Locks, keys and break-ins in Project Zomboid

Most houses and businesses spawn with locked exterior doors, and each building has its own key. A building key opens only the doors of the building it belongs to. The item database lists it as Key (weight 0.05), and it fits in a wallet.

Loot tables put building keys mostly in bedroom dressers, side tables, wardrobes and kitchen drawers, and less often in office desks, counters and security lockers. Key rings are a good source too: every key ring variant can hold building keys, and zombies carry key rings. The zombies standing around a house are often the people who lived there, so kill and search them before you start swinging at the door. See looting for a full search routine.

Opinion Walk the whole building before using any key or tool. A back door, a cellar hatch or an open window is often unlocked, and it costs nothing.

This table sums up the vanilla options in 42.22.x. Smashing figures come from a Build 42.21 analysis and assume Strength 5.

Boards and metal sheets are covered in barricades, and taking doors apart for parts in dismantling.

Before 42.22, vanilla Build 42 had no pry action: the crowbar only pulled boards off barricades and was a poor door basher. Older guides still say this. Build 42.22.2 added Force. With a crowbar equipped or in your inventory, right-click a locked target and choose Force.

• Works on: ordinary wooden and metal doors, locked or jammed windows, garage doors and locked fence gates.
• Does not work on: security doors, jail cell doors, gun store bar cages or cars.
• Strength raises your chance of success.
• Burglars force locks faster, more quietly and more reliably.
• Repeated failures raise the chance of damaging the crowbar and give you muscle strain. A failed Force on a window can break the glass.

Patch summaries give no success percentages or noise figures, so expect a few failed tries at low Strength. Opinion Force is now the best default for most doors: it is far quieter than chopping, it leaves the door intact so you can lock it later, and the crowbar is a solid weapon anyway.

Any melee weapon can attack a door. Each hit is scaled by Strength: Strength 0 halves damage and Strength 10 adds 70% (one source). At Strength 5 a wood axe breaks a normal door in about 5 hits, a sledgehammer in about 7, a fire axe in about 8, and a crowbar takes about 32 (one source). Every hit makes noise and draws zombies. A broken wooden door drops a doorknob, sometimes hinges and wood.

The sledgehammer also has a Destroy action that removes a door or wall instantly with no loot, which is the only vanilla way through a security door without its key. Servers can limit it with the SledgehammerOnlyInSafehouse option. See sledgehammer.

Windows are easier: smash the glass, use the option to remove broken glass, then climb through. Climbing over unclean glass risks cuts that need first aid. Breaking glass is loud, so treat it as a last resort in a crowded street.

Vanilla Build 42 has no lockpicking minigame. Lockpicks and pin-based locks come only from Workshop mods. The closest vanilla equivalent is the crowbar Force action.

The Burglar occupation is the lock specialist. It starts with Nimble, Sneaking and Lightfooted bonuses, can hotwire cars without the usual skill levels, gets the Force bonus described above, and knows the Copy Building Key recipe from day one (one source). Compare it with other picks in traits and occupations and pair it with stealth play.

You can lock an exterior door from the inside without a key. That was broken for a while in Build 42 and 42.22.2 fixed it, so deadbolts work again. Locking from the outside needs the building key. Each doorknob keeps its door's key ID: if you salvage a doorknob and use it on a door you build, the old key still fits it. This is handy for carpentry bases.

Copying keys: the Copy Building Key recipe needs a Blank Key, a small file (kept, may wear) and the key you are copying (kept). You learn it from the magazine The Cheapskate's John Spiral - Escaping Captivity; see magazines. Blank keys spawn in key-cutting cases and tool store key-making shelves. Spare keys are worth giving to each player in a group.

Padlocks: the game has a Padlock with its own Padlock Key and a Combination Padlock, each weighing 0.3. They are found mostly in janitor toolboxes, big-box tool aisles, tool stores and pool lockers. In earlier builds padlocks were attached to containers in multiplayer, and the right-click option to lock a container is still the expected use, but we could not confirm the exact Build 42 behavior. Check in game before you trust one with your loot.

Car keys belong to one vehicle. Look in the ignition, the glove box and around the car, and search nearby corpses and zombies. Smashing a car window gets you in but can set off the alarm. Without a key you can hotwire; Burglars skip the skill requirements. How often cars spawn locked depends on the Locked Vehicle Frequency setting in sandbox settings. The full process is on hotwiring.

In multiplayer, a locked door slows other players but does not stop one with a crowbar, axe or sledgehammer. Claimed safehouses are the server-level protection, and the SledgehammerOnlyInSafehouse option stops players from cutting through walls elsewhere. Opinion On PvP servers, copy your keys for trusted group members, lock every exterior door, and keep valuables in a room with no windows.