Project Zomboid Build 42.22 Pre-Release: Ladders, Crowbars, and the New Pre-Release Branch

The Indie Stone renamed the Unstable branch to Pre-Release because the old name was confusing players, especially after the long history of Unstable in Build

42. The change is a rename with a promise attached, not just a new label. From now on, every new update goes to the Pre-Release branch first, is tested there for at least one week, and only then moves to Stable. The one exception is urgent hotfixes, which may go directly to Stable. For the average player, the studio says, this changes absolutely nothing: keep playing on the default Stable branch, currently 42.21, while Pre-Release goes through final vetting. The branch exists for three groups: modders, multiplayer server admins, and players who are willing to test and break things before they go live to the broader public. The point of the week in Pre-Release is to find issues and to give server admins and modders a chance to look under the hood at upcoming changes. If testing turns up bugs that need another revision, The Indie Stone will ship one and keep players informed through the forums, Reddit, and Discord. How to opt in: back up any Project Zomboid save games you want to come back to first, then right-click Project Zomboid in your Steam Library, select Properties, and under Game Versions and Betas choose Pre-Release. That is the whole procedure, and the backup is the step that matters. The full patch notes add the same warning in practical terms: existing saves on 42.21 should not be affected, but if you want to test 42.22 with an existing save, back it up manually first, and if you report a bug, reproduce it on a fresh save with no mods installed.

Ladders are the first headline change, and the studio calls this the first rung of implementation. In 42.22 you can interact with ladders placed on the map: walk close to one and press the default E key, or use the right-click menu on the ladder tile. That covers the ladders scattered across Knox Country, including the ones the blog singles out: the top floor of the Rosewood Fire Station, and the ladders around empty pools. The joke in the announcement is that you can now be a little less fearful around empty pools, which is also a practical hint: a pool ladder is now an escape route, not decoration.

Three limits matter. First, ladders are fixed in place across Knox Country in this build; any ladders you previously moved should stay in their moved position after the update, but you cannot pick up and place new ones as a mechanic yet. Second, zombies cannot climb ladders, which is what makes a ladder a real escape: the patch notes say so directly, and then add the sensible warning to check below for lurking zombies before you come back down. Third, this is a first implementation, and The Indie Stone is explicitly asking Pre-Release players to climb up and down every ladder they find and report the ones that do not work. If a ladder in your corner of Knox Country does nothing, that is a bug report, not a feature you missed.

The second headline change is the one players have requested for years. A crowbar is no longer just a weapon and a dismantling tool. In 42.22, with a crowbar equipped or carried in your inventory, the right-click menu on certain door, window, and garage door tiles offers forced entry: force open jammed or locked windows, force open locked doors (wood and metal included), and force open locked fence gates. Garage doors are in scope too, per the blog announcement. Forcing is not automatic, and the odds are not flat. Your chance of success depends on the door type, your character's Strength level, and Burglars get a bonus to succeed and are quieter while doing it. Strength helps here the same way it already did when opening jammed windows, while weaker characters will struggle more. Two costs ride along with every attempt. The more times you fail at forcing something, the higher your chance of damaging your crowbar. And your character accrues Muscle Strain during forcing attempts, consistent with the amount caused by attacking a door with a crowbar. So the crowbar is now a real lockpick with a durability and stamina price, not a free key: carry one, but do not lean on it for every locked door on a loot run, and remember that a failed pry on a window can smash the window instead of opening it.

Beyond the two headlines, 42.22 is a pile of small corrections to things players hit every session. Four of them change habits directly. Pushing: characters can now push while both hands are full of encumbering items, though doing so means dropping items that would otherwise prevent the push. If both hands hold items that used to block pushing, the item in the primary hand is dropped and the push goes ahead; a large item such as a generator or a large stone, equipped in both hands, is dropped too. Sleep: characters can no longer sleep while a Bad Smell moodlet is present, such as the smell of generator fumes or excessive corpses that are actively making you sick. Ammo boxes: you can now open boxes of ammo while walking, as many players requested, and the same while-walking treatment extends to opening and closing an umbrella, ripping clothing or sheets, opening bullet boxes (50 and 20 sizes) and shotgun shells, removing or inserting a battery, extinguishing a candle or hurricane lantern, removing or inserting a propane bottle, and adding or taking a cigarette from a pack. Trees: more XXL trees are now visible while driving, balancing the view of Knox Country's forests against driving safely, with fewer of them hidden from the driver's view cone.

