Adjusting the Difficulty Settings on Your Sons Of The Forest Server

Overview

Sons Of The Forest can swing between a relaxed survival sandbox and a punishing fight for territory, and the difficulty setting is what decides which one your group ends up playing. Some people want fewer cannibal raids during a long build session, others want the island to push back harder. The server is happy to do either. The control panel keeps every option in one place, including a fully custom mode for groups that want to tune individual values. This guide covers both routes: picking one of the built-in presets and assembling a custom configuration through the config file.

Available Difficulty Modes

Four preset difficulties ship with the game, plus a custom option that exposes the underlying settings for editing. Each preset shifts enemy behavior, encounter frequency, and survival pressure in slightly different ways, so it helps to know what you are choosing before you commit.

One important rule: difficulty cannot be changed on an existing save. Switching modes always requires a fresh save slot, which means existing progress on that world stays where it is. If you already have hours invested, factor that in before swapping settings. The next two sections cover each workflow step by step.

Switching to a Preset

Applying one of the built-in modes is a short trip through the panel. The flow is: select the mode, assign a new save slot, then restart so the change loads in.

• Open your server panel and head to the server settings from your panel sidebar.

• In the Difficulty dropdown, pick the mode you want to play on.

• Below that, set a new Save Slot. This is required, not optional.

• Return to the main panel page and Restart the server so the new mode takes effect.

Building a Custom Difficulty

If none of the presets match what you have in mind, the custom mode unlocks the underlying values through a configuration file. The setup starts the same way: choose Custom in your server settings and assign a fresh save slot. Do not restart yet, because the config file still needs editing.

When working in the file, keep the syntax intact. Quotation marks, brackets, and commas all matter, and accidentally deleting one of them will silently break the file.

• From your panel, open the file manager or FTP client from your panel menu.

• Enter your password in the field and click Login to reach the file browser.

• Locate the Sons Of The Forest server folder and open it.

• Find `dedicatedserver.cfg` and press Edit to open its contents.

• Scroll down to CustomGameModeSettings and adjust the values to fit the experience you want.

• Save the file with the button at the top, then go back to the panel and restart the server.

Troubleshooting

If the change does not stick after a restart, the most likely cause is reusing an old save slot. The game ignores difficulty edits on existing worlds, so the fix is creating a brand new save through your server settings and restarting again. Anyone who would rather keep an active playthrough than swap modes can simply stay on the original setting. That is a valid option, not a workaround.

For custom mode, two things tend to go wrong. First is forgetting to choose Custom in the Difficulty field before editing the config, which means the file edits go to a mode the server is not actually loading. Second is a malformed file: a missing quotation mark, a stray comma, or an invalid value will keep the new rules from being applied and the world will load with default behavior. If your tweaks are not showing up in game, double check the file syntax, save, then restart.

Wrapping Up

A quieter survival run, a tougher fight for the coastline, or something exactly between the two, the difficulty system has enough range to land where your group wants to play. The presets handle most situations and the custom mode covers the rest. Keep the save slot rule in mind (new difficulty equals new save) and the rest is a one time setup that holds up across the entire playthrough.