The precious boy will no longer demolish your home out of sheer enthusiasm.
Sons of the Forest got its first big patch yesterday, bringing a bunch of bug fixes and new features to the incredibly popular survival sim (opens in new tab). And, look, there’s a lot of new stuff that we’ll get into further on, but let’s not bury the lede here: Kelvin—sweet, precious Kelvin (opens in new tab)—will no longer go absolutely hogwild cutting down trees with your treehouse in them. This is somehow both excellent news and the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
But suppressing Kelvin’s free spirit isn’t all Sons of the Forest’s Patch 01 (opens in new tab) does. You’ll also be able to find a few new tools to help you in your anti-cannibal quest the next time you fire the game up. Specifically, you’ll now be able to make use of a hang glider and a set of binoculars to scout and traverse your surroundings, and build a defensive wall gate to protect your valuables from marauders.
If you don’t know how to get these new toys, you’re in luck, we’ve already got guides on where to find the binoculars (opens in new tab) and where to find the hang glider in Sons of the Forest (opens in new tab).
There’s plenty of other additions, and I’ll include the full patch notes below, but what seems notable to me is the way the patch makes the game a little more dangerous. There’s a new mid-game boss fight, some of the cannibal villages now have lookout towers, shotgun damage has been halved and, as if that wasn’t enough, « Angry regular cannibals can attack now by jumping out of trees, » possibly the most threatening single sentence ever committed to writing.
The patch has also upends the Sons of the Forest speedrunning meta (opens in new tab) by fixing the glitch that let you use sticks to get through locked doors, updates the game’s DLSS version to 3.1.1 and, crucially, fixes an issue that meant certain varieties of small birds showed no fear whatsoever of the player character, which was really bruising my ego. If that’s not enough for you, here are the full patch notes:Features
Added Binoculars
Added Hang Glider
Added Defensive Wall gate
Added mid game boss fight into food bunker
Added Settings Reset in the Options screen
Added missing Virginia leather suit pickup to world
You can now lock doors with a stick placed on the interior of the door
Built small structures (furniture) can now be grabbed, while grabbed it can either be placed again somewhere or thrown to collapse it and get back its resources
Some additional story elements added
New headshot death animation variations added for cannibals
Angry regular cannibals can attack now by jumping out of trees
Small birds will now land and eat/gain fullness
Added option to hide player name tags
Added option to hide projectile reticle and trajectory
Fish trap should now work and catch fish (every 5-10 minutes) as long as it’s placed in water and the current season is not winter
Added lookout towers to some cannibal villages
Story Paper pickups will now show UI to « Zoom » in
Added new structure type: One Sided Apex. Fills the space between a leaning beam and its supporting beam. Aligns automatically based on the leaning beam orientation. Fits quarter log variations to the right length automatically.Balance
Added sleep cooldown
Set rest drain from hunger and dehydration to 0
Muddy Cannibals will now get less angry (from player proximity and in late game)
Added possibility of Player Sleep Interruption events from nearby enemies that can reach player
Tweaked fire drain rate to make using firewood more important
Tweaked berries to give slightly more fullness
Tweaked energy drink to give half as much hydration and less energy buff
Tweaked amount of fullness and hydration all herbs and mushrooms give
Hard enemy health setting reduced to 1.
