Project Zomboid players can finally climb a ladder. Build 42.22 went up today on a new Pre-Release branch, and The Indie Stone’s announcement, titled Moving on Up, leads with the feature the community has joked about for years: placed ladders across Knox Country can now be climbed with the E key. The same update lets you force locked doors, windows, garage doors and gates with a crowbar, and it renames the Unstable branch to Pre-Release, with at least a week of testing before anything reaches Stable.
Ladders climb with the E key, and the Rosewood Fire Station roof is open
The studio calls this “the first rung of implementation” for ladders. In 42.22 you interact with ladders already placed on the map by pressing E, which the post says means “you can be a little less fearful around empty pools now, and finally take in the view from the top floor of the Rosewood Fire Station.” Crafting your own ladder is not part of this step. The Indie Stone is asking Pre-Release testers to climb up and down every ladder in Knox Country “to make sure every rung is sturdy and every side-rail is secure.”
The subreddit took the news in the expected spirit. The top thread of the day announces, “after 15 years of development, it has finally arrived, the most ground breaking and long awaited zomboid feature,” and the replies mourn the ladder mods, ask for craftable ladders and roof tiles next, and predict a death by stepping off the ledge at the top.
Crowbars force doors, windows and gates, and Burglars do it quietly
Crowbars get a second job beyond braining zombies and pulling up window frames and flooring. A new right-click option lets you force open locked windows, doors, garage doors and gates. Security doors and jail cell doors are “made of stronger stuff” and cannot be forced. The Burglar occupation is handier and quieter with a crowbar than other survivors, Strength helps the same way it does with jammed windows, and weaker characters will struggle. Each failed attempt raises the chance of damaging the crowbar, so the trade-off is tool condition rather than noise alone.
Unstable is now Pre-Release, with a week of testing before Stable
The branch rename is the quieter change with the longer reach. Stable stays on 42.21, which shipped on September 28, and the studio says the average player should stay there. Modders, multiplayer server admins and anyone willing to break things can opt in through Properties, then Game Versions and Betas, then Pre-Release in the Steam library. The new cycle is fixed: every update lands on Pre-Release, sits there for at least one week, then moves to Stable, with only urgent hotfixes allowed to skip the queue. If testing turns up bugs that need another revision, the studio says it will do one and announce it on the forums, Reddit and Discord.
The Indie Stone is blunt about saves: do not move a long-term singleplayer save to Pre-Release without backing it up, because there is no guarantee it will work in the final release. The name change itself is a nod to Build 42’s long stay on Unstable, which the post admits “was causing some confusion among players.”
Push with full hands, open ammo boxes while walking, and the clone bug is fixed
The rest of 42.22 is tuning and fixes. In singleplayer and multiplayer alike:
- XXL tree rendering is polished while driving, to improve visibility without losing the foliage.
- Characters can push with both hands full of encumbering items, at the cost of dropping whatever would stop the push.
- Characters cannot sleep with a Bad Smell moodle active.
- Ammo boxes can be opened while walking, a frequent request.
- Animals stop dying when their cell unloads, rabbit kits no longer starve because their mothers produced no milk, and chickens no longer vanish from full hutches.
Multiplayer gets the fix for the duplicate character bug, also known as the doppelganger or clone bug, and PvP damage calculations move server-side so hits apply correctly. There are crash fixes for characters leaving a chunk while chickens sit in a nest box, faster server backups, trailer physics fixes, a working “All Known on Start” sandbox option, and map notes that finally save. The studio also mentions updated anti-cheat measures. The full patch notes are on the Indie Stone forums, and bug reports go to the forum’s bug board.
Build 42 first reached the Unstable branch in December 2024 and went Stable earlier this year, so this is the first update to run through the new Pre-Release process from day one. If the week of testing goes cleanly, 42.22 and its ladders reach everyone in early November.
After 15 years of development, it has finally arrived, the most ground breaking and long awaited zomboid feature, this will change the game for ever and truly shake up the Zomboid community, I introduce to you: Climbable Ladders IN VANILLA!
byu/metamorphosis___ inprojectzomboid
