Hey Everyone,

Today The Forest moves from early access into a full release.

It’s been a crazy ride, made possible only by the players who have supported us for the last four years. To the team here it feels like a game we all made together, us and the community. Your input suggestions and feedback has been invaluable to us.

This version of the game adds a bunch of new stuff, from a craftable warmsuit, significant re-work of the endgame and a new alternate ending. Along with this there is a ton of cave re-work and polish and many many improvements and fixes.

There is a lot we still want to do, and plan on heavily supporting the game moving forward. Some other big items we hope to implement soon are proper cheat controls in multiplayer and fixes to the issues that will likely come up in this release.

Today we are also announcing our first major update to the game. The VR version of The Forest will release for free to all players of the game, on May 22. It’s the full game, with your hud on a smart watch, a full 3d inventory, and tree cutting using motion controls. We think it’s the most fun vr game we’ve ever played and can’t wait to share it with everyone.

We know there are a couple reports of crashing and keyboard related issues that came up in the last 2 days and will aim to get fixes for those as soon as we can.

Edit: Added a possible fix for keyboard issue & Fixed missing 32 bit build

Edit - We just uploaded a small hotfix, fixing an issue with some players keyboards.

Edit: Here are a few small fixes for some issues that came up since yesterday's release:

Fixed some issues with enemies not reacting to players

Effigies now unlock when sanity drops below 90 instead of below 50

Fixed some additional keybinding issues and re-added ability to bind walkie talkie and survival book

Edit: Added a small hotfix, improving some visual issues.

Fallback tone mapping on cards below dx11 should now look exactly like old tonemapping from patches pre-73

Fixed background mountains looking blurry and low resolution at high FOV setting

Fixed unity AO not darkening grass/terrain in light

Fixed fire on boss monster using old fire effect

Unity ambient occlusion type now works in backpack view

Increased sky contrast slightly, to look less washed out

Fixed draw distance setting resetting to high when previously set to very high

Fixed cases of icons in center of screen possibly overlapping in some conditions

If you are running a dedicated server, you will need to restart your server with the latest version to be compatible with this patch release.

As always, please continue to post your bug reports and feedback in the Discussions area of the Community Hub

V1.0 Changelog:

Improved range of fire lights

Set medium quality settings to previous version settings

Taa off by default, turn on via options menu

Fixed repairing small log cabin

Fixed attaching plastic torch to weapons

Fixed Cave 8 bridge room floor

Fixed Cave 8 broken waterzone

Fixed grade contrast for caves and nighttime

Fixed repairing defensive spike

Fixed creepy armor value not accounted for in stats page display

Fixed missing icon on sled after loading a save

All tasks are now striked through after doing alt ending

Fixed wrong menu mapping for dualshock gamepads with xinput on

Fixed missing dates on save slots in title scene

Added clouds beside window in opening plane cutscene.

You can now craft a spear bag, which will allow you to carry up to 5 basic spears

Improved lighting in opening cutscene drag away scene

New pick up item added, Hairspray! Use hairspray with a lighter for a mini-flamethrower. Findable in some suitcases and in specific parts of world.

You can now carry upto 10 rabbit skins, and 10 deerskins

You can now retrieve boar and racoon skins! And carry 10 of each in inventory

New art added: skinned boar

New icons added for slingshot, hairspray, raccoon and boar skin

Fixed shooting arrows into end boss causing arrows to scale incorrectly

Fixed chainsaw still animating when out of fuel

New item added: (spoiler)

New item added: (spoiler)

Pooled props such as benches and chairs now stipple on smoothly when approached/backed away

Added spoiled meat shader. Meat will now visually decay depending on its state.

Improved look of cooked rabbit, lizard

Multi Thrower now uses grab icon instead of climb icon

Menu buttons when activated are now a yellow instead of grey to make it clearer they are on

Fixed some wrong capitalization in options menu and renamed ‘fastest’ preset to ‘very low’

Fixed lock icon when placing body in a part of endgame

Added 4 new buildable creepy head trophies !

