Sons of the Forest update continues to improve on Kelvin

Although it was an instant hit the moment it came out (selling 2 million copies in 24 hour) hype for Sons of the Forest has definitely dropped off recently. Developer Endnight Games is still improving on it, and the latest patch adds some new things while also giving more love to helper NPC Kelvin.

The notes on the game’s Steam page show exactly what’s been implemented in Patch 12. For starters, there’s now a pickaxe, a brand-new cave, more emote actions for Virginia, and more.

There have also been a few tweaks to Kelvin, the mute companion who became the star of Sons of the Forest. Now, he will react to animal heads, has also been given some extra emotes, and has had some fixes.

Also, a new introduction video

Endnight has also added a new introduction video “for guests at Holosprings.” This can be viewed at the entertainment bunker, specifically in the screening room.

While still in early access, there was a lot of praise for the follow-up to 2018’s The Forest. The game currently has a Steam review score of “Very Positive.” There’s been no word yet on when it will release fully, but hopefully it won’t be long before it leaves early access.

Sons of the Forest Patch 12 notes

Features

• Added Holosprings introduction video to screening room of bunker entertainment
• Reworked gold room cutscene adding new animations, effects, audio and music
• New helicopter flyover moment added (leaving bunker residential)
• You can now build corner ramps, enabling ramps (or roofs) to be joined when placed at a 90° angle
• You can now build stone floors
• You can now build wooden railings
• Added large log holder
• Added placeable decorative deer hide rug
• Added subtitles which can be toggled from the gameplay menu
• Changed the timed explosive item into a sticky bomb and modified its visuals
• New multiplayer cheat allow option – will block clients from using Console when off – hosts won’t be blocked from using Console. The option will be saved along with the other game setup settings. Accessible via multiplayer player menu
• Added electric particle and lighting effect when electric fence is triggered
• Added some new emotes for Kelvin
• Added a new aggressive cannibal enemy type ‘Frank’ who pours vodka on himself and sets himself on fire when near the player
• Cannibals will now sometimes carry fire torches
• Increased variety of enemy raids
• Some villages will now have cannibals chosen as gold mask leaders, and other cannibals will now sometimes follow them

Improvements

• Destroying structures is now far less punishing, if supported structures have other valid supports still standing it will no longer get destroyed and fallback to the other supports instead
• Placing stairs or ramps between a wall and a beam no longer requires the beam to cover the full height of the wall, which allows for a variety of slopes
• Significantly improved construction processing cost when joining a multiplayer game with a large amount of structures to help clients getting disconnected sometimes
• Creepies on fire will now more often rush and attack players
• Increased likelihood and range of cannibal distant yell, mainly at night
• Raised the player camera higher off the ground when falling from a stake, so the camera is less likely to clip through snow
• Adjusted player’s final death animation so hands don’t clip through the ground
• Polish and improvements on Large Female locomotion animations
• Prevented creepies instantly appearing after loading game at night
• Prevented creepies from taking over village on load when player is in village
• Player can now dismember the larger blue Puffies after they die
• AI pooling improvements and optimizations
• Converted some colliders to primitive colliders to improve performance
• Automatically disable and hide fog options when not supported by GPU
• Optimized spawn pool logic to remove unnecessary CPU cost
• Name card pickups in the food bunker no longer sound like coins when dropped
• Added a north direction to the GPS tracker screen
• Player no longer falls all the way to the bottom of the water when knocked back. The knockback is now ended once the player enters the water
• Various improvements to story item pickup visuals
• Various localization improvements
• Entertainment bunkers curved stairs collisions updated to be smoother to walk on
• Mountain cliff material adjusted to use moss and have more gradual transition to rock texture, and mesh modified to resolve some harsh geometry
• FX optimization for standing fire and skull lamps
• Cleaned up some harsh terrain
• Some layout cleanup on standing fire sticks and wrap
• Removed particle controller component from wall torch particles ( improved performance in saves with hundreds of wall torches )

