Sons of the Forest Releases Update 03 Along With New Traversal Method

While the initial hype has died down, there are still plenty of fans playing Endnight's Sons of the Forest, and Patch 03 was recently sent out which comes with improvements, additional fixes, as well as implementing what is essentially a motorized unicycle. There's a lot happening in the world of horror gaming in 2023 at the moment. Both the AAA and indie scenes are looking to launch, or have launched, several titles, as well as remakes, for those that love all things scary, and SotF is no exception.

As it's still very much in development, Sons of the Forest continues to get updated with new content and bug fixes. When it came out in early access back in February, it immediately shot to the top of the charts, with the studio reporting that the game had sold more than two million copies in just 24 hours. For comparison, the remake of Resident Evil 4 shifted three million units in two days, so an indie developer succeeding with such stiff competition from the big leagues is no mean feat.

Now Sons of the Forest fans will have noticed that Patch 03 has been rolling out recently. According to the game's Steam page, not only are there now night vision goggles, solar panels, and other new assets, players can also get around the titular forest thanks to an EUC called the Knight V. EUC stands for Electric Unicycle and is exactly what it sounds like. The game will now allow survivors to make light work of long distances with the help of a motorized and mono-wheeled vehicle. As well as that, there have also been some improvements, such as dead babies having "buoyancy in water" now.

Sons Of The Forest Kelvin Spotting Enemies

There have also been a few improvements to Kelvin, such as him now being able to pick up and drop arrows, as well as other tweaks to his programming. For anyone who hasn't played the game, Kelvin quickly became Sons of the Forest's star AI. His ability to follow commands set by the player, such as gathering wood, made him a valuable asset for many, not to mention him being good, if mute, company during a solo playthrough.

For newcomers, there are plenty of Sons of the Forest guides out there to help make the opening sections easier, whether it's building that first shelter or finding keycards. Surviving in the middle of a dense forest inhabited by vicious cannibals is not many people's idea of fun, but Endnight's sequel to The Forest proved amazingly popular when it released not long ago.

Sons of the Forest Update 03 Patch Notes:

Features

Rideable E.U.C. ‘Knight V’
Nightvision goggles
Solar panels, light bulbs and wires added to construction system
Ramps/Stairs can now be built between a beam and a wall
Buildable spring trap
Working armor rack (replaces mannequin)
Added button / option to delete saves (also limited amount of save slots to 30 to fix issues with steam cloud sync)

Improvements

Dead babies now have buoyancy in water
Mr. and Mrs. Puffton clothes now burn up when they are burned
Added security camera model to bunker luxury entrance
Cannibal lookout towers and large huts are now breakable
Adjusted navigation areas by lakes to fix issue with stuck animals/characters around edges
Can now pickup and throw puffy dead bodies
Dismembering dead characters with melee is now easier
Adjusted creepy spawning logic in caves, should no longer visibly spawn and should not lead to over the top amounts of enemies in caves over time
Improved some enemy base attack logic
Enemy damage game setting is now properly replicated to clients in multiplayer
Kelvin "return to shelter" command will also return to hunting shelters and beds
Kelvin can now pick up all types of arrows, visibly carry them, and drop the proper type of arrow
Fly Swatter and Bone Maker traps will no longer trigger on small animals
Improved morgue lighting in bunker residential and added some dead cultists there
Added flower wreaths to some dead cultists
Added world position fixer to block player going outside the bounds of the world on X and Z
Added quarter resolution mipmap limit option and set book pages to use it, to prevent them becoming unreadable at low texture settings
Set rock, stick and small rock to disable colliders when not dynamic
Fixed player clothing blend shapes not always properly applying visually to other players in multiplayer
Tarp and turtle shell will now show their item count in inventory
Renamed mannequin to armor rack
Changed amount of duct tape required to build armor rack to 1
Added shimmy area after boss fight in hell cave
Made it possible to leave hell cave if reentering it after completing game
Rope climb trigger for caves is now accessible from a wider angle
Creepies will now be hidden if they manage to wander into any cutscenes
Virginia will now stash guns when carrying a gift and drop gift when entering combat

Balance

Cannibal ability to dodge heavy attacks increased
Increased John2 damage to structures
Enemies now flee further when scared

Fixes

Fixed issue with nomad cannibal families spawning more than maximum allowed amount
Fixed more cases of enemies and large animals able to spawn in player bases
Fixed missing translation on find the Puffton tutorial messages
Fixed slight delay when hovering over the exit confirm button
Fixed some more cases of being able to glitch out of the world using a stick
Fixed animation pop in puffy male walk aggressive loop
Fixed some areas players could get stuck in hell cave
Dropped backpack should now properly spawn if the player saves and reloads before picking it up
Grab bag should no longer get the player stuck in a bad state if it is opened and closed quickly
Player should no longer get into a broken state if they begin swimming while performing the refill flask action
Added a safety measure that if the player somehow gets into a state where they are missing a vital item such as their lighter, tracker, combat knife, guide book or grab bag, they will be readded when a save game is loaded
When the player’s dropped backpack is picked up, it double checks to ensure that the player now has the backpack item
Player should no longer be able to lose their backpack from using their Quick select in some rare use cases
Fish on drying racks will no longer despawn when their max pickup count is reached
Items on the camp fire will no longer auto despawn
Fixed heavy actor sometimes popping to standing when hit again during hit head reaction
Fixed Kelvin not stopping trying to fill holder that player put final item in
Fixed player getting into stuck state if machete ground attack was interrupted
Fixed stun baton FX sometimes stuck on when interrupted
Fixed issue with there sometimes being more fish than maximum allowed amount
Improved logic to better prevent cases of seeing enemies pop in
Fixed falling trees not hitting cannibals
Fixed clients sometimes seeing extra GPS locators for Virginia
Fixed multiplayer client’s taking gun with multiple mods from Virginia losing a mod
Fixed visual issues decapitating heavy faceless cannibal and female puffy