Sons of the Forest patch 6 is here, and everything’s getting harder. At least, if you want it to. The latest Sons of the Forest update introduces the first implementation of a ‘hard survival’ difficulty for one of the best co-op games this year, but it also adds stone as a resource that can be gathered and used to create all manner of structures to help shore up your own defenses and build the best Sons of the Forest base.
Hard survival mode is intended as a more true survival game experience for players who enjoy the torment of having to keep themselves fed and watered in tough environments. When selecting this new difficulty, you’ll face reduced food spawns in crates, lowered fish and animal spawns in the world, lower health and stamina regeneration while cold, an increased penalty for using raw or rotten meats, and no item storage crate respawns when you load the game.
Whether you fancy that mode or not, the addition of stone in Sons of the Forest should make for some much sturdier structures. You’ll find this new resource available to collect all over the world, and can use it to build all manner of stone walls, beams, and columns, as well as stone fireplaces. Kelvin will be able to collect and use stone if you ask him to, and it can be placed in the advanced log sled alongside logs, rocks, sticks, and bones.
Among the rest of the full Sons of the Forest patch notes (which you can see below), you’ll also now be able to build custom effigies, quickly dump out the contents of your cooking pot or flask, and more easily place your cooking pot onto the fire while holding it. There’s also plenty of additional minor updates: cannibals will now drag injured friends away, the rain catcher won’t tell you it’s ready unless there’s enough water for a full drink, and fish caught in traps will no longer go rotten before you collect it.
Sons of the Forest patch 6 release date and patch notes
Sons of the Forest patch 6 is out now on Steam. Here are the full patch notes, courtesy of developer Endnight Games:
New Features
- Hard survival difficulty mode added.
- Stone pickups added to world.
- Buildable stone fireplace, stone walls, stone beams, and stone columns.
- Custom effigies.
- Advanced log sled can now hold logs, rocks, stones, sticks and bones.
Improvements
- Countdown clocks added to dining area of food and dining.
- Blown apart limbs added to exploded bathroom in bunker luxury.
- The cooking pot and flask can now be dumped out with right mouse button.
- Cooking pot will now be placed on the fire immediately if the player is holding the pot while interacting with the fire.
- If a fire is broken while the pot is cooking, the pots contents is reset back to water. The recipe is retained if the pot was done cooking when the fire is destroyed.
- Added some water movement to the pot when not boiling.
- Visual and audio improvements to steady water drip FX in caves.
- Improvements and fixes to Lava sound and visuals.
- Adding thunder sounds to lightning strikes in space city view of gold room cutscene.
- Rain catcher will no longer show the refill icon until there is at least enough water for one drink.
- The pot can now be re-added to the fire even if it has a completed recipe in it.
- The hotkey UI will no longer show up in quick select and grab bag menus and only be visible when in the inventory.
- Added loading hints for Comfort rating and Sleeping indoors vs outdoors.
- Added a loading hint for cooking bonuses.
- Fish traps now run in game time instead of real time to work better with pausing and sleeping.
- Fish caught in traps will no longer go rotten.
- Added UI for current cooking bonuses.
- Improved UI for cooking recipes.
- Added a new equip/unequip animation for shotgun that is simpler and matches the idle held pose, so blending feels smoother and less awkward.
- Cannibals will sometimes drag their dying friends away from the player.
- General optimizations to reduce AI update cost.
- Kelvin can now pickup stones.
- Kelvin can now fill the log sled with sticks, rocks, and stones.
- Reduced some oversaturated animal spawn areas and spread them out more.
- Fixed dead bodies in beach cave floating in multiplayer games when host player is not in the cave.
- Player effigies cause fear to cannibals based on number of body parts.
- Spearing multiple fish will visually stack on spear instead of all overlapping.
- AI are no longer blocked by defensive stick spikes, but still take damage.
Balance
- Sleeping outdoors will now give less rest than sleeping indoors.
- The amount of rest gained by the player is now modified by their current comfort rating (certain soups and clothing can affect comfort rating).
- Lowered chance of meds in crates.
- Large Demons can now sometimes appear above ground after end game.
- Lumberjack juice recipe has been reworked so that it’s easier to make in peaceful games.
- Added hard survival to start difficulty settings.
- Cooking buff durations changed from 8 hours to 4 hours in game time.
- Hard survival; Reduced food spawns in crates. No Item storage crate respawn on load in this game mode. Lowered fish and animal spawns. Decreased target health and stamina regen speeds while cold. Increased penalty for raw/rotten meats.
Additional bug fixes can be found via the game’s Steam page.
Make sure you know where to find everything on the Sons of the Forest map with our handy guide, including all Sons of the Forest keycards. If you’re looking to play Sons of the Forest on Steam Deck, we’ve tested it thoroughly to see how it performs.