Best Features Coming To Project Zomboid In Build 42

Summary

• Build 42 overhaul features include animals, farming upgrades, and new crafting methods.
• Project Zomboid’s Build 42 to introduce skyscrapers, expanded lore, better gunplay, and dynamic exploration music.
• Changes in Project Zomboid’s Build 42 include new towns, wilderness mode, refined nighttime atmosphere, and interactive reading material.

Project Zomboid fans have been waiting patiently for build 42, which promises a slew of excellent features that will improve the game. Usually, players are excited about new updates as they add new content and a few QoL fixes, but build 42 can be considered a game overhaul.

Build 42 will bring engine upgrades, a reworked crafting system, the addition of animals, farming improvements, and lots of game polish. The modding community is also excited as they will have new content to make excellent mods with. There are lots of features coming in build 42, but this list will only cover the most interesting ones.

Updated December 13, 2024 by Aly Azmy: With build 42 inching closer to launch, the developers have teased more of the releasing features. This list has been updated to add the most relevant additions coming with the anticipated update.

Build 42 might launch just before Christmas and players will have many new features to play with. The new features vary from polished towns, new items, new animations, and tweaked zombie spawns. Build 42 will reignite the passion for the game to many players and the update is packed with features to hold interest for a long time.

1 Animals

What’s New: Wild & Farm Animals

Single-player worlds can get hauntingly lonely as players have no companions, aside from zombies. While Build 42 does not add NPCs, having animals keep players company will alleviate the feeling of isolation. The animals will also increase the diversity of food options by allowing players to obtain fresh eggs, milk, and meat.

The animals will range from domestic farm animals such as sheep and chickens to wild animals like deer. Animals must be tracked by their paw prints or droppings to find them. Animals will give lots of character to player builds by having populated pens next to their base.

2 Farming

What’s New: More Crops, QoL Changes & Growing Seasons

Currently, farming in Project Zomboid is basic compared to many other farming simulator games and will receive a significant upgrade in Build 42. Farming players will now have to add regular weeding to their crops and worry about slugs and snails in their gardens. With the introduction of animals, players can use chickens to handle a slug invasion.

Some logical features are added including the ability to plant potatoes by just using a potato, removing the need for constantly needing potato seeds. Growing seasons will be added and planting crops outside of their optimal season will result in a reduced harvest.

3 New Heights

What’s New: Skyscrapers

Thanks to the engine upgrade, Project Zomboid will now be capable of new possibilities due to improved optimization. This improvement will vastly increase the limits of buildings and give shockingly large buildings that would totally transform the landscape.

A skyscraper filled with zombies sounds exciting, but be sure to grab the best guns before exploring one of these buildings. Be sure to remember the way out as a 32-floor skyscraper can become confusing to navigate.

4 Map Changes

What’s New: New Towns, Remote Areas & Basements

Knox Country is already overwhelmingly large for new players to fully explore, but older players will be overjoyed with the addition of new areas in Build 42. The map will receive three new towns and several smaller areas of interest to add more life to Knox Country.

The new towns will be less dense than Louisville and will come with many unique areas to explore. The new areas will add new unique vehicles that are town-specific, giving players something rare to collect from each area. Buildings will have basements added, giving players a safe area to store even more of their valuable loot.

5 Crafting System Upgrade

What’s New: Blacksmithing, Drying Rack, Mill & Primitive Crafting

The crafting system is getting an overhaul in Build 42. Weapons will have separate durability for the handle and weapon head and a sharpness indicator that will need occasional topping off at a whetstone. New crafting methods will be added, which introduce metal forging, stoneworking, pottery, and breweries.

Players can now craft new workstations, including a drying rack, a quern-stone, and a mill. A tree stump and workspace boulder will naturally spawn, which gives access to primitive crafting. Blacksmithing will be added, which will be used to craft higher-quality melee weapons, such as spears.

6 Dynamic Background Music

What’s New: Dynamic Exploration Music

Build 41 added dynamic action music that plays while fighting zombies, and it does an excellent job of ramping up the game’s intensity. Build 42 aims to add dynamic music outside of combat, as players aren’t fighting zeds most of the time.

This new change will give Project Zomboid more life during the less active moments when players quietly explore areas and loot. Timed exploration music is a staple of many games and will now be added to Project Zomboid.

7 New Wilderness

Build 42 has a surprise for wilderness players. The game will feature a new mode that will generate a map consisting of a complete wilderness without any towns or roads. This change will also replace the black borders surrounding the map with a large wilderness to explore.

The wilderness will have procedural generation and will result in more outdoor diversity. Be sure not to get too relaxed in the great outdoors as the threat of zombies is always looming around the bushes.