Animals got a round of fixes for deaths that should not have happened: animals dying when their cell unloads, rabbit kits starving because their mothers were not producing milk, and chickens disappearing from full hutches, on server restart and on chunk reload. Two small additions are worth knowing: raccoon skulls can now be used to make normal and long animal skull necklaces, and there is a new recipe for refilling lighters using gasoline, a funnel, and a surface to put them on. Sound gets dozens of new variations for equipping and unequipping weapons and throwables, plus new ladder footsteps that vary with ladder material and footwear, and a new sound for climbing sheet rope.

Much of 42.22 is aimed at multiplayer, and at the bugs that ended sessions rather than the features that fill them. The headline fix is the duplicate character bug: the doppelganger issue where a character could be duplicated at the edge of a chunk and potentially killed is fixed. PvP damage calculations moved server-side to address damage not being applied correctly. Server backup creation is faster, which matters most on higher-population servers, where the pause for a backup used to disrupt play. The All Known on Start sandbox option for the in-game map now works in multiplayer, and notes made on map items now save instead of vanishing. Trailers got a number of behaviour and physics fixes, including towing desync, and a moving vehicle no longer disappears permanently after a reconnect or server restart. Around those are dozens of client and server error fixes, from the Loading Map stall to a dedicated-server freeze. Server admins and modders are the other audience for this branch, and the 42.22.1 hotfix that followed on 4 November 2026 speaks to them directly. It fixes a vulnerability related to eMudhra digital certificate validation, adds JRE integrity checks that detect modifications to the Java Runtime Environment (detected alterations show in the version watermark), and updates third-party software licence acknowledgements. The hotfix announcement says saves should not be affected. The Pre-Release branch exists so that this kind of change gets a week of live testing with admins and modders watching, instead of landing on every Stable server at once.

Nothing in 42.22 changes what Stable is. Stable is still 42.21, released 28 September 2026, and everything written for 42.21 still applies to the default game. This article is a Pre-Release differences piece, not a new guide to the game, and it does not rewrite any 42.21 guide. When 42.22 reaches Stable, a separate confirmation piece will follow; this article's Pre-Release wording will not be quietly edited into Stable wording. So the decision is simple. If you run a server, maintain mods, or enjoy testing, opt in, back up first, and report what breaks, ideally reproduced on a fresh save with no mods. If you have a long-term save you care about, stay on 42.21. The ladders and the crowbar will still be there when the build finishes its week in Pre-Release and moves to Stable, and they will be worth the wait precisely because someone else tested them first.

No. As of 5 November 2026, 42.22 is on the Pre-Release branch only, and Stable is still 42.21. The Indie Stone plans at least one week of Pre-Release testing before any Stable move, and no Stable date has been announced.

No. The patch notes state that zombies cannot climb ladders. A ladder is an escape route, but check below before you climb down, since zombies can still wait at the bottom.

No. It can force jammed or locked windows, locked wood and metal doors, locked fence gates, and garage doors. Security doors and jail cell doors cannot be forced, and forcing can fail, damage the crowbar, and build Muscle Strain.

Not guaranteed. The Indie Stone says it cannot guarantee a Pre-Release save will work in the final release. Back up before switching, and test on a copy or a fresh save.

Nothing. Staying on the default branch means you keep playing 42.21, and 42.22 will arrive automatically when it moves to Stable.

A pre-release hotfix from 4 November

2026. It fixes an eMudhra certificate validation vulnerability and adds JRE integrity checks. Its announcement says saves should not be affected.