Common myth worth killing outright: as of the current build, players cannot build their own basement. PZwiki is explicit about this — basements are pre-placed or seed-generated, not something you can dig or construct. If you also break through a basement's walls into the void beyond, the game just teleports you back to ground level; there's nothing to find out there.
## Randomized basements: what's actually down there  Any building that qualifies can roll a randomized basement, and PZwiki now catalogs them in four size classes — tiny, small, medium, and large — with dozens of furnished variants inside each class (storage rooms, laundry rooms, home gyms, band practice rooms, hunting rooms with animal racks, pottery rooms, and more). The video's creator counted 34 distinct randomized layouts back in January 2025; PZwiki's current listing is substantially longer than that, which is the clearest sign of how much 42.20 expanded this pool. Most of these are mundane — storage, laundry, a home gym — but there's real loot variety in the mix: workshop-style basements with construction supplies and tool storage, a fully stocked crafting basement, and rooms built around a specific hobby (poker, a home theater, a recording studio) that spawn worthwhile miscellaneous items alongside the usual boxes. ## A basement with a story  Not every basement is just loot. One randomized variant is dressed as a last stand: sandbags stacked as cover, a table with a radio and microphone, folding chairs, and "I won't become one of them" scrawled on the wall in blood. It reads as a survivor who tried to hold out and call for help before their basement shelter was breached — no gameplay mechanic attached, just environmental storytelling, but worth knowing about so you don't mistake the blood for a live threat. ## Static basements: what's fixed under specific buildings Some basements always spawn under the same building type, in every world, regardless of seed. Per PZwiki's currently-maintained basement catalog (which already includes Brandenburg and Irvington, the two towns added by 42.20 — making it more current on this point than any pre-42.20 video, including the one this guide is otherwise built from): | Town / area | Notable static basements | | --- | --- | | Muldraugh | Bank, police station, Rusty Rifle bar | | Riverside | Shop storage, bank, construction site | | Rosewood | Gas station, bowling alley, workshop, two-floor school, prison | | West Point | Shop storage, office space, police station, general store | | Irvington (42.20) | Gun club, school, church, bank, apartments | | Ekron (42.20) | Church, farmhouse, bar, community college, fire station, houses | | Brandenburg (42.20) | Gas station, music bar, grocery store, prison, destroyed building | | March Ridge | Bunker | | Other / unique | Military Research Facility, sanatorium, abandoned factory | Building-type basements also repeat their theme wherever that building type appears: **banks** get safety deposit boxes and a secured vault, **police stations** get cages, forensics areas, and a small armory, **schools** get storm shelters (built for tornadoes, not zombies, though they work for both), **prisons** get cells, autopsy tables, and morgue lockers, and **gun stores** get an attached shooting range with weapon lockers.  The Muldraugh police station specifically goes further than the standard template — PZwiki and the video agree it has a full lab and surgical area in addition to the usual cages and evidence storage.  ## The military bunker and other unique static basements  A dedicated military bunker basement runs a full sequence: a decontamination area first, then storage, a meeting room, separate men's and women's barracks, a workout room, a leisure room, a cafeteria, an armory, and a radio room apparently meant for contacting other bunkers. It's one of the largest static basements either source describes.  Prisons get the darkest version of the static basement idea: secluded cells (some stripped down to just a toilet), autopsy tables, morgue lockers, and cages built for dogs. A separate secret military base basement exists too, though neither this video nor its creator's other coverage of it gives enough detail to describe reliably here. ## How this guide was fact-checked The visual material and the tiny/small/medium/large room descriptions come from komp's "Every Basement in Project Zomboid's Build 42 Unstable" (2025-01-03). That video predates the 42.20 "Big Glow Up" patch (2026-07-29), which PZwiki's own changelog-linked notes credit with roughly 400 new procedural basements and 75 new unique ones — so its claim to show "every basement" is no longer accurate, and this guide does not repeat that claim. Wherever the two sources could be compared, PZwiki's Basement page is treated as the current authority: it already lists static basements for Brandenburg and Irvington, both 42.20-exclusive towns the video could not have known about, which is why the static-basement table above leans on the wiki rather than the video. The "can't build your own basement" fact and the void-teleport safety behavior both come from PZwiki, since the video doesn't address either. ## What this guide doesn't answer Neither source gives exact spawn coordinates or a guaranteed way to find a specific basement type — PZwiki's own random-basement list runs into the dozens of named variants with no location data attached, and the video is a room-type tour, not a coordinate guide. This guide also can't confirm the secret military base basement in detail (the source video only mentions it and links elsewhere), and it doesn't cover the mapping-tool side of creating basements for custom maps, which is a separate, developer-facing system PZwiki documents on its own page. --- ## FAQ ### How do I find a basement in Project Zomboid? Basement entrances are ordinary interior staircases with no outside marker, so you have to walk into a building and look for stairs down. The community B42 Map tool can show predefined basement locations if you want to plan routes instead of checking house by house. ### Can I build my own basement in Project Zomboid? No. Per PZwiki, basements are either pre-placed on the map or generated per world seed — there's currently no player-facing way to dig or construct one, and breaking through a basement wall into the void just teleports you back to ground level. ### What's in the Riverside basements? Per PZwiki's current catalog, Riverside's static basements are shop storage, a bank vault, and a construction site — the same building-type templates (bank vaults, shop storage) that repeat in other towns. ### Is a basement guide from before 42.20 still accurate? Only partly. The 42.20 'Big Glow Up' patch added roughly 400 new procedural basements and 75 unique ones, plus two entire new towns (Brandenburg and Irvington) with their own static basements, so any catalog claiming to show 'every basement' from before that patch is now an undercount. ### What's the biggest static basement in the game? The military bunker basement is the largest either source describes: a decontamination area leading into storage, a meeting room, separate barracks, a workout room, a leisure room, a cafeteria, an armory, and a radio room.