Project Zomboid Map: Every Town and What Build 42 Changed

The Project Zomboid map is Knox Country: a partly real, partly made-up corner of northern Kentucky around Fort Knox and Louisville. In Build 42 the map covers twice the surface area of Build 41, with new towns such as Brandenburg, Ekron and Irvington in the west. You normally start in one of four towns: Muldraugh, Riverside, Rosewood or West Point. In the game you open the map with M, and online the official Project Zomboid Map Project shows every street. Checked against Build 42.21, the current stable version, on 27 October 2026.

Where is Project Zomboid set?

In Knox Country, which used to be called Knox County. According to the PZwiki, the map is heavily based on the real area around Fort Knox and Louisville in northern Kentucky. Some places are recreations of real towns, such as Muldraugh, West Point, Valley Station and Louisville. Others are made up, such as Rosewood and Riverside.

The story is simple. Knox Country was a quiet rural region until an outbreak turned infected people into zombies. The US government made it an exclusion zone and sealed it off. Louisville, the big city across the Ohio River, is separated from the rest of the map by a fence.

Which towns can you start in?

There are four standard towns. Since build 42.17 you can also start in seven other towns through Custom Sandbox.

In the four standard towns your exact spawn also depends on your occupation. A chef can start at a restaurant, for example. The Indie Stone warns that occupation spawns only work in those four towns. Elsewhere your starting spot is much more fixed. Echo Creek was a spawn town for a while, but 42.16 took it out of the normal spawn selection.

What is the best starting town?

For a first run: Riverside. The PZwiki calls it widely considered an ideal choice for new players. It has a good balance of loot and zombies, quiet suburbs in the south and the river for water and fishing. The weak spot is firearms, because Riverside has no reliable gun spawns. Build 42 did add a lot of zombies there, but the loot is still good for the risk.

Want guns early? West Point has Stendo’s Firearms Emporium. According to The Indie Stone it still has plenty of guns and ammo, if you can get in and out alive. Note that Riverside, West Point, Rosewood, Muldraugh and Fallas Lake were completely rebuilt in 42.20. Tips from older videos may no longer match what you see.

Playing with friends? Agree on one town before you start, so you find each other quickly. On your own server you can also send every new player to the same spot, see the last section.

How does the in-game map work?

• Open it with M, or click the mini-map if it is turned on.
• What you see: only places you have visited or read a map or flier of. The sandbox option All Known On Start shows everything.
• Light: by default you can’t read a map without a light source.
• Notes and symbols: any pen, pencil or crayon will do. To move or remove a mark you also need an eraser. There are five colours, depending on what you carry.
• Your marks stay until you erase them, even when the character who made them dies.

Paper maps still matter. Reading one fills in that area on your world map. Annotated maps from earlier survivors can lead you to a hidden stash, for example under the floorboards.

Which online map can you use?

The official Project Zomboid Map Project at map.projectzomboid.com, which now forwards to pzmap.org. Calvy runs it today, after blindCoder created and managed it for over a decade. In July 2026 The Indie Stone announced a full rewrite: the map now supports Build 41, Build 42 and older versions. A Roleplay mode shows roughly what your character would know about Knox Country.

Two tips. First, check which build you are looking at, because 42.20 changed many towns. Second, the online map shows coordinates. You need those for a fixed spawn point on a server.

What changed on the Project Zomboid map in Build 42?

• Twice as big: the map grew westward with Brandenburg, Ekron and Irvington. Echo Creek is new too.
• Rebuilt towns: 42.20 completely reworked Riverside, West Point, Rosewood, Fallas Lake, Muldraugh, Ekron and Dixie. Every building and house there is now unique. The Indie Stone plans to bring the rest of the map up to the same standard later.
• Numbers: 1,400 new unique buildings, 20,000 new tiles, 400 procedural basements and 75 unique ones.
• New places such as an abandoned orphanage, a new prison and a scout camp.
• Old saves don’t carry over. Build 41 saves don’t work in Build 42, and even 42.19 saves didn’t work in 42.20. Want to keep a Build 41 world? Use the Steam beta branch legacy41.

A map mod or another spawn on your own server

A dedicated server keeps its settings in Zomboid/Server, in files named after your server (servertest by default). This is how you add a map mod from the Steam Workshop:

1. Make a backup first, so you can go back if a map mod clashes with your world. See Create and restore a backup.
2. Add the mod in servertest.ini: the Workshop ID after WorkshopItems= and the mod ID after Mods=. Pick a mod that supports Build 42.
3. Add the map after Map=, using the folder name in the mod’s media/maps. Put the default map last, or it overrides your map mods: Map=YourMapName;Muldraugh, KY.
4. Add spawns in servertest_spawnregions.lua. It lists each town with its spawnpoints.lua file. If the map mod has its own spawn points, add a line for it.
5. Restart the server.

• Everyone in one spot: put x, y and z coordinates after SpawnPoint=. The default 0,0,0 means off.
• Other players on the map: MapRemotePlayerVisibility 1 hides them (default), 2 shows friends, 3 friends and nearby players, 4 everyone.
• Map rules for the world: in servertest_SandboxVars.lua you set AllowMiniMap (off by default), AllowWorldMap, MapAllKnown and MapNeedsLight.

The other server settings, such as PvP, loot and sprinters, are in Project Zomboid server settings for Build 42. On a CakeHosting server, Build 42 runs by default. You edit the files in the game panel or over SFTP and restart afterwards. Memory use grows mostly with how much of the map your group explores, because every loaded area costs memory.