Riverside Base Guide — Build 42 Town Profile
Riverside in Build 42: the base-friendly starter town with larger homes and garages, moderate density, and a preservation-friendly food and tool run.
FAQ
Is Riverside good for first-time Build 42 players?
What changed in Riverside for Build 42?
Where should I base in Riverside?
Does Riverside have good water access?
⚠️ Content Pending Full Verification
Building-level claims for Riverside — the channel reportedly cut through town, rebuilt landmarks, and named base candidates — come from community gameplay video, not from written guides. They stay off this page until we confirm them in-game.
Where Riverside Sits Cross-Verified
Riverside is the suburban town on Knox County’s southern river line, and it was in the first wave of Build 42 town reworks — rebuilt interiors and layouts in the 42.20 art pass, together with West Point, Rosewood, Muldraugh, Fallas Lake, Ekron and Dixie. Both community write-ups describe it the same way: the base-friendly town, with housing stock that takes a base without remodelling.
| Aspect | What the sources say |
|---|---|
| Character | Suburban starter town; moderate density compared with Louisville; larger homes and garages |
| Loot focus | Food and basic tools, plus a large warehouse district; the best preservation run of the starter towns |
| Best for | Balanced starts and preservation-focused runs |
| Watch out for | Gunfire still pulls residential hordes; power and water cut off on a sandbox roll |
Riverside sits in the easy-to-medium band of our spawn-town comparison.
Why It Takes a Base Well Cross-Verified
The recurring reason Riverside comes up first for a starter base is not a single landmark — it is the housing: larger homes, garages, and footprints that already work as a base. Both sources frame the first week around that, and both warn about the same trap:
- Plan power before you settle. The shutoff is a sandbox roll, so bank water early and read the water collection guide and the generator guide before committing a room to machinery.
- Food and tools are the loot identity. Riverside’s run is a preservation run: what you gather here is what you keep through winter, which is why the food preservation lanes matter more here than loot density.
- Noise discipline still applies. A residential town means gunfire pulls the neighbourhood, so treat routes as loops with exits — the discipline is in the loot routes guide.
What Is Still Unverified
Community gameplay videos about Riverside make several specific claims that the written sources do not carry, so this page names them rather than asserting them:
- A channel cut through town with docks on the banks.
- Rebuilt landmarks — a larger post office near the police station, a shrunken gated community, a shopping block replaced by a sports field.
- Named base candidates and their stocked contents.
They stay in our requirements fact table as video material pending an in-game pass. What we do publish is the agreed shape: a base-friendly housing stock, food and tool loot, moderate density, and the same shutoff and noise rules as every other town.
Named Points of Interest — Interactive Map
All 66 points, A–Z (Riverside area)
- Auto Repair x 5429 · y 5964
- Back to the Nurture chiropractic services x 6187 · y 5359 A nice spot to loosen those joints!
- Bait & Tackle x 3631 · y 5722 Right next to a river.
- Bait Shop x 5918 · y 5242 Includes water barrels.
- Bakery x 6493 · y 5267
- Bank x 6504 · y 5301
- Bar x 5963 · y 5422
- Bar x 6382 · y 5208
- Beef Roundup x 3655 · y 5719 Restaurant.
- Boat Club x 6571 · y 5212
- Book Store x 6437 · y 5269 Enigmabooks.
- Burgers x 5955 · y 5263
- Cafe x 6176 · y 6374
- Camera Store x 6188 · y 5351
- Car Junkyard x 5820 · y 5412 Junked Cars, high fence, space to build a castle.
- Cementery x 5700 · y 5331
- Church x 6568 · y 5374
- Clothing Store x 6403 · y 5268
- Clothing Store x 6506 · y 5266
- Clothing Store x 6250 · y 5266
- Coffee Shop x 6400 · y 5252
- Convenience store x 5970 · y 5355
- Country club x 5756 · y 6446
- Diner x 5424 · y 5914
- Donut Store x 6491 · y 5224 Donuts!!!
- Factory x 5570 · y 5899
- Factory Warehouse x 5617 · y 5973
- Fancy Restaurant x 6192 · y 5340
- Farm x 6817 · y 7720 Farm with field, two toolsheds.
- Farm x 5693 · y 5740 Has a lot of land, two houses and sheds.
- Farm Store x 7253 · y 8285
- Fenced off radio station x 4849 · y 6284 A densely hidden station with two tall fences with the outer fences having some holes.
- Food Market x 5969 · y 5392
- Food Market x 6344 · y 5297
- Food Mart x 6273 · y 5266
- Furniture store x 6427 · y 5300
- Furniture Store x 6239 · y 5265
- Gas Station x 6083 · y 5309
- Gas Station x 5418 · y 5870
- Gas Station x 3661 · y 5958 1 pump chump.
- Gated Community x 6715 · y 5483
- General Store x 3679 · y 5743
- GigaMart x 6505 · y 5346
- Golf Course x 6091 · y 6392 Golf. At a time like this?
- Grocery Store x 6140 · y 5370
- Hardware Store x 6364 · y 5327
- Hotel x 6357 · y 5259
- House with Farmland x 6956 · y 5565
- Ice Cream Parlor x 6471 · y 5222
- Jewellery store x 6481 · y 5267
- Laundromat x 6407 · y 5339
- Liquor Store x 6189 · y 5370
- Mama Mcfudgingtons x 6491 · y 5266
- Pharmacy x 6471 · y 5266
- Police Station x 6082 · y 5261
- Rec Centre x 6560 · y 5305
- Riverside x 6443 · y 5281
- School x 6446 · y 5444
- School x 6440 · y 5445
- Seat Yourself Furniture Store x 6236 · y 5264
- Spiffo's x 6123 · y 5305
- Storage Units x 5541 · y 6063
- Toy Store x 6452 · y 5298
- Trailer Park x 5342 · y 5980
- U.S. Mail Service x 6312 · y 5264 There are a lot of books at their storage.
- VHS Store x 6206 · y 5344
Where these 66 Riverside markers come from: names and in-game tile coordinates are vendored from PZmap
(html/poi.json), MIT License, Copyright (c) 2022 Min Xiang; retrieved 2026-10-01. We add no coordinates of our own.
Read the gaps, not just the dots. This is a community catalogue, not the game's own list, and it is incomplete. Muldraugh is the clearest case: it carries no fire station record at all, even though the town's fire station is a well-documented loot site and base candidate. Absence from this map does not mean absence from the game. Nothing is drawn here that we could not source — and anything you find missing or misnamed is worth reporting, because we will check it against the game rather than guess.
Sources & Verification
| Source | Type | Sections Used |
|---|---|---|
| projectzomboid.wiki — Towns | Fan-made wiki guide | Riverside housing character, moderate density, generator/shutoff warning, gunfire horde note |
| build42guide.wiki — Starting Locations | Community guide (42.20) | Riverside difficulty tier, loot focus, best-for profile |
| projectzomboid.wiki — New Towns | Fan-made wiki guide | First-wave rework list including Riverside |
Building-level detail stays off the page until our in-game confirmation pass; the video material remains in the fact table.
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