In-game maps and annotated maps in Project Zomboid

Press M to open the world map (the default key, see controls). In Build 42 the map does not start complete. On every built-in preset the sandbox option All Known On Start is off, so you begin with only the ground around your spawn and the rest is blank.

The map fills in two ways:

• Walking or driving. Ground you have been near is drawn in and stays drawn.
• Reading print. Reading a paper town map, or a flier, adds an area you have not visited. Areas learned from paper are drawn darker than areas you have seen yourself (one source).

By default the map needs light. With Light Needed To Read Map on, opening it in the dark gives a "too dark to read" message, so carry a light source at night. Build 42 also added street names to the map during its unstable phase.

This site's interactive map is separate: it shows all of Knox Country whatever your character has seen.

Four options control map visibility. They sit in the in-game map group of custom sandbox settings. Two Build 42 references agree on the defaults below.

Extinction and Six Months Later match Apocalypse on all four. A fifth option, Annotated Map Chance, is in the loot group and is covered below.

To use the minimap where it is allowed, hold M for about half a second and pick Show/Hide Mini-Map from the radial menu, or use the minimap button beside the map icon on the left of the screen. There is no separate minimap key. It only draws what your world map already knows and shows no zombies or loot.

A town map is a paper item weighing 0.1. Right-click it and read it, then reopen the world map: the town is now drawn in.

The item list below is the long-standing set. The spawn chances come from a wiki page last revised for Build 41, so treat the percentages as a guide to which maps are common, not as Build 42 values.

The nine Louisville maps share a name in the inventory, so you only learn which section one covers by reading it (one source). The same Build 41 page says Valley Station and Fallas Lake had no map item.

Where to look, in rough order of how well it is sourced:

• Gas stations and stores. Shelves, crates and magazine racks. Two sources.
• Vehicle glove boxes. Police, fire, ambulance and taxi cars are named, among others. Two sources. See vehicles.
• Zombie corpses. Two sources.
• Garages, storage units, closets and tool cabinets. (one source)
• Bookstores, schools, post offices and offices. (one source)
• Mailboxes. Often repeated by players, but we could not confirm it for Build 42.

See loot locations and the loot tables for the buildings.

An annotated map is a town map with a dead survivor's marks on it: circles, arrows and short notes. The marks point at a real building. How often a looted map is annotated is set by Annotated Map Chance, which is Sometimes on Apocalypse, Often on Outbreak and Extremely Rare on Extinction. Setting it to Never removes them.

The content is not sitting in the world from day one. According to one detailed guide, the game works like this (one source):

1. A looted map rolls against Annotated Map Chance.
2. If it passes, the game picks one unused stash definition for that town.
3. You read the map.
4. The first time the marked building loads after that, the stash is applied to it.

The practical rule from this is to read the map before you go inside the marked building. The same guide says walking the interior first can use up or skip the spawn, and that some stashes can only roll from maps carried by zombies.

That guide counts 10 annotated maps for March Ridge and 16 for Louisville (one source). Notes can mislead: a marked vehicle is not guaranteed to be there.

Open the world map, or right-click a paper map, and use the symbols panel. You need a writing tool in your inventory. Sources name pencils, pens, crayons and markers. Without one, the tools stay locked.

• Add a symbol or note: any writing tool.
• Remove a mark: an eraser.
• Move or edit a mark: a writing tool and an eraser together.

There are more than 40 symbols, including houses, skulls, arrows and traps (one source). Build 42 added text layers, resizing and rotating of marks, and duplicating a mark (one source). Paper maps can be renamed in the inventory.

On a server the host's sandbox decides whether the world map and minimap exist. Clients cannot override it. See hosting a server.

Whether other players appear on your map is a server option with four levels in Build 42: hidden (the default), friends, friends and nearby players, or everyone (one source). Older Build 41 guides describe three levels. The minimap settings in multiplayer include a checkbox for other players' shared marks (one source), but we could not confirm exactly how symbol sharing is set up in 42.22.

A paper map is a normal item. You can hand one to a teammate or leave it in a base crate. For stash maps, one guide warns that the first player to load the building triggers it, so agree who goes.

Opinion Pick up every town map you see in the first week. Each one weighs 0.1 and saves you from driving blind into a town center.

Opinion Mark as you go, not afterwards. A simple legend is enough: base, fuel, books, medical, danger, cleared. Then plan each run as a loop that ends at your base, with fuel as the first stop and the heaviest loot last.

Opinion Treat an annotated safehouse as a raid, not a free pickup. Scout it in daylight, bring a tool to remove boards, and expect more zombies than the street suggests. Caches marked near gun stores pair well with the stops in gun locations.