Project Zomboid Build 42.21 has moved from the Unstable testing branch to Stable. The Indie Stone says players did not report any major issues during testing, so the same update is now rolling out to the main branch.

This is the release step that the earlier 42.21 Unstable report was waiting for. Players no longer need to opt into the beta branch to get its main fixes.

Zombie populations should behave better

Build 42.21 tackles the worst cases of zombies duplicating in multiplayer and disappearing after a player leaves and re-enters a world chunk. Those bugs were most visible in games with large zombie populations, where a loaded area could change far more than intended between visits.

The developer is not calling the problem finished. Some disappearing-zombie cases remain and are planned for the next update. Expect a clear improvement, not a magical end to every population bug.

Trees stop hiding quite so much

The oversized trees introduced with Build 42 now cut away more reliably around players in vehicles. They should no longer hide houses and furniture beneath their branches, and their transparency has been adjusted for better visibility.

That work is still in progress. The Stable release makes driving and building visibility less awkward, but more tree changes are expected later.

Build 42.21 also re-enables the loadstring and loadstream Lua methods. Both were disabled in 42.20.4 while the team investigated security vulnerabilities, which disrupted some modders and server administrators.

The full Project Zomboid 42.21 Stable announcement links to the complete patch notes and the official bug-reporting process.