Main innovations of version 42.5.0
In March 2025, the Project Zomboid team released an unstable build on branch 42, bringing balance changes and meaningful improvements that can alter how players approach survival. This article surveys the key changes and explains how they affect play in a zombie apocalypse setting.
Note: Patch notes can be lengthy. This piece focuses on the highlights worth knowing for practical play.
Raccet
Bears have been added as small players in the world, altering the rhythm of encounters. They mostly stumble through shelters, leaving waste and scavenging for food, and they can even be coaxed into close contact. For players in need of extra resources, these animals can be hunted for leather or fur to support crafting, though they can also pose a risk to shelter safety if not approached carefully.
Flyers
Five new leaflets are now available for study, guiding players toward valuable locations for sourcing materials and expanding the range of viable spawn points for supplies.
Metal armor
Metal armor has finally become a feature of the game. The update accelerates preparation for blacksmithing and forging, introducing missing recipes such as working with welded scrap and a shovel tip. These additions broaden the crafting toolkit and help players ready themselves for the demands of the Zombie Apocalypse era.
New Bows
Two new tree types, Lake and River, have been added to the game world, enriching the landscape and broadening opportunities for exploration and study. These additions bring new research avenues and environmental variety to the map.
Food production tables
Food production tables now focus on wild plants, herbs, insects, and crops that yield seeds. This is particularly useful for farm and greenhouse owners who rely on diverse yields to sustain communities.
Artifacts
A new category called Artifacts appears outside urban areas. These rare finds add excitement for explorers and researchers who chase unique items with unusual stories and potential uses.
Spontaneous screwdriver
Improvised screwdrivers, usable for vessels and makeshift repairs, have been added. This tool serves as a practical alternative for repairs and carpentry, helping players who prefer on‑the‑spot fixes and efficient construction.
Firewood
The game now features bundles of firewood and firewood with nails that burn longer than standard wood. Players can chop branches or trunks to obtain firewood and collect wooden chips that help start fires more reliably.
New traditional recipes
New vessel-related items include cut wooden cups, a machete-like knife, wooden rods, and metal components. The patch also introduces recipes for processing and forging metal products, with the option to work with precious metals such as silver and gold jewelry to craft items of value.
Coin
Gold and silver coins have been introduced, though they are not yet craftable. They can be used with precious metals to forge plates that become useful materials for crafting and trade in the future.
New functions
Beyond new gear, several functions were added to the game, including enhanced animations, refined animal behavior, and an adjustable interface scale. These enhancements aim to improve immersion and control in the survival cycle.
Support for the controller
Controller support has been significantly improved. Players can access traditional menus, manage trailers, and use carcass-cutting hooks more effectively. Compatibility with workbenches, a liquid pump, and related systems is now easier, making the game more accessible to a wider audience.
New animations
New animations and sound effects heighten realism. Smooth transitions from running to aiming, generator operation sounds, chair interactions, and the opening or closing of wooden gates—all contribute to a more believable world. Even chicken sounds have been refreshed for a more vivid farm ambience.
Interface scaling
The side panel elements can now be scaled through settings, which helps players on higher-resolution screens enjoy a better-aligned user interface.
Animal behavior
Animals now recognize water bodies such as rivers, lakes, and ponds and will drink when in their habitat. Building enclosures near water is recommended to simplify care. Behavior has been refined, with more diverse and realistic eating patterns and social interactions observed in the field.
The car alarm sound
A script option lets players replace the standard alarm with an alternative sound when alarms are triggered. If no custom sound is chosen, the default beep remains.
Rain collectors
Rain collectors can be filled with water even when players are away from shelter. The previous requirement to be present inside a shelter is no longer necessary. It remains to be seen whether this change affects cattle water systems as well.
Improvement of bonfires
Bonfires now have greater capacity, enabling more effective water treatment when needed and making the process easier to manage.
Changes in cutting animals
Meat quality and yield decline over time after an animal is killed. Leaving a carcass unattended for too long reduces the meat value. Using a vehicle to remove an animal also lowers the total meat quantity and quality gained from the carcass.
New skills
The patch adds three new skills: Mason, Inventor, and Craftsman. Mason offers two levels in brickwork, Inventor reduces the requirements for research skill levels, and Craftsman provides one level in glass and earthenware. These additions expand character development paths and specialties.
Balance changes
The update adjusts experience gains to influence how characters advance. Notable changes include greater XP from stone masonry, different XP scales for stone blocks, stones wheels, and anvil work, and revised XP for fishing and research topics. If a weapon lacks experience in a skill, a warning prompts players to adjust actions and avoid wasted effort. Building plates now yield more experience, encouraging construction over dismantling facilities.
These balance tweaks aim to streamline early-game progression while keeping crafting and construction meaningful and rewarding.
Changes in weapons
Weapon crafting and balance were refined to reflect their handcrafted nature. Production is more demanding, wooden clubs are weaker, and large stone axes require more resources or higher skill levels to craft.
Plunder buildings
Looted buildings now present clearer signs of intrusion: bottom-floor windows remain unlocked to facilitate entry, doors and ground-floor windows are commonly damaged, and litter and corpses signal recent activity. Looting of deeper basement levels is reduced in relation to the number of underground floors, making lower levels safer and less destroyed.
New Spawn Objects
Spawn objects are being expanded. Improvised hammers and similar tools can be found in farm barns, garages, and occasionally in vehicle wrecks, giving players early access to basic weapons and repair options without extensive searching.
Buffs and Debuffs
Mechanical adjustments affect mood and stress management. When mood or accident reaches a peak, actions can yield twice the usual impact. This raises the importance of maintaining a balanced state and careful planning in character management.
Error corrections
The update includes numerous fixes, including overlay issues on different vehicle models, a fixed liquid-transmission problem, wear on cutting tools, proper dehydration logic for thirst, correct defrosting of frozen items, rain handling in containers, capped pain at 100, labels for poisonous plants, avoidance of character getting stuck, and performance improvements from inventory and object handling optimization.