Build 42 vs Build 41 — Complete Change List for 42.20

Build 42 "Expanded Crafting and Balance" ran as an unstable branch from December 17, 2024 and went stable as 42.20.0 on July 29, 2026 — roughly forty versions of changes between. This is the consolidated change list: what's new, renamed, rebalanced, or removed versus Build 41, organized by system. Core facts come from PZwiki's Build 42 page and skill navboxes; balance specifics from the Steam "B41 Veterans' Guide to Build 42" are marked community-reported. Checked 2026-08-04.

New skills: ten systems that didn't exist

B41 had ten skills; B42 has twenty. Verified skill list on 42.20:

New occupations follow: Blacksmith, Welder, Tailor, Rancher, Burger Flipper, and Construction Worker join the roster, and Build 42.16 ran a full occupation balance pass with further tweaks in 42.18 and 42.19.

Trait changes: added, renamed, removed

• New: Crafty (crafting XP; conflicts with Fast/Slow Learner), Mason, Inventive (recipe research), Artisan (pottery/glass), Tinkerer (+1 Maintenance), Target Shooter (+1 Aiming), Sewer, Whittler; Motion Sensitive was added mid-cycle (community-reported).
• Renamed: Wilderness Knowledge became Bushcrafter, absorbing the bow-drill fire-starting bonus that Outdoorsy lost.
• Removed (per the wiki's current markers): Lucky, Unlucky, Marksman, Patient, Brooding, Hypochondriac, Gift of the Gab, Hardened Drinker, Light Drinker.
• Rebalanced: Smoker landed at +3 (not B41's +4); Cat's Eyes and Wakeful cost more; First Aider and Iron Gut cost less; Desensitized now also grants discomfort immunity (community-reported).

Moodles: what moved on the status bar

Current moodle set adds Hyperthermia, Hypothermia, Windchill, Heavy load, Stressed, and Pain to the classic lineup. Angry and Hungover were removed; Fear, Morale, and Sanity are flagged as future work in the wiki's own navbox. Expect thermal management to matter more than it ever did in B41.

Crafting and forging: the core of the update

• Five new crafting systems: pottery, blacksmithing, stone working, brewing, and weapon crafting, each with its own workstations (furnaces, forges, anvils, kilns, grindstones, pottery wheels).
• Recipes now gate on knowledge: magazines and schematics, research from reference items, skill auto-learns, and workstation/surface requirements.
• Literature split into skill books vs recipe resources; VHS tapes expanded to Aiming, Animal Care, Blacksmithing, Electrical, First Aid, Knapping, Pottery, Tailoring, Welding (community-reported list).
• Weapon parts system: handles and heads track condition separately, blades track sharpness, and broken weapons serve as temporary options or spare parts.
• Fluid system: a global fluid registry, transfer between containers, mixed drinks and concoctions.
• A new cleaning system and double-click emergency actions arrived with the polish pass.

Animals, farming, and fishing overhauls

• Animals: first interactable animals — cows (three breeds), sheep (three breeds), chickens (two breeds), pigs, turkeys, plus wild deer, rabbits, raccoons, rats, and mice. Livestock zones, troughs, breeding genetics with dominant/recessive alleles, and Butchering as a dedicated skill.
• Farming: renamed Agriculture; 56 crops with planting seasons, bad months, curses, moon-phase health, and four diseases (see our farming guide). The disease "Devil's Water Fungi" was renamed aphids.
• Fishing: procedural fish schools reacting to noise, chum attraction, 21 new species in the data, tension minigame, and filleting moved to Butchering.
• Foraging feeds production chains: clay, flint, dogbane, limestone, fiber plants, and biome/weather-dependent finds.

Combat, health, and firearms (community-reported)

• Muscle strain limits sustained melee; heavy clothing causes discomfort tied to stress.
• Firearms: body-part damage matters more (headshots up, limb hits down); shotguns no longer grant aiming XP per pellet; jamming reduced with sandbox multipliers; .223 folded out, with the varmint-rifle side moving to 5.56 in 42.14.
• Health: pain fixes, fall-damage tuning, corpse sickness as a persistent threat — gas masks and respirators protect with draining filters; chamomile, honey, or mint hot drinks help flu recovery.

Map, zombies, and world

• Underground play: basements, bunkers, panic rooms, and taller buildings once the height limit was lifted.
• Knox Country expanded with three new towns plus borderless wilderness generation; automatic foraging zones and biomes.
• New challenge map "Many years later" for post-apocalypse crafting survival.
• Zombie population follows a generated heat map with a noise layer; fences bend and break; an option lets zombies open doors.

Loot, vehicles, and power

• Apocalypse individual loot moved 0.4 → 0.6 during unstable (42.10); loot follows place identity — police storage, ranches, themed rooms, work vehicles, safehouses, and survivor stories all carry progression now.
• Generator variants (premium, standard, loud cheap ValuTech, loudest old) with different noise and degradation; default radius 20 tiles and 3 vertical levels; fuel is a fluid — siphoning needs a hose, jerry cans hold 20 L, open containers evaporate.

Engine, audio, and multiplayer

New lighting with ambient bounce, a 3D depth buffer enabling interaction with furniture from all sides, better chunk caching, adaptive soundtrack, four male and four female voice options, an official mod manager, and high-resolution UI. Multiplayer arrived mid-unstable with server-side item ownership and support for far-future "Alexandria Years" servers.

What did NOT change

Permadeath, sandbox customization, Knox County's core geography, and co-op persistence remain. The game is still Early Access — not 1.0.

Verified on 42.20 · Last checked 2026-08-04

Feature lists and version dates: PZwiki Build 42 page (stable July 29, 2026). Skills/traits/moodle status: current wiki navboxes. Combat/health/loot balance specifics: community-reported via the veterans' guide and may shift with hotfixes.