Project Zomboid Soft Reset vs Hard Wipe (Build 42, 2026)
Short answer: A soft reset clears world clutter (corpses, blood, dropped loot) and keeps player characters and bases, use it to fix mid-season FPS lag. A hard wipe deletes the whole save folder and resets to day 1, use it for new map mods, branch migrations, or season restarts.
"Wiping" a Project Zomboid server can mean two very different things. If your server is choking on thousands of corpses and blood splatters causing FPS drops on every reconnect, you need a soft reset. If you want a clean day-1 restart, new map, fresh time, new characters, you need a hard wipe. Build 42 added more granular tools for both, plus a couple of new gotchas worth knowing.
1. Soft Reset
Removes corpses, blood splatters, and (optionally) ground loot while preserving player characters and bases. Skills, inventory, and stats stay intact; the world gets "cleaned." Cure for performance drop on long-running multiplayer servers.
2. Hard Wipe
Deletes the entire pzserver / pzserver_db save folder. Resets the map, the in-game time, and all player data. True day-1 restart.
3. Chunk Reset
Targeted middle option, delete specific .bin files under /map/ to force regen on glitched cells only. Keeps everything else intact. Surgical fix for locked-door / floating-floor / stuck-NPC bugs.
How to Perform a Hard Wipe (Full Restart)
- Open your Supercraft panel and Stop the server. (Or via console:
quit.) - Open the File Manager.
- Navigate to
/Zomboid/Saves/Multiplayer/. - (Recommended) right-click your server folder and copy to a timestamped backup first.
- Delete the folder matching your server name (often
pzserver, check your server configServerName). - On Build 42, also remove
pzserver_db/in the same path if it exists (the SQLite character store). - Restart the server. A new world generates on first boot; players need fresh characters.
How to Perform a Soft Reset (World Cleaning)
Run these in the server console (or via RCON) while the server is up:
| Command | Effect | Preserves |
|---|---|---|
/removecorpses | Removes all corpses from the world | Players, bases, loot |
/removebloodsplats | Clears blood texture splatters (Build 42) | Everything except blood |
/removezombies | Despawns all currently-loaded zombies (they respawn per sandbox rules) | Players, world state, bases |
/grantadmin <user> | Grant admin so they can run these themselves | , |
Sandbox: WorldItemRemovalList | Auto-age ground loot after N hours | Players, world, bases |
Sandbox: HoursForCorpseRemoval | Auto-clear corpses on a schedule | Everything except corpses |
Chunk-Level Reset (Surgical Fix)
For specific glitched cells, locked doors, broken floors, stuck NPCs, mods leaving orphaned tiles, you can force chunk regen by deleting the matching .bin file:
- Stop the server.
- Open
/Zomboid/Saves/Multiplayer/<server>/map/in the File Manager. - Find the cell file matching the broken coordinates. Filenames follow the pattern
map_X_Y.binwhere X / Y are cell coordinates (each cell ≈ 300×300 tiles). - Copy the file to a backup folder, then delete the original.
- Restart the server, the cell regenerates fresh on next load.
Warning: chunk-level reset wipes player builds in that cell. Use it surgically; warn affected players first. Tools like the in-browser PZ Map help you locate cell coordinates from in-game positions.
Wipe Comparison: What Actually Survives?
| Action | Keeps skills? | Keeps bases? | Keeps map? | Best for… |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hard wipe | ❌ No | ❌ No | ❌ No (regens) | New map mods, branch migration, season restart |
| Soft reset (commands only) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | Fixing FPS lag mid-season, clearing corpses and blood |
| Chunk reset | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Lost in affected cells only | ⚠️ Regens affected cells only | Glitched buildings, stuck doors, mod-orphaned cells |
| Item cleanup (sandbox aging) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | Daily maintenance, performance optimisation |
Build 42 Specifics
- SQLite character store. Build 42 stores player data in
pzserver_db(SQLite) alongside the older flat-file format. Hard wipes need to delete both; orphaned_dbrows on a partial wipe will cause "character not found" errors at login. - Animal husbandry data. Livestock state lives in separate per-cell files. A chunk reset can wipe an entire pen of animals if their cell is regenerated, copy the .bin files first if the pen contained breeding-line investment.
- Mod-added items. Some mods (Brita's, Common Sense) leave persistent ground spawns that the standard WorldItemRemovalList doesn't age out. Check your modlist before counting on auto-cleanup.
- Stable vs unstable. Build 42 stable and unstable use slightly different save formats. Migrating a save between branches needs a hard wipe; the unstable save layout doesn't load cleanly on stable.
Common Mistakes
| Mistake | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Deleting save files while the server is running | Corrupted save state, server crashes or fails to load. |
Hard-wiping pzserver/ but not pzserver_db/ | Orphaned SQLite rows, "character not found" errors on login. |
| Chunk-resetting a player's base cell without warning | Player revolts. Always announce, always back up first. |
| Mid-season sandbox-setting changes | Zombie counts, loot tables, and weather often desync from existing save data, expect bugs. |
| No backup before any wipe | Disaster recovery becomes impossible. Five minutes of snapshot saves you from hours of explanation. |
Always create a snapshot backup of /Saves/ before any wipe or reset. Even on a "harmless" soft reset, mod interactions can surface in unexpected ways. Disk is cheap; rebuilding player trust isn't.
Related Project Zomboid Guides
- Build 42 dedicated server setup
- Build 42 performance tuning
- How to allocate more RAM (Build 42)
- Backup player data (snapshots and exports)
- All sandbox settings reference
- Admin menu and commands reference
- Project Zomboid Wiki home
Clean up your world without losing your edge. Host a Project Zomboid server with Supercraft, one-click snapshot backups, scheduled wipe automation, and a file manager that doesn't fight you.