The Indie Stone will release Build 42, the next major version of survival game Project Zomboid, on July 29. The studio calls it one of the broadest updates in the game's long development history, and it arrives after roughly two years of work alongside a series of smaller unstable beta releases.
Project Zomboid has been in early access since 2013, which makes the gap between full builds less unusual than it might otherwise look. Build 42 is the first version in some time to gather the studio's in-progress systems into a single stable release.
What Build 42 adds
- The official debut of animal husbandry
- Revised and expanded crafting and building systems
- New and reworked areas to explore
- Extra backstory to uncover in the world
- An improved lighting system
- A general tidying of the menus and interface
The crafting and building changes are the broadest of the set, described as ranging from short-term fixes through to more ambitious attempts at self-sufficiency. The Indie Stone said further detail on those systems will follow closer to release.
Build 42 has been a huge undertaking for the team, and we are all incredibly grateful to the community for sticking with us: testing, surviving, dying, and then doing it all again, while providing valuable feedback all along the way.
Existing saves will not carry over
Players with runs in progress should plan around one significant caveat. In a Steam post the developers cautioned that existing Build 41 saves will not be compatible with Build 42, so any current character or settlement will not survive the transition.
Anyone who would rather keep playing their existing save can stay on the older version by opting into a dedicated beta channel named legacy41, which The Indie Stone is keeping available alongside the new build.
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