V0.49

**v0.49** was the 49th major update for The Forest and was released on November 3, 2016. It brought several new features: a new difficulty, wearable paint, a new weapontype and much more!

## Dev Notes

V0.49 – New difficulty mode, wearable paint, new weapon type, improved caches and more
Posted on 3 November, 2016 by Anna

Hey everyone,

For this patch we’ve added a new weapon type. It’s in parts and constructable by finding the pieces in hidden caches around the world. We’ve also added new photo pickups to help you find these locations. You can find the photo’s hidden in caves and other areas around the forest.

Findable red paint can now be worn by players. Whilst worn enemies may act differently towards you however rain or going into water will wash this off. We’ve also added some cave paintings to help explain why enemies might be doing this.

We’ve added a new hard difficulty mode, and an option to choose from peaceful, normal or hard mode from the title screen. Hard mode is experimental, and we are hoping to get feedback from players if it’s too hard, or still too easy. Along with harder enemies that do more damage and will be around more often, this mode will increase the chance of the larger distorted creatures coming out, as well as making some basic survival aspects harder.

We’ve improved more of the storage this patch, it is now possible to add items to the weapon rack without going into your inventory, and snack and medicine cabinets can now use either meds or snacks. Note – medicine and snack cupboards built in old saves won’t have this functionality, but newly built cabinets even in old saves will.

There are also a bunch of other bug fixes, some balance tweaks and lots more, for the full list check:

A couple weeks ago we mentioned progress on the story, but today want to give a date for the release of that content. The door at the bottom of the sinkhole will be openable next month, on December 14th.

As always, please continue to post your bug reports and feedback in the Discussions area of the Community Hub

## Additions / Changes / Fixes

* New cave paintings added to some cave story spots
* Red storage container company logo added
* Storage container manifest pickup added
* New photo pickups showing location to hidden caches added around world and especially in caves
* Red paint - added more buckets to world and in caves. These can now be worn by players to scare off enemies, or have enemies pray to you.
* (Building) Ghost structures now prevent adding the very last ingredient until the player exits the premises - fixes players getting stuck inside foundations or flying into air when completing raft
* (Performance) Fixed excessive overhead occurring when loading saves with huge amount of player made structures, possibly using 50% CPU for up to several minutes after black screen goes off
* Fixed dried meat added to fire before eating it not yielding anything
* (Multiplayer) Fixed houseboat oar not working
* (Building) Meds & Snack holders have been replaced by the Small and Large food holders which let you choose which item you wish to store in each slot with the “Rotate” button
* Improved animations for client during plane crash sequence and waking up on plane
* (Building) Skin rack has been revamped to use the new storage control scheme, each slot can now hold any type of skin, which can be selected with the “Rotate” button when prompted on empty slots
* (Building) Weapon rack & wall weapon rack have been revamped to use the new storage control scheme, equipment type to be stored can be selected with the “Rotate” button when prompted on empty slots, it will default to whatever is currently held when first interacting with the rack
* Exploded state of caches is now saved
* (Building) Drying rack has been revamped to use slots for each drying meat piece
* Increased speed of animals and increased the rate that lizards will run away from player
* Fixed placing bombs on explodable caches not working
* (Building) Floor & Roofs ghost triggers now better conform with the visible model (prevents the new system from not allowing to complete it when standing bellow)
* Slightly pull out inventory camera and tilted up to give a bit of space for upper items
* Fixed a case of thrown spear not being possible to pick up (i.e. after hitting a rock)
* (Building) Slightly re-positioned large food holder (former snack holder) triggers to prevent the 3rd one to be inaccessible when up close
* Difficulty mode is now saved in the upper node of the save file and visible in title screen save slot thumbnails
* Added Peaceful/normal/Hard mode selection with hover tooltip after clicking on new game
* Fixed large raft stick requirement icon
* Improved cut/not cut tree materials not matching
* Switched garden icon positions and replaced rotate icon with switch one
* Fixed eating burnt meat not playing eat sfx
* Added whoosh sfx when adding items to fire and drying rack
* Fixed arrow basket icons on wrong layer
* Switched all rotate icons to switch icon (except rotating buildings)
* Hard survival setting: polluted water damage x20 from normal (which is 1)
* Hard survival setting: polluted water thirst replenishment 50% of normal
* Hard survival setting: frost speed x3 from normal
* Hard survival setting: frost damage x3 from normal
* Hard survival setting: defrost speed 50% of normal
* Fixed north area slight constant snow not properly following player
* Weapon rack & wall weapon rack now only accept weapon items
* Ammo pickup added and added to cave spots
* New pickup icons added for katana, bow and spears
* Updated enemy layout and navmesh in cave 8
* Improved look of cloud/sky at night especially if overcast

**Versions**