All Sons of the Forest Traps Ranked

This guide was written during a single-player run on Hard Mode. Take your own gameplay settings into consideration when using this guide.

In Sons of the Forest, one of the funnest ways to spend your time is to find creative ways to dismantle your enemies without having to waste ammo. While combat is fun, sometimes its nice when you’re relaxing at your base for your defense systems to handle things for you. I’m splitting this article into two parts. Part 1 will not contain spoilers; however, spoilers are required to explain my second set of traps. So if you don’t want anything spoiled, stop reading when you get to Part 2. 

Part 1: The Handbook

Small Animal Trap

In my experience the animal trap is more trouble than it’s worth. Yes, it can catch food from time to time but I found its success rate to be pretty low. Getting some food from a small animal trap is going to take the type of patience that will require you to eat a bunch of other stuff before the trap catches anything worth eating. While it doesn’t hurt to have a few animal traps near your base if you’ve got the spare sticks; you should not be relying on this food source to survive. Additionally, they can only hold one animal whereas the fish trap can hold multiple fish.

The obvious convenience to the small animal trap lies in the fact that it costs a measly fourteen sticks. Even if you find the trap useless, you won’t feel like you had to make a great sacrifice in their formulation.

You’re better off just hunting the animals outright with a bow or spear; but if you really prefer the idea of traps I found this option more feasible…

To craft you will need:

• 14 sticks

Fish Trap

The fish trap is a little more expensive in terms of sticks, but they aren’t exactly a hard commodity to come by. My experience with fish is that any time you sleep, you wake up to a full catch. This may not be entirely true, but 9/10 that will be the case. Unlike the fish trap, the small animal trap does not have that convenience. The fish trap can hold multiple fish at the same time; so if you have two or three traps set up you won’t have to worry about food ever again.

Just don’t forget to cook them.  

To craft you will need:

• 25 Sticks

Bone Maker Trap

The bone maker trap is convenient for a variety of reasons. Its eclecticness lies in the fact that it lights the enemies on fire. 

While it can only “trap” one mutant at a time, the fire can still spread to other mutants if they are in close contact; something that isn’t all that hard to attain if you have tricked the mutants into going down a tunnel/funnel at your base.

To craft you will need:

• 2 Sticks
• 3 Leaves
• 3 Rocks
• 1 Vodka Bottle

 

 

 

Conveniently, it does not require additional vodka bottles to reset the trap. So, you could potentially build an entire set of bone armor without wasting any ammo or additional vodka. Just be careful, it doesn’t trap some of the more powerful enemies.

Fly Swatter Trap

The fly swatter is an amazing tool if you only have one pursuer. It is an instant kill for regular cannibals, but unfortunately it only has one use before having to reset it. Since it doesn’t have any additional benefits, like how the bone maker can light the enemy on fire, it isn't the most effective trap. 

The big benefit here is how ridiculously cheap it is to make. While one fly swatter trap may do very little in protecting your base, four or five of them could work just fine without costing too much supplies.

To craft you will need:

• 10 Sticks
• 1 Rope
• 3 Rocks

 

 

Spring Trap

The spring trap has a variety of cool benefits that set it apart from other traps. It does have a single use and must be reset; but that is the case for most of the traps so we aren’t going to hold it against the trap. 

It’s very small and is not finicky with the levelness of the ground below.

Its best aspect is in the fact that you can actually pick it up and move it, in a sense making it an item in its own right. Just don’t forget to pick it back up since it cannot be stored in your inventory. 

Unfortunately, the spring trap is significantly harder to build than the other traps because of the difficulty in obtaining turtle shells. Their appearances are pretty randomized and you can’t carry very many turtle shells at a time. 

To craft you will need:

• 1 Turtle Shell
• 2 Wires
• 7 Sticks

 

 

Hokey Pokey Trap

The hokey pokey is easy to build. While it does take a lot of supplies, all of those supplies are pretty readily available from anywhere on the map. 

When it is initially set off it does massive damage to any unsuspecting victim below it; but the spikes stay strong afterwards. This means that cannibals that just happen to run into the sprung trap will still be injured on the ball. 

The ball will continue to damage according to the physics placed onto it. 

To craft you will need:

• 10 Sticks
• 6 Logs
• 3 Ropes
• 15 Stones

Part 2: The Blueprints

Other than the standard traps discussed above there are a variety of more grisly and expensive traps that are only obtainable through searching underground. To an extent some of this information could be considered spoilers, so read the rest of this article knowing I’ve given you fair warning. 

The Multi Trap

This bad boy can pretty much destroy anything that’s above it. It doesn’t matter if it’s one or two or ten cannibals they are gonna be wrecked.

It's found on the Southwest area of the map on the right-hand fork that makes a Y out of the land. A short swim with the rebreather through the cave following the left- hand side will lead to the blueprint. 

To craft you will need (big inhale):

• 2 Skulls
• 15 Bones
• 3 Leaves
• 1 Golf Cart Battery
• 2 Ropes
• 2 Vodka Bottles
• 4 Wire
• 6 Rocks
• 14 sticks

 

 

The Spear Thrower 

Clearly birds have nothing to worry about. 

The spear thrower isn’t all that bad, but it does have a few flaws. While it is nice for the trap to be able to work five times, when that is said and done you will have to replace those spears and I found that alot of the time after being used the spears weren’t anywhere to be found. Which meant having to craft more between each use. 

It can also be finicky about hitting the target, sometimes failing to fly forward at all; instead just kinda falling off the side. 

The spear trap blueprint is found within Ice Cave B. 

To craft you will need:

• 3 Wire
• 2 Logs
• 1 Battery
• 2 Sticks
• 8 Bones
• 3 C4 Bricks

The Spin Trap

Closest you’re going to get to a Christmas tree on the island. 

I’m a big fan of this trap. It does good damage, much of the time landing headshots. It’s not limited to hurting a single enemy. It brings the spins for as long as it can go without it being destroyed. Conveniently, it's hard for enemies to destroy something that has already killed them. 

The ingredients to build the spin trap are very simple, as long as you know where to find a battery; but much like the other blueprint traps, this one requires some exploration to obtain. 

This trap can be found inside the entrance of the cave system marked below:

To craft you need:

• 5 Wire
• 37 Sticks
• 1 Light Bulb
• 1 Battery

 

 

The Grind Trap

If you have read my article on base locations, you will recognize this as “The Miner’s Camp”

The grind trap can be found while traversing a section of cave that is abundant in Solafite ore near the Northeast corner of the map. On the place marked on this map there are three buildings. There is an entrance to the tunnels that is very easy to find inside one of the buildings that leads to the grind traps blueprint location.

To craft you will need:

• 3 Wire
• 65 Sticks
• 2 Large Stones
• 1 Skull
• 1 Battery
• 1 Log

 

 

Check out these related articles:

• [Top 10] Sons of the Forest Best Weapons
• [Top 3] Sons of the Forest Best Axes
• [Top 5] Sons of the Forest Best Melee Weapons