Endnight Games has just launched the Patch 9 update notes for Sons of the Forest. The game’s latest version has notable changes, offering new features, improvements, balance updates, and fixes. Like Patch 8, several innovations are included in the new release, such as the ability to explode enemies in chunks and the addition of the Radio alarm trap. Let’s examine the Sons of the Forest Patch 9 update notes.
Notes for the Sons of the Forest Patch 9 Update
Features
- Radio alarm trap added
- Creepy enemies can now be exploded into chunks
- Held radios can now be placed
- Returning creepy added to endgame
- New large female cannibal type added
- Added an option to the controls options page that allows the player to adjust the speed at which the inventory camera pans, tilts, and pivots
- Added new “batch place” input; pressing left shift (or left stick with a gamepad) while placing ghosts now leaves the blueprint active so that it may be placed again without going through the book each time.
Improvements – Notes for the Sons of the Forest Patch 9 Update
- Ducks can now land on the ground and walk around in some areas, such as the golf course
- Loot pouches can now be opened even if the player is full of some of the items in the bag. Items that the player is full-on are dropped when cleared from the mat
- Night Vision goggles and the rebreather can now be toggled if mapped to a hotkey
- You can now hold ‘Take’ to equip skulls directly from the pickup
- Added jumping capability to Armsy
- Kelvin should now be able to find stones when the player is not around
- Enemies killed by player traps now count as killed by player
- Traps will now cause damage to larger enemies and sometimes knock them down
- Plants growing in plots can now be harvested when they are at 70% of their full-grown size. The grow time of plants has not changed; only the scaling of the plant will be different with this change
- Added a change so that Items can not be stored in inventory when the player does not have their backpack. They are instead immediately dropped
- Added Localization on Multiplayer death respawn timer
- Added Tutorial Visibility setting to the options page
- Added Vitals Hud Visibility setting to the options page
- Added Global GUI Visibility setting to the options page
- Improved visual transition when getting onto the zipline
- Set up LODS for the golf bag and putter, Grenade, Time Bomb, Molotov, Vodka Bottle, Pills, Wristwatch and Money
- Adjusted the positioning of the pendulum on the Hokey Pokey trap so that the end of the rope would not look disconnected at the anchor point
- John2 will now properly set off traps
- Radio music events are now updated with both position and rotation
- Improved the positioning of the UI interaction for ropes
- Climbing Ropes now stop at the surface of the water rather than go to the bottom
- Scaled-down the 3D printed sled a bit while it’s in the printer
- Added an option to allow players to set if traps will trigger on players. This is off by default but on in hard survival. (Spring traps always trigger)
- The Fly Swatter and Bone Maker traps will now do some damage to the player if they set them off
- All traps have been adjusted to be able to be placed on steeper slopes to make placement less restrictive
- Added dedicated server direct connection via <ip>:<game port> in the multiplayer menus. You can now connect directly to a specific server without waiting for the entire list of servers to refresh
- Cooking pot lid will now properly update its cooking animation for clients
- Added the ability to override the pickup audio event so that we can have the berries plucked from bushes use the correct sound
- Updated LODS on the traps
- Hard-to-select items in quick select, such as herbs, are now easier to select
- Added the Q button to the printer UI to show people they can also cycle backward
- Added LODs to animals
- Shooting dead bodies with rifles will now impart more force
- Freeform placed structures such as fire or fence posts placed on floors are now linked with the supporting floor. It will properly prevent the dismantling of the floor as well as propagate the collapse in the event the floor gets destroyed
- Reinforced fire rocks now stay in place when fire runs out of fuel, and a stick can be added to refuel it
- When damaging effigies, only the first stick gets distorted, and repairing it brings it back into position
- Small structure links are now synced with multiplayer clients so that restrictions can be calculated locally instead of getting their invalid actions rejected by the server when attempted (i.e., dismantling a floor supporting a chair)
- Tree stump LODs added
- Floating driftwood range increased, and LODs added
- A few more light blockers for the Food Bunker (fixed light leaking in) and added Distance Activated Groups.
- Various environment cleanup and fixes
- Bunker Entertainment spittle moved to the work scheduler, missing LODs added.
- Bunker Entertainment sections are now enabled and disabled by the area
- Food Bunker dining room tables and couches with collisions are now active for bosses when the host is not in the bunker
- Cave rocks in Bunker Entertainment moved to the work scheduler
- Setup LODs for door planks, stick paths, defensive wall spikes, stone fake pillars, stone struts, defensive walls, log and stone beams, electric wire elements, wires, wire zip ties, and lightbulbs
- Optimized setup for shadows in freeform elements LOD hierarchies
- Added combined LOD system for walls and floors, cuts down rendering cost significantly for full walls without windows or floors without holes
- Wall torch particle optimized
- Cliff Rocks LOD2s optimized
- Rock LOD2s optimized
- Rock A LOD2 improved visually
- Bunker Entertainment light blockers adjusted and added Distance Activated Groups.
