The Strength icon in on your UI is essentially the XP bar for everyone in the Sons of the Forest. You will gain a level whenever you increase that bar to a full red circle, granting you extra stats. Leveling up is a general part of the game, rewarding you for almost every activity you do. So, with that said, here is a look at the Sons of the Forest Strength Level feature, showcasing level rewards and how the XP system works.

How Does the Sons of the Forest Strength Level Work?¶

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(1 of 2) Above your map is the Sons of the Forest Strength Level, which works like an XP bar. Levelling it up awards more HP and damage.

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Above your map is the Sons of the Forest Strength Level, which works like an XP bar. Levelling it up awards more HP and damage. (left), At level 11, you will almost have another full HP bar on your HUD. (right)

The Sons of the Forest Strength Level feature awards players with a display of XP progression. Players will accumulate an unquantifiable amount of XP as they play the game. You can gain XP from killing enemies, chopping trees, plants, base building, and more.This XP will go towards the red circular bar that fills up around the strength icon on your HUD. At some point, that strong, muscular icon will change to a number, indicating the level you are. When the bar around it fills up, you will level up, and reset the progress bar.

As with most RPGs, you will need more and more XP the higher you level up. This is because the leveling system will rewards you with more HP and damage the more you level up. For example, it will take about 6 spear hits to kill a deer, but, around level 5, it will take 4, for examples. When you start reaching the realms of level 12, you will pretty much gain an entirely new health bar.

To help demonstrate the requirements for the Sons of the Forest Strength Level feature, we have curated a table to show the XP requirements. While the game present no visual numbers to show XP gain, we have done a test using tree cutting with the Modern Axe. This will give you an indicator of what the XP jumps are like. This is also the most consistent method of getting XP.

Note, there will be slight flaws with our methodology. While swinging our axe, we sometimes hit trees that wasn’t counting as part of the average 7 hits to fell a tree. Occasionally, we hit bushes, birds flying around us, and other critters running nearby. The result is that the evidence is somewhat slightly skewed as we will have gained more XP via these hits. However, the approximation is something that other players can repeat if they so wish to cut down hundreds of trees like the mad scientist behind this guide.

Remember, you can get XP from killing enemies and other tasks. As you can see with the chart, there was a noticeable jump around the level 4 mark, followed by the level 8 mark. So, every 4 levels seem to be the main XP jump gap. This means that you will likely slow your levelling down if you’re only gunning for XP requirements. If you play the game from start to finