Musical instruments and music in Project Zomboid

In unmodded Build 42 you cannot sit down and play a guitar, keyboard, horn or drum kit for fun. The big instruments are coded as InstrumentWeapon items: you can swing them at zombies, and that is all. There is no play action, no song, and no boredom or unhappiness effect attached to them in the item data we checked.

Three things in the music space do work in vanilla. Whistles and the harmonica replace your shout with a louder sound. CDs played in a CD player are the vanilla way to use music for mood. Radio stations broadcast in the first days, though their main value is information, not music. Everything else on this page, from drum kits to pianos, is decoration or a mod feature.

If you want a real music system, it comes from Workshop mods, covered in the last part. For the moodles that music is supposed to fix, see mood and boredom and the moodles list.

The large instruments spawn in music stores, band practice rooms, closets and instrument crates, and inside guitar cases and flight cases. In Build 42 the item database lists the following as weapons or plain items:

The acoustic guitar figures come from the pzfans.com item database for Build 42: damage 0.3 to 0.8, a 1 in 3 chance of losing condition per hit, and only 2 condition points, so it breaks after a few swings (one source). Hitting with any of these makes the normal combat noise, not music.

Opinion Treat big instruments as emergency clubs or as decoration for your base. A real bat or crowbar is far better; compare them on the melee weapon list and best weapons. A guitar on the wall or a drum kit in the garage is good decorating material and nothing more.

The small instruments are the only ones that make sound on purpose. Each has a ShoutType in its item script, which means that while you hold it, your shout key blows the instrument instead of yelling. The multiplier makes the sound carry further than a normal shout.

We found no boredom or mood effect for any of them. They are noise tools. A louder shout is useful for pulling zombies away from a friend in co-op, drawing a group to a fence line, or calling a horde toward a trap, as covered under stealth and noise.

Opinion A plain whistle is the best of the three because it is the loudest and weighs only 0.1. The bone whistle is a useful carving project if you never find one in loot.

CDs (Base.Disc_Retail) spawn mostly in CD crates, music store shelves and electronics stores, with smaller chances in band practice rooms, school lockers and gift parcels. The CD Player (Base.CDplayer) runs on batteries, uses the radio item type, and is often found with headphones or earbuds.

Load a CD, turn the player on, and the disc plays as recorded media. Players have long reported that you do not hear actual songs; the lines appear as text, and the benefit is a small drop in boredom and unhappiness. The size of that effect is not published in a source we could read, and it is not clear whether replaying the same disc still helps, so check it in game before relying on it.

Practical points:

• A CD player drains batteries while on. Keep spares; see batteries.
• Headphones or earbuds are worth carrying with it, since a player has a base volume range of 15 in its item data and sound can reach nearby zombies.
• CDs do not train skills. For skill XP from media use VHS tapes, covered in TV and VHS.

Cassettes and vinyl records: we did not find a cassette player, Walkman, record player or vinyl record in the Build 42 item database categories we checked. Treat any you see in houses as scenery until confirmed.

Radios and TVs pick up broadcasts in the first days of the outbreak. Guides describe music and news stations fading out after roughly the first week, leaving the emergency broadcast (AEBS) running. Listening still lowers boredom as a side effect, and the AEBS gives weather warnings you need, so a working radio is more useful than any instrument. The full channel guide is on the radio page.

Once the grid goes down, a radio or TV needs batteries or generator power. A sound left playing in a quiet house is still a sound, so keep the volume low near open windows.

Because vanilla has no play action, the Workshop fills the gap. The Musician mod for Build 42 lets you play guitars, bass, banjo, keytar, violin, flute, trumpet, saxophone, harmonica, pianos and the vanilla drum furniture, with songbooks or a MIDI controller, and says its in-world music can draw zombies. The Bard to the Bone mod lists boredom and unhappiness relief from playing, plus extra calorie burn. Those effects belong to the mods, not the base game. See mods for how to install them, and check that every player on a server runs the same version.

Opinion If boredom is your real problem, vanilla answers are cheaper than a mod: books and magazines, cooking good food, and keeping busy with base work. The mood guide ranks them.