Fixed dynamic text in book and on manifest so they aren’t visible when book is clipped

Fixed lighting on text in book and manifest

Updated new font shader for smoother font edges

Improved look and resolution of blue inventory tarp

Made lighter yellow to be easier to see on inventory tarp

Added small white dash under page numbers

Next and previous page buttons are now spaced out across both pages

New xbox and ps4 controller icons

Fixed extra pixels visible at top of flame texture sheet on stick lit

Fixed gazebo built not lining up with gazebo ghost

Head trophies can now be harvested from creepy corpses

Added signals page in book in place of effigies. Effigy page now shows up after sanity falls below 50%

Calories are now always considered positive and lead to gaining strength unless in hard survival difficulty mode.

Player collect and switch clothing system. You can now find specific colored suitcases in the world which have outfits you can change into. Some caves and specific locations have unique outfits.

Darkened inventory UI backing when hovering an item

Held flares now require right click to light

Added new space, l and r icons for keyboard interaction

You can now use the rebreather light in the ocean at night

(Multiplayer) Dying with an empty inventory no longer produces a backpack

Reworked inventory item descriptions, and placement. Less text overall.

Increased thickness of yellow outline when hold to select an item

Improved game start times!

Added new endnight logo to start of game

Major memory improvements/reduction by removing unused assets and older duplicates of plants that were no longer being used

Deerskin can no longer be equipped as an armor piece (check below for replacement)

New crafting cog icon, new mp dying skull icon.

You can now craft a warm suit! Wearing a warm suit replaces all of your current armor forcing you to choose between warmth and damage protection.

You can now wear armor skin from dead creepies. This is the strongest coolest looking armor in game

Added some hairspray pickups to some of the further beach huts

Added clothing switch suitcase to some areas near snow and in further cannibal village locations

Happy birthday trap text now matches rest of book

Fixed some wrong legacy left over icons

New check off animals system added with drawings. As you find animals and plants in the world, the greyscale drawings will turn to colored pictures. To activate, look at animals or plants up close for a short period of time.

Fixed player not holding logs properly if logs were picked up while cold and hands are empty

Improved cut geometry when chopping dead shark heads!

Aligned construction UI with camera

Run speed now slightly increases with athleticism skill level

Improved the look of ambient occlusion

AA, bloom, dof, motion blur, chromatic aberration, grain, all are now using unity post processing.

Added new improved camera image effects for aa, bloom, motionblur chromatic aberration, eye adaptation and grain

4 New structures added and become available when you: (Spoiler)

You can now equip timmy photo from inventory to remember him!

Icons on backpack quick select tooltip now render correctly

Item tooltip now extends length if item name is longer

In game pause menu now uses action icons instead of hand icon

Small generic meat renamed to small meat and Generic meat renamed to meat

Meat freshness is now displayed in the description line of the tooltip instead of the item name

Fixed all meats not in caps

Fixed X icon inside stuff like circle eat food a few pixels too high

Fixed translation showing localized text for keys no longer used in english (ie: removed item descriptions)

Added plant/animal specific message when ticking off stuff in nature guide

Tweaked prev/next gamepad icon action position in book pages

Rewrote cell culling, should fix a lot of the tree flickering, and several cases that left distance cell rendering enabled

Player will now stop and look at a photo of Timmy if attempting to leave the world on a raft

Improved placement of distraction devices and bombs that are placed on trees

Rearranged positioning of many items in the inventory

New stealth armor model and textures in inventory that match worn version

You can now carry the full armor amount of each armor type

Action icons 15% smaller will help with left hand side messages

L to light now has the circle around it before pressed to indicate you need to hold.

All items in the inventory now animate and play a sound when hovered over! Crafting items together will also cause an animation to play and the cog will spin when hovered.

Added missing translations in mp scene

Player are now faced with a decision to either (Spoiler) or (Spoiler)

Gamepad can no longer navigate to the top buttons in options, use bumpers to navigate instead

Checked missing Caps option in options & title scene

Fixed rafts sometimes bouncing up and down weirdly while in water

Fixed player moving at wrong speed when attacking immediately after a downward strike

Added new Loading/Unloading Caves message while entering/exiting caves

(Multiplayer) Improved animation sync of creepy ragdolls in MP

Fixed player able to fire empty flintlock pistol while in aim mode

Book texts are now dynamic, allowing translations to smoothly blend in

Newly picked up in world items now shine in inventory until first interacted with to alert you about the new item

Fixed walkie talkies not working correctly on dedicated servers

Performance - fixed some always on dynamic objects falling out of world at game start

Ingredients recipe now shows along product icon and name when adding ingredients to the crafting mat, giving you a list of all possible items you can craft using this ingredient.

