Sons of the Forest Top 10 Weapons

This guide was written during a single-player run on hard mode. The usability of weapons can drastically change based on your play mode and style, so take that into consideration.

    While the core of Sons of the Forest focuses on base building and exploration, you will find both of those things impossible if you are not equipped properly. Enemies can be ruthless, many times able to kill the player with one or two attacks. These are the ten weapons I found the most helpful, ranked from worst to best, along with where in the game I needed them. 

10. Chainsaw (Mid Game)

This is what it’s for right?

As cool as the chainsaw is, I found it a little underwhelming in terms of actually holding the cannibals at bay. While it can be helpful in terms of crowd control, it is worthless in terms of defense; something that is imperative if you prefer your combat up close and personal. I found it a bit slow. Yes, it is enjoyable to easily decapitate your enemies; but not if you’re being incapacitated from behind. More often than not, I found myself using it on trees instead of enemies. 

The chainsaw can be found inside a bunker a small bit down the river from the inlet near the pistol’s location. Once you pass the second pool area, there will be a locked door that requires the guest keycard that can be found in the same room. 

9. Pistol (Early Game)

Shown here with a useless silencer

I was pumped to find the pistol, as it was the first firearm I found, but was disappointed to find that it did very little damage. While it is more feasible than the bow when you find yourself overwhelmed by a couple enemies, it becomes useless if you have four or more basic enemies coming at you. Later in the game, I found that I could unleash an entire clip into some underground monsters without taking them down. 

It has its benefits if you merge it with the silencer; but its failure to one-shot most enemies, even with a headshot, makes the silencer pointless. In terms of stealth I found any of the bows more beneficial since you can craft more arrows mid-combat and never have to reload. The pistol is essentially only a helpful addition to your arsenal if you haven’t found any other firearms yet, which admittedly will probably be the case for most players.

It’s an easy grab if you just swim out to the only GPS location in the middle of the ocean. This location is marked on your map from your first step onto the drop point. 

8. Cross (Late Game)

The Father, The Son, and the Holy crap did that thing just catch on fire?

This might seem like a strange pick. Some might not even consider it a weapon as it does not do any damage to 90% of the enemies you come in contact with. However, I have to mention it because without it I wouldn’t have been able to complete one of the harder cave systems towards the end of the game.

While the cannibals may step back in fear before proceeding to continue to attack, it can actually light demons on fire. When I needed it the cave was FILLED with very fast demons that could take a lot of damage. You can light multiple demons on fire at the same time, which also causes them to temporarily retreat. It can even cause one very obnoxious boss to be engulfed in flames.

There is more than one location to find the cross, but the easiest way is to simply pick it up out of the bedroom before your descent into the previously mentioned cave of death. There’s really no way you can miss it as you are required to pass through this area in order to complete the game. 

7. Revolver (Mid Game)

Pictured here next to the skeletons in my closet.

The revolver does what I wish the pistol did. It has a more powerful punch that can one shot a couple enemies with a well placed headshot. It also has a decent knock-back that you won’t find with the normal pistol. Unfortunately, once you get into the later caves it simply does not have the damage output to be a viable tool. 

The reload animation is considerably longer than the pistol; enough so that gauging their DPS becomes difficult. I found it a very helpful tool above ground, but that was usually when I was out of ammo for other weapons. 

You can find the revolver inside the third maintenance bunker. You will need the shovel as well as having already entered the first two maintenance bunkers; as the GPS location for the spot is obtainable from the second maintenance bunker… whose location is obtainable from the first maintenance bunker… whose location is obtainable from the cave by the drop point. 

6. Katana (Mid/Late Game)

While I found melee weapons more of a burden than a blessing on hard mode, the katana is unquestionably the best melee weapon by a landslide. It can do massive amounts of damage and has decent knockback against some of the smaller enemies. It has the best defense (sans some tools that you would never bring to a battle). 

There is unquestionably a cool factor to the weapon, as who doesn’t want to act like a samurai? I also like how if you use a heavy attack on a downed enemy it has a special animation where you can impale them into the ground. It is extremely fast, beaten only by some weak knives that are too small to be used effectively in combat (thus their failure to be anywhere on this list). 

Wrecked.

The katana can be obtained by entering a cave near a large lake near the smaller island on the edge of the map. It requires the maintenance keycard. Once inside you will have a long way to go but after a lot of traversing it is easily obtainable in one of the bedrooms. As long as you take a look in all the bedrooms you won’t have any trouble coming across it, as it is on display.

5. Crossbow (Mid Game)

I probably missed this shot

    The crossbow is one of my favorite weapons to use above ground. I found it to be one of the easiest weapons to aim. It can be shot from a very far distance away before being affected by gravity. It is my go-to in terms of stealth, as (unlike the silenced pistol) it has no trouble one-shotting enemies with a headshot.

    Unfortunately, the crossbow’s reload animation is a total buzzkill. It takes a very long time to complete and must be done after EVERY SINGLE SHOT. As such, I found myself generally switching to a different weapon once the cannibals became aware of my presence. The only exception to this is when I found myself in very wide open spaces against a large amount of enemies. 

    While the constant reloading and running away from enemies makes the battles feel dull, it has surprisingly good crowd control as long as the crowd is, like, very far away and all have big heads.

    It is not hard to find or get to, as it is found towards the beginning of the food bunker (a required location to complete the game). However, it is easy to accidentally pass so make sure to check between the shelves in the grow rooms. 

4. Grenades (Early/Mid Game)

Why do I care about tree cutting efficiency so much? That’s what Kelvin is for

The grenades were my best friend for a while. At the beginning of the game, when I had absolutely no armor and my weapons were whatever I could manage to craft, they were many times my only way to kill some of the harder enemies that would attack my first base camp at the drop point. 

This is perfect considering they literally spawn next to where the game begins inside one of the suitcases. By using the save/reload method you can have access to an infinite amount of grenades without having to do any sort of exploring. 

The only thing I can’t stand about the grenades is how finicky they can be to aim. They don’t create all that large of an explosion so if the enemy isn’t right on it, which is likely since they are pretty fast runners, you’re likely to find yourself blowing up your own base by accident instead. I also found myself the victim of plenty of my own grenades for whatever reason (but that’s probably a user error.)

3. Bow (Early/Late)

This is the compound, not the crafted.

There are actually two bows in the game but I am including them in the same position because they were just as efficient. It’s just that I used the crafted bow at the beginning of the game and I used the compound bow at the end of the game. They do excellent damage if you’re good at headshots. At first you might have trouble finessing their aim, but once you get it down they are excellent. 

Unlike the firearms, you have access to an almost endless supply of arrows as they can be built using some of the most basic farmable items. You can open the inventory mid-combat and create more if you run out. There is hardly any reload animation at all. To top it off you can use a variety of different craftable arrows for different types of situations. 

The crafted bow can be found by simply opening your inventory and building one with some very easy-to-find, above-ground items. The compound bow is an easy find inside the second maintenance bunker inside the bathroom.

2. Bomb Arrows (Early/Mid/Late)

Just don’t try to switch to them mid-battle.

While the bow has plenty of different options, such as shock and fire arrows, the bomb arrows are so nice that they deserve their own place on the list. It’s considerably easier to hit a target with a bow than a grenade, and if you do hit them directly it's going to stay stuck until you blow the enemy to smithereens. 

There was a certain boss that was driving me crazy because I felt like nothing I did would damage it. So, I crafted as many bomb arrows as I could find. When I hit it, it would fall to the ground and become temporarily immobilized. While it was incapacitated, I would just keep attaching more until I succeeded with little to no effort. 

They are craftable, so they aren’t particularly hard to find. The only issue is that they are composed of a pretty large amount of ingredients, most of which are only found in suitcases, caves and bunkers. So, if you find yourself in dire need of some major firepower that only a bomb can fix, you might find yourself having to retreat to the surface to craft more. 

1. Shotgun (Early/Mid/Late)

Here comes the boom.

The shotgun is, unquestionably, the best weapon in the game. Like, it’s not even slightly a competition. It can kill most enemies in one shot, it has the most powerful knockback of any weapon, and it doesn’t take all that long to reload. 

It’s pretty easy to find; in fact it’s one of the first non-craftable weapons I obtained in the game. If you aim down the sights you’ll find that it has a pretty decent reach. It has the best crowd control of any weapon as you can hit an unlimited number of enemies at the same time so long as they are in front of you (as all projectiles…).

I suggest obtaining the shotgun one of your first priorities, as it makes most early and mid-game fights a cake-walk. It won’t one-shot kill at the end for most of the stronger enemies, but even then its knockback is significant enough that you will easily be able to sneak in the final blow.  

You can’t obtain it without the shovel and the rebreather; however both of those items aren’t particularly hard to obtain. It’s easy to find as it's in a grave among one of the three GPS locations on your map from the beginning of the game. 

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