The Forest: A Guide To Surviving Your First Night

Survive your first walk through The Forest with this guide to living past your first night.

Surviving your first night in The Forest can be challenging for those who have just picked up the game. There's a few things you should  know before you jump into exploring the depths of the woods that's crawling with cannibals to find your stolen son. Read this guide to learn the ins and outs of maintaining your character’s stats, scavenging for food, resources, crafting, and avoiding cannibals to survive your first night.

Scavenge The Crash Site

After watching the cutscene of the plane crash, you’ll find yourself on the crash site. Your character will be hungry but that can be easily remedied by navigating through the plane and eating the food that you find throughout. There should be enough to restore your hunger completely. 

Explore the inside of the plane thoroughly since you’ll find drinks, food, and pills. You’ll also pick up your first weapon which is an axe that can be found lying on top of the flight attendant. Use this axe and attack some of the luggage lying around the plane. Pick up all you can but be quick because mutants will be on the way to investigate the wreckage.

Find A Safe Place

Once you’ve picked up a good amount of stuff from the luggage at the crash site, you should now look for a safe place where you can settle. Don’t spend too much time doing this because night will fall quickly. The ideal place to settle would be on a small island off the mainland since mutants cannot swim. There are only a few of these islands so you must use your map to find them. Make sure you build a raft for travel since this will help you avoid sharks.

If this is not an immediate possibility for you before the first night, the alternative would be to settle in an area in The Forest that is secluded and far away from open areas/mutant camps. Mutants are attracted to fire light and commotion, so stick to heavily wooded areas and avoid lighting a fire at night (unless it’s hidden from plain view). Make sure there are resources nearby or this method could greatly inhibit progress.

Overall, it’s recommended to avoid confrontation with mutants unless it’s absolutely necessary. The more threatened they feel, the more aggressive and lethal they become.

Build A Shelter

Once you’ve found a safe place to settle, you can begin building your shelter which will be pivotal to surviving your first night in The Forest. You can do this by accessing your survival book (press B). This book will cover all the ways you can survive in The Forest. It’s up to you how ambitious you want to be when building your first shelter. Keep in mind that chopping down large amounts of trees will draw the mutants to you. We recommend starting off small with a temporary shelter and then building a bigger one once you’re more settled.

Health, Armor, Hunger, Thirst, and Energy

There are the 5 character stats that you must monitor when trying to survive. During your first night, you’re most likely going to deal with low energy, hunger, and thirst. Let’s start with the easier stats to replenish. In order to restore energy, you can opt to eat, drink, rest or sleep. Hunger is satisfied by eating snacks, berries, mushrooms, and cooked meat. Take caution because some berries and mushrooms are poisonous.

Water is a bit more complex. You can use a water collector or a waterskin to collect rain water since freshwater is a rarity in The Forest. If you find a pot during your exploration, you can also use this on a fire to boil lake water and make it safe to drink. If neither option is available, you may have to drink contaminated lake water which will impact your health.

Lastly, health can be restored by taking medicine, coneflower, or aloe. Small amounts of health will be restored by eating but not by much.

With this basic knowledge, you should be prepared to successfully outwit the cannibals and survive your first night in The Forest. Good luck!

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