DayZ Badlands Expansion and Update 1-30 Are Out

Bohemia Interactive released the DayZ Badlands expansion on 15 October, alongside Update 1.30. Badlands brings Nasdara, a brand new 267 km² map and the largest terrain ever built for DayZ, while 1.30 drops motorbikes, reworked firearm skins and well over a hundred redrawn icons into the base game. One thing to get out of the way first: 1.30 ships with a full wipe on every platform.

The new map is already live on XLGAMES.GG and servers can be updated from the panel right now. If you run a modded server, hold off for a moment, there is a section on that further down.

Nasdara

• 267 km² running from jagged mountains to sprawling desert plains, built specifically for DayZ
• Large evacuation zones, abandoned oil fields and crumbling military bases, each one telling its own story of a troubled past
• After autumn in Chernarus, summer in Livonia and winter in Sakhal, Nasdara's arid spring completes DayZ's cycle of seasons

New ways to die

• The sun never lets up, and gusts of wind can build into full sandstorms
• Two new medical threats to manage: heatstroke and silicosis. Neither is survivable without the right gear
• Water is scarce, and you need it for more than staying hydrated. It also cools you down and rinses the sand out of your eyes after a storm

Shelter and rebuilding

• Nearly 5,000 rebuildable structures are scattered across the land, and they are not all houses
• Wells and irrigation tunnels are in there too, which opens up new options for both PvP and cooperation
• Rebuild a well with a stranger for the benefit of the whole server, or put together a sweaty base with secret entrances
• When you are nowhere near a base, shade under a palm tree counts as shelter

Motorbikes

• Motorbikes are finally in DayZ, with leaning and a proper two-wheeled vehicle simulation behind them
• Crashes come with ragdoll physics. Other players get to see where you landed, the rider goes unconscious and misses the show
• The Moped comes in three fixed colors: blue, red and yellow
• The Enduro comes in four base colors, with swappable plates in those same colors
• The animation systems were significantly updated to support all this, and the team expects the modding community to benefit from those changes too

Morse code and bunkers

• There is a new, dynamic way to find loot, and it starts with keeping your personal radio close
• Transmissions carry coordinates and access codes for urban bunkers scattered across the map
• Decode the message, find the entrance, claim the reward. This is where a motorbike earns its keep

Loot and wildlife

• New gear for the climate: face wraps, dust goggles, lightweight clothing and desert camouflage
• Weapons ranging from the classic Lee-Enfield to modern SCR firearms
• Local food and snacks, and when those run dry, hunting is on the table
• Out in the wild you will run into mouflons, desert monitors and territorial dogs still guarding their former owners' grounds, on top of the infected

What 1.30 adds to the base game

• Motorbikes are not Badlands exclusive
• Alpha-era firearm color variants are back for select guns, with upgraded visuals and textures
• Over 150 inventory icons were redrawn for a consistent style, angle, outline weight and contrast
• Infected now pick an upward, centered or downward attack animation based on how high the target's head sits relative to their own
• Infected gained a new running heavy attack
• The animation systems were significantly updated

What this means if you run a server

• The wipe is not optional. Update 1.30 marks a fresh start with a full wipe across all platforms, so everyone begins from scratch
• Modded servers need their modpack rebuilt. Bohemia significantly reworked the animation systems, and animation related mods are likely to break. This is not a patch where you just hit update and walk away
• The order of work is simple: take a backup, check every mod in your pack for a 1.30 release, drop or replace anything the author has not updated yet, and run the whole pack on a test server before you let players in
• Some mod authors will need time. That is normal for a major DayZ patch, and sitting on the old build for a couple of days beats opening a server with broken mods
• Bohemia is already pushing the first 1.30 patch to Steam Experimental specifically to address issues affecting modders, with the stable patch for all platforms to follow later
• Many Motorbikes test servers are also up on Experimental so the team can monitor performance with a lot of bikes around, much like the old Many Cars servers
• The full 1.30 patch notes are published as separate lists for Steam, Xbox and PlayStation

What the expansion costs

DayZ Badlands launched with a 10% discount, which puts it at roughly $22.50. If you already own the base game and want both extremes of the weather, Badlands and Frostline are bundled together as the Hot & Cool Bundle. Bohemia also confirmed that Badlands is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in Q1 2027, with seasonal events on select terrains planned over the coming months.

Run a server on Nasdara

The 1.30 build and the new map are live on XLGAMES.GG right now. Existing servers update from the panel, and a new DayZ server is online in a couple of minutes: DayZ hosting.