I’ve written before about the need for more carrots in Zwift. One often-requested carrot is a new challenge to accompany the Ride California, Tour Italy, and Climb Mt. Everest challenges which many Zwifters completed years ago.
Here’s an idea for an unofficial and potentially never-ending challenge: what if you worked to buy everything in the Drop Shop?
Drop Shop Intro
Zwift’s Drop Shop is the virtual store where you spend Drops, the virtual currency you accumulate as you ride or run in Zwift. You can only buy bike frames and wheels in the Drop Shop today, but in the future it may expand to include other virtual items.
To visit the Drop Shop in game click Menu>Garage, or just hit the “T” keyboard shortcut.
Got What It Takes?
If you tally up the price of all the wheels and all the frames you arrive at the big total: 75,018,300 Drops. (Of course, this number will increase as Zwift adds more items to the Drop Shop. This total is current as of November 16, 2023.)
You probably don’t have those Drops yet. Hardly anyone does. So what would it take to earn them?
While it’s fairly easy to understand the factors Zwift uses to calculate Drops, it’s impossible to estimate something like a “Drops per hour” accurately. That said, an estimate of 35,000 Drops per hour is close enough for our purposes here.
At that rate, it would take you 2143 hours (or 89 days, 7 hours) to accumulate the Drops needed to buy everything in the Drop Shop. Or look at it another way: that’s riding an hour a day, every day, for almost 6 years!
(If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. Since November 2015 I’ve ridden over 87,000 km on Zwift, accumulating ~92 days of riding.)
Overwhelmed? Break It Up.
A challenge this daunting may be a bit overwhelming. But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Break the challenge up into manageable chunks: perhaps buying all the wheels or frames from a certain manufacturer first, then moving onto the next.
Or Be More Selective
Not a TT fan? Remove all the TT frames from the list and the total is reduced by 16.8 million Drops. Take the overpriced Zwift Safety Bike off and you’ll save another 3.5 million. A 27% reduction!
Hope you take on the challenge and it inspires you to ride more. Now I’m off to earn some Drops!
I’d rather sell all the bikes and wheels I never use.
Dear ZHQ, at minimum LET US SORT all items in the Garage (Frames, Wheels, Kits, Helmets and so on) to find the favourite stuff easier & faster 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
100% agree on this. Please let us sort thru the garage! There is maybe 3-4 bikes I use on a regular basis but a bunch of others acquired a few months ago as I was going thru the levels.
That only works if you can have a favorites map for maybe 3 normal bikes, 3 tt-bikes, 3 gravelbikes and 3 mountainbike (same for wheels).
And perhaps an archive (attic?) to put away the stuff you don’t normally use.
Agreed! I’d love to have an ability to put my fav bikes at the top of the list as scrolling is not ideal
Unless there a way to tag favorite gears, I doubt many people will try this; it will only pollute the garage.
Cracking challenge Eric,. It’s great that you are still finding ways of keeping us high level zwifters interested. I remember the last challenge ( complete all zwift routes in as many days ). Way more routes nowadays, maybe re introduced this challenge. Uber pretzel & London PRL on consecutive days still gives me nightmares. Keep up the good work Eric 👍Ride On.
London PRL is still the only route I haven’t finished. It is so tedious.
A cool feature would be degradation of gear–put a cost (in drops) on riding and maintaining a top of the line bike.
Collecting badges, routes, etc.. help me a lot to bike again and get fit. Now, I would think more about KOM, W/kg, increasing VO2 max. etc… The real stuff.
Bad idea. The vast majority of the zwifters is not interested to get most of the virtual toys in the garage (who really cares if a wheelset or frame is a fraction slower or faster). It seems a bit childish. And why would you collect all these items you never going to use? Not a real motivator, to my opinion.
Yep, once I got the Tron that’s pretty much all I use. I can’t be bothered to mess around sorting through the garage, as others have said id rather be able to sell/archive the old stuff. The only times I change is if I’m going a specific ride like an AdZ climb or if I fancy a TT flat route. I guess this is aimed at people who simply want a challenge to aim for though.
