Zwift version 1.96 begins its phased rollout today. This is a small update, but racers should take note of a fast new wheelset, and achievement badge completionists will want to know what’s changed on their badge list. Read on for details…
New ENVE SES 4.5 PRO Wheelset
The biggest news in this week’s update is a new, top-performing wheelset from ENVE. The real-life ENVE SES 4.5 PRO wheels were announced in July of this year, and ENVE shared that the wheels were developed with direct input from Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates XRG over two seasons. When the wheels were announced, they had amassed 25+ victories this season alone … before Tadej won the Tour de France!
The wheels are now available in the Drop Shop, accessible at level 29 and above, for a price of 675,000 Drops. They are the only wheelset in the Drop Shop with a 4-star rating for both aero and weight, so we expect them to be fast on the flats, and light on the climbs!
Watch this space for a detailed post about their performance once we finish our speed tests.
If you’d like to try the wheels before purchasing, September’s ZRacing events feature them, meaning everyone will be placed on these wheels for each of September’s races. (More info on September’s ZRacing will be published here on Zwift Insider tomorrow.)
Unearned Event-Only Badges Now Hidden
Zwift says, “In the Achievements screen, placeholder badges will now only be shown for routes that are available to all Zwifters in the Routes list. If a route is only accessible via an Event, the badge will be shown in the Achievements screen if it has been earned.”
The event-only route badge situation has been a messy one for years on Zwift. In the early days, event-only routes didn’t have achievement badges. That changed with the release of the Neokyo Crit Course in November 2021, the first event-only route to ever have an achievement badge and corresponding bonus XP.
Since then, more and more event-only routes have had achievement badges attached. But there are still many that don’t.
Zwifters who love earning achievement badges have been frustrated by their inability to earn badges for certain event-only routes, and this seems to be the driving force behind Zwift removing unearned event-only route badges from the list and the counter at the top.
To be clear, you can still earn these badges. They just aren’t visible until you earn them, making them like other hidden “extra credit” badges in Zwift.
Here’s a full list of event-only routes with achievement badges and associated XP, in case you want to make sure you earn all these badges:
| Route | Map | Badge XP |
|---|---|---|
| Glasgow Crit Six | Scotland | 360 |
| Handful of Gravel | Watopia | 125 |
| Hilly Route Reverse | Watopia | 180 |
| Hot Laps | Watopia | 465 |
| London Classique Reverse | London | 110 |
| Macaron | France | 50 |
| Mech Isle Mayhem | Makuri Islands | 365 |
| Neokyo Crit Course | Makuri Islands | 90 |
| Neon Shore Loop | Makuri Islands | 660 |
| Park Perimeter Reverse | New York | 195 |
| Red Rock Loop Reverse | Gravel Mountain | 105 |
| Red Rock Loop | Gravel Mountain | 105 |
| Twilight Crit | Makuri Islands | 80 |
| Urumaze | Makuri Islands | 365 |
| WhatYumeziWe'reLost? | Makuri Islands | 350 |
Release Notes
Zwift provided notes on additional tweaks and bug fixes in this update:
- The in-game “Friends Zwifting” notification is no longer shown during Workouts.
- Fixed an issue that caused some environmental shadows to have jerky animations.
- Fixed a crash that could potentially occur when creating custom workouts.
- Fixed an issue that could cause water to flicker at some locations in France.
- Android: Improved Bluetooth connection reliability.
- Windows, Android: Stability improvements.
Discuss this update in Zwift’s forum >
Questions or Comments?
If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!
The event only badge thing is incredibly dumb. Just make the courses available, it’s pointless to do this. No one wants to spend their time looking a rides to find these courses and Zwift hacks is terrible. This one area they fail terribly at and get the running badges off the cycling achievement page and vice versa.
My god, lets just hide the so people dont ask about them … what a load of ………
Typical Zwift, lets hide it or keep quiet so it will all blow over and we dont have to come up with a usefull solution.
what is the performance of “New ENVE SES 4.5 PRO Wheelset”？
patience is a virtue =) “Watch this space for a detailed post about their performance once we finish our speed tests.”
Hang on, I’m on the phone to Pog right now to find out! 😉
I look forward to the Enve speed test Eric. However, the event only route badge nonsense, is just that. Nonsense. If the routes exist with badges and XP, Zwift should make them readily available. Providing customers with more routes is a good thing, but don’t make access to the routes difficult.
“…Zwift removing unearned event-only route badges from the list and the counter at the top“. And yet they are happy to retain all the running badges in the counter at the top for the vast majority of Zwifters who will never run on Zwift – even though the actual badges are already hidden. Crazy.
How about a several week/month hidden badges challenge? Hidden badge of the week?
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I personally would have preferred they gave us an easier method to get into an event only route. Why not make all event only routes accessible to those who can create a club event in the companion app?
My total available listed badges went from 287 to 281, losing 6. But I thought the only event only badges I didn’t have were the 4 newly introduced ones that haven’t been used yet? What are the other 2 that went missing? I checked your list of event only badges on this article and I am correct in that I have all but 4 of those badges listed. Something running disappeared maybe?