8 Visual & Engine Changes

What’s New: Lighting Upgrade & Performance Improvements

The aesthetics of Project Zomboid are far from its strongest selling point, as the game matches The Sims 1, which was released in 2000. The lighting system is receiving an upgrade that will allow light to bounce off walls, blend better through doors, and shine through windows.

A new rendering system will rework the game to improve performance while also looking better. Players who have performance issues with Project Zomboid might want to give it another try after this update.

9 Character Voices

What’s New: 8 Voice Types

Gamers will no longer play as a stereotypical silent protagonist as Build 42 adds player voices. During character creation, players will have 8 voices to pick from and these can be heard during gameplay actions. The gameplay actions vary from swinging weapons to panting.

Coughs and sneezes will now emit noise, as well as the preset character yells. The character will no longer be mute while swinging a massive sledgehammer. While this is a small change, it all builds up to increase the immersion of Project Zomboid.

10 Improved Gun Play

What’s New: Better Shooting Mechanics

The game’s standard gun mechanics will likely change, but they will receive slight tweaks to make them more realistic. Gunplay improvements are unclear but are rumored to include shooting variables based on weather, lighting, and character well-being. Tired, injured, or depressed characters may receive shooting penalties.

With the new lighting system and increased nighttime darkness, using guns at night may no longer be advisable. Players may be rewarded for shooting in clear weather conditions, a lit environment, and an energized survivor. A backup melee weapon is a must-have for cases where shooting conditions are poor.

11 Polishing Older Areas

What’s New: POI Overhaul

Older towns still deserve attention and will get a major glow-up in build 42. Muldraugh is receiving changes to buildings that will liven up the area and make it prettier and less bland. Vents will be added atop buildings, more lights and windows will utilize the new lighting engine and more color will be displayed throughout buildings.

The glow-up will target buildings like schools, police stations, and libraries. The tweaked engine allows for taller buildings with more detail than ever before.

12 Darkness

What’s New: Changed Night Time Atmosphere

Nighttime will become a hurdle players will have to face. Darkness will cover more at night and players will need to add a flashlight to their toolkit if they do not want to get caught in a bad spot. To reflect this change, flashlights will illuminate more and have a proper place in the game. Gamers will no longer need mods that buff flashlights.

Players will have to rely on streetlights and other niche light sources to get by until they secure a flashlight with batteries. The change of zombie spawn locations and the nighttime changes will significantly affect how gamers move around at night in Project Zomboid.

13 Zombie Heatmap

What’s New: Fine-Tuning Zombie Spawns

Project Zomboid aims to strike a balance between realistic and fun when it comes to zombie placement. In Build 42, the spawns will have a bit more reason for them now, and will now focus more on areas of interest and will spawn less in empty areas. Areas of interest include homes, stores, and parked cars. The empty roads should be more devoid of the undead.

The new system has not yet been finalized and may receive future adjustments once more players can test the new feature. The developers were careful to keep difficulty settings in mind, meaning players should not notice the game being any easier or harder due to the changes to the zombie heatmap.

14 New Reading Material

What’s New: Immersive Tips

Despite its graphics, Project Zomboid gets quite immersive with the depth its gameplay provides. One jarring experience that breaks this immersion is the need to tab out to find specific locations, or generally needing direction as a new player. With new reading material being added, players will find that it provides a gentle nudge to lead them to points of interest.

The new material will be flyers that can be found in mailboxes and other suitable spots. The flyers will be visible to the player and will contain text and images ranging from helpful information to spam.

15 New Animations

What’s New: Seated Animations and Corpse Dragging

Not every action in Project Zomboid has an animation, and while many mods remedy this situation, having it covered in vanilla is a great benefit to have. The biggest animation change that will impact immersion is corpse dragging. Currently, sticking an entire body into a backpack and dropping it out of thin air does break immersion.

Corpse dragging will be added to the game and will make Project Zomboid truly feel like a zombie survival game. New seated animations will also be implemented, giving players time to relax after a stressful day of surviving.

16 Expanded Lore

What’s New: More Story

To take advantage of the new reading material, the game’s lore will have new content for players to delve into. The lore can be read from newspapers, flyers, TV channels, and radio. Gamers seeking out the lore will have new lore to find, while those not interested will not be affected at all.

Players can now read a newspaper, while their character utilizes the new seated animations. While waiting for the update, players should begin reading up on all the current lore or playing games similar to Project Zomboid in preparation for the biggest update for the game.

17 Item increase

What’s New: More Components

With the upcoming crafting update, the looting table is increasing in items across the board. Gamers will have more clothes to pick from, new containers to loot, more weapons to use, and many new world objects to clutter the world.

World objects will increase the already varied loot pool, giving an even more immersive looting experience akin to an actual zombie apocalypse. The biggest downside to this change is that sorting items will be harder. As a positive, the new containers might be used to create better storage systems for players to use.