Sons Of The Forest difficulty settings

A gritty fight for survival, or just a walk in the park?

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The game has been out in early access for a few weeks now, but both those folks who have jumped in already, and those who are going to pick the game up soon might be wondering what the deal is with the Sons of the Forest difficulty settings.

Much like it’s predecessor, The Forest, this new release brings us a more than just one difficulty to check out. So, no matter if you’re a survival expert, or a clueless newbie, there’s a mode suitable for everyone.

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We’ll be talking you through all the different Sons of the Forest difficulty settings available to you in-game, and explaining how you can expect each one should provide you additional challenges during your time on the Sons Of The Forest map.

Difficulty settings on Sons Of The Forest

Launching in early access currently, the Sons of the Forest price is proving a real tempter at $29.99 / £24.99 right now, and players are already wondering and playing with the range of difficulty settings on offer. So, first of all, let’s check out a list of different difficulty settings – or modes – in Sons Of The Forest. There are four different options to take a look at, so here they are.

• Normal
• Peaceful
• Hard
• Custom

Normal difficulty

There’s nothing to get crazy here of course, just the settings balanced to the level most players will enjoy. Normal difficulty sets the bar at a reasonable level, mixing in both a challenge for survival, while being not overly difficult or frustrating for your average player.

Peaceful difficulty

Otherwise known as Peaceful mode, this ‘easy mode’ of the game makes a return for the sequel. If you’re someone that wants to, well, peacefully enjoy the world of Sons Of The Forest, this is the mode for you. Peaceful difficulty allows players to put a bigger focus on exploring the world, storylines, and mastering the crafting system. You’ll have much fewer enemy encounters here.

You can learn more about Peaceful Mode here.

Hard difficulty

It’s not too difficult to understand that you’ll have a harder time surviving on the hard difficulty. Although everyone will need time to discover what exactly the hard difficulty affects in terms of gameplay, here’s a list of some of the broad differences:

• Increased respawn times for resources, wildlife, etc.
• Lower amount of resources on the map.
• Damage ratios skewed in the enemy’s favor.
• Health / hunger / status effects recovery is slower & you experience them quicker.

Custom difficulty

For those that want to customize the settings to their liking, this is a great option to take advantage of. The custom difficulty at the moment gives players the chance to change details such as:

• Starvation / dehydration damage.
• Enemy stats.
• Seasons & season length.
• And even more! We expect more customization to come in future too.

Sons Of The Forest difficulty settings FAQs

Can you change difficulty in Sons Of The Forest?

Changing your difficulty in-game after you’ve started your save is not currently possible in Sons Of The Forest. If you really want to change difficulties, you may need to resort to editing your save or config within the game’s files.

Some users on the Steam Community discussions have some ideas on how to do so.

Is Sons Of The Forest single player difficulty the same as multiplayer?

Recruiting a whole crew of members in a multiplayer server to take on the island in Sons Of The Forest is a good idea, especially if you want to tackle a tougher game difficulty. You have the same selection of difficulties in single player as you do in multiplayer.

This is little information out there for how difficulty scales in multiplayer, though we’ve seen health increases per active player mentioned in patch notes. Additionally, you are much more likely to cause aggression in more enemies at once due to the fact you have more players invading their space.

How do I change the difficulty of Sons of the Forest mid playthrough?

Given difficulty levels of all games are different when we actually play them after a while, as they take time to bed in and get used to, knowing if you can change the difficulty mid-way through a game is a very useful thing to know. However, the bad news here is that there is no official way to change the difficulty of Sons of the Forest mid-playthrough – once you’ve set it, you are locked in.

Sons Of The Forest difficulty settings: Final word

That’s everything to know about the difficulties or modes in Sons Of The Forest so far. As we learn more and more about the game, it will be interesting to see even more differences between the modes on offer. Future updates may shake things up too.

No matter if you’re happy to live your life on this remote island peacefully, or want to go all out and get seriously stuck in and fight for your survival, you should be highly impressed with what Sons Of The Forest has to offer.