- Changes to convert directories to zips for saving games means much less files to sync to Steam Cloud.
- Set Male Puffy, Female Puffy, and Heavy Heads to use primitive colliders
- Defensive wall three-quarter LOD improvements
- Added displacement toggle to water quality setting
- Improved look and usability of debug console (cheats menu)
Balance
- Creepies will no longer be focused around cave entrances in late-game after loading a save. They should now be distributed around a larger area.
- Reduced the number of creepies wandering outside in late-game
Fixes – Notes for the Sons of the Forest Patch 9 Update
- Fixed some issues that could occur after network disconnects
- Fix centering on some UI elements
- Fixed a bug where left-hand items would disappear while using the repair tool
- Player no longer gets stuck when holding the crossbow and picking up new items in quick succession.
- Hokey Pokey trap should no longer get into a broken physics state where the pendulum would freak out and start spinning.
- Fixed issue that caused items to not be removed from a layout group if the item was defined as a unique item but displayed in the layout group as a non-onetoone representation
- Fixed animation issues and stuck states when grabbing a rope while swimming.
- Fixed incorrect scaling on one of the mushrooms in quick select
- The laser sight mod pickup no longer shows the laser beam
- Fix for broken sticks while crafting arrows, causing mesh collider error spam
- Item Hotkey UI no longer displays on items that are on the crafting mat
- Fixed issue with resin volume and percent complete readouts being incorrect when loading into a game
- Fixed audio issues with the 3D printer after loading into a game that had a print in progress or a completed one still on the plate
- A 3D print will now resume from the visually correct height once loading in from a save game
- Fixed issue with “Collected” UI notifications comping up every time a held item was stashed
- Fixed battery items clipping through the inventory mat and reanimated their shuffle
- Set multiplayer lobby as non-joinable if connection count is maxed out, in case someone tries to join a game while a client is timing out
- While cooking, the prompts are better placed and will no longer go off the screen
- Fix for the 3D printer not showing the correct readouts for clients when loading into the game
- Fix for players being able to lose their equipped combat knife when they do not have their inventory and hold to equip multiple items and then stash them
- Fixed a rare case where items being equipped would lose its Item Instance data if their equip sequence was canceled for some reason
- Fix for client audio not working in multiplayer games when cooking directly on the fire
- Clients will no longer get an extra drink after a cooking pot has been emptied
- Fix for clients always seeing arrows being printed when loading into a save game that has an active print on the printer
- Fix to prevent the Hokey Pokey trap from resetting but still thinking it was disarmed
- Fix for not being able to drink from a pot that has clean water after it has been placed back onto a fire
- The Flashlight will no longer emit light when held by other players that have run out of battery
- Fix for 3D printer beeping for out of resin after the item is removed after loading a save game
- Added a delay to trigger when stashing quick select to hide all the renderables rather than hiding it on destroy, which shows the gimbal issue on the last frame
- Fixed issue with some actions using different inputs when interacting with a structure ghost compared to when not interacting with one
- Fixed serialization issue when loading into a game where a 3D printer was not actively printing anything
- Fix for growing plants being able to be interacted with when they should not be
- Fixed white tracker antenna in inventory
- Scaled-down the horsetail and aloe vera layout items on the grab bag
- Fixed issue with rain not showing up in the opening crash cutscenes
- Fixed issue with the player rain audio sfx playing in the opening helicopter scene
- Fixed issue with non-clients not getting the correct printer bed height set when loading in from a save game
- Placed paper targets now save
- Fix for the cooking pot lid animation and cooking audio not working when loading into a game that has a pot actively cooking on a fire.
- Fix for radio not syncing correctly on other players when the local player is in their inventory.
- Fixed issue that was causing some structures to take more damage than intended when hit with melee weapons
- Fix for some cases where explosives in the network game caused extra damage or didn’t cause damage.
- Fix for AI trying to path through the wall of LeanTo.
