Due to a rare combination of Zwift events and bugs/misconfigurations, there are currently four very time-limited “hacks” available to all Zwifters.
There’s something here for everyone, but these should be particularly appealing to lower-level Zwifters looking to procure faster in-game setups. Read on for details
#1: Cervelo Aspero 5 (Faster Upgrading)
The new Cervelo Aspero 5 is the most aero gravel bike on Zwift, beating the next-fastest bikes by just over 3 seconds across an hour of riding. It’s a bit heavy, so maybe not the best choice for races that involve steeper, longer climbs. But it’s still one of the top 4 gravel bikes on Zwift.
Currently, the Aspero 5 is set up as a mid-level bike in terms of upgrades. This means it can be upgraded to top performance with much less work than the other top gravel bikes, which are all set as high-level upgrade bikes.
- A mid-range bike requires you to ride 160+200+240+280=880km and spend 50k+100k+150k+200k=500,000 Drops to reach stage 4 and top speed.
- A high-end bike requires you to ride 200+260+320+380+440=1600km and spend 100k+200k+350k+500k+750k=1,900,000 Drops to reach stage 5 and top speed.
A couple of caveats to note:
- The Aspero 5 is currently misconfigured in terms of weight, meaning it’s a bit heavier than it should be. Zwift tells me this will be fixed in the next update, scheduled to roll out April 21. All the info above about its performance, as well as the data on today’s gravel performance post, are based on this revised weight.
- I’m assuming Zwift will adjust this frame to use the high-end upgrade scheme in the April 21 update as well. When that happens, any upgrade stages you have reached (and paid Drops to unlock) will remain in place, but any new stages will be shifted to the high-end requirements. It’s a rather odd state of affairs, because you may have reached stage 4 and maximum performance, but once it is shifted to a high-end scheme, you’ll need to upgrade to stage 5 for maximum performance.
#2: Pinarello Dogma 2024 (No Level Lock)
The Dogma 2024 is one of the top-performing road frames on Zwift, and my personal favorite due to a very limited-availability paint scheme I unlocked back in 2024 so my in-game Dogma matches my IRL bike.
Zwift didn’t announce this, but a rider tipped me off that the Pinarello Dogma 2024, typically locked so only level 40+ riders can buy it, has had its level lock completely removed. Zwift did this because Zwift Camp: Breakthrough includes a “Starry Red” colorway unlock for the Dogma 2024, but you have to purchase the frame to use the unlock. I guess Zwift decided it would be a bummer to be below level 40 and unlock the colorway with no way to use it.
I’m sure the Dogma 2024 will return to a level 40+ lock once Zwift Camp: Breakthrough ends, so if you’re below level 40 and want this frame, buy it while you can! (It’s not cheap: 1,750,000 Drops.)
#3: Princeton Carbonworks Wake 6560 Lava (Free Unlock)
I saved the best for last.
Zwift originally said riders would unlock a “Lava” colorway for the new Princeton Wake 6560 wheels as part of Zwift Camp: Breakthrough. But it turns out, you unlock the actual wheelset. That’s right: complete any two stages of Zwift Camp: Breakthrough, and you’ll get these wheels (a 685,000 Drops value!) free of charge.
This isn’t just any wheelset, either. As explained here, the Princeton Carbonworks Wake 6560 White is the new top all-arounder in the game. Super strong climbers.
One minor caveat: the “Lava” version of these wheels is currently misconfigured and a bit slower than the “white” version. Zwift knows about it, and I bet this will be fixed to match the White wheels in the next release.
#4: Mystery Spinner Drops Farming
Lots of riders have been “Drops Farming” the Stoneway Sprint Reverse segment on Watopia’s southern coast, because every time you complete the segment you get a spin on the mystery spinner. If the spinner lands on a prize you already own, you’ll get a healthy 10k Drops bonus instead.
I was able to do a full “rep” in 1 minute, 40 seconds, without a lot of effort. 10k Drops every 100 seconds=360k per hour (and 72 U-turns)! Here’s a YouTuber showing how it’s done…
Tip: Several routes will get you to the Stoneway Sprint Reverse quickly. The Mayan 8 is one of them.
