Sons of the Forest gets huge update, gives Kelvin spicier personality

Sons of the Forest is one of my favorite games to hop into with a group of close pals, especially with its humorous big head setting activated. I loved Endnight Games’ first indie horror survival experience, but the second one is undoubtedly superior with improved gameplay, visuals, and Kelvin. That’s right, Kelvin. The beloved companion with absolutely no thoughts. With Sons of the Forest’s latest update, dubbed ‘Patch 12,’ Kelvin gets a personality makeover and the game gets a ton of other new features.

With the latest Sons of the Forest update, we get a bit of everything from new materials to tools. The survival game is still in early access, which means that we can expect to see more of these massive patches in the future. This one adds “a new cave that contains a pick axe,” Endnight writes alongside its Sons of the Forest patch notes. If there’s a pick axe, there must be something new to use it with, right?

“The pick axe can be used to mine the Solafite mineral found in caves,” which is the game’s new material that is “used with one of the new buildable structures.” That’s right, we’ve now got two more book items to find so that we can build those new structures. My camp is going to look better than ever, especially with a more human Kelvin gathering the materials I need.

Endnight says that the team “added more reactions and emotes to Virginia and Kelvin,” including things like approval, confusion, disapproval, joy, sadness, and more. Unfortunately, the cannibals are also a bit more ‘alive’ thanks to this patch. Once alerted, they’ll call for backup more quickly, so get ready to practice running in-game.

You’ll find a lot more additional content while playing, from a new mysterious item to improvements while building. The patch is also hygiene-friendly, making sprinklers actually clean blood off of your body as well as your companions’ bodies. You can read on below for our in-depth rundown of Patch 12, including bug fixes and new features.

Sons of the Forest patch notes – Patch 12 update – Friday, September 29, 2023

If you want to see the full patch notes, courtesy of Endnight Games, as well as the developer’s accompanying message, you can find the update’s details directly on Steam.

Features

• Added pick axe
• You can now mine the Solafite mineral found in caves
• Added new cave
• Added second ??? item
• Added 2 new findable book items allowing you to build two new structures
• New upgrade system for weapons
• New hanging cross, gore props, and cave roots were added to Cave A and Cave F
• Added hanging skeletons to some trees in the world
• Added Ranged aiming sensitivity option
• Cannibal leaders or village guards once alerted to a player can now call for quick backup from others in the area
• Implemented more Kelvin emotes: Nod, Thumbs up, Confused, Shake Head, Hit Head, No, Happy, Sad (If the player quickly nods at Kelvin he will nod back)
• Implemented more Virginia emote actions: Laugh, Nod, Shake Head, Happy, Confused, No, Sad

Improvements

• Animal heads now can be hit with a golf putter
• Virginia will now laugh if she sees an animal hit a spring trap or a full-health Kelvin get hit with a small rock
• Kelvin will now react to animal heads
• Improved look of volumetric light from sun and work lights
• You can now carry up to 3 Turtle Shells
• Spawn location for skinned animal heads will now be at the head of the body
• Burning player, torch, molotov, and spreading fire now react to sprinklers
• Improved sprinkler performance in bunkers
• Sprinklers will clean blood off players and held weapons
• Improved positioning of free wires extremities when placing on beams and pillars
• Electric wires can now be placed on three-quarter-high pillars
• Moved the ramp placement arrow up slightly so that it is easier to see when targeting from the bottom of the ramp
• The player no longer slides when standing on ramps
• Placing planks on ramps is now easier to target when standing close to it
• Physics collider cleanup and optimization on a few Items
• Various environment fixes
• Food Bunker tree base collisions synced in multiplayer so AI interact with them
• Lighting transition improved in food bunker water
• Improvements to driftwood physics
• Some optimizations to characters and AI update
• Kelvin’s Finish Structure order will no longer stop after one structure, will now finish everything he can before completing the order

Balance

• Creepies are more resistant to bullets and have slightly increased general health
• Puffies when high health won’t get dismembered
• Add a two-second hit react cooldown to lower the stun lock on Puffies
• Fingers and Twins now have more aggressive behavior
• Reduced max late-game outside creepy count by 20%
• Reduce the likelihood of creepies taking overpopulated villages
• Spear melee stab damage reduced 15->10

Fixes

• Fixed Frank sometimes trying to do revenge attack on himself after lighting himself on fire
• Players can no longer be killed during any cutscenes
• Fixed missing spittle in bunker entertainment
• Fixed small rock not spawning when digging
• Fixed some issues with Sluggy sound in Cave C
• Fixed light bulb getting visually culled too early
• Fixed supported screw structure getting destroyed when adding a strut to a beam
• Fixed sharpening a defensive wall log playing audio of the player swinging his weapon
• Fixed corner ramp beam on ground placement able to place against off-grid structures which would typically create degenerate corner ramps
• Fixed placing strut underneath leveled beam unlinking the forward support in some case
• Fixed placing strut underneath leveled beam inverting the beam visually sometimes
• Fixed pressing shift while placing a stick or rock path leaving the player in a broken state
• Fixed lifting beams causing the renderer rotation to pop after lifting it
• Fixed case where beams supporting a concave corner ramp beam would block placement of floors on the wrong side of the beam
• Fixed case where placing a strut under a leaning beam wasn’t possible
• Fixed issue when placing walls over floors that would break floor linking with its support beam
• Fixed own shadow leaking slightly on wall and pillar logs
• Fixed issues with grass and leaves from the fake ground covering up some items in the inventory
• ??? pieces will no longer respawn if the player already collected them
• Added missing equip UI to wire in inventory
• Fixed bug where other players would stash items when a networked player triggered the Puffton cutscene
• Fixed missing knife in tree crash cutscene
• Fix for molotov smoke alpha clipping
• Fixed Armsy sometimes not setting off traps
• Fixed Greg’s carried effigy type not matching on clients
• Fixed floating spittle sometimes appearing on destroyed huts
• Fixed bullets fired from ultra-close range sometimes going through the enemy
• Fixed issue with player block and parry where hits got through during animation transitions
• Fixed player-held severed head scare not working properly when done by clients

Audio

• Updated fire events for built fires and standing fires
• Retimed skinning animals sounds
• Tuned audio on burning stick and molotov events
• Added new physics interaction SFX object for small batteries
• Changed a sluggy event to be 3d
• Changed distance settings on sluggy emerges event
• Turned down vista sting a little
• Added some sounds for skeletons and falling rocks

If you’re into Sons of the Forest for its spookier features, you should look through our roundup of these other creepy horror games for some more chill-inducing fun. Alternatively, you can browse around our list of the greatest indie games around if you want to support other independent developers.