Project Zomboid

We released 42.21 into our Unstable beta last Wednesday, and extend our thanks to the community for checking it over and kicking the tires!

If you’ve just seen your game updating and want to know what’s new, then read on below. Full patchnotes however can be found here.

Going forward, this should be the standard procedure for all releases; a new update goes to Unstable, it’s tested by you, we potentially make more changes, and ultimately the release goes to Stable.

In this instance the community did not report any major issues, so the ‘Go’ button is being pressed… today.

Main Stuff

• We have tackled the worst offending bugs when it came to issues of zombie duplication in MP, and issues in which zombies would disappear after a player left and re-entered a “chunk” of the game world in both SP and MP. These issues were particularly obvious in larger zombie population games and as such impacted a lot of our hardcore players. You should find your game much improved on this count, although there are still some instances of this which we have on our radar and will be fixed in our next update.

• A common piece of feedback since the launch of B42 Stable has been the new ‘XXL trees’ occasionally getting in the way of the player - especially when driving. 42.21 contains changes to the XXL tree cutaway behaviour: they now cutaway better for players in vehicles, they no longer hide houses and furniture they overhang, and their overall transparency has been adjusted for better overall visibility. The work in 42.21 will make your life easier, but is a work in progress and will receive more love in future.

• In 42.20.4 the “loadstring” and “loadstream” lua methods were disabled to help address security vulnerabilities. After investigating further into the security issue, we’ve decided to re-enable those commands. Sorry for the disruption, modders/server admins!

Plus, clearly, much more. As mentioned, the full changelist can be found here on the Indie Stone forums.

Big Thanks

While we have your attention we also wanted to extend our thanks to Scribl (Boris) and Rasmus Moorats (nnsee) for their aid in flagging security vulnerabilities that were fixed in 42.20.4.

We are endlessly grateful to those who help keep the Project Zomboid community a healthier and happier place.

Got feedback? Found a bug?

If you’d like to give us feedback on the 42.21 update, feel free to do so via the Indie Stone forums.

If you find a bug, please read this first, then post the bug on our forums.

Please note if you post bug reports anywhere else - especially via Discord - then your report will likely get lost and may not be investigated.

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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.

As always, discussions regarding this update can be found pinned to the Project Zomboid Discussions Forums here.

Project Zomboid build 42.21 includes balance changes and bug fixes aplenty, as The Indie Stone chases a more regular stable patch rollout.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Project Zomboid is "trying to move faster" as a new update fixes vanishing zombie hordes