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Tomorrow, Wednesday 29th July, we will be releasing Build 42 of Project Zomboid!
This is a quick post to ensure that those who want to continue playing Build 41 are aware of how they can do so with minimal disruption, and indeed to tick off a few other items to be aware of.
Apologies for the overall boring post! Hopefully yesterday’s map overhaul excitement counterbalances it a little.
THOSE WANTING TO STAY ON 41
Build 41 savegames clearly will not be compatible with Build 42.
If you are a Build 41 player who wants to minimise disruption on the 42 launch, or a server owner / online player who wants to continue on Build 41, then there is already a beta channel for you (and your players) to move over to before the event.
To reiterate: you can safely swap to the Build 41 beta now.
To do so:
Right-click PZ in your Steam library.
Select “Properties”.
Under “Game Versions & Betas” select “legacy41”.
THOSE WANTING TO FINISH AN UNSTABLE 42.19 GAME
Due to additional map content being added, existing saves on Unstable 42.19 will not be compatible with 42.20.
To continue your Unstable game you can opt-in to the new “42.19” beta now also, again to minimise your disruption tomorrow.
To do so:
Right-click PZ in your Steam library.
Select “Properties”.
Under “Game Versions & Betas” select “42.19”.
STREAMERS AND YOUTUBERS
Streamers and YouTubers who have been given slightly early access to the map overhaul in Build 42.20, and are being allowed to post and broadcast their content from 10AM BST / 5AM EDT / 11AM CEST / 12PM EEST on Wednesday for a few hours preceding the official launch.
So if you fancy spoiling it all for yourself, please keep watching relevant channels on YouTube, Twitch and wherever else you get your content creators from!
PRICE RISE
As with the launch of Build 41, there will be a rise in price for Project Zomboid alongside the release of Build 42 – although not one that many would consider a huge one.
The game will continue to be what we consider to be reasonably priced and good value for the gameplay available. This change will apply across storefronts and regions once 42.20 launches to Stable; if you want to pick up the game at the current price (or for a friend), act now.
LOCALIZATION
Community Localization work is an ongoing project, with an amazing response from players all over the world, and will continue to be patched in beyond launch. Once the current iteration of Community Localization has been released we will be welcoming feedback on what’s working for our many different nationalities who play the game – and what isn’t.
Please provide feedback in the #localisation_feedback channel on The Official Project Zomboid Discord Server when the time arises.
Other localization items of note:
Thanks to our amazing community translators we are adding Czech, Indonesian, Spanish (Argentina) and Spanish (Mexico) to our list! More will come in future also.
Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), and Catalan have font issues we are aware of and are actively working on. They will be addressed in a future update.
Some available languages still require a lot of work, so please be aware that currently Catalan, Romanian and Spanish (Chile) still feature a lot of English vocabulary.
Gracias, Merci, Danke, Grazie, 谢谢, ありがとう, Obrigado, Спасибо and 감사합니다!
UNTIL TOMORROW!
That’s probably about it, here’s a few trailers and interviews with the team in case you’ve missed any of them.
Hi everyone, as previously mentioned Build 42.20 will be coming to the public stable branch this Wednesday, July 29th! For full details on this please check out this announcement blog. A big new part of this is a HUGE new upgrade to the Knox Event Exclusion Zone – that goes way beyond what you have already played during the Unstable beta. Our aim? To create a heavily evolved Knox Country that expands and overhauls the game’s Kentucky setting with new and reworked areas, that feel more lived-in, more natural, and more believable as places that existed long before everything went wrong.