- Fix UI jumping around when attached to the player (eg. speared fish)
- Fix the skinning prompt being delayed before showing on creepies, and fix some cases where the skinning prompt didn’t show up on animals
- Fixed cases where dead bodies could regrow limbs when the player returned to them
- Fixed case where small birds would land on objects underwater
- Fix loading with final boss dead but before ending not showing him in dead state
- Fix a case where seagulls could get into an odd animation state when landing interrupted
- Fix an issue where John2 wouldn’t play a death or hit animation
- Fixed placing fence on cliffs not working
- Fixed fence detached placement allowing to snap towards an existing fence
- Fixed placing on cliff UI not visible
- Fixed quitting to the title screen while looking at a ghost structure, causing some issues after returning to the game
- Fixed dismantling free wire preventing from dismantling the supporting structure
- Fixed dismantle attempts on fence wire, moving the renderer
- Collisions on light blockers for cave entrances removed (could block actions)
- Fixed repairing floors when supporting beams are inverted
- Fixed placing fire in a fireplace not working as a client while in fence placement mode
- Added some failsafe checks to electric wire and power grid so that it will be less likely to break in the event of a bad linking state
- Fixed destroyed floors and doors, not leaving behind log planks
- Fixed being able to cut a pillar that is supporting a wire (both regular or free)
- Fixed being able to cut floor holes while supporting free-form structures such as fire
- Fixed case where window shutter wouldn’t toggle properly
- Defensive wall gates no longer allow partial collapse
- Placement of defensive wall gates now checks if logs are contiguous, prevents cases where the weird placement of defensive walls could make broken-looking gates
- Fixed delay between placing the first stone of a beam and the following ones
- Fixed sharpened stick defense not spawning a stick when destroyed
- Fixed breaking doors not spawning the correct amount of planks
- Fixed case where stone pillars would use non-LOD versions
- Fixed case where lifting a beam with a pillar too short of leveling the beam wouldn’t link those structures together properly
- Fixed case where damaged UI would not show up
- Fixed context where dismantling logs placed on uneven terrain leaves a fake pillar
- Fixed fence detached placement prompt able to overlap existing fence posts
- Fixed fence detached placement blocked when trying to place on slopes in contexts where the player can move to the place position
- Fixed repairing beams, not syncing element transform
- Fixed cutting window out of wall failing at the end of the animation if the wall is supporting a shutter; it now properly doesn’t show the prompt at all when there is a supported shutter
- Fixed destroying stone pillars, beams, or walls, spawning one stone for complete lines instead of the amount that was required to create it
- Fixed some sounds not getting synced to clients in multiplayer such as damaging structures
- Fixed destroying quarter log variation pillar not yielding the corresponding item pickup
- Fixed transforming a single log wall into an apex by adding a shorter log that was not working
- Fixed placement preview 3D arrow not centered when placing a log on an apex
- Fixed the zipline controller not cleaning itself up if it gets destroyed while it has player focus, resulting in errors when pressing E afterward
- Wall log rotation is no longer affected by the seeding of the Random system and consistently uses the random value for the Z rotation of the log
- Fix for light leaking in maintenance bunkers on Ultra Low Shadow setting
- Fix for light blockers visible in inventory view when inside maintenance bunkers hallways
- Fix for default error when initializing tree wind audio
- Fix for collider initialization delay
- Limited max characters in the multiplayer chat box and fixed auto-formatting to prevent overrun
- Fix for glider/knight V duplicating bugs
- Fixed linked collider issue causing error spam on suitcases
- Fix for logic toggling wall torch particles
- Fix for underwater controller thinking it’s still in a water volume when the trigger is disabled fixes underwater rendering that could happen in lava cave under certain conditions.
- Fix for multiplayer client stomping bunker hatch/door open state when loading in.
- Fix initializing time of day from server fixes seasons not switching when first connecting.
- Fixes for radio playback bugs in bunker entertainment
- Fix for light popping when entering Luxury Bunker with a flashlight held and SSR disabled in quality settings
- Fixed error in thread runner causing the game to lock up in credits in some cases
- Cave B dead wakeup inventory bag locations fixed
- Fix for Lava Streams, not damaging players
- Converted Math.Eplison to Mathf.Eplison fixes errors on some hardware
Audio – Notes for the Sons of the Forest Patch 9 Update
- Hitting structures with weapons will now make an impact and sound
- Added missing impact combinations with an event so that there is at least some sound playing for all possible material types
- Updated impact sound effects for the glider as they were missing. Also added a sound for when the glider is detached from the player because they hit something
- Added audio to demons burning from the cross
- Setup new damaged sounds for defensive walls and stone structures
- Added golf cart Impact audio events
- Tweaked speeds of golf cart ‘traction’ audio smoothing
- Fixed some network audio bugs with the golf cart
- Radio panning improvement
- Tuned distances on Armsy VO and Footsteps
- Added 3d printed GPS case to mouse over and pickup events
- Added audio event for wood structures being destroyed
- General ambient audio mix improvements
- Added Defensive Wall Gate open and close events
- In Game mixing of current audio squirrel footsteps, player footsteps on leaves, berry pluck.
- Fixed missing audio when placing reinforcement rocks
The Patch 9 update for Sons of the Forest is now available on Windows (Early Access). After checking out the game’s latest version, you can also follow The Nerd Stash for previous patch note articles like Patch 5.
