Items in Yet Another Zombie Survivors
Chests, magnets, joke toys, and the achievement gear that stays in the pool.
Items are the extras you walk over or unlock for the rest of the account. They are not a fourth survivor. They will not evolve a pistol into a rifle. They will turn a good dawn into a silly dawn, or a greedy dawn into a tombstone. This page is the practical list for 1.0. Combat order still lives on best builds. Account power still lives on training.
During a run
Chests spawn on a timer and from some events. Walk over them. Equip something that matches the hole in the kit: pickup radius if gems are a death donut, armor if spitters are clipping you, damage if the rifle is already evolved. Five items in one run is an achievement named like a joke. It is not a dawn requirement. If a chest asks you to swap, read the full tooltip. 0.9 already showed full text on the swap UI; 1.0 still does.
Magnets yank every gem. They are not health. Save them for a ring you refuse to enter. Using a magnet at minute three because it sparkles is how you have nothing left at minute eighteen. The dawn page treats this as law.
Health kits are red hearts. They expire. They only count for the Medic unlock if you are missing HP. Power-up heals do not count as kits. See how to unlock survivors.
Greed pieces
Glass Cannon and similar “more damage, less survivability” toys are real and they are bait. Take them when you already have a shield, lifesteal, or a map you could dawn in your sleep. Hardcore at 9:00 is not that map. Endurance after minute 35 is not that map. Isolated City Default with Engineer in the squad can be that map. If you die immediately, refund nothing: the item is gone with the run. Training is the refundable layer, items are not.
Jade Amulet and other numeric trinkets now show their bonus in the tooltip. Believe the tooltip, not a 2023 spreadsheet.
Achievement pool
Many Steam achievements dump an item into future runs. Homing Pigeon, Ring of Power, joke dolls, burger for feeding the wasteland worm, barrel roll for getting slapped by it. You do not need the full 229-achievement sheet to play. You should open the in-game achievement list sometimes, because a locked item is often a locked gimmick rather than a locked skill. The maps walkthrough calls out worm-related toys. Do not farm Om Nom Nom on Bio Lab; the worm lives in Vile Wasteland.
“It’s Raining Men” is a physics stunt with Tank rockets, not an item pickup, but it unlocks bragging rights and sometimes pool noise. Play Tank, gather a blob, launch. The Tank notes are enough.
HUB and 1.0
Quests can hand extra items or faster meta. They are optional. Prestige can change how greedy you can be. Neither system replaces walking over a chest. If a quest tells you to equip five items, that is a directed run, not a new genre.
What not to do
Do not skip a weapon evolution to chase a chest across a boss. Do not stand still on a magnet. Do not fill five slots with joke dolls on One Hit. Do not write a review that the game is unfair because Glass Cannon was orange. Read the 1.0 review if you are still at the store page, not the corpse screen.
When the board and the chest disagree, the gun wins. When the chest and the magnet disagree, the exit lane wins. When everything sparkles, you are in the last two minutes of Hardcore and you should already be kiting. See How to beat Hardcore.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common questions.
Do items replace weapon evolutions?
No. Finish the gun line. Chests are extras.
Should I always pick up magnets?
No. Save them for gem piles you cannot walk into.
Does Glass Cannon stack with a shield?
Yes, and that is the only time most players should take it.
How do achievement items work?
Some badges add toys to future item pools. Check the in-game achievement screen, not only Steam's overlay.