Locking Doors & Safehouse Permissions in Build 42 — Keys, Keypads, Claims
How locking works in Build 42: per-building keys, keypad doors, padlockable crates, and the multiplayer safehouse permissions that protect your base.
FAQ
Can you lock doors in Project Zomboid Build 42?
Does locking a door stop other players on a multiplayer server?
What is a safehouse claim in Build 42?
⚠️ Content Pending Full Verification
Single-player lock mechanics and the multiplayer safehouse option set below were assembled from official-forum threads (developer and community bug reports, April–September 2026) — our own in-game verification pass is still pending, and several adjacent questions are explicitly marked as untested.
The Short Version
- Doors lock. The right-click menu on doors includes Lock/Unlock (a 42.17.0 bug report about missing options documents the intended behavior).
- Keys are per-building. Build 42 spawns keys belonging to a building’s own locked doors; they can live on a keyring. Basement/high-floor door compatibility was an open bug at 42.20.4.
- Some doors you cannot buy your way into. Red keypad doors (police stations and similar) are a distinct category — how players can legally open them is still on our verification list.
- Containers lock too. Padlocked containers and locked crates are real, and so is Rosewood’s barricaded-and-locked gun shop — but note how the 42.21 changelist proves it: all three appear only inside bug fixes (“remove corpses from padlocked containers”, “briefly see inside locked crates by picking up adjacent corpses”, “unlucky survivors could spawn inside the barricaded and locked gun shop in Rosewood”). They confirm the objects exist and stay shut; they are not a design description of how each lock works.
- Multiplayer: protection = safehouse claim + sandbox permission options, not padlocks. Details below.
Multiplayer: What Actually Guards Your Base
Vanilla B42 servers use a safehouse claim: right-click a residential building and claim it, which switches on the owner-scoped sandbox rules. The relevant server options surfaced across official-forum threads:
| Option (server sandbox) | What community testing reports |
|---|---|
SafehouseAllowTrespass |
whether non-owners can enter |
SafehouseAllowLoot |
whether non-owners see/loot containers — but a 12 Sep 2026 repro shows furniture can still be moved with it off |
AllowDestructionBySledgehammer / SledgehammerOnlyInSafehouse |
hammer protection toggles; a player report says the safehouse-only variant “breaks the function entirely”. 42.21 officially fixed a conflict between DisableSafehouseWhenOwnerConnected=true and the safehouse sledgehammer option, so re-test that combination if it is why you disabled it |
DisableSafehouseWhenOwnerConnected / SafetyDisconnectDelay |
when protection lapses around logouts |
If you run a server, the full setup walk-through is in the dedicated server guide; the protection mindset (why walls beat alarms) is in the base building guide.
Practical Reading for Now
Use building keys to control zombie flow and storage rooms inside your base, not to wage door-lock wars with other survivors — on multiplayer, only the safehouse layer and sane server settings do that (see survival basics for the day-one version of this discipline).
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