Wow this feels a bit Baader-Meinhoff. With Valetudo + self-emptying as motivation, I received my Z10 via Amazon / "Dreametech official store" just this past Friday. Happily, it arrived with fw 4.1.7_1056 and I was able to use the simple reset method to install. Valetudo's worked wonderfully for the past week and I've never even seen the official app.
One note: VT is not open source firmware. It's more like a brain controlling parasite with a good UX.