Player can no longer save while doing other actions like entering caves or climbing ropes

Fixed spacing of embedded action icon in between labels

Finished the book drawing buildings! These should make the book feel more enjoyable to look through and make quickly identifying structures easier

Selecting pouch or quiver in inventory now correctly highlights entire model

Improved look of selected materials in inventory and fixed manifest not highlighting when selected

Changed bottom left message limit to 5 per message type at a time (ie: no more than 5 got item entries)

Clothing outfit pickup rolls now give far fewer chances of receiving already owned clothing pieces

Added a 0.2s delay before showing tooltips in inventory

Fixed boats being pushed if moving against additional built structures on them making them easy to flip over

Item tooltip positioning improved

Performance - improved cull grid performance

Sheen inventory now uses a screen space effect! Fixes sheen effect being affected by UV’s

Fixed player able to shoot multiple rocks from slingshot

Fixed quickly hovering a single item on crafting mat sometimes leaving it wrongly enabled

New base fire effect. New molotov fire effect. Replaced also player on fire and enemies on fire with new fire effects!

Improved positioning of blood when hitting enemies.

New close map, pedometer and rewind icons to replace legacy text

Same bonus upgrade recipes are now combined into a single entry in the recipe list shown when adding ingredients to the crafting mat

Performance: Optimized a bunch of textures, and fixed and removed a ton of old referenced textures and models that were no longer in game

Performance: Cleaned up a bunch of unused resources that were being kept in memory

Upgrades can now be placed automatically replacing the fiddly old system.

Fixed cases of upgrade ingredients on crafting mat not showing the filling cog

New crafting mat action icons design

Added new outline ghost shader. A thin outline will appear around outlines giving them more of a drawn appearance and making them easier to see in various lighting conditions.

Fixed cursor appearing below filling cog in inventory

Fixed far shadow option still calculating even when disabled

Procedural buildings point locking logic now properly check for permission to build on dynamic structure, thus effectively preventing doing so with current state of the features

Crafting tutorial now says to open book and doing so will now open the crafting chapter. replaces the tutorial in inventory when acquiring molotov ingredients for the first time

Calories text in stats pages and inventory item tooltip is hidden unless in a hard survival game

Fixed can see through heads on effigies small and large

Fixed houseboat ghost building too high above water

Chair now requires deer skin instead of rabbit skin to construct

Fixed multiview created crafting inventory views retaining the selection outline

Fixed molotov liquid sfx playing when loading a saved game

Fixed stash item whoosh playing when loading a saved game

Fixed stash lighter routine playing sfx even when lighter isn't equipped, was triggering for example when bending the bow

Fixed player name display on load save screen

(Multiplayer) Fixed wrong font used in parts of the chat UI

Fixed button hover visual in book remaining active after clicking on a link, and flashing off when going back in previous pages

Fixed place/take icons not always updating correctly on food holders

Removed building proximity check on structures where it didn't make sense, such as bridges, ziplines, leaf pile traps, sap collectors etc

Fixed bench and armor mannequin missing build hammer

Improved positioning of hammer icon on ghost structures and fixed some cases of icon visible before ghost position was placed

(spoiler)

Blocked building rafts on terrain, can now only be built on water like rest of boats

Dpad down button is now bound to the Utility action when using a dualshock gamepad

Fixed cloth wrapped clubs missing alpha cut out effect and fixed wrong uvs on burnt cloth

Cloth wrapping weapons is now red

Improved look of held weapon fire and added distortion effect

Improved look of flintlock smoke

Fixed case of going back to pause menu with a gamepad leaving the action icon halfway inside the continue text

Fixed shiver animation still playing after becoming warm

Blue skin while cold now smoothly blends on and off

(Multiplayer) Fixed some characters having excessively shiny hair

Improved look of bonfire flames, and blocked cooking on bonfires. Can now only be used for heat and to attract enemies

(Multiplayer) Fixed revive player action icon remaining visible after looking or walking away

All plants in the nature guide are now checked off by looking at them briefly in the world

New underlake plants added

Regular enemies can now destroy cannibal art structures by running through them

Improved look of the big lake in game that crosses world

Fixed ghost structures appearing stuttery if moving left or right while placing

Player no longer gets stuck igniting lighter when attempting to light fires and structures

Fixed backing on loading screen being grey instead of black

Caves - Old suitcases in caves can now be broken.