So what’s got us to this point? Let’s hand over to Art Director Ayrton Orio to explain: “Since Build 41 the Art Department has been hard at work on expanding the map westward, establishing an ambitious target quality, and revamping many of the existing towns in-game – while also hiring and restructuring.” “Overall Build 42 in the Knox Event Art Department saw four new map artists added to the team (Erika, Melo, Dylan and Alokin), one departure (Xeonyx), two ascensions to wider game management positions (Mash and Binky), and my own promotion to Art Director.“ “The first improvements made to the map itself are those that Build 42 Unstable players have already experienced. Myself and Jamie (Xeonyx) made a first leg of improvement that covered a whole new area furnishing the extreme West of the map with three new towns: Brandenburg, a new location on the banks of the Ohio river river; Ekron, a small agricultural town full of Southern charm; and Irvington, in the South West of the map, with its famous race track.” "While we were working on the above, however, the South of Muldraugh became our proving ground to experiment on a much more detailed style of world building. If reception was positive, we thought, then this could eventually become the expected standard for the rest of the map.“ “As it turned out, the reaction from players when B42 hit Unstable was so overwhelmingly positive that it triggered the hiring of the new enlarged team mentioned above – which would then go on to achieve that vision we’re announcing today.” A snowy night in Muldraugh
Following on from Ayrton’s thoughts above, when 42.20 hits stable Knox Event, survivors will find the following entirely reworked:
Riverside
West Point
Rosewood
Fallas Lake
Muldraugh
Ekron
Dixie
The revamp, meanwhile, follows certain standards – while future versions of Project Zomboid will see the rest of the map overhauled to the same rigorous high level:
An idiosyncratic style for each town
All buildings and houses are now unique
Consistent landscaping between buildings
Unique tiles where necessary
For more details on this, and Ayrton’s vision for the future of the map and his oversight on the game as Art Director, he has been interviewed by MrAtomicDuck – in the same fashion as Christian Allen our new Design Director was recently quizzed.
In terms of the differences between Build 41 and Build 42, the surface area of the map has been doubled. In fact, when comparing builds, overall the Art Department has delivered 1,400 new unique buildings, and 20,000 new tiles – which brings the game’s tile total up to 35,000. Build 42 contains 400 procedural basements, and 75 unique ones. Hundreds of posters and wall decorations. Light overlays for any source of light. Snow overlays. New burned tile variations, new 30 degree roofs, many more types of windows, all the crafting tiles, and much, much more.
Knox Country Map (Isometric) – from Build 41 to Build 42.
Knox Country Map (Top down) – from Build 41 to Build 42. There are many other locations to explore too, like an abandoned orphanage, a revamped logging compound, an entirely new Prison, a boy scout camp, and so on… but we will let you explore all these nooks and crannies, when Build 42 comes to stable later this week!
While some existing Challenge maps are being taken out of rotation for now in 42.20, the map update also means that classics like “A Really CD DA” and “Winter is Coming” are returning with improvements. Meanwhile two new Challenges are available to conquer: whether starting at the top of a skyscraper in “Top of the World”, or battling a world full of sprinting zombies in “28 Seconds Later”.
When we released B42 Unstable, we initially changed the Main Menu illustration and added other art for loading screens. The artist for these pieces had previously worked with us and provided ‘human-created’ art. However on release, the community quickly saw what we didn’t: inconsistencies and typical AI generated artifacts. In the intense period of work to get Build 42 Unstable out the door, we failed to notice the use of AI. As soon as we realized the mistake, the art was removed from the game. Since then, absolutely no AI has been used in our art processes. As we moved past B42’s launch, we began developing the PZ “rendered style”, which you can see on flyers, newspapers, leaflets and so on. We are very happy with this approach, as it makes the world we build way more lively and consistent. So, it became clear that the way forward was to use that style to redo the Main Menu title screen which you will be welcomed by on the release of 42 Stable. This will only be the first iteration of the Main Menu, seeing as we have lots of ideas to make it better and more interactive. Alongside 42’s spawn map and and front-end UI improvements, this is just one part of a more global effort to make the start of a game less austere and more immersive. We hope you’ll like it! - The Art Department, The Indie Stone
These are just some of the new and revamped locations in Knox Country. Anywhere look familiar? Beware of spoilers!
The Block of Italicised Text would like to direct your attention to the PZ Wiki should you feel like editing or amending something. You can also find us on Bluesky, on our Discord, Reddit and Forums. If you fancy, sign up to receive PZ blogs like this in your email right here.
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This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Project Zomboid, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Project Zomboid statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.