This guide is for all of you watching your favorite YouTuber playing Project Zomboid wondering why the game seems to have more features that you can’t seem to figure out. Build 41 of Project Zomboid introduced a huge amount of updates and new mechanics to the game that weren’t previously there. Mechanics like zombies crawling under cars, being able to work out to build your strength and fitness and new combat. (including new items).
Opting in to the latest build isn’t always recommended though. As the game is a work in progress these builds are often more unstable and are their mainly as a means to test bugs on a wide scale. There are generally a couple of different builds, with the developers giving us a ‘relatively stable’ build along with one that is always aptly titled iwillbackupmysave (I will back up my save).
Please also be aware before you change your gave version that any mods you have may not work or have to be updated. Multiplayer is currently not available in Build 41 but the devs have been doing internal testing and it seems that multiplayer will be coming soon.
Opting in to Build 41 on Steam
This will be a step-by-step guide on how to opt in to not only Build 41 of the game, but the latest branch when it becomes available. The guide will be for the Steam version of the game.
First of all open up your Steam library and scroll down to Project Zomboid in your list of games. Right-click on Project Zomboid to get to the drop-down menu for the game. When you have the menu up, select the ‘Properties’ option as shown below.
Once you’ve gone into the properties you will have opened up a box with various settings. The one setting we are looking for is the ‘Betas’ tab on the left of this small window.
Navigate to the ‘Betas’ tab and then you will see a small drop-down box with your currently selected version of the game in it. Click the menu and select the option that you wish. If you’d like to pick the more unstable but experimental branch the option will generally be on the bottom. For this example, we are selecting the ‘build41 beta’ version.
Once you have selected the option Steam will begin to download the necessary files for Build 41 and update the game. Once the update is finished, congratulations! That’s all you need to do to access Build 41 in Project Zomboid. Welcome to the club. You can now join us while we work out, evade new crawling zombies and wait patiently for multiplayer to come out. You can still play the game in split-screen mode in Build 41, just not online multiplayer.
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