Loot does not respawn by default. On every official preset Hours for Loot Respawn is 0, which turns the system off. If you raise it, every container in towns and trailer parks refills after that many in-game hours, with three limits that also default on: containers already holding 5 or more items do not refill (Max Items for Loot Respawn), buildings you have barricaded or built in never refill (Construction Prevents Loot Respawn), and Loot Seen Prevent Hours, if set above 0, stops a zone you visited within that many hours from refilling. Your own crates never restock. Zombies are separate: Apocalypse and Outbreak have respawn off but redistribute living zombies every 12 hours, while Extinction and Rising respawn on a 72-hour cycle. All of this lives in sandbox settings.
Annotated maps are the game's one scripted loot. A looted town map can come back with a dead survivor's notes on it; Annotated Map Chance defaults to Sometimes on Apocalypse, Often on Outbreak and Extremely Rare on Extinction. Most of them roll from maps taken off zombies rather than from shelves. Louisville has the largest set with 16 definitions, March Ridge has 10, and the older towns each have their own family; Build 42 added sets for the western towns too.
The stash fires when the marked building first loads after you have read the map. Walk through the building before reading and the stash can be skipped, so read the map in a car park, then go in. What you find depends on the note: signpost maps point at a school or hospital and add nothing, duffel and crate maps drop a bag and often restock the kitchen and bathroom cupboards, and survivor safehouse maps mark heavily barricaded houses with weapons, food and tools behind the planks. Bring a hammer or crowbar, and check every cupboard, not just the marked room. Trucks drawn on Louisville maps do not spawn vehicles.
In multiplayer the first player to load the chunk uses up the stash, so the map reader should say what they are about to do.
