Basic Tips

-IMPORTANT NOTES ON GLITCHES-

-TIPS FOR SURVIVAL-

If you die you'll start over still, so watch out! Also, physics glitches are prelavent: crouching into the wrong place or hitting something wrong can kill you, so watch your movements.1: Grab what you can from the crash. While most people would see this as common sense, some items you can grab here will greatly bolster your odds of survival. Obviously there is the small axe and various food items, but by bashing open the suitcases (look down at them and left click, you have to get the aim right), you can find scaps of cloth, some meds, and flashlights, possibly more.2: Evasion and Combat At some point you are likely to run into the canibals. They are tougher than they look, and your starter axe is not powerful enough to take them down quickly. You can sneak past and hide from them, and if they spot you they might not be immediately hostile. If you can escape do so. If you have to fight, be aware of their numbers for they will try to flank around you. With certain weapons, like the rusty axe, you can block by holding RMB, which will deplete stamina on hit but keep you from suffering HP loss. Keep them all in your sight and watch your sides.BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS. Even if you don't see the cannibals, they might see you. If you're spotted, you might hear one of their cries, or a faint music cue. If you hear either, take a look around you and make visual confirmation of the threats.Fire is your best bet for killing them; by combining booze and cloth in the backpack, you can make molotov cocktails. These will kill the cannibals much more efficiently, but at a risk: if you try to equip other items you will drop the mollie, bursting it at your feet.The choice weapon for beating the cannibals at the moment is undoubtedly the flaregun. Ranged, several shots, and kills in one shot over time.Two users credited below have found lizard skin can be used for armor, basically a second health bar. Suit up!To aid in avoiding cannibals, Celticpredator has found that mud piles in the game can be used to adorn yourself in a coat of mud. This would aid in camouflage, but can be washed off.3: ShelterSmall shelters, i.e. the Temporary and Hunting shelters, let you save and sleep, which forwards time a bit and restores energy. Log cabins will keep cannibals off your back and rain off your head.To build a shelter, pull out your survival guide by pressing B and select the shelter tab. You can also find the hunting shelter in the basics of survival section. The guide will tell you what you need, but the actual number of resources required may vary when you set it down.Next, select a location for the shelter. You can rotate it by holding the R key. Next, find the resources you need and collect them, tapping E when you approach the shelter to add the resources. Logs you can only carry two of, but you might also build a log storage to let you quickly amass logs.LOCATION IS VERY IMPORTANT. Look around for caves, resources, and other natural advantages. Caves seem to have more cannibals around (because they live in them, obviously) and having shelter near one is a death wish. A good idea is to find somewhere you can locate easily and defend logically. For example, I built a log cabin near the beach, a ways away from a shipwreck. The cannibals could not approach from the rear, so I could monitor the woods more easily; also the resources of the forest and the shipwreck allowed me an ample supply of items.IMPORTANT NOTE ON SHELTERS: DO NOT TRY TO CROUCH INTO THE SMALL ONES. THIS WILL GLITCH YOU OUT AND KILL YOU.4: Finding Food and Staving Off the ElementsFood is more bountiful than you think, thankfully. As the survival guide states, bluish berries can be eaten safely, while black berries are poisonous. You can spear fish and hunt other animals. I cannot find a way to craft the spear, but I found one stuck into a bloodied sleeping bag outside of a tent, on the beach. I have not tried traps, so comments on that subject would be appreciated :DOnce you kill an animal or spear a fish, look at it and tap E to pick that sucker up. You'll see it in your inventory. Build a fire, and then click the carcass and hit C to put it on the fire. After a while it will cook, and you can tap E to eat it right there. It would seem you can't carry cooked food atm so that's sad. Also, fish might be a bit difficult to spot on the fire because when raw and cooked they have similar shape to the branches and blend in a bit. Just wait a minute or two after you add them and chomp away!DID YOU KNOW: In real life, you can starve to death by eating rabbit? This phenomenon is known as "rabbit starvation", and happens when you eat primarily lean meats like rabbit and don't add other things to the diet. Luckily this is an over-time deal, and won't happen immediately. Be sure to mix up your diet in The Forest! Sources: Wikipedia, biznitch!The elements also play a factor. The rain will make you wet. As lovely as this sounds, you'll also get hypothermic if you are left in the cold rain for too long. Find a shelter or get near some warmth to prevent death by hypothermia.5: Effigies Striking a cannibal corpse will burst it and allow you to take the head and limbs. You can stack these onto effigies and light them up, this will scare off cannibals temporarily. They might come back in greater number to kill you, so be wary with the effigies. They did the same to the passengers, anyway...NOTE ON CORPSES: As reported by Black_Dashie_Cat, there is a chance that a corpse you strike will explode violently and kill you. Me, I avoid that voodoo-effigy stuff, but if you wanna make one that's up to you. Watch that you don't get blown up!6: Caves Exploring caves yields many resources and allows you to find the deceased passengers of your plane. While their fate is grim and saddening, you can find valuable resources to aid in survival, like the rusty axe, flaregun, flares, meds, and other items.NOTE ON CAVES: In certain cave areas there will be mutated enemies, tougher and more dangerous than your average cannibal. I will post screenshots of these and name them as best I can in a rogue's gallery.7: InfectionAfter engaging in melee combat or other ways you might get bloodied up, you will indeed get bloodied up. I haven't found out what this does yet. To remedy this, you can swim around to wash the blood off.This guide serves as a simple way to get you on your feet in The Forest for these early days of Alpha. When further updates apply some of this information might be null, some of it might retain. However, this is fine. It is truly up to you to adapt to your environment and beat the odds, so fight hard, stay alive, and never give up.