Note: this is a very limited-time opportunity. I believe the Mystery Spinners will end with the Big Spin 2026 ends, on April 20th.
Questions or comments?
Will you be taking advantage of any of these hacks? Share below!
“I guess Zwift decided it would be a bummer to be below level 40 and unlock the colorway with no way to use it.
I was above level 40 and “won” the paint job before I had enough drops to buy the bike. So I guess it wasn’t a “bummer’ back then. lol
Tap through the exercices in zwift camp and youll get every unlock in 3 minutes
Hahahah, superb idea nice one 👍🏻 💪🏻😍
Oh man. Hacking the hack.
@Eric Schlange While I got this hack right, a team member confused ‘Zwift Camp Breakthrough’ with ‘Zwift Camp: Insde Out’ collection in the Workouts section. Maybe a word of caution in the article? haha
Can you give more detail on the Tap through the Exercises 🤔?
Well im on a computer. In the execercise you can skip a part with the tab key … so tab tab tab tab
Thanks…I was on my IPad 😂
Thanks…A was on my Ipad 😂
On ipad click the play button with a perpendicular line in the menu at bottom. Just keep touching the button and you will progress through it.
Cheers, just did this and bagged the wheels. Great little hack this one.
Start breakthrough. Move pedal more 0:01. Click bottom of screen. Click ▶️⏯️ or whatever it is and you move to next interval. Do that 23 times. End ride and wait for it to say you got glasses. End ride and trash can it. Start breakthrough #2 and click through 22 times. Wait for it to give you wheels.
(sorry if that makes no sense. Sounds great in my mind🤪)
Wow. Never even considered this. Can confirm lol. Took about 3 minutes.
I think it’s already been locked 🙂
I “went through” all 5 workouts using the tab key, and nothing unlocked 🙂
To be honest, I wasn’t interested in the paint job or the wheels, but out of curiosity and to test it out, I wanted to check it out.
Have a nice day
It still working, just did it.
If the unlocks aren’t working it’s likely you’re either needing to update to the current version or you’ve got zwift open on two devices.
The reason it wasn’t working was that it’s not enough to have the trainer paired—you actually have to start “pedaling” at the beginning of each workout, and only then can you use the tab key to skip through the blocks/intervals of that workout 🙂
Yes, that’s how the hack described by my friend works 🙂
Legend! Just did this on my apple tv setup. Easy as!
“Gee I feel so awful stealing wheels from Zwift” /s 🤡
Having the Stoneway sprint has been a nice hack, but I’m ready for it to go away. I don’t want to U turn again for the rest of my life and I’m still only at 6M drops out of the 10M I need. Sigh…
😅😂. Me too, I feel the same way. Got enough drops now for what I wanted and I’m done U turning. 😀
Why are you guys doing U turns??? Teleport to the start of the stoneway sprint. That way you only ride to the end of the sprint, teleport back to the start and then do it again. You can double your number of drops over an hour. Normally theres someone sitting there allowing riders to use them to TP to.
Because theres no teleporting while doing a workout.
Spent 40 minutes on a recovery ride doing this, nice little earner, but the drops seem to be missing from my account. Guessing an error just for me as no other complaints.
My drops were not recorded either. I discovered this hack with 3 days to go. On the last night 1.5 million drops (long ride for me) we’re “lost”.
I’m not doing it all the time. Just basically maybe half an hour on my rest days at like 50% of FTP. Goal was to finance by SL8 level 5 unlock. Maybe in the next week will go for the Princeton Altas as well. Maybe both “new” DT Swiss (already have the retired ones, but never use anymore) if I get bored enough :p
Great no more stupid Mayan 8 activities in my feed
I don’t understand the logic in Zwift making the very best wheelset in the game available to anyone, at any level, as long as they perform (or “Tab” their way through) two workouts.
Hey, here’s a good idea, let’s make the entire reward system we set up, of levels and drops, meaningless!
Its a game there are mans ways to cheat
That’s not the point. Zwift intentionally created a system whereby everyone who completes two simple workouts receives the best wheels in the game. That is a very stupid way to handle one of the primary in-game carrots (faster wheels).
