The building system in Sons of the Forest doesn’t seem all that intuitive at first, but once you get to grips with the basics you can begin to create some elaborate structures which connect pieces of the landscape that would otherwise be difficult to travel through. Naturally, one of the best ways to do this is by building a bridge. We’ll show you how to build a basic standing bridge and a rope bridge on this page.
A rope bridge in Sons of the Forest.
How to Build Bridges in Sons of the Forest¶
If you’re new to building in Sons of the Forest, we’d recommend you check out our more general guide for How to Build Freeform Structures in Sons of the Forest first. Once you’ve understood the basics from that, you should be well prepared to start building bridges in some difficult terrain. The examples we’re working with on this page are only basic for the purposes of keeping things simple, but the same principles shown here can be applied to much larger and more complex bridge structures.
Building a Basic Bridge in Sons of the Forest¶
The first type of bridge that we’ll cover isn’t shown as a template in the Guide Book, but it’s a good place to start if you want build a simple, sturdy bridge. You will need to gather a lot of logs depending on the size of your project, so you may want to craft some Log Storage around the area that you’re building in first. You can then bring any logs that you gather and store them safely until you have enough to begin the project. Even for a small bridge, you’ll need 10+ logs to get started, especially since you will have to split most of them to create flooring for the bridge.
You can ask 
Kelvin to help you gather logs, or if you’re playing with friends the whole process should be a lot quicker. Either way, the first thing you need to do is place two whole logs vertically in the ground, at the point where you want the bridge to begin. Once the logs are in the ground, you can then cut them with an axe (such as the 
Tactical Axe), to the size that you require for your project. There will be a steep ramp or set of steps if you choose to begin the bridge from the full height of a log, and you’ll be using more material this way, but it’s still doable.
Once you have both vertical logs in place, you need to position two more logs diagonally, one coming from each of the vertical logs, to create the basic support structure for a ramp or steps. You can see this in the screenshot below. At this point you’ll need to decide whether your bridge will feature a ramp or steps, and you can alternative between placing either by right clicking 
as you’re hovering over the gap between the logs with a split log in your hand.
Remember that you can split a whole log in half using an axe when it’s placed on the ground, but not if it’s already in a fixed position. You can remove a log from an existing position by pressing 
, then throw it on the ground by pressing 
.
(1 of 3) You can place logs diagonally from vertical logs to create a structure for a ramp or steps.
After you’ve built a ramp or a set of steps at the beginning point of your bridge, you can extend it by placing more vertical logs in front of it. You need to snap these in place to make sure that the bridge is straight, so just hover around the floor until you see the white line connecting the circle where you can place a log to the existing structure. You can alternate the modes of placement (vertical or horizontal) by pressing right click again.
At this point all you need to do to complete the bridge is repeat the process of laying down the vertical logs to provide the base structure for the bridge, then splitting logs in half to create flooring and a ramp / steps. It’s a good idea to build the bridge as you go, rather than build the end point first, since the position of the end point may not match up with the bridge by the time you’re finished, so you can do this last.
If you want a more visual representation of how to build such a bridge, see the video below.
Building a Rope Bridge in Sons of the Forest¶
To build a rope bridge in Sons of the Forest, you’ll obviously need to have a good amount of rope. Make sure you’ve looted enough from camps, caves, and other sites throughout the map. If you want to see the locations of such places, be sure to check our interactive world map here. Once you have enough rope and a few logs, you can begin to build the basic structure for a rope bridge. In the simplest of scenarios, all you have to do is place two vertical logs next to each other, then connect them at the top using another horizontal log. You can then equip the rope and look up at the horizontal log to see a white line, indicating where you can begin placing the rope.
The key thing to understand here is that once you begin placing rope, you’ll need to connect it to an end point. You can’t place bits of rope as you go, so make sure you know where you want to connect the beginning of the rope bridge to the end. This can either be another structure made up of logs, or alternatively you can actually attach rope to some natural features such as cliff edges or tall trees, but the game is finicky in what it allows at the moment, so you may have limited success trying the latter.
The advantage of a rope bridge over a basic log bridge is that you won’t need as many logs, and even one piece of rope can extend far enough to create a useful bridge. You will need at least two rope lengths to place the foundation for the rope bridge, and you can then begin splitting logs to place flooring in the same way you do for a regular log-based bridge.
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