Building Guide: How to Make the Best Base

If you're looking to survive for the long haul in Sons of the Forest, you're going to need a strong base. So when it comes to making the best base you can, location, resources, and the defenses you lay down are extremely important. We've considered all of these features and more in our building guide, designed to help you get started on building your very own base.

There are three major things to consider when crafting your main base in Sons of the Forest before we get into the actual how-to build it. These are:

Each of these aspects is going to play an important part in how quickly you can establish a base, time-saving when it comes to keeping your hunger and thirst managed, as well as protecting yourself from the inevitable cannibal attacks (and keeping up with repairs).

When it comes to choosing a location for your main base, we'd recommend finding a flat surface in the forest with plenty of space around you. If it's flat is going to be easier to build on, and space allows you to expand.

In all honesty, this isn't so important in the first few days — you can get away with a tarp and sticks, tents, or small log cabins. Cannibals and mutants will tend to leave you alone during this period as long as you don't engage with them. This allows you enough time to explore the island and find some essential tools. But once you hit the day 4 mark, you can be sure that the cannibals will start to sniff you out and visit you more often.

When you've scouted a bit of the island, you'll then want to think about setting up your main camp. It's best to start small with your base, then gradually expand it as the days rack up.

We've marked a point on the map below where we established a base that worked well for us. It allows us to zipline down to a fishing spot, and be close to underground caves and points of interest.

Start with a small house that's got enough room to fit a bed in (to rest and save your game), and focus on getting storage crafted first. Winter arrives by day 10, so you'll want to have stocked up plenty of food and resources by this point.

You'll also want to find somewhere that's on higher ground. Besides the vantage point, which allows you to overlook cannibal camps or nearby resources, you can also use the Zipline Rope Gun and make traveling across the island much faster. Avoid building a base too close to paths, so you have less chance of cannibals just wandering by.

Surround yourself with trees to give you enough resources to build your base — you're going to need lots of logs and sticks to make everything, so being close by saves time and effort. Get a log storage rack built straight away and ask Kelvin to fill it up for you.

Finally, water is obviously essential, but even if you're using a 3D Printed Flask to hold on to some, being by a body of water also allows you to fish. This means one place can be used to keep your hunger and thirst levels sorted while you get your base established. Craft a drying rack and get those fish hung up before winter arrives, so you've got plenty to snack on.

Having resources that are close by will save you a lot of time and effort, which is why we recommend being surrounded by trees. Not only will this give you logs and sticks as you begin to expand your base, but these dense forest sections are home to lots of creatures. This means you can set traps and get hold of meat quickly.

Also, consider placing your base close to facilities like a 3D printing station — or at least in a way where you can zipline to them quickly. There are multiple of these around the island, and this will allow you to craft arrows, get tech armor, and even get hold of a sled.

Start small with your base and immediately stick a wall of logs all the way around it to create a barrier. For each one of the logs, you're going to want to aim your axe at the top and chip away at it to create a spike. These spiked defenses can slow cannibals and mutants down, especially if you create a raised base.

Start by laying the foundations of a lower level, then build on top of this and use a slanted log as a makeshift ramp. When you have the foundations of the second level started, lay flooring on this level and create your base starting from here.

Having this raised base will allow you to use ranged weapons like a bow, and attack cannibals from lookout points as they make their way toward their base — hopefully stopping them in their tracks before they can do damage.

Your base is yours to make your own, so there's no set way to way to make it the best. That being said, there are some things you can do to make it the best base structurally. Below we'll talk you through each of the steps you should take to get your base started. Click on the links below to jump to different sections of this guide.

The first thing we'd recommend you do is build a raised floor rather than going straight for laying your foundations on the ground. You can choose to place logs either horizontally or vertically, but to create a raised floor, it has to be vertical. When you've placed a log down, aim at the bottom of it, and then you can chop away at it to create raised supports.

Take another log, and line this up with the first support you placed. You'll see a white line and circle appear when it's in the correct position.

You'll need to repeat the process of chopping it down at the bottom, then you'll be able to lay a log down on top of the two supports. Continue doing this until you have a square. Repeat this process to make your foundation as big as you like, building each section into a square at a time to give it the proper support it needs.

The next step is to lay the flooring. With a log, go up to the square you've created with the support beams, and two arrows will appear. You can right-click to change the direction that these lay. When you're ready to put them down, the log will be split into two to create flooring.

Once you have your platform sorted and your flooring down, you can also cut logs into smaller sizes, to act as additional supports under your raised platform. When the arrow appears aiming up, this tells you that you can pop a log in underneath to reinforce the structure.

If you're making a roof, it's just the same as laying the flooring. Once you have a square structure, you'll be able to split logs in half to create planks for a roof.

With the flooring designed in the way you like, it's time to start putting the structures in place to build your walls. With the logs still aiming vertically, you can prop up support beams in all four corners of the squares. Essentially, wherever two logs meet, you can put in a support beam.

When you have two beams on either side of a log, you can start to stack them vertically to create a wall. Just change the orientation of your aim and then you can pile them up on top of each other.

After you've built all your walls up, you can begin to create doors and windows. To do this, aim at the wall and a red square will appear where you can cut the logs down.

You only need to cut away at a few of these to make a window, but for a door, you'd need to chop away at all but the bottom and top support. To make the door itself, you then just approach it as you did with the flooring, aiming the log at the hole you've made until arrows appear. Your character will then rip these in two to start building a door.

If you need to make a ramp, you can place logs diagonally against support beams and walls. Aim the log at the top of the wall or support beam, and an arrow will appear. Just be careful that it's not the horizontal arrow, and it's the diagonal one to ensure the beam lays correctly. We've been using just the logs as makeshift ramps to get in and out of our bases, but you can also fill them in to create proper ramps.

For this, again, you just need to follow the same steps as laying flooring. You'll need to have two diagonal logs coming down from a support beam or wall, then the option to lay planks as a ramp will appear. Look for the arrows to show you when it's set up correctly.

If you'd rather make stairs, right-click to change the orientation and look for the wavy arrows. This will let you know you're in stair mode.

With the basics covered, you want to start considering how you put together your base. We'd recommend that you use makeshift ramps while the game is in Early Access, to allow you to get into your base easily, but keep the cannibals out.

As soon as you have a basic structure made, place a defensive wall around it. Avoid using a lower level, in case cannibals and mutants break down your defensive wall, and begin to build a second level that you can access via a log ramp.

Create little lookout points where you can use ranged weapons from. And be sure to use storage shelves. When you come back from exploring, you'll want to have these stacked up and ready for winter.