PSA: Sons of the Forest companions can be revived with Notepad

Sons of the Forest players have found the line of code that dictates whether their favorite survival companions live or die.

Kelvin and Virginia, your two NPC allies in the game, can permanently die if you let them. And, trust me, you don’t want to. Kelvin may be accident prone, but he only wants to help. And Virginia is a great shot, even if she won’t listen to your direct commands.

In the event that one of them dies, or you are a heartless person that refused to help Kelvin after the opening helicopter crash, you can resurrect them with a fairly simple tweak.

Locate the folder where your Sons of the Forest save games are located. For most people, it will be in your App Data folder on your C: drive. The address should look like this: C:\User\[UserName]\AppData\LocalLow\Endnight\SonsOfTheForest\Saves. Alternatively, you can get close to it by hitting Windows key + R, type in “appdata,” and press OK.You’ll need to open and edit the GameStateSaveData.json file. I’d recommend saving a copy of the entire save folder as a backup just in case.

Then follow these steps:

1. Open the Saves folder in the game’s directory. 
2. Open the folder that matches your Steam account ID. 
3. Open SinglePlayer or MultiplayerClient folder based on how you play the game. 
4. Copy the folder containing your save data and store a copy of it somewhere. 
5. Open GameStateSaveData.json file in Notepad. 
6. Find (Ctrl+F) where it says “IsRobbyDead\”:true,” and “IsVirginiaDead\”:true,” and change the “true” text to “false”. Then save the file. 
7. Open the SaveData.json file in Notepad. 
8. Find (Ctrl+F) where it says “TypeId”\9” (Kelvin) or “TypeId”\10” (Virginia). Look for “State\”:6″ and change the “6” to a “2”. 
9. Find (Ctrl+F) where it says “Health\”:0″, and change the number it has to “100.0”.
10. Look for “PlayerKilled\”:1″ and change the number to “0”. Save the file.

Congratulations, now Kelvin and Virginia are effectively immortal. If you’re having trouble finding them, Reddit user AxLBR (opens in new tab) has another change you can do to set their spawn location.

Now you can clone survival games’ newest mascot (opens in new tab) into an entire army. Or you can just keep him around because there’s always plenty to do, regardless if it’ll set you back (opens in new tab) a few steps or not.