With the release of Build 42.20 for Project Zomboid, survivors are met with new ways to endure the zombie-infested region known as Knox Country. Enhanced lighting makes Knox Country feel more immersive, while randomized building interiors, procedural basements, and other world-generation improvements help ensure adventures are always unique. So, keep reading to learn what to expect from Project Zomboid 42.20 with its patch notes and all the big changes arriving in the Stable launch of Build 42!

Project Zomboid Build 42.20 Patch Notes: All New Features in the Build 42 Stable Release

Project Zomboid Build 42.20 for the Stable branch delivers significant changes across the board. It refreshes many aspects of the game’s core survival experience, ranging from the world itself and its inhabitants to how players interact with it all. It also marks the arrival of Project Zomboid Build 42 on Stable, and as a result, brings the game's biggest overhaul in its history to the players who weren't testing the progress on Unstable along the way. Below is a quick rundown of many of the new features included in the Project Zomboid Build 42.20 patch notes, as well as the arrival of Build 42 to the Stable branch:

• Map Size Doubled: The Project Zomboid playable map has doubled in size, ensuring survivors have plenty more locations to explore and loot!
• Lighting Overhaul: Light now realistically bounces off walls and leaks through windows and doors, with a complete pass reflecting 1990s-era bulbs that make nights darker and significantly more dangerous.
• Ragdolls: Zombies now physically ragdoll when struck by vehicles, gunfire, or explosive damage.
• Major Town Overhauls: Riverside, West Point, Rosewood, Fallas Lake, Muldraugh, Ekron, and Dixie have all been significantly upgraded with 1,400 unique buildings, 20,000 new tiles, consistent landscaping, and idiosyncratic town-specific styles.
• Basements & Skyscrapers: Technical improvements to height limits now allow for underground bunkers, panic rooms, and Wayne's World-style sets under houses, alongside up to 32 zombie-filled floors in Louisville skyscrapers.
• New Towns: Knox Country expands with three new towns: Ekron, Irvington, and Brandenburg. There’s also a new Wild West tourist town, a docked steamboat, a racetrack, a huge lakeside guesthouse, and an abandoned sanatorium.
• Randomized Wilderness: The map's edges now feature huge expanses of randomized wilderness, allowing players to leave civilization entirely behind and live deep in the forest.
• Randomized Interior Details: Interior doors and lights are now randomized for tactical decision-making; some houses may already be looted and trashed, and players can finally remove grime from their walls.
• Animal Husbandry: Players can find and care for domestic animals such as sheep, chickens, pigs, and cows to produce meat, leather, eggs, manure, and milk as part of sustainable, long-term survival.
• Animal Hunting: Wild animals, such as rats, rabbits, and deer, can be tracked by droppings and paw prints, making hunting a viable survival technique required for advanced late-game crafting recipes.
• Raccoons: The game’s mascot finally appears in Knox Country. However, Spiffo the Raccoon will be upset if you make a hat out of his cousin.
• Seasonal Farming & New Crops: Farming introduces new crops like Corn, Peas, Tobacco, and herbs like Rosemary. The plants have realistic growth times and optimal planting months. There are also farming implements for pulling stumps and scything grass.
• Fishing Revamp: Fishing is now more interactive than before, with visual splashes indicating fish density, fish that react to nearby noise, and the ability to craft chum to attract them to a specific area.
• Zombie Distribution: A new spawn map system uses "Voronoi Noise," creating more urban-focused, natural-feeling hordes with believably random distribution across the Exclusion Zone.
• Seed Saving: World seeds now determine generated elements like basements, zombie distribution, and wilderness borders. Saving these values is possible and can be shared for consistent layouts across different save files.
• New Game Modes: The revamped game modes include the canon "Apocalypse," a faster-progressing "Outbreak," a cozier "Rising," and an unforgiving hellscape called "Extinction."
• New Challenges: Returning challenges like "A Really CD DA" and "Winter is Coming" are updated. The update also adds two new challenges: “Top of the World,” which spawns the character at the top of a skyscraper, and “28 Seconds Later,” a world seed filled with sprinting zombies.
• Expanded Sandbox Options: Custom Sandbox now lets you spawn in any Exclusion Zone town of your choice, tweak new features like animals and basements, and find nuanced options for loot spawning and zombie behavior.
• Crafting Improvements: Crafting inputs are now selectable, recipes can be searched by input or output items, and players can craft multiple items at once or use intelligent right-click shortcuts when conditions are met.
• Weapon Parts/Heads: Some melee weapons now track Handle and Head Conditions separately, along with blade Sharpness, allowing heads to fall off while broken spears remain usable as weaker wooden clubs.
• New Skills & Outputs: Project Zomboid Build 42 greatly expands crafting with new disciplines including Masonry, Carving, Knapping, Blacksmithing, and more. These systems are complemented by new occupations, traits, recipes, and progression paths.
• Workstations: A new workstation system interfaces with crafting to create items, utilizing a variety of constructible or findable surfaces and devices found throughout the world.
• Occupation & Trait Revamp: Occupations and traits have been heavily rebalanced for fairer gameplay with more starting skill levels, with new options like Rancher, Artisan, Target Shooter, and Tinkerer.
• Aiming System: A new firearm aiming system allows precise location targeting on zombies, rewarding careful aim while still reflecting your character's panic, stress, and aiming skill state.
• Revamped Guns: Firearms have been completely overhauled with new 3D models, animations, muzzle effects, ammunition types, and SFX. Additional guns have also been added to the game’s library, including the L92 Lever Action Rifle and JS-3T Tactical Shotgun.
• New Clothing Items: Hundreds of new clothing items have been added, including Halloween masks, SWAT uniforms, eccentric headwear, and dozens of craftable armor pieces for outfitting or combat.
• New Containers: Build 42 also adds dozens of new containers, such as sticker-covered backpacks, trauma bags, and craftable satchels. There are also tents and sleeping bags that can be attached to backpacks.
• 3D Item Placement: Inventory items can now be placed at any position within a tile via a 3D placement system. Players can also hang guns or crafted melee weapons on walls to decorate their bases.
• Pack Into Cartons: Items like canned food, boxes of nails, and ammo can be packed into single carton items for more efficient storage and stacking, or found pre-packed while looting.
• Liquid Mixing: A new liquid transfer system enables advanced mixtures and more storage options for all fluids, including the ability to mix a bucket of whiskey with bleach.
• Dynamic Music: The Project Zomboid OST has been reworked into an adaptive exploration soundtrack, with a music intensity parameter that adjusts in real time based on in-game events.
• Character Vocals: Beyond coughing and sneezing, your character now audibly reacts to situations, including carrying heavy loads, states of sadness, or being wounded, and vocal calls have been added to communicate.
• Official Mod Manager: The new built-in mod manager allows searching, favoriting, setting load order, viewing dependencies/incompatibilities, and saving/sharing Mod Presets via your clipboard.
• Refreshed Menus: UI now scales better on large-resolution monitors. Also, the map selection screen features a beautiful Knox Country map from the Art Director for better starting-location planning.
• Multiplayer Screens: The server browser has been vastly improved with options to show/hide modded, full, or empty servers, and to sort servers by Ping and Player Count.
• Controller Improvements: Gamepads are now fully customizable, with any action bindable to any button or axis, stored in shareable presets, and actions can even be activated by portions of a 2D axis for variable-speed control.
• Additional Lore: Hundreds of new readable flyers, newspapers, book titles, vehicle liveries, TV/radio stations, annotated maps, and decorative items add extensive environmental storytelling and mysteries to uncover.
• Multiplayer Features: The inventory system and all Timed Actions have been moved to the Project Zomboid server. Clients now only run visuals, ensuring better fairness and preventing desyncs and stuck-animation bugs.
• Anti-Cheat Suite: A full anti-cheat suite covering Speed, Hit, NoClip, Inventory, and more has been enabled on top of the server-side reworks for secure multiplayer.