Zwift is not a game…
It definitely is…
Honestly: I think the game designers who would normally be in charge of making those level locking/reward system/progression decisions weren’t the ones who set up the event in a way that unlocks the wheels. That’s my hunch.
It’s that they made a new set of wheels rather than a new colourway for the existing ones. We’ve never seen colour controls on a wheel before, even the wheels that change with the colour slider are controlled by the frame.
Have there even been screenshots of how it’s supposed to work?
Just my luck Eric. I bought them last week after reading your article on the new wheels. 🙄
I bought them two days ago and yesterday I read on comment from someone stating we get the actual wheels. That hurt.
Zwift didn’t intentionally make it available to anyone, that’s why it’s called a hack. There are always going to be people that come up with new ways to game the system. Blaming Zwift for it is silly.
Think about how many people (including myself) climbed AdZ to get the Meilenstein wheels just to have what were the best climbing wheels in the game. Now hack three minutes on a workout and get the best wheels for free. At this point I will exploit every loophole and shortcut to gain equipment. Remember when they nerfed the Felt AR frame from fastest to average a week after release. Yes, I bought that frame and wasted the drops.
Oh cool. Just bought the white Princetons with drops. Feels bad.
If you get the wheels and look close, it it a different set of wheels with 3 stars instead of 4 for weight. Maybe there will be an upgrade to 4 like the white set – maybe not.
The Lava wheels will be updated to the same performance as the White ones.
Absolutely zero qualms in cheesing them since I’d already paid for the white ones (and there’s no way to recoup any drops from all the stuff we’re never ever going to use anyway)
I did 3 laps of The Classic yesterday and pretty sure I received 15,000 drops each time through the Jarvis KQOM.
you do, its the CCW climb to KOM, 15K.
Il had the mistery spin also after a complete lap of volcano circuit (and got 10k drops)
For the drop expoit on Stoneway, you don’t even need to u-turn. Just find one of the several riders parked at the start of the sprint, friend them, then teleport to them once you cross the finish line. You effectively double your output for half the effort.
Exactly!
Exactly. Stoneway is about 2/5ths of a mile. 40-50,000 drops per mile. 23-24 miles to a million drops. Many have been doing this daily for the past 6+ weeks. Renders the cost of upgrades a bit more moot when you have 20, 30 million drops or more.
According to the Strava Segment data, Stoneway Sprint is precisely 398.1 meters (0.24737 miles)
Segment:
https://www.strava.com/segments/38152293
Data:
https://www.strava.com/stream/segments/38152293
According to Strava data for this segment, Stoneway Sprint Reverse is precisely 398.1 meters (0.24737 miles)
@Eric Schlange will you be testing the performance of the Lava vs White colored wheels after the fix?
Do you know what will happen if one after unlocking the Lava wheels, then purchase the white version will it be two wheel sets or one with two color options?
I’ll be testing them to confirm they match, yes.
If you purchase both, they’ll both show up as separate wheelsets in your garage.
And the rating is different. 3 stars for weight instead of 4.
With all the drops I’m finally able to get the Sl8 bike tomorrow. Should I get the Pinarello Dogma now instead? Same amount of drops. Thank you
SL8 is a bit faster than the Dogma. I like the Dogma because fewer people ride it, and I’ve got the cool limited colorway.
the red colorway with white princetons look shmick 👌 i may have to lv this one up
I have both the SL8 and Dogma max upgraded. Dogma gives me a better look, especially withy the red colorway via Camp Breakthrough. Performance differences are a bit moot for all but the most skilled racers. So, maybe choose based on the look you want to achieve?
“the Lava version of these wheels is a bit slower than the white version”
Any idea how much? I’m tempted to use them in ZRL if it’s not by much
I don’t know – haven’t measured the Lava ones, since they’re going to be changed very soon anyway.
So select the work out jump on the New Cervelo and loop the stoney bridge sprint for a 3x Combo
Find a friend to teleport to on the stoneway and you can get 600k per hour easy.
Apparently the QA guys were not happy to not been invited to Mallorca, or they left the Interns running the company during the event
Zwift has a long history of misconfigurations, which have affected many events series in the past, and many other mistakes that could easily have been avoided. As a Zwift enthusiast, it has always made me sad to see how Zwift unnecessarily caused frustration this way. But what we have seen during the last weeks is a lot, even by Zwift’s measures. Yes, everyone makes mistakes. But how could all that happen? Is Zwift staff only configuring everything while riding with eyes closed and without any kind of quality control? I hate watching my favourite training platform effectively tear itself down this way. Wake up, Zwift!
