If you’re a fan of Sons of the Forest by Endnight games, the developers have released one of the largest updates for the game, Patch 12. The update adds some new items, locations, and a few quality-of-life changes to really bring some more emotion to the game.

First, they added a new cave. While exploring the new dark area, you will find a pickaxe, which will allow you to mine the Solafite mineral that is found in many of the caves around the map, along with a recipe to build a new, and even a mystery relic item as well.

The recipe will allow you to build a weird alien egg-forge-looking thing that will allow us to use the Solafite. But what can we use this Solafite for? I got the answer for you: you can use the Solafite and the forge thingy to upgrade your existing weapons, allowing them to do more damage, though not all items are upgradeable. And you can also build a new powered cross item with several rows of lights attached to it to spruce up any base. However, powered cross is not self-powered, and the light de-spawns if you get too far away, so unfortunately you cannot use it for a long-range light beacon.

One of my favorite additions to the game are the new emotes and reactions that have been given to Kelvin and Virginia. Virginia will now laugh if she sees an animal launched in the air by a spring trap or even if you hit Kelvin with a rock, and sometimes she might even take your que and hit Kelvin herself. Some of the emotes you’ll see your followers do are, approval, confusion, disapproval, joy, sadness, and more. Kelvin also has a few more animations, such as a nod, thumbs up, confused, shake head, hit head, no, happy, sad, and if you nod at Kelvin, he will nod back. And you can also expect Virgina to laugh more, shake her head, be happy, confused, sad, or even tell you no.

A.I. have also seen a bit of a boost as well; hopefully Kelvin won’t get stuck on so many items in the world, but more noticeably is that Cannibals can also call out for help, and backup will arrive in short order, so make sure your shoes are tied in case you have to bogey out of there. Some of the mutants have also seen a bit of a health boost as well. Creepies are more resistant to bullets, Puffies won’t get dismembered as easily, especially at high health, and Fingers and the Twins are a bit more aggressive.

A few more interesting things to mention are that you can now use a gold club and knock a few animal heads into the rough; you can now carry three turtle shells instead of just two (if you can find them); and sprinklers will now work better and will put out fires and even wash the blood off you. There are a ton of other new improvements and balance-related fixes in this patch on Steam.

Are there any other things you would have liked to see in this game? Let me know in the comments below.