Sons Of The Forest Beginner’s Guide: Tips & Tricks You Should Know

by Mike Alexander / Game Guides, Tips & Tricks / 28 Feb 2023

It’s been a while since Sons of the Forest was announced at one of PlayStation’s live broadcasts. In that debut trailer, we were presented with a game that looked far better graphically than The Forest, offered much improved and way more immersive crafting, and had a smattering of nightmarish new mutants & cannibals to deal with.

Well the game dropped on Steam last week to begin the Early Access portion of its development and it seems to be living up to that first impression so far. Sons of the Forest is f****ng scary, incredibly immersive, and full of beautiful and dangerous things to see. Veteran players of The Forest will probably feel right at home even taking into consideration the huge improvements in many systems, but what about players who are completely new to the survival/crafting/horror series?

Well, that’s what I’m here for. Today, I’m going to do my best to ease beginners into this awesome game, and together we’ll do our part to help grow the Sons of the Forest community. There’s a lot to know and this guide won’t cover everything (keep an eye out for new, more specific guides in the coming weeks), but it’s a pretty good place to start. So let’s pick ourselves up from that crazy helicopter crash and get started!.

For God’s Sake, Help Kelvin!

Ok, you probably ran straight to Kelvin and helped him up when you gained control after the crash, right? What? You went around and picked up everything you could before you even noticed he was alive? That’s pretty rough.

But don’t worry about it, I didn’t realize Kelvin was a helper until I restarted my playthrough.

Kelvin represents a brand-new feature for Sons of the Forest: an AI helper. Kelvin can set up a shelter, collect rocks and sticks, and do a few other helpful things to make survival a little easier and a lot less tedious. So, in the name of everything that is good, DO NOT LEAVE HIM STRANDED. Go straight to him, pick him up and you can get started on your adventure.

Hoof It to GPS Locations

In the helicopter wreckage, you’ll pick up a number of helpful items, including some flares and a GPS. Once you’ve scoured the area, go ahead and equip that GPS so you can head toward the marked locations that are pinging on the screen. There’s no set progression path in Sons of the Forest, but heading to these locations to check them out is a pretty good place to start.

You will need to visit the three purple-marked locations, but I’m talking about the green markers. I won’t spoil what these are because they are really, really cool, but make sure you visit these as soon as you can. At least one of them that I’ve encountered needs special equipment (a shovel), so take time to explore & craft along the way.

Pack Rat Extraordinaire

You’re probably picking up everything you can interact with, aren’t you? It’s ok, you really never know when you might need that little pebble, so go ahead and pick it up. It’ll just go into your impossibly massive storage pack. You know, the one your character lays out every time you hit the I key?

Isn’t that annoying? Being bombarded with every little thing you’ve ever picked up when you only want one or two things? Well, Endnight Games considered this, and they implemented a quick inventory system that happens to be super helpful.

Instead of tapping I to lay everything out, hold the key instead to only bring out a backpack with essentials. This saves a ton of time, and it’s extra helpful when building structures because it doesn’t break your flow as much.

Hold On to That Tarp

Another helpful item you’ll get from the crash site is a tarp. That’s it, it’s just a tarp. Seemingly nothing special, until you consider the fact that this plain piece of fabric can be combined with sticks to make a shelter, ANYWHERE. It’s incredibly helpful, especially when you’ve been running away from cannibals all day and need to crash so you can wake up and do it all again in the morning.

Once you set up your makeshift shelter, you can sleep and save, two incredibly important things to do in Sons of the Forest. Now instead of leaving it there, the smart thing to do would be to dismantle the shelter so you can set it up somewhere else when you need it.. You can do this by hacking away at the sticks until the shelter breaks, but the much faster way is to just jump on top of it. That will make the tarp able to be picked up again, and you can add it back to your inventory. Try to remember to keep the tarp around, because I left it behind in my playthrough and things get SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult without it.

Mike Alexander

Mike has been playing video games since he was able to hold a controller, having been fascinated by Sonic 2 on his mom’s Sega Genesis. That fascination and passion for the art form has grown exponentially nearly 30 years later, and he doesn’t see that fading away anytime soon.
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