Added sledding tutorial

Procedural building UI now as inverted lock/unlock icons when using a gamepad to match physical position of buttons

New 3d crafting cog art

Made all action icon sizes more consistent

Added a confirm overwrite save feature

New quick select inventory UI design to make quick selecting easier

Tweaked camcorder, map and walkie icons position

Rewind icon turns off immediately when stashing camcorder to prevent possible overlap with map icon

New underwater lake refraction visuals! And fixed looking up in cave water and seeing only black. Scene now correctly refracted!

Added darkening in cave entrances to cover transition of player entering and loading

Switched walkman to right hand to make it possible to use fire to turn it on and off! Instead of having it stuck on forever

Now assigning items as quick select by pressing the matching buttons after combining backpack with an item on the crafting mat

Now dynamically centering the switch ghost wall type & cancel ghost icons instead of using preplaced position which was not centered in case of unused icons

Burning plants are now considered as destroyed immediately and fire can no longer be cancelled by walking away to trigger a LOD change

Instancing support thing

Burnt bushes and plants now spawn the cut version with same material look/effect after burning down

Removed coordinates from pause screen

Target no longer requires blue paint to build

It is now possible to store creepy armor on armor rack !

Options menu fixes, fixed gameplay buttons, cleaned up gamepad nav, setup anchors to ensure buttons don't overlap each other in other languages

Fixed weapon rack widget

New cave climbdown area covers and fixes can stand on opening holes

Removed annoying loud bat screech from title scene

Forcing always caps translations

Joining a game with no player slots left now reads “Server Full”

Kicked from a game message now reads “You have been kicked”

Banned from game message now reads “You have been banned by Host”

Player backpack recovery message now reads “Recover your backpack”

(multiplayer) Updated icons above players heads

Renamed up and down in key binding to forward and backward

Fixed placing a flare on mat showing prompt for crafting a "Flare Gun" instead of "Flare Gun Ammo"

Options are now linear instead of looping back around

Dynamically created at runtime texts like build missions are now translated if changing language at runtime

New decorative props added to cannibal village climb entrance

Made colored difficulty backings consistent across different game modes

Fixed scale of headless burnt bodies

Fixed big gap at top of mappings table

New trap re-arm UI using same design as constructions and updated traps icons

Item thrown as projectile with the catapult now use the correct pickup icon

Fixed a rare occurance of grabber sometimes resetting its collider continuously, thus resetting any timed input until looking away and back

Door weights now only accept rocks and skulls and can no longer be collected back

Limited multi thrower to rocks, skulls, dynamite, molotovs and bombs

Added new gore underfoot sounds to gore piles in caves

Optimization - buildable lights and fires will now turn off from distance

Molotov’s and held burning weapons are no longer extinguished by rain

New black backing stripe added to pause menu

Stealth icon is no longer visible while on rope

Fixed berries not moving with bush in garden

Fixed in cave state sometimes breaking when entering swim caves

Fixed some minor issues in (Spoiler)

Fixed geese lake water reflection being too small for size of lake

Matched brand of vodka on held and shelf/inventory versions

Ghost models now use the same geometry and the final build versions, making the models line up perfectly.

Log sled built now has set flag color that can’t be changed to help identify its location

Improved placement of weapons on racks and holders!

Performance - removed deprecated items from the action icon atlas

Burning weapons are no longer extinguished when entering caves and climbing ropes

Setup dynamic signals / effigies / family effigies book pages

New buildable added: Sos marker.

