If you want to survive the cold nights and even colder winters in Sons of the Forest, you’ll need to get building a fire and reinforce it with firewood. Not only will a fire heat you, but it also’s a decent light source for your camp and you can cook food on it, so everybody wins. Except for the people eaten by cannibals, but it’s too late for them.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to start a fire to keep yourself alive longer and, more importantly, where to find and how to use the firewood to keep your fire burning for longer.
Alongside building a fire, you’ll want to make sure you have essential items like the shovel, rope gun and rebreather, too.
How to start a fire
Starting a fire is easy: find two sticks and make sure you have a lighter in your inventory—you should have grabbed one from the crash site. Equip a stick, look down at the ground and you’ll see a faint outline which is essentially the blueprint for your fire. Left-click to snap that stick in two, then you’ll be prompted to do it again before you can light the fire. You can then hold E to add food to the fire to cook it.
How to keep your fire burning for longer
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Okay, you’ve started a fire, but it doesn’t seem to last very long and even with your winter jacket, it’s getting cold out here—what gives? Luckily for you, there’s a way to reinforce your fire so that it’ll last a good while longer.
To reinforce the fire, you’ll need to collect some of those large grey rocks lying around. You’ll also need some firewood, which you can collect from logs. Gather logs, then get your tactical axe out and start chopping them in half. Once halved, chop them in half again until you get squares of firewood. You’ll need two pieces of firewood for your fire, so chop the logs close to your base so that you don’t need to go wandering far for more.
Next, build a regular fire. Equip the rocks and look for the circular patterns surrounding the fire and place them. After that, use the two pieces of firewood on your fire by using E to interact with it, and you’ll have yourself a roaring fire, sir.