Sons of the Forest Patch 01 Live Now - Balance Changes, New Items

Sons of Forest has had a few hot fixes since release, but today’s Patch 01 marks the game’s first full patch. All told, it’s an impressive list of changes, improvements, and additions. Of particular note are the two new tools in the Binoculars and Hang Glider; other interesting additions include “additional story elements”, a mini-boss fight in one of the bunkers, and — you’ve all been waiting for it — a gate for the Defensive Wall. For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of some of the more interesting changes.

Sons of the Forest Patch 01 TL;DR Patch Notes:

New Items
- Binoculars
- Hang Glider
New construction options
- Defensive Wall gate
- Locks for doors (by using a stick)
New boss in the food bunker
Fish trap fixed
New story elements
Changes to the nutrition and hydration granted by some foods
- Berries give slightly more fullness
- Energy drink gives half as much hydration and less energy
- “Tweaked” fullness and hydration from all herbs and mushrooms
Sleep can now be interrupted by nearby enemies that can reach the player
Shotgun damage halved
Kelvin will no longer cut down the tree that’s holding up your tree house
Hunger and dehydration will no longer drain rest
The trick to use a stick to get through locked doors has been removed

There’s a lot more in the patch than that, so check out the full notes below if you want to see all the changes!

Sons of the Forest Patch 01 Notes

Hey everyone,

For our first patch we have added a new mini-boss battle, new binoculars pickup, hang gliders, defensive wall gates and door locks as well as lots more, for the full list check below:

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 1.25x health
Increased cannibal armor health by 1.5x on hard
Kelvin catch fish order will end after a time
Fixed opening a cave in late game having too many enemies
Adjusted some player melee events and ranges for better A.I. responsiveness
Halved shotgun damage
Boosted seat rest amount from 0.3 to 0.7
Added regular Puffies to dining hall
Increased health on creepies depending on amount of multiplayer players active

Improvements

Improved red cannibal animation and blends
Fixed sleeping animation for female cannibal
Set up player effigy struggle/idle for multiplayer
Fixed ‘bouncy’ logs when deep in water
Performance speed up for world locators
Added Logic to allow hatches and doors to be forced open when player is spawned inside
Fix for some LOD’s sometimes not switching correctly
Fixed error caused when quitting while in death wakeup
Unique/Story items are now force equipped when they are collected
Door orientation is now determined by the position of the player when placing it, the face in front of player is the interior face
Adjusted Deer and Moose locomotion for better pathing
Prevented placing bench so close to objects that player could be stuck when standing up after sitting on it
Added more small prop setup for melee impacts and collision
Added LODs/optimization for the wall torch
Destroying screw storage now spawns stored items as dynamic pickups
Beach greebles regenerated with coral rock sizes reduced
Bunker food fixed some small lighting issues
Added radio to bunker food
Turned the table cards for Mr. and Mrs. Puffton into story pickups

Fixes

Should no longer be able to get through locked doors with a stick (Sorry speed runners!)
Fixed Kelvin cutting down trees with player structures attached
Fixed keycard guest not opening the two doors in bunker entertainment and not being needed to get into bunker residential
Fixed ghost blueprints not rendering underwater (for example fish trap)
Fixed some stream underwater rendering glitches
Fixed some potential issues on multiplayer disconnect
Fixed multiple issues with input bindings
Fixed player stuck after dying while climbing rope
Fixed being able to place paper target on tarp collision
Fixed place defensive wall option available on non grounded pillars, often resulting in invalid placement that gets rejected
Fixed placing a defensive wall log against a pillar made of log quarter variation causing an invalid placement that gets rejected
Fixed destroying the small animal deadfall trap getting its resources yielded back twice
Fixed some issues occurring when a fire is destroyed while interacting with it
Fixed lifting tarp with stick sometimes not detecting stick being equipped properly when auto equipped resulting in a unnecessary delay before performing the action
Fixed adding log planks to ghost blueprint structures by splitting logs automatically not consuming the log properly
Fixed case where some elements from some unbuilt outlines could be removed
Volume fix for cave visuals disabling when navigating into some corners of caves
Fixes for various open rock / cliff edges in terrain
Fixed case where Virginia grab bag interaction could trigger at same time as pickup, leading to bad player state
Fixed case of player stuck attacking with spear after revive
Fixed enemy armor setting not working
Fixed animal count setting not working correctly
Fixed player able to trigger actions while doing ground attacks, fixes some possible temporary stuck states.
Fixed some cases of small birds not being scared of player
Fixed some incorrect keyboard icons for keypad inputs
Fixed music not playing in title screen after leaving a multiplayer game
Autumn ground leaves shouldn’t pop on visually as much now
Player will no longer get into a broken state when trying to equip an item that they are already holding and have maxed out in inventory
Fixed a transition to move with Tactical Axe which was preventing attack/block/parry from activating during it
Fixed case where removing a beam supporting a pillar wouldn’t re-link the pillar properly with its new support, resulting in wrong pillar position calculated after the cascading repositioning process
Fixed wood stack loading from saves as an apex (non retro-active)
Added player saving system for cutscenes
Fixed the cave shark eating severed limbs looking broken
Fixed some cave entrance bat scare spawn locations
Fixed some eagle perch landing / takeoff issues. Add a perch spot to tall dead stump
Fixed issue where walking over entertainment bunker could cause trees and other world objects to disappear.
Cannibals should no longer snap long distances to climb into windows
Fix for clients no longer loading into the correct season when rejoining a saved game
Players held items at time of knockout are now remembered upon being revived
Tutorials will no longer be force closed when opening the pause menu and are instead just visually toggled. This should fix some tutorials such as the pick up construction element tutorial from completing before the player has actually done it
Player will no longer slide down slopes when either utility book is held or when the player is in their inventory
Can no longer attach both the laser sight and flashlight weapon mods to the crossbow at the same time
Fixed some cases of multiplayer client able to duplicate logs
Fixed repairing wood stacks not putting its elements back in correct position
Fixed floating log when chopping down a tree with tree shelter attached to it
Fixed Screw Structures being broken apart have no audio
Tagged auto jumps off on portable light
Fixed Kelvin dropping radios destroying the radio
Fixed weapons given to Virginia not being returned with correct amount of ammo and weapon upgrades
Modified fade distance on icons slightly to make them more visible
Fixed for player able to be pushed through terrain if another players stand on their head
Fixed opening hatches removing weapon upgrades from currently held weapon
Made sure player correctly aligns to death marker when dying at high height
Removed floating life vest
Fixed displacement digging visuals breaking on some quality settings

Audio

Improved audio CPU overhead
Improved some cannibal audio/vocals
Reduced audio stuttering issues
Reduced intensity of high wind audio to reduce performance impact
Reduced max instances of footstep audio to reduce CPU cost and improve performance
Changed the audio ringing effect on explosions and grenades to lessen as you are further from the explosion to avoid it cutting out with distance
Spittle audio added to first spittle nest in entertainment bunker
Added fadeouts to physics sounds
Tuned player rock footstep when running, waterfall and surf levels
Added gun fight audio before door opening to “Get down son” cutscene
Updated triggered and reset audio events on flyswatter, bone maker and small animal traps
Prevented repair tool from spamming SFX causing performance and audio issues
Fixed audio loop not ending when climbing down ropes