How to Set Up Custom Difficulty on Your Sons of the Forest Server

Custom difficulty in Sons of the Forest lets you fine-tune your survival experience piece by piece, adjusting things like enemy strength, animal spawn rates, day length, and hunger effects individually instead of picking a fixed preset. This guide walks you through switching to Custom mode and configuring it.

⚠️ Important Warning: Custom difficulty settings are only read when a new save is created. Setting Game Mode to Custom on an existing world will not apply these settings, you need a fresh world for them to take effect.

Step 1: Start a Fresh World with Game Swap

Since custom settings only apply to a new save, use the Game Swap feature on your MintServers panel first. This saves your current world to the side and gives you a clean instance to set up your custom difficulty on, without losing your existing progress.

Log into your MintServers panel and click Stop to shut down your server.
Use the Game Swap option to save your current world and create a new, empty instance.

💡 Pro Tip: Game Swap is the recommended way to get a clean save without touching your existing world. If you don't need to keep your current world at all, you can instead delete your existing save files from the Files tab to force a fresh save the next time your server starts, but Game Swap is the safer option if you want to keep your progress.

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Step 2: Enable Custom Game Mode and Configure Settings

With a fresh instance ready, set Game Mode to Custom and fill in the individual settings you want inside the CustomGameModeSettings section of your configuration file.

Navigate to the Files tab on the left-hand sidebar.
Open the serverconfig folder, then open the dedicatedserver.cfg file.
Set GameMode to "custom".
Find the CustomGameModeSettings section and add or edit the settings you want to change, using the reference table below.

📄 dedicatedserver.cfg (excerpt)

"GameMode": "custom",
"CustomGameModeSettings": {
  "GameSetting.Vail.EnemySpawn": true,
  "GameSetting.Vail.EnemyHealth": "Normal",
  "GameSetting.Vail.EnemyDamage": "Normal",
  "GameSetting.Vail.EnemyArmour": "Normal",
  "GameSetting.Vail.EnemyAggression": "Normal",
  "GameSetting.Vail.AnimalSpawnRate": "Normal",
  "GameSetting.Environment.StartingSeason": "Summer",
  "GameSetting.Environment.SeasonLength": "Default",
  "GameSetting.Environment.DayLength": "Default",
  "GameSetting.Environment.PrecipitationFrequency": "Default",
  "GameSetting.Survival.ConsumableEffects": "Normal",
  "GameSetting.Survival.PlayerStatsDamage": "Off",
  "GameSetting.Survival.ColdPenalties": "Off",
  "GameSetting.Survival.ReducedFoodInContainers": false,
  "GameSetting.Survival.SingleUseContainers": false
}

📌 JSON Formatting Rules: Text values need quotation marks, true/false and numbers don't, and every line except the last one in a section needs a comma at the end. A single missing quote or comma can stop your server from starting, so double-check the file before saving.

Click the Save Content button once you're happy with your settings.
Navigate back to the Console tab and click Start.

Custom Setting Reference

🧟 Enemies & Animals

GameSetting.Vail.EnemySpawn — true/false. Enables or disables enemy spawning entirely.
GameSetting.Vail.EnemyHealth — low, normal, high. Starting health of enemies.
GameSetting.Vail.EnemyDamage — low, normal, high. Amount of damage enemies deal.
GameSetting.Vail.EnemyArmour — low, normal, high. Amount of armor enemies have.
GameSetting.Vail.EnemyAggression — low, normal, high. Aggression level of enemies.
GameSetting.Vail.AnimalSpawnRate — low, normal, high. Spawn rate of animals.

🌦️ Environment & Building

GameSetting.Environment.StartingSeason — spring, summer, autumn, winter.
GameSetting.Environment.SeasonLength — short, default, long, realistic.
GameSetting.Environment.DayLength — short, default, long, realistic.
GameSetting.Environment.PrecipitationFrequency — low, default, high. Frequency of rain and snow.
Structure.Damage — true/false. Allows player-built structures to take damage.

🍖 Survival

GameSetting.Survival.ConsumableEffects — normal, hard. Controls whether low hydration or fullness causes damage.
GameSetting.Survival.PlayerStatsDamage — off, normal, hard. Controls damage from eating bad or rotten food.
GameSetting.Survival.ColdPenalties — off, normal, hard. How much cold affects health and stamina regeneration.
GameSetting.Survival.ReducedFoodInContainers — true/false. Reduces the amount of food found in containers.
GameSetting.Survival.SingleUseContainers — true/false. Containers can only be opened once.

🛠️ Troubleshooting Custom Difficulty

Settings don't seem to be applying: Custom settings only take effect on a brand new save. Double check you used Game Swap (or deleted your existing save files) to start a fresh world before you started the server.
Server won't start after editing: This usually means invalid JSON in the config file, most commonly a missing comma or quotation mark. Compare your edits carefully against the example above.
Want to go back to a normal difficulty: Switch Game Mode back to normal, hard, hardsurvival, or peaceful, and use Game Swap again if you want a fresh world with that preset.

That's everything you need to build a custom difficulty tailored to how your group likes to play. If you run into any trouble getting your settings to apply correctly, no worries! Just open a support ticket and our team will gladly jump in and help you get it sorted out.