My badge total was 283 before the 4 more recent event only badges as well. Hmmm
Yes there are 2 running event only routes with badges, Italian Villas Circuit and Handful of Gravel Run
Thanks! Would be good if that info was added that to the article for anyone else curious like me.
I don’t think the problem was being against event badges, but more not being able to find events for some of those badges to participate. And introducing badges for events still to come was/is a pain too. This hasn’t changed, because – hidden or visible – we badgehunters know the badges are there. They are just even more difficult te find now.
Glad I postponed buying the DT wheelset now. I don’t need a repeat of saving drops for the Dogma, only for the new S-Works to be released the next week😅
The list is here:
https://support.zwift.com/en_us/zwift-event-only-routes-for-cycling-H1GQONCUT
Eric, maybe list this in the article.
I list all the event-only routes that have achievement badges above…
Is something big going to happen when we get to version 2.0?
That assumes that we aren’t going to get version 1.100.
They are going to reset everyone’s level to “0” and introduce a new method to gain levels, expected release date is April 1st 😈
at this point, Zwift is already got pretty good concept, beside some minor corrections here and there, like more data in the HUD, allowing to move and create your own data blocks.
It would be good to have a full Forum integration in Companion app, something like Reddit style, presently it’s not very user friendly the Forums usage under Companion.
— Total Garage rearrangement with filtering options, and options of saving the same bike frame with a different wheels
As a payed version, maybe introduction of the personal Garage spaces: real garages with the aligned bikes and wheels, maybe shops, shed, house or any other 3d personalized environments/spaces where the bikes would be stored, filtered and have tabs/shortcuts for the favorite setups. Like: Climbing bikes —-> 2-3 best setups shortcuts options, Flat Route bikes —>> etc…etc..etc..
20$ a month per option lol )))
— Good thing would be a second generation of Zwift plays, with the bigger buttons for the gears, and additional 2-3 buttons for personal shortcuts, + an option to reconfigure all the buttons.
More perks for clubs and with the financial pressures of the reality, probably… introduction of in-game purchases
1000$ for a personal design of club jersey+ option to order a real one with the same design lol…
Maybe some additional gamification , with additional events, like “Counter-Strike” lol )))
Capture the flag and bring it to the finish .
The first 4-5-6 riders team at certain point capturing the flag, if another team member is aligned with the flag rider for 10 secs, he takes it over, lol.. could be very popular one among the younger generation.
– Full integration of running into the general stats in the Companion app + swimming stats.
love this idea, would love more fun games like that or tag where a random rider gets picked and they have to get ahead and the group has to chase or hide and go seek across a smaller map and of course more mtb tracks
yeah, that might be even slightly different, by using Zwift physics, lets say,cto capture the flag, one need not to align with another rider, but be in front of him for 5-7-10 seconds, but the team members could try and block other riders to go in front by blocking the road, by using zwift play controllers, might be interesting to see different tactics on this one.
Or another type of gaming events, could be by group or personal.
The event announced and published, but without any route, and even world specifications.
Once started, lets say in Watopia world, or any other, you need to cross the finish line by using any of your own routes. The finish is indicated on the minimap. And initially everyone is starting on the longest possible route till the finish line.
So, the rider might do his own decisions, by turning and seeking the shortest route to the finish.
Or even better, before getting to the finish line, you need to cross 2-3-4 gates indicated in the different spots on the map.
A mass start event without separation by the groups, with 1000 riders might be a real fun for an hour or even two)))
A feature I just remembered I’d love is an audible tone alert say 100m from a sprint start. The number of times I missed a sprint because I wasn’t paying attention for 30 seconds dying from riding is too high.
I wish Zwift never went in the rabbit hole of varying performance in bikes, wheels, tarmac etc. It’s costing them resources, its creating bugs, its causing everyone to ride the same boring white sworks (until a new faster frame drops) and all along it’s been over a year that we got a bit of interesting new roads (not routes).
That’s a quite useful full list of event-only routes with achievement badges and associated XP. Awesome value-add by ZwiftInsider.
It would be great if you could see in Zwift which ones you had done and which ones you haven’t! The new approach just hides them completely
Those event only badges have been bugging me for ages. The new arrangement makes a lot more sense.
If only it were straight-forward to create events on those routes..
Harrogate circuit reverse is listed on zwift companion as a event only badge
And many others…
It’s event only. But doesn’t have a badge.
Strange that red zone repeats badge in the compian app is event only. An in zwift in game under the achievements visible to catch as routebadge.
Went from 288 to catch to 283 to catch. That means indeed there are 2 in running event still, and the 3 cycle new ones event only. Were the 4th new one red zone repeats is a grey area now. It should make the minus 282.
Excluded already the earleir invisible badges for running: going the distance and olympian to make the counting even more complicated.
I have no route badges in my hidden “extra credit” badge area, including the new badges for the Zwift Camp: Baseline ’25 workout/routes that I have recently earned (I do have screenshots to prove it)
Did this happen in the end? Does anyone else not have these or is it just me?
They do not appear in the “Extra credit” but in the “Route achievements” area
Thanks! I thought there was an update that put the event only badges under the Extra Credit area instead? Maybe I got my wires crossed there
😊
@Eric Schlange Any chance of maintaining an up to date list of event-only routes with achievement badges? As it is constantly changing!