Best Sons of the Forest settings for PC and Steam Deck

The best Sons of the Forest settings will help you survive this cannibalistic creepshow, especially when, despite being out of early access, the game still has a few lingering performance quirks to navigate.

Thanks to the Sons of the Forest system requirements, we know you won't need the best graphics card from our handy buying guide to get good performance in this horror game. However, the more power your gaming PC is packing, be it a powerful Nvidia GPU or AMD CPU, the better your chances of survival.

• Quality Preset: Custom
• Draw Distance: High
• Ambient Occlusion: Ultra
• Fog Quality: High
• Anisotropic Textures: On
• Shadow Quality: High
• Clouds: High
• Grass: Medium
• Water: High
• Parallax Distance: High
• Texture Resolution: Full
• Anti-Aliasing: Off
• Dynamic Resolution: DLSS
• DLSS mode: Quality
• Screen Space Reflection: Off
• Micro Shadowing: On
• Contact Shadows: Off
• Chromatic Aberration: On
• Film Grain: Off
• Colour Grade: Default
• Bloom: On
• Motion Blur: On

Using the above settings on our RTX 4070 testing rig, we achieved an average frame rate of 91fps, with 1% lows of 63fps. Ideally, for a single-player experience, we're happy to have a nice high frame rate so long as we're also clearing 60fps with the 1% lows, which we are doing here with ease.

Sons of the Forest lacks an in-game benchmark tool, so we decided to use a specific path to represent typical gameplay. In the meantime, here are a few key settings to keep an eye on.

Sons of the Forest DLSS

Our Sons of the Forest settings tests use an RTX 4070, which means we can reap the rewards of Nvidia DLSS. Switching the AI upscaler on provides a substantial boost while using the ultra preset, producing the same average frame rate as low. However, the performance is still a bit jittery, and even one of the green team's best graphics card tech couldn't save us from random dips, but it'll still make a big difference.

Sons of the Forest grass quality

We can only imagine Kermit the Frog would love Sons of the Forest, as its playpen is bursting with greenery. If you're not a big fan of vegetation, you could take a metaphorical lawnmower to the survival game's grass by switching the setting to low, and you'll earn a couple of extra frames as pocket money. Just keep in mind that the option will effectively clear the forest floor, which ultimately makes everything look less dense.

Sons of the Forest draw distance

Dialling down draw distance, even if just a tad, will take the load off your graphics card, enabling it to spill a few extra frames on your screen. The change from ultra to high didn't seem to obscure our long-range view that much during testing, but further changes could hamper your ability to see encroaching cannibals.

Sons of the Forest contact shadows

Contact shadows equip Sons of the Forest with a layer of visual depth, but ditching the setting could increase your average fps by around 5%. Of course, this result could vary depending on specific parts of the woodland, so it's best to keep that in mind while trying to claw back frames.

Best Sons of the Forest settings for Steam Deck

• Quality preset: Custom
• Draw distance: Low
• Ambient occlusion: Low
• Fog quality: Low
• Anisotropic textures: Off
• Shadow quality: Low
• Clouds: Low
• Grass: Low
• Water: Low
• Parallax distance: Low
• Texture resolution: Full
• Anti-aliasing: Off
• Dynamic resolution: AMD FRS 3.0
• DLSS mode: Performance
• Screen space reflection: Off
• Micro shadowing: Off
• Contact shadows: Off
• Chromatic aberration: Off
• Film grain: Off
• Colour grade: Default
• Bloom: Off
• Motion Blur: Off

Unfortunately, Sons of the Forest runs terribly on the Steam Deck and has an Unsupported rating, which is backed up in our testing. You can boot the game and play it, but ultimately, the experience will be poor, and even on a Steam Deck OLED, the loading times are overly long.

For now, we recommend waiting for further updates to focus on the optimization of the game on lower-end hardware. Alternatively, Sons of the Forest is also part of GeForce Now, so you can download the native Steam Deck app and play this way instead.

Sons of the Forest presets

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Ultra

If you're looking for a starting point, selecting a Sons of the Forest preset will serve as a great foundation. However, cranking things down across the board didn't produce the substantial frame boost we'd normally expect, so they're anything but a performance silver bullet.

Switching global settings from ultra to high provided us with a few extra frames, but the result is nothing to write home about. Admittedly, erratic frame rates and frame rate dips mean it's hard to enjoy any minor performance gains, and that'll ring particularly true if you're playing at 4K. Then again, if that 60fps sweet spot is just out of reach, it might be worth making the change.

Changing your preset to medium prompts a 6% frame bump, and visuals don't seem to take that much of a hit. So, if your rig is crying out for help, we wouldn't judge you for making the plunge. Sadly, the same can't be said for low, as while it seemingly facilitates a whopping 15% frame rate hike, it becomes hard to see the forest from the pixelated trees.

How we tested Sons of the Forest

At PCGamesN, we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Sons of the Forest includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration, and MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.

We always run our testing first at 1,920 x 1,080 to identify the best settings for this entry-level resolution, then again at 2,560 x 1,440 using the same setup to gauge the difference in performance. We use CapFrameX to capture frame data and compare testing sessions.

Does Sons of the Forest need an SSD?

Sons of the Forest does not require an SSD, but one is preferred as per the system requirements. Due to the long loading times you can experience without one, it's highly recommended that you upgrade if you still currently use a mechanical drive.

If you grab yourself the best SSD from our buying guide for your existing gaming PC, it will really help keep game loading times in check.

How to monitor performance in Sons of the Forest

If you want to keep an eye on performance in Sons of the Forest, we have an easy method that works whether you're using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.

For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.

Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.

With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.

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