Learn tips and tricks for how to upgrade weapons in The Forest
If you want to survive longer on The Forest’s peninsula, you need to learn how to upgrade your weapons and gear. Players can’t upgrade all weapons in the game, but those that can be enhanced become more deadly. Some upgrades are temporary, like the fire upgrade that burns out over time and becomes even faster the more you swing the weapon. This guide will help you maximize your resources to handle even the hardest survival difficulty.
Types of weapon upgrades
There are many ways you can upgrade your weapons, and they can hold up to 30 upgrades at one time. There are some downsides to weapon upgrades, as they change the weapon’s build a bit at a time. For example, if you upgrade speed, you may suffer from minor damage dealt in exchange. There is a bit of science for getting the most benefit out of your weapon upgrades which we will discuss shortly. But upgrading weapons will ultimately aid you in your hunting and mutant defense efforts. These are the different types of weapon upgrades:
Important: As of version V0.15, the bonuses for using one upgrade too frequently will cause a decay in benefits.
Speed upgrade
Feathers and sap will upgrade your weapon’s speed with the cost of reducing damage to the weapon. Using the speed upgrade will increase your weapon speed by .1, and your damage will decrease by .05.
Damage upgrade
Using Teeth and Sap will upgrade your weapon’s damage with the cost of reducing speed on the weapon. Using the damage upgrade will increase your weapon damage by .1, and your speed will decrease by .05.
Damage+ upgrade
Players can combine booze and sap to make glass shards. Glass will increase damage twice as much as teeth and decrease speed twice as much. When you use the Damage+ upgrade, your weapon damage will increase by .2, and your speed will decrease by .1.
Fire upgrade
The fire upgrade will give your weapon a temporary chance to ignite enemies with a tiny reduction in damage dealt for the duration of the burning effect. This is also a very quick and easy way to increase your lighting so you can see around caves better. We recommend upgrading a weapon like the stick, as it has the longest burn time and can still ignite enemies. To use, Simply combine a cloth with your weapon of choice and ignite it with the lighter. Most weapons will burn longer and all weapons lose around 10%-30% of their burn time per swing, so make sure your swings are connecting to an enemy.
Poison upgrade
The poison upgrade allows your strikes to deal damage over time to your enemies. A poisoned enemy will also suffer from reduced movement and attack speed. There are a limited number of hits that you can deal poison damage before needing to reapply for the upgrade. To craft a poison upgrade, apply one of the following crafting recipes to your weapon:
- 4 Twin Berries
- 4 Snowberries
- 1 Amanita Mushroom
- 1 Jack Mushroom
How to upgrade the Plane Axe
- Decide what upgrade you wish to add to the axe. In this example, we will be using a damage upgrade.
- Place the Plane Axe (or your weapon of choice) in the center for crafting.
- Add teeth and sap to the center
- Your weapon will now deal slightly more damage and swing slightly slower.
How to get upgrade materials
Sap can be gathered from trees using a sap collector or, in some rare cases, by chopping trees with an axe-type weapon. Make sure that if you decide to craft a sap collector, make sure you have an extra old pot for water collection, as it is a rookie mistake to prepare a sap collector without a consistent water source.
Teeth can be gathered from attacking cannibals. You have a higher chance of gaining teeth by using weaker weapons like the upgraded stick. Teeth have a roughly 10%-15% chance of dropping regardless of how much damage you deal. Mutants do not drop teeth.
Booze spawns in many fixed locations on the map, usually found with human structures and found around luggage boxes. A good spot to farm booze is the yacht or villages that have lots of luggage and yellow boxes.
Glass is crafted by combining booze and sap together. This material is crucial for creating a Damage+ upgrade.
Feather: Dropped from birds found on the peninsula. Most birds will drop 3-5 feathers upon defeating them. Crucial for speed upgrades and other crafting recipes like arrows. A good spot for farming birds, seagulls specifically, is to hang out on the beach with a bow or a fast melee weapon. Another way to gather feathers is to utilize a birdhouse, generating passive feathers over time.
Weapons and their available upgrades
Upgradeable: The following weapons can be upgraded using feathers, teeth, and glass for permanent upgrades.
- Plane Axe
- Rusty Axe
- Crafted Axe
- Modern Axe
- Crafted Club (no poison upgrade)
- Upgraded Stick (no poison upgrade)
- Weak Spear (no glass, or fire poison upgrades)
- Machete (No fire upgrade)
- Upgraded Rock (only glass upgrade)
- Tennis Racket (no fire or poison upgrades)
Non-upgradeable: The following weapons cannot receive permanent upgrades.
- Katana (poison upgrade eligible)
- Upgraded Spear (poison upgrade eligible)
- Club
- Flare Gun
- Flintlock Pistol
- Both bows
- Rock climbing Axe
- Chainsaw
General weapon upgrade tips
You should always save your game before upgrading your weapons, just in case something goes buggy, if you make the wrong upgrade, or even if you are feeling experimental and want to try something out. You cannot remove upgrades one at a time. They must all be removed at once, so make sure that you have a previous save state to return to before experimenting; otherwise, you will either miss out on many supplies or be stuck with a weapon that you don’t find fully optimal. To remove all of your weapon upgrades, place the weapon on the center of the crafting mat and press the ‘C’ key.
You can place the weapon you wish to upgrade into the center of the crafting mat and add your desired upgrade materials to the center. If you mix the wrong materials, the crafting cogwheel will not appear.
Another miscellaneous tip is that you can place your teeth, feathers, and glass wherever you wish on the weapon. This is purely cosmetic and does not further increase or decrease damage and speed values.
For the spear, If you craft a spear and upgrade it and then lose the spear you can get your upgrades back by simply crafting another weak spear. You can technically upgrade the weak spear with glass, however, it is buggy, and you run a high risk of upgrading your weapon and not gaining any benefits from it.
Upgrades are attached to your player. This feature allows you to store your upgraded weapons; however, if you make another spear or stick or are given a weapon by another player, the item taken, crafted, or given will revert to the last upgrades you previously had equipped to those weapons.
Power attacks are not affected by speed upgrades. Therefore if you wish to utilize only power attacks, you can fully upgrade damage and swing a power attack at the same speed as if you had used feathers. Block speed is also unaffected by upgrades.
How to get the most benefits out of your upgrades
As said previously, each upgradeable weapon can have up to 30 upgrades at once. The following is a quick guide for determining how to get the best stats for your weapons:
- For best overall stats: equip 10 glass, 10 teeth, and 10 feathers
- For best damage: (on a very slow weapon) 19 glass and 11 teeth
- For best speed: (on a fast weapon) 16 feathers and 14 glass or teeth. This is due to the damage values falling off so much from feathers that if you utilized 30 feathers, it would take you a very long time to dispatch an enemy.
With that, you should now have a solid grasp on how to upgrade weapons in The Forest. If you’re looking for more tips on getting started, be sure to check out The Forest Beginner’s Guide for a deeper look and a broad range of tips for getting yourself bootstrapped to survive!