Items that cannot be crafted due to being at max capacity in inventory now show up in recipe list with an icon showing it cannot be carried

Fixed rock model in some destroyed structures not having underneath model

Fixed climbing a rope attached to a structure that was partially broken causing rope animation to play in wrong position on rope

Big dead tree logs now fade smoothly on and off

Old caver tents now fade on smoothly and from further away

Setup all systems that involve adding or taking an item and were playing the whoosh sfx to play a custom sfx for any item that has one

(spoiler)

Procedural bridges now use 3 half log model variations !

Fixed lowering texture resolution breaking cave entrance visuals

Gamepads DPAD buttons now work as well in menus to navigate

(Multiplayer) Todo list is now properly carried over to the new character after dying

Food no longer loads in save games on fires

Procedural stairs now display actual shape before locking first point

Blocked building on small prop tents in world

Fixed bats fly out of cave position being wrong

Cloth covered stick upgraded in inventory now positioned correctly with cloth showing

Fixed the very first lag spike that use to occur when launching a game

(spoiler)

Player can no longer climb very short ropes on platforms/treehouses

Switched book todo font to more readable font

Fixed position of anchor icons for all elevated structures

(Multiplayer) Fixed buildings placed on tree structures not properly removed if the tree is destroyed

Added missing bush 5 billboard

Fixed suitcases not appearing in caves for clients if host is not also in the cave

Removed paints, flintlock and toy from crafting achievement and replaced with other craftable items

Added small snow camp and fixed alternate frozen man not appearing

Fixed some collision areas in snow and extended height of cliffs to cover low resolution mountain

Reworked crafted axe textures and bloody variation

(Performance) Added LODs to procedural bridges

(Performance) Added LODs to defensives walls

Dropped bodies will now smash and push away small objects in their path!

Improved zipline environment detection to prevent placing the rope through things as much as possible

Fixed water level from water collector not decreasing if drinking not thirsty

Fixed ghost birdhouse sometimes being wrongly not placeable

It's no longer possible to burn bodies placed in the log sled

Fixed fortune pickup respawning if you already have it

Cloth on enemy racks no longer re spawns by going in and out of its close vicinity

Replaced inventory cod with new cod model/textures

It is now possible to remove defensive wall gates using the hole cutter

Fixed missing breaking apart effect when destroying catapult

Fixed some held animal heads in wrong position on other players

Improved lods for when oceans turn on/off

Rebreather is auto equipped now when diving underwater in caves

New skin models and art for skin rack and for skin in inventory

Fixed cant add some items to metal tin tray in mp

Fixed adding lizard or fish to tray and not having them visible on mat

(Multiplayer) Fixed a bunch of case of distortion not occurring for clients when damaging building

Fixed procedural floor and roof sometimes not parenting correctly with its supporting structure

Fixed switching defensive wall to gate loosing parenting information

Improved some cases of placement of defensive wall reinforcement difficult

Fixed error log spam when using walkie talkies in mp

Fixed some areas in snow cliffs you could walk out of world or into collision areas

New cliff lods for snow area stipple in gradually instead of pop

Deer & rabbit skin can no longer be placed on terrain as decorations

Added loading UI when opening endgame

Timmy drawing placement icon now matches the top of the placed visual

Setup ghost foundations to turn last edge red if not lockable

Fixed procedural wall & derived structures showing place icon while not possible to place due for example to having a tree in the way

Advanced controller support (XInput) option now on by default + resetting the value for everyone, can still be turned off if needed by going in options but having it on allows features like throwing spear to work fine with XBOX gamepads (driver issue when XInput is off)

Fixed position of sodas on food holder

Fixed cut blackberry bushes falling through terrain

Added lod to caught rabbits in cages so performance didn’t take a hit with lots in a game

Fixed steam overlay leaving the shift key stuck pressed

Cave 1 - fixed holes and new lighting

Cave 2 - fixed holes, new lighting and polish pass in several rooms. Tried to make the hanging room more inviting.

Cave 3 - fixed holes, lighting and transition areas between other caves

Cave 4-5 - hole fixes and polish

Cave 6 - huge pass on lighting and general polish and fixes

Cave 7 - Lighting and hole fix pass

Cave 8-10 - overall polish pass

Hellcaves- polish and fixes. New corridor layout added to cavern room

Yacht - added new locked door and improved room props