Easily happens when you farm out programming jobs to contractors/3rd parties or even might be using AI. None of them have any interest in fully testing the complete product – just their own project/job.
Let’s not forget Zwift don’t bug check or have much focus on QC/QA at least while we’re still loyally paying our subs regardless! 😅
How do you get the Blue Wake 6065 wheels?
The red ones are following the frame colour so just use the red ones on a frame with a colour slider
If you have a frame like the Trek Madone with a colour slider the red 6560 Lava wheels will change colour to match the frame. Now, if we could just have a top tier frame that does the same thing …
You could add the temporary hack of using Zwift Spring Classic, climbing Paterberg (0.4km, 45m, 11.9%) repeatedly on a TT frame, giving 10 experience on each portal. Doing it at 50% difficulty and having 10 portals giving a total of 100xp per climb in 800m (including downhill)
I used that to get from lvl 98 to 100, and now I don’t want to see the climb portal on a TT bike ever again!
Sometimes I doubt if they are really mistakes.
If you see the nuimber of people doing the Stoneway Sprint or any of these other hacks while normaly they would sit on the couch.
Since Zwift is a business and numbers are very important. These kind of ‘errors’ do give nice numbers to present to the boss.
Please ignore the section about drop farming at Stoneway. It is presently closed for repaving and will be open again on the 20th.
I can confirm this, the road is closed
I left the game open yesterday and this morning I was able to start a ride on that section. I’m probably the only one of few ones farming today. I have decided to not disconnect and ride more later in the morning, LOL
I demand a refund! Gutted I bought the wheels last week. I really wish they would introduce a selling system for old bikes and gear.
But the white wheels are much nicer and better looking.
So what’s needed is to different stage? Or is same stage twice good enough
“ That’s right: complete any two stages of Zwift Camp: Breakthrough, and you’ll get these wheels (a 685,000 Drops value!) free of charge.”
The Princeton wheels are labelled differently in the drop shop. The Lava wheels are ‘the 5th iteration of the wake series’, whereas the White wheels are the ‘6th iteration of the wake series’. This might the reason behind the weight difference.
That is the reason, but it wasn’t what Zwift intended. They are updating the Lava wheels to match the White wheels in next week’s update.
When is the update? (How long do we have left on breakthrough “hack”?)
My Cervelo Aspero 5 – upgrading to Level 2 – has disappeared from my garage since today! ☹️
Not cool. You should contact Zwift support about it right away.
Yes, I did. I’m looking forward to the result!
Lots of people on the Stoneway Spring are offering teleport so you can just teleport back to the start line allowing you to get 600K plus drops an hour.
Now to figure out how to do the “Friend” thing so I can Teleport. Gives new meaning to “Beam me up Scotty.” grin lol
There were so many people at the Stoneway Sprint Reverse that my Apple TV started jerking the picture, bikes appeared without riders and it took me several minutes to exit. Might be a good hack, but it might blow up Zwift also.
Apple TV does NOT get along with Stoneway Sprint (probably at least partially due to the latest update as well). If you have any other device you can use your experience should be much better.
I was able to do the Stoneway sprint 3 times and then the fun ende
We had a great community at the Stoneway Sprint here in the farming period.
I am missing it a lot now.
All the nice parked teleporters, and a lot of good communications.
The red Wake 6560 wheels change color! Pair them with the Zwift Steel or Zwift Carbon, the color slider affects these wheels along with the bike.
I have completed stage 3 of the Breakthrough Training that unlocks the Starry Red Dogma F2024 colorway lock. However, when I go to the SHOP, the Dogma F2024 Bike is still locked ( I am at level 35)??
If it’s still level locked for you then you’re running an outdated version of Zwift.
Yup, great advice Eric. I upgrade to the latest available for me anyway 1.111 as I was on 1.110.
Cheers!! Got the bike! and Still have 2mill drops left, some handy farming helped ensure I could get it without being left in the hold.