Zwift CEO Eric Min has traditionally posted a Strava activity on new Zwift roads within a few days of their release, and this morning he rode Neokyo, the Makuri Islands city addition which Zwift has been talking about for the past few weeks.
See his Strava ride here. You can also see his activity on Zwift.com or Garmin Connect.
What We Know About Neokyo
Here’s everything we know about Neokyo, based on various teasers from Zwift and Eric Min’s ride today.
Neokyo is a new map within the Makuri Islands world. It is connected to the existing Yumezi map by a single connector road.
Neokyo has 4 sprint segments, 1 KOM, and a set of start pens. Eric’s ride today covered three of those sprint segments, which are labeled on his Zwift.com activity (thus our labels below). Presumably, these sprints go in both directions.
The KOM ends where you see the mountain icon (bottom-right of the map). It appears to be a ~55 meter climb over ~2 kilometers, based on Strava’s elevation profile (see below – Eric rode the KOM twice).
Eric ride didn’t cover all of the roads shown below, in the full map but it appears the roads are quite flat except for the KOM section at the bottom-right.
Zwift launched a homepage for the new map last week (zwift.com/neokyo) which says there are “eight new routes across approximately 13 mi // 21 km of new roads in Neokyo”. The route Eric rode today is called “Railways and Rooftops”.
The updated map can now be seen in the Companion app (of you view a Makuri Islands activity) or on Zwift.com activities. This gives us a view of the size of the new map, as well as its location relative to Yumezi roads:
Meetups, Events, and Free Rides
Zwift’s FAQ says, “At initial launch, Neokyo will only be available for free rides. We are hard at work making this new map available for Meetups and Events. We’ll update this FAQ when that happens.”
But When?
Zwift says Neokyo will go live in the November game release. So when is the November game release?
Releases have been coming in the second half of the month lately, but Zwift had Makuri Islands scheduled as a guest for November 10-17th, so we figured that meant a release was planned for this week. And indeed that seemed to be the original plan, but this was posted on Zwift’s forum today:
We hope you’ve been enjoying our eye-popping teasers for Makuri Island’s latest expansion, Neokyo. We can’t wait to jump into the bright lights and fast roads of this neon city. We’re installing the final neon signs and will be opening these roads later this month. To prepare, we are shifting the current world calendar a bit so you can get your daylight fill before the sun goes down and the Neokyo lights turn up.
As soon as the guest world schedule is posted, we’ll add a link to it here.
Shuji from ZwiftHQ
So it looks like the release has been pushed off to next week, which (incidentally) was the original date I guessed for the Neokyo release. Prescient!
Zwift’s guest world calendar has just been updated (see it on our schedule page) and the week-long Makuri Islands block is now scheduled for November 17-23rd.
So my guess is Zwift’s next update will arrive on November 17th or 18th, and Neokyo along with it. Can’t wait to ride some new roads!
Your Comments
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How to world hack this one please!?
You can’t world hack into Neokyo. It’s part of the existing Makuri Islands world, but it’s not released yet. So if you get into Makuri Islands, you won’t be able to get onto the Neokyo roads. Until Zwift releases their update.
Zwift is slowly making Makuri the second “Watopia”. Looks like there are a bunch of roads going off the screen… looks exciting!
I’m awful at maps in Zwift and curious about the connection between the current Makuri and the new map. Is it going to be via a tarmac road or gravel?
Looks like tarmac.
tunnel?
Do you know whether there will be any routes that include both Yumezi and Neokyo? Would love to see some longer routes in Makuri.
Don’t know, although I’ll probably find out this week. Certainly some routes will include both – it would be silly not to!
Agreed. Makuri desperately needs some longer routes.
Yeah. Also I need some longer routes to get that XP. Still need 3 levels for the DT Disc wheels. Everyone profits from that.
do alp du zwift with a workout. when I do my workouts up adz and get the 1000xp spinner, i earn around 2100 xp.
That’s a relief, I’m too tired to ride the new routes this week. Roll on the 17th!
Thanks for updating us on the schedule change. Personally I’m happy to see Zwift rearranged the schedule. I’m excited about the new map and will welcome some extra time to explore. For me, New York is a good pairing for Makuri as you can get your fill of climbing in New York, then do some more mellow/ scenic riding in Makuri.
Makuri has lots of hills already
Any thoughts as to why Zwift orients their ‘view’ of what Makuri looks like (and France, for that matter) 90 degrees off from how Strava renders them? It hurts my OCD.
Agree, they should have North upwards. I wish their maps even had contour lines.
Agree. This is bizarre.
Good work detective Eric. Always happy for new roads but some more mountains would be nice. Hopefully the release after next
This is the *current* full extent of the complete Makuri Islands map, taken from the Android apk file. Neokyo has filled in the left hand side, with only a bit of space above and below for expansion as it stands. This is the same map layout as the original Yumezi map, shown here: https://zwiftinsider.com/tokyo-teases/ [see comment by Sven K], but I guess they could re-scale the map if they wanted to add further roads in future…
That’s interesting, I hope they do scale it up – there’s around 5 roads coming off Neokyo that look like they could be used to link up with new areas, also the one off Yumezi to the top right corner. Since everyone’s noticed Mount Fuji in the distance I would really hope Zwift put that in as the new mountain to climb. Another AdZ style climb would be a great addition.
Anyone else looking forward to a bigger hill in Yumezi? I am, but doesn’t look like it’s happening with this release
13 miles of new roads? 13? Is it worth it? I hope it’s REALLY good.
hypers
Any new badges? Or I guess no knowledge about that until release?
For sure there will be new route badges – I assume all 8 new routes will have badges.
Sort of wish Zwift would get out of the world building business and partner with a racing game maker (like the Forza horizon series) who have the amazing worlds already built… Substitute bikes for cars and build in the group ride/race physics for bikes. Waiting months for 13 miles of virtual city roads for crits mostly? Hmmm…
Got to agree with you. They do seem to take ages building worlds. If they could use already built world like Forza or Mario Kart then why not (there may be compatibly problems). Also odd to me that they keep building new worlds … France could easily be developed further, as could New York. Once a world get to a certain size then you can add a few link roads and provide new experiences. This doesn’t happen with small worlds, like Richmond, Yorkshire and Innsbruck. But I do look forward to these new roads
Zwift needs to keep the miles of road available at any one time in a reasonable ratio with the number of users.
Folks want variety, but also don’t want to ride through a ghost town.
Awesome. Thanks for the update Eric, your summaries are always just what’s needed! Do you know if you will be able to free-ride from Yumezi to Neokyo in the same activity? Hope so! Cheers fella.
I’ve just been on the Zwift Neokyo FAQ, and it says this:
Q: Do Neokyo and Yumezi connect?
A: Yes, Yumezi and Neokyo connect via a tunnel. Rush into Neokyo’s neon-lit streets or change your pace in the serene countryside of Yumezi—all in the same ride or run.
Guess that answers my question!