How to Get the Pistol – Sons of the Forest

Death is always around the corner in Sons of the Forest, often in the form of the game’s myriad enemies. These foes are made more threatening by the fact that defending yourself isn’t always easy in SotF — sticks and stones will only take you so far, and other weapons (and their ammo) are very scarce. However, there is a gun you can get very early in the game, and in this guide, we’ll show you where to find it.

When you first start a new game, first things first, you’ve got to open your Emergency Kit by pressing /to open your Inventory. Drag the kit onto the mat and right-click on the gear to open it. The kit contains essentials like the tactical axe, lighter, and — most important for our purposes, the GPS Tracker. Click on the tracker, and you’ll automatically pull it out. (In the future, you can press /to take out or put away the tracker.)

Zoom out all the way on the tracker by pressing//. Regardless of which starting location you have, you will see a purple point of interest off a beach in the sea — this is your goal. Don’t head there just yet, however! First, you’ll want to make sure you loot all the crates at the crash site. Also, don’t forget to revive Kelvin and tell him to follow you.

Once you’ve grabbed everything you can and you’ve got Kelvin in tow, start heading towards the indicated GPS marker. Even if you can’t quite see the marker yet, you can still start heading towards the beach and it will come into view. There’s a river that leads directly to the beach if you have the mountain start, so keep your GPS out and follow the river until you hit sand. As long as you stick near the river and sprint the whole time, you shouldn’t run into any enemies — but it’s best to have your axe out just in case.

Once you make it to the beach, you’ll be able to see your destination out in the water (1). Continue to the shoreline, but don’t dive in yet. First, either make a simple shelter, or have Kelvin do it. Save your game at the shelter, and then start swimming out to the survival raft in the water (2). Upon reaching the raft, you’ll need to approach the side with the ladder, then press // when the prompt appears to climb inside (3).

The pistol will be sitting on top of a book (1) — pick it up with //, and make sure you also snag the GPS locator from the dead soldier (2) as well as the Meal packs.

After picking up the gun, a shark will appear, and start swimming around the raft. At this point, you have a few options:

• You can wait for the shark to swim away — it seems to get tired of waiting after awhile.
• If you’re impatient, you can shoot the shark once with your newfound pistol, as this appears to scare it away. Other weapons may work as well, although we haven’t tested this. If you want to shoot the shark, you’ll need to open your inventory ( /) and find the gun, which is in the black case at the top of your crafting mat.
• Finally, you can simply swim for it without waiting for the shark to leave — this option is the reason we saved our game before swimming out here. When testing the “swim for it” method, the shark bit us once, and it only did 25% of our health on Normal difficulty. At full health, you can survive three bites while swimming back.

After swimming back to dry land, you might be tempted to start blasting away at seagulls and turtles, but resist the urge! Ammo is limited, and so your best bet is to save your pistol bullets for when you really need them. Of course, a few shots for target practice wouldn’t hurt… If you want to get the silencer for the pistol, you can head over to the overgrown helicopter too.

We hope this guide on finding the Pistol in Sons of the Forest was helpful! Please leave any questions or suggestions you have in the comments below.