Released in 2018, The Forest is an open-world survival game with a smidgen of horror thrown in for good measure. You are a parent whose plane crashed on a mysterious island, and your son is missing. While finding your son is a plotline that you can finish, the game is pretty open to you doing whatever you please, be that building, exploring, and fighting cannibals who attack at night.
The game is especially fun to play with friends and family, as it is open to up to eight players. While there is a lot to do, many like to spice things up or make things easier with mods. The Forest has many, but some are way more well-known for their usefulness and fun than others.
Updated December 18, 2021 by Allison Stalberg: The Forest has become incredibly popular, with over two hundred thousand positive reviews on Steam since its release. The first-person survival horror game has a lot for you to do, from crafting to exploring and building. Due to its increasing player base, more and more mods are coming out, and with mods added, the great game gets even better. You can make the game easier, harder, and/or even make it more like an RPG with leveling. It is a great way to spend your time while waiting for the upcoming sequel to The Forest, Sons of the Forest.
16 No Sleep Cooldown
Sleep both passes time and lets you heal from any wounds. In the base game, though, you cannot just sleep whenever you want. There is actually a timer for when you can next sleep after you wake up.
This mod gets rid of that limitation. Now you can both pass time and heal whenever you desire. While this might not sound like a huge change, it makes a significant difference within the game.
15 Longer Nights And Days
The length of the days and nights can feel a bit too fast for some players. It is during the day that you have more freedom to explore, build, and collect resources without much danger. At night, though, you are in danger of cannibal attacks and may want to fortify yourself in a base.
For those who think the time is too short, the longer days and nights mod exists. In fact, multiple have been created depending on your preference.
14 Tides
Since you are on an island, you are surrounded by the ocean. Besides the danger of sharks, you can also swim, dive, and even hunt in the water.
Mod creators had the brilliant idea to make the ocean even more realistic by adding tides. This means the sea levels can change with the time of day. With that in mind, you may not ever want to set up camp flatly on the beach.
13 Tree Respawn
Wood is an important resource for any video game that includes crafting mechanics, and The Forest is no different. With your tools, you can chop down trees for various resources necessary to build bridges, walls, and fortifications.
In the plain game though, these trees will dwindle in number. Only 10 percent of what you cut down grows back. That is why the respawn trees mod is an excellent addition to lessen the stress of destroying your local ecosystem.
12 Easy Building
Building can be difficult for some, or it may just take too long. A solution is to cut the number of resources needed for each recipe in half. For example, the Easy Building mod will let you build a fortification piece with just 14 logs instead of a whopping 28.
With this mod, you can get more instant rewards and not have to put yourself in danger by looking for extra resources.
11 Better Blueprints
Better Blueprints allows you to build anywhere without physics to stop you. It features other mods within as well, such as infinite zipline. Other features include no anchor print limit, customizing blueprint colors, reverse rotation, and quick interact.
Most use the mod for building anywhere though, as that can be a game changer, allowing you to build whatever you dream of without having to concern yourself with slopes and gravity.
10 Full Inventory
This is a basic mod that allows the player to totally fill their inventory with the press of a button. All items are now infinite without the need to gather. For some players, this could break the game too much and make it boring.
For others though, it is a great opportunity to play the game without annoying limitations.
After all, not all items are easy to get.
9 Bigger Backpack
There is nothing more familiar to a gamer than limited inventory space. There is a constant desire for more space. In games where inventory space upgrades aren't available, you may find yourself going back and forth between storage spaces all the time or eating all your food when you aren't even hungry.
Thankfully, the bigger backpack mod for The Forest is here to save the day.
8 Damage Numbers
Ordinarily, you cannot see the health of enemies in The Forest—you just keep hitting them and hope that they will be down before you are.
The Damage Numbers mod fixes that stress by showing the health bars of the enemies. Even better, it gives them names. The names also are pretty silly, so that will make them far less scary... well, at least in theory.
7 Map
Some players like to unveil a game map piece by piece as they explore. Others prefer to have a map on hand so that they do not miss anything.
Ordinarily, The Forest is suited for players who like to unveil maps as they explore. With the map mod though, players can also know where everything is from the start. You will never get lost, and you can avoid enemy compounds.
6 Infinite Zipline
Ziplines are a great way to get safely from point A to point B. They're a great way to stay safe during a cannibal attack or just a convenient way to go between two buildings on differing heights.
However, the base game has a limit to how far a zipline will go. With the Infinite Zipline Mod, though, you are free to make your zipline go as far as you want. Want to make a zipline down from the top of a mountain like something out of Death Stranding? You can now do so with this mod.
5 MP Cap Remover
Eight friends is an alright sum for multiplayer. However, there are those who have a lot of people who want to play together. More than eight!
Well, how many will the MP Cap Remover allow? It allows a total of 32 players. That is a lot of people running around! It sounds fun, though that's assuming you can find that many people willing to play and share the island experience.
4 Day22SpawnChange
This mod allows you to set the spawn rates of enemies. That is basically setting a particular kind of difficulty for yourself. You can set a super low spawn rate to just enjoy island life without being attacked, or you can make it like a total war zone! It's your choice; just update the game to fit your preferences. Want to focus solely on cannibals? Then up their spawn.
3 Ultimate Cheat Menu
Ever just want to let loose with no limits? That's where this mod comes in.
Its cheats include flying, chopping trees with one hit, unlimited fuel for the chainsaw, no underwater blur, freeze time, automatically activating dynamites and Molotov cocktails without a lighter, spawn animals, spawn enemies, spawn items, revive players, make infinite gardens, and create infinite buildings. Basically, this mod makes you a god.
2 Champions Of The Forest
Here is a mod with a ton of features. It basically turns The Forest into an RPG, complete with custom stats, hundreds of perks, uniquely named enemies, spells, new equipment, a leveling system, and custom difficulty settings. It is just a beautiful package that can change the way The Forest is played.
You and your friends can all try different character builds. Some have described this mod as turning The Forest into a Diablo spinoff.
1 Skip Plane Crash
This mod is simple but great for those who play the game a ton. In the base game, the plane crash cutscene replays every time you start with a new character. Mercifully, pressing the spacebar does skip the cutscene. However, this mod makes it so you don't even have to do that. Instead, the plane crash is skipped automatically.
The mod is quite small and not one that exists for fun or difficulty, but it is a nice convenience that gets plenty of downloads.