Sons of the Forest tips and tricks

Sons of the Forest was the hottest game on Steam at release, crashing the platform as the developer Endnight Games would later confirm it had sold two million copies within the first 24 hours. As more players hop into the game, they may be wondering about the best way to approach certain situations.

Make sure to carefully navigate the island, as the threats can sneak up and take you out before you know it.

Related: The best Sons of the Forest mods from Attack of the Fanboy

What are some tips and tricks for Sons of the Forest?

The more you play, you may prefer certain settings in Sons of the Forest over others. However, these are some great starter tips for a variety of players.

Customize your keybinds

On the keyboard, developer Endnight Games made some interesting choices about some of the default keys for certain actions. For instance, the “I” key is pretty far away from the standard keys that you’ll use, making it hard to hold as a quick swap to open your bag, so consider switching to Tab. This will be a great asset in allowing you to craft more quickly, but also allows you to hot-swap weapons faster.

Another optional change could be switching your crouch from the “Left Ctrl” key to the “C” key, which doesn’t currently have a keybind. This is really a preference thing but it makes sneaking a much quicker action instead of having to reach over with your pinky or ring finger.

Collect everything

It’s a smart idea to pick up every resource that you come across since you’ll need as much as you can find. Fortunately, if you’re playing as a group, most of the loot is instance-based, so each player will be able to take their own copy of it. Plus, each piece of gear has its own slot in your inventory, so you don’t have to worry about picking up too much of one thing.

The inventory in Sons of the Forest is much larger than it was in its predecessor, so make sure that you look around the entire collection after getting out of the cave. The game’s UI does a minimal job of telling you what you picked up, so you may end up with more resources than planned.

Build a base near a river at the center of the island

In Sons of the Forest, you’ll be traveling all over the island, so it’s wise to build your shelter in a convenient and central location. There is a snowy biome there, but it may be wise to build on the outskirts of it so that you won’t have to constantly combat the cold weather at the start of the game.

It’s probably wise to grab the Rebreather from the cave before you move inland, though, since it’s so close to where players spawn. After that, make sure that you find a river to consistently have fresh water—and potentially fish.

Put your weapons away around Virginia

If you want to befriend everyone’s favorite three-armed NPC, you’ll need to make sure that she doesn’t see you as a threat. Virginia is very gentle and won’t approach the player or their camp if she notices that anyone has a weapon drawn. This doesn’t persist once she gets comfortable with you, but she will run away if she finds you threatening.

Once she becomes friendly with your camp, you can put a tracker on her like the one Kelvin has so that you can always find her while she’s running across the island. She works as a great cannibal detector in your base by pointing at them when they’re close, and you can even give her a gun to defend herself.

Save often

Sons of the Forest provides a new option that The Forest didn’t: it allows players to save the game wherever they want with two basic supplies. There are a number of tarps littering the island that players can easily find multiples of, plus a stick, and if players have a place to wait out the night, they can save their game whenever they want.

This is a great asset, as dying in a cave can end your game. This means that you’ll have to start from your last manual save, which can be days before. Because of this, it’s recommended that players use tents and collect their tarps again after saving.