer as soon as Bohemia publishes them.

FAQ

Do players need to own Badlands to join a Nasdara server?

Not confirmed. For Sakhal, the previous paid map, Bohemia was explicit: "access to servers running Sakhal requires a purchased copy of DayZ Frostline". It hasn't said the same for Nasdara, so don't promise your community either way yet.

Does the server owner need to buy Badlands?

Bohemia hasn't said. Nothing in its posts up to 13 October covers what a dedicated server needs to run Nasdara, or whether the mission folder ships with the 1.30 server files. For Frostline, the Sakhal mission came in the standard server files.

Does Update 1.30 wipe my server?

Nothing official says so. None of Bohemia's posts up to 13 October mentions a wipe for 1.30. The precedent points the other way, though: when Frostline launched in October 2024, Bohemia "decided to wipe the official servers and recommend that community server owners do the same", and said so in the release-day post. Take the backup and plan for either answer. Switching to Nasdara doesn't delete anything by itself: each map keeps its world in its own mission folder, so your Chernarus world stays where it is.

What time does it go live on 15 October?

Bohemia hasn't announced an hour. The only timing it has given is that the creator preview embargo ends "on the morning of release day", so give your players the day and leave the time open.

Can I try 1.30 before Thursday?

Partly. Update 1.30 has been on Experimental on PC since 16 September, with "Many Motorbikes" test servers, so the bikes, icons and infected changes are playable now. Some of the expansion's assets are held back (Bohemia: "we're keeping some of them until the release"), and only creators have the pre-release Badlands build.

Sources: Bohemia Interactive's price announcement (2 October), Dev Blog 8, Dev Blog Recap 2, 1.30 Experimental release, Dev Blog 7, 31 August post, Dev Blog Recap 1, Dev Blog 5 and the Frostline release post (October 2024), and the DayZ Badlands store page.