Sons of the Forest: 18 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started

gameranx.com:

In Sons of the Forest, you end up marooned on an idyllic, isolated island where you can hunt, fish, swim, garden, and build your dream home with your own two hands. The only drawback is that all your neighbors—no, seriously, all of them—are mutant cannibals who intend to strip you for parts.

There’s a lot you need to know and not a lot of time to figure it out for yourself before someone shows up to eat your spleen. Here are a few useful, spoiler-free starting tips for new players of Sons of the Forest.

At time of writing, Sons of the Forest has just launched into Steam Early Access, with a planned roadmap of big content additions every two weeks or so. As such, there’s a lot about the game that could very well change between now and its full release.

For example, the 2/28 hotfix added the ability to set custom numerical hotkeys to various items by mousing over them in your inventory, which is a fairly significant game changer over the launch build. Endnight, the developer of SotF, has also been pretty good about clarifying various obscure in-game mechanics by adding new loading tips.

With that in mind, this article does have a built-in expiration date. If you’re reading this after late February/early March 2023, take what’s here with a grain of salt, as it’s likely that Sons of the Forest will make a few big changes as it moves through Early Access.

You can spawn in one of three places at the start of the game, which appears to be determined by how long it takes you to flip through the dossier on your laptop and close it. Most frequently, you’ll end up high in the mountains in the center of the map.

At each initial spawn point, you’ll initially be surrounded by a number of equipment boxes scattered around the area.