Fixes

• Fixed water shader causing crashing on some AMD GPUs
• Fixed issue with structures sometimes not linking together after saving and loading
• Fixed an issue where enemies could fall from the sky
• Fixed bug that allowed placing pot on standing fire and sanitized saves with fires that have pots
• Fixed issue where player would get into a bad state after interacting with a standing fire while holding a pot
• Setup loader 3d audio blocker system to prevent audio playing from world during loading screens
• Fix for cooking pot being destroyed in MP games when the fire burns out or is destroyed
• Fixed issues with the 3d printer and the client not getting correctly updated when loading into a save game
• Fixed issue where player could get stuck if they opened their chat window right after bringing up quick select
• Fix for player getting into a bad state if they block with a weapon at the same time as pressing a hotkey to equip another item that does not support blocking
• Fixed issue when adding strut under a leaning beam supported by a pillar on the forward end
• Fixed some cases where ramp placement didn’t work properly
• Fixed taking pot on fire after all sticks are burnt out not working properly
• Fixed defensive wall spike orientation on the spawned pickup when collapsed
• Fixed case with an error when destroying combined LOD walls
• Fixed combined LOD floor not working as expected in old saves with elements in wrong order
• Fixed skewed floor getting turned into combined LOD version which looks wrong
• Fixed wall spinning issue in specific context
• Fixed leaning beam supporting a forward pillar allowing to lift it with a strut
• Fixed place strut animation perfect finish system no longer working with LOD version
• Fixed gaps in floor of “Lean to” screw structure
• Fixed dismantling stone wall that was switched to combined LOD
• Fixed opening grab bag on a fire that’s about to completely burn out allowing player to relight the stick
• Fixed own shadow visible on some logs placed in constructions
• Fixed merging super structures not registering it for all linked structures when merged, solves some issues with interior space warmth and path finding not calculated correctly after combining separate super structures
• Fixed side ramps not preventing the dismantling of walls
• Fixed some issues with repairing structures in multiplayer
• Fixed top section of wall being remove-able while it is supporting leaned beams
• Fixed super structure integration calculation tolerance being overly strict
• Fixed merging super structures which have a quarter log height offset instead of full height
• Fixed issue causing some construction placements to fail if starting a game as multiplayer host after going back in game from title screen
• Fixed case where placing structure on ground could cause it to become invalid
• Fixed repairing grounded stone pillars or non full height stone pillars not replacing its elements at the correct positions
• Fixed rope stretch script not filtering out non water triggers + fixed rope not stretching down all the way if placed too high above, it will now stretch up to its max length
• Fixed stick path dismantling
• Fixed Creepy Virginia idling after some electrocutions and idling too long while exploring
• Fixed Armsy sometimes getting stuck in loop with taunt hitting electric fence, and long idle while exploring
• Fixed issue with deer sometimes not doing their alert and move away, and increased run speed slightly
• Fixed Kelvin able to pass outside of enclosed walls to get fish
• Fixed issue where throwing dead bodies against collision while moving forward could launch player super far
• Fixed an issue where player getting hit and dropping a body could send the body flying
• Fixed gibbed creepies coming back intact after load
• Fixed an issue where killing a female cannibal holding a log didn’t remove the attachment right away
• Prevented eagles from stealing fish from cooking fires, which caused issues with cooking system
• Fixed a bug where the flashlight would remain in an incorrect pose when hotkey switching between shotgun and rifle
• Fix for the player getting into a completely broken state when trying to place a structure from the book when they have not yet retrieved their inventory after dying
• Moved cave rocks, in entertainment bunker epic view room, out of work scheduler and setup prefabs with LODS, fixes them vanishing on low view distance settings
• Enabled alpha clipping on newspaper cutout to resolve visible edges
• Fix for ‘Stream I’ underwater rendering flickering off near large lake
• Light probe proxy volume adjustments to resolve bright ceiling in entrance of luxury bunker
• Fixes for some open edges on cliffs
• Fixed issue with held items being able to be equipped via hotkeys when a table card is picked up
• Fixed smooth snow and wetness fade in effect only applying to LOD0 construction elements, resulting in visible pop when moving back & forth and lod switches levels

Audio

• Added new rock/stone drop audio events
• Added season parameter to rain on metal objects for winter
• Improvements to pre crash opening sequence audio
• Tuned distance setting on mutant feeding events