Because of the “gaming” aspect? If you treat it as attempting 100% completion, then it’s not a bad idea, especially for those of us who like to complete video games to near completion.
But, as others have noted, until there’s a way to “favorite” frames and/or complete bike setups, I won’t be tackling this.
You are the man when it comes to Zwift but seriously this has to be the worst ever idea. As others say, we need a way to drop the rubbish, not accumulate it.
LOL 😆
I realize it’s not for everyone. But I’ll tell you this: I first proposed this idea a few years ago… and lots of people jumped on board.
Not everyone is concerned with riding the fasted virtual frame or wheelset. In fact, I’d guess that the majority of Zwifters don’t care much about that (most don’t race on Zwift, after all).
Each to their own mate, I find it hard enough to get rid of the IRL stuff I don’t ride in my IRL garage, and that should have a value
In ZUL (Zwift Unreal Life) it is impossible. You’ve alluded to the problem when talking about bike changes (eg for the Jungle). Good luck with this challenge 😉
I’m not doing this challenge. Just writing about it. 😜
thanks for the idea, i dropped 10mil drops last night for a lot on frames…
Great article! I have been on Zwift since March 2016. I own all of the wheelsets but still have 30 more bikes to buy…lol
Cut that in half Robo pacing.
Would need to be able to sort in all the items in my garage first then. Put some of the items in the “drawer” so not so much is visible in the first tier. Right now I have more than enough to scroll through when I want to find something special. I actually aborted to finish the Tour Italia quest since it would just give me one more bike I never will use in my garage.
According to my calculation the challenge is even harder!
The assumption of 35’000 Drops per hour seems to be very accurate for my riding on Zwift. Assuming this, it takes 2’143 hours until the garage is full (75,018,300 Drops for the full garage / 35’000 Drops per hour).
For those on level 60, this is probably the only challenge left. More carrots, please!
Even though I ride only about 2-3 different setups on Zwift, I want to complete my wheel and TT-bike collection this winter.
Oops, you’re right! I forgot to revise the new hour total after I updated the current Drop Shop total. Fixed above.
Jesus, why would I want to buy everything, my garage is full or rubbish I’ll never use as it is.
ill give this article 1/10 as it’s probably the most pointless article on your site. Congratulations
I give this comment a 1/10 as it’s probably the rudest one I’ve received this week.
Congratulations
😜
No wonder you kept it quiet last week when someone asked you when we were riding with Coco lol 😂
Well, one can do this challenge without buying things. Just ride trying to reach the total of 75 million drops but do not buy anything apart from the essentials.
Don’t want any more drops, don’t need anymore kit, unless its the ability to upload and ride in my local club kit. Just want to have a functioning garage so i can have a few bikes setup for the type of riding going to do, training, TT, flat race or climbing. Not having to go and choose a frame, then the wheels etc. Really how difficult a UI would that be for zwift to create. It’s how just about how every “game” where there are different cars/avatars available. And an easy way to switch bikes (on all platforms) if zwift… Read more »
I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the “special” equipment challenges return that get you the “7Eleven” bike or the disc wheels. Not sure what unique equipment was available that is not for sale in the drop shop….
Oof, that sounds a like an actual nightmare… “I had a dream my garage contained every single bike and I was scrolling everywhere to find the tron.” Definitely not doing this. 😆
It’s not for me as I’d want to favourite/bin/hide the ones I don’t use, BUT I am more interested in Jersey Hunting and getting those random unlocks 😉
Only tangentially related: is there some easy way to print an inventory of the garage contents? Specifically the frames, plus maybe the wheels? Might make it easier to find to find what I’m looking for. Thanks
There is not.
@Eric Schlange not entirely related to the drop shop, I know you took over ZwiftHub (not the trainer – the site)…is this still updated by you, and will the new routes be logged soon too?
I appreciate the sentiment but until they make a way to organize what’s in my garage there is no way I’m buying anything else in the drop shop.