Build 42 Recipes — Every Crafting Table Verified on 42.20

Build 42 rebuilt crafting around research, workstations, and recipe knowledge, which means most Build 41 recipe memory is now actively misleading. This page maps every recipe category that exists on stable 42.20, gives verified recipe tables for the highest-demand skills (cooking, blacksmithing, survival, and farm support), and flags what changed since Build 41. Everything below was checked against PZwiki pages current to the 42.18–42.20 era on 2026-08-04.

How crafting works in Build 42

You open the crafting menu with B. A recipe completes only when all of the following line up: ingredients (tools count as ingredients but are returned), recipe knowledge if required, the skill level, and the correct workstation or surface when one is needed. Some recipes also need sufficient light, and every recipe takes a set amount of time during which you stand still. Some repair recipes can fail and damage ingredients.

Recipes are learned four ways:

• Occupations and traits chosen at character creation
• Recipe magazines and schematics (the old literature category was split — skill books and recipe resources are now separate loot pools)
• Researching reference items — many tools and weapons can be reverse-engineered from the item itself
• Auto-learning from skill levels — e.g., the makeshift fishing rod unlocks at Fishing 4 or Carving 4

Build 42 crafting skill categories

The crafting skills on 42.20, per the current skill navbox:

Blacksmithing, Carving, Glassmaking, Knapping, Masonry, Pottery, Welding, Animal Care, Butchering, and Tracking did not exist in Build 41 — anything "new" in your crafting menu comes from these.

Cooking recipes and the evolved recipe system

Cooking still runs on evolved recipes: you start from a base item (soup, stew, pie, cake, sandwich) and add ingredients. Skill makes each ingredient go further:

From level 7 you can safely use small amounts of rotten food. Poisoning is part of the system too: evolved recipes with 3+ ingredients can carry bleach or other poisons, and higher cooking levels both detect poison more easily and hide your own better.

Representative cooking recipes verified on the current skill page:

Jarring matters because it is one of the few power-free preservation routes in the build.

Blacksmithing recipes (the new forge path)

Blacksmithing is the deepest new chain. Every recipe burns charcoal-family fuel (wood charcoal, charcoal, or coke) and needs metal — iron and steel are interchangeable in some recipes but the game distinguishes them in many. Verified stations and recipes:

Workstations

Core recipe verbs (from the verified recipe tables)

First blacksmithing level, verified: burn logs to charcoal, get crude tongs or tongs, then forge small iron bands at a primitive forge with scavenged metal and a hammer — no blacksmithing level required, 10 XP each. Casting uses ceramic molds and crucibles, so pottery feeds this chain directly. The Blacksmith occupation starts at level 4; the Blacksmith Knowledge trait gives +2.

Survival recipes: fishing, trapping, foraging

Verified survival recipes from the current Fishing page:

Note the last line: filleting trains Butchering, not Cooking — a real shift from Build 41.

Farm support recipes: disease cures and compost

Agriculture links directly to crafting. Crop disease cures (all need an empty gardening spray can; require the Farmer occupation, Gardener trait, or Kentucky Farmer magazines, auto at Agriculture 6):

Composters (Carpentry 3 to build, or found in backyards) convert stale/rotten food and poppies into compost over two in-game weeks. Animal droppings feed the same loop.

What changed from Build 41: recipes edited, moved, or gated

• Recipes that once needed only "item + right-click" now often need a workstation, surface, reference item, tool sharpness, or recipe knowledge — a blocked craft is usually one of those five.
• Literature was split into skill books and recipe resources, so loot tuning changed what books spawn.
• VHS skill tapes expanded to Aiming, Animal Care, Blacksmithing, Electrical, First Aid, Knapping, Pottery, Tailoring, and Welding (community-reported list from the B41 veterans' guide).
• Molotov crafting changed enough that old recipe memory is slightly off (community-reported).
• Composters can keep worm reproduction going through winter indoors (community-reported from later 42.x patch notes).

For browsing live recipe chains, the community tools hub at pzfans.com runs dedicated B42 crafting-table, crafting-chain, blacksmithing, and metalworking calculators — useful for planning stations before you haul materials home.

Verified on 42.20 · Last checked 2026-08-04

Facts on this page come from PZwiki's Crafting, Cooking, Blacksmithing, Fishing, Agriculture, and Animal Care pages (each stamped 42.11–42.18 at check time) plus the Build 42 feature list, cross-checked against the stable 42.20.0 release of July 29, 2026. Claims marked community-reported come from the Steam "B41 Veterans' Guide to Build 42" and could shift in hotfixes — re-check after any patch.