The Forrest Multi-player (A multi-player primer v.0.22)

Overview

This is a guide to the things you and your friends should know about multiplayer before your first game. This guide attempts to address all the got you moments of discovery learning that will occur when switching from single to multiplayer modes.

Introduction

After 30+ days of in game Co-Op my wife and I have discovered a lot about the game and wanted to share what we learned with the community. My wife and I have been playing The Forest in multiplayer for the last week and have amassed 30+ days of experience. The entire game has been conducted with mutant/cannibal presence. I host the game and my wife joins me, we usually use a public 2 player game for reasons detailed bellow.

This guide will focus on the unique multiplayer experience. A later guide will focus on the hints, tips and in game techniques we have learned to make a better The Forest gaming experience.

1) Multiplayer set-up

a. The multiplayer services provided by steam work great. The issues we have encountered and the reason we use a public game are:

My forest game crashes as soon as I alt-tab. As a result we use a public game so that if a joined player has an issue they can get back in. In a private game an invite is required that has to be given in steam, thus alt-tabbing.
If the host system has an issue the game crashes and you are reverted to your last save.
The players are immaterial and any player can join any public game without consequence. Any resources destroyed or used are consumed by any player.

b. Multiplayer chat and the walkie talkie:
I have only used in game chat a little bit when someone randomly joined my game when I was waiting for my wife to re-join due to system issues. We sit in the same room and play so we don’t need a chat function very often or use VoIP.

It appears long distance communication works but is initiated using the walkie talkie.
General chat is local, I think.
Walkie talkie chat is whole game.

Need more testing and a better write up for this.

c. Saves
Upon reloading a game all conditions, fires, water stores and cannibals are reset.

Clients whom join a previously visited multiplayer game will be loaded with the equipment and items they possessed when they last saved their game. The host does not maintain a copy of each players assets. When the host saves they are only saving their game state. If someone spent 8hours in a multiplayer game without saving they go back to when they started, as an example.
If you were cold and wet, under attack by 5 cannibals, hungry and thirsty. You will reload simply hungry and thirsty as the cannibals will reset as will your cold wet condition, all fires will be out and all your water stores wil be empty.
The political situation does not change when loading a game and within a few game hours your camp will likely be attacked again.

2) Death, First Aid and Fratricide

a. Death is very different in multiplayer
In multiplayer you have an interim gray period before you get the RED Screen of “You Survived X Days” durring your grey period you are only mostly dead. Which means you are slightly alive and can be revived by another player. These are the affects of multiplayer death:

You do not get dragged to a cave.
You will get dragged to the cave if you go afk, location does not matter and it is unclear if other players even see this happening.
You will be respawned at the plane wreck in the condition and with the items you start the game with.
You will leave a corpse/backpack on the site of your most recent demise.
Your corpse will contain only a fraction of your previous inventory and no special items such as weapons, armor, storage items (the pot, pouch, or water skin).
Prior to the above and upon reaching zero heath your screen goes gray and you generally are looking at the ground unable to control your toon. No you cannot pop your own meds and save yourself despite the flashing advisement txt telling you are low health and should find some medicine. In the center of your screen is a skull slowly filling up white, your death clock.
It is presumed that if this gets filled you “die”. Most of the time it doesn’t have time to do this because the natives have the option to continue attacking while you are down pushing you to the red screen faster than the clock indicates. The natives usually get you or your friends wild swinging to get the baddies off you does their job for them. Or on a rare occasion:
Your fellow players can save you. By reaching a downed player before the skull fills or additional damage is applied to the gray player. Your fellows can apply first aid.

b. First Aid
You have the ability to save your friends who are mostly dead. First aid is that lifesaving skill… Unfourtunately there is no option to check your former friends pockets for loose change.

First Aid is a timed interaction and takes approximately 2.5 seconds of a healthy player administering by holding E (PC) with the first aid icon highlighted above a mostly dead plaer.
Once administered a revived player (and their loose change) is restored to full health and equal energy to what they had upon their near death experience.
There is no item loss when first aid is applied.
There is nothing required to apply first aid by another player. You don’t need bandages, medicine or anything else just apply.

c. Fraternization is a thing

Friendly fire is in full effect in this game. Be careful in combat you can just as easily kill your friend as your enemy especially if they are already down.
This is especially true when using fire!!!

