Sons of the Forest's first big update makes enemies more threatening, adds a hang glider, and quells Kelvin's tree-chopping bloodlust

Sons of the Forest got its first big patch yesterday, bringing a bunch of bug fixes and new features to the incredibly popular survival sim. And, look, there's a lot of new stuff that we'll get into further on, but let's not bury the lede here: Kelvin—sweet, precious Kelvin—will no longer go absolutely hogwild cutting down trees with your treehouse in them. This is somehow both excellent news and the worst thing I've ever heard.

But suppressing Kelvin's free spirit isn't all Sons of the Forest's Patch 01 does. You'll also be able to find a few new tools to help you in your anti-cannibal quest the next time you fire the game up. Specifically, you'll now be able to make use of a hang glider and a set of binoculars to scout and traverse your surroundings, and build a defensive wall gate to protect your valuables from marauders. 

If you don't know how to get these new toys, you're in luck, we've already got guides on where to find the binoculars and where to find the hang glider in Sons of the Forest.

There's plenty of other additions, and I'll include the full patch notes below, but what seems notable to me is the way the patch makes the game a little more dangerous. There's a new mid-game boss fight, some of the cannibal villages now have lookout towers, shotgun damage has been halved and, as if that wasn't enough, "Angry regular cannibals can attack now by jumping out of trees," possibly the most threatening single sentence ever committed to writing.

The patch has also upends the Sons of the Forest speedrunning meta by fixing the glitch that let you use sticks to get through locked doors, updates the game's DLSS version to 3.1.1 and, crucially, fixes an issue that meant certain varieties of small birds showed no fear whatsoever of the player character, which was really bruising my ego. If that's not enough for you, here are the full patch notes:

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

• 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
• Updated DLSS dll to version 3.1.1

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