3) Spawn Timers and Special Items

a. All the special resources and tools are on a respawn timer. To include the airplane emergency axe and airplane food/supplies. Upon initial discovery all items are individually available for each player. After initial discovery and retrieval is currently not completely understood. Example: When you go to the nose and get the flare gun the first time, everybody gets it. I.E. the host can pick it up move out of the area and a joined player can go to the nose and it will be there for them too.

After that if it respawns and you both don’t have it you both can get it again.
If only one person is missing the item and they retrieve it, it is now gone for everyone, we think.
This is important because if you die after retrieving a special item you will not have access to it until it respawns.
Unless another player gives it to you via an intermediary device (storage), or you stored it prior to dying on a storage rack.
The spawn timer appears to be based on the initial collection of the item and it is unclear if the timer is different per player.
Example. If a joined player died and lost the modern axe she can go back to the tree and get a new one ~7 game days from when the host last picked it up. If the host later dies and loses their axe the weapon is not available. It is unknown if it will respawn later.

4) The Host Experience

The game Host player experiences the game differently from the other users. These are likely just alpha issues but can lead to quite a bit of frustration amongst friends. These are some of the differances the Host will experience.

The host will always become “cold and wet” if not near a fire as soon as the first clash of thunder is heard. (even if in a structure with a roof, no structures to date have prevented this.
The other players are not affected by cold and wet. My wife reports that she never gets cold and wet in our multiplayer games (I host)
The host is also the only one that becomes “covered in blood”
The host is much easier for natives to detect than other players and most of the time the natives will attack the host if given an equally weighted choice.
The host only sees the totems the natives place around the camp (lots of testing).
Some creatures are only seen by the host. (In our case it is tortoises) We have this difficulty with deer mostly I can see some dear but my wife cannot. She can see some deer that I cannot see.
Most of the time a kill can be looted by the other player. (more testing needed)
Herbs, berries can be different between players, what appears as aloe to the host could be marigold to another player, it does not appear to be consistent. What appears as aloe in one set of spawns to the host may appear as marigold to the other player, but in another spawn of aloe may appear as chicory. (more testing needed)
Some killed mutants when slain by one player may bug and die standing or continuing to walk around for the other. We have seen this go so far as my wife seeing a slowly dismembered (as I chopped him up) cannibal walking in circles in our camp. This can be corrected by having the affected player pick up the corpse and put it back down. When it is set back down it will appear normal for both players and the pick up function is available on all bugged cannibals so far.

5) Trading Items

YOU CAN NOT TRADE (directly)
There is currently no trade interface in the game.

This is the most frustrating part of multiplayer.
There is no trade interface in multiplayer, but you can trade resources in certain circumstances detailed bellow. To trade items you have to create an intermediary device.
You can put pieces of meat on the fire which other players can eat.
You can build storage which other players can use and thus trade items.
If you cant store it; you cant trade it. This is important when one of you is thirsty and the other has a water skin, you cannot let them use it.
You cannot simply drop items out of your inventory either, everything you have is yours unless you are able to store it in an intermediary device.

6)Construction

Construction can be challenging in multiplayer as the specifics of a design can be difficult to relay.

Any player can add designs and contribute resources.
Communication is key to success. Our fort has an entire floor with no windows because of a communication breakdown.
Use spotters, all players can see the design plans before they are anchored so use a spotter to ensure alignments and angles are correct before you anchor your design.
Look outs are extremely useful during base construction, again communication is key.

7) Unanswered questions:

a. This is a primer and as such is not all inclusive but it will spark some disscussion and hopefully be a positive contribution to the game. Bellow are the issues I still need to investigate and answer with more play time. Please feel free to help answer these questions.

Does the number of players in a game affect the natives?
Super mutants in multi-player; what triggers their appearance do they appear at all?
Player offense can we take back the island? Is there a way to prevent canibals from attacking? Can we live in peace/destroy them all?

b. If you have information about the above to either confirm or deny the premises put forward in this guide please do. I am eager to hear some discussion about multiplayer experiences. I am planning on doing a more comprehensive guide on the things that I have learned about The Forest but for now I wanted to start with a relatively simple guide. The topics I am looking forward to covering are:

Canibals/natives how they act and what to do about it…
Build site selection the do’s and don’ts (covered by others but needs more refinement).
Timeline of survival and what’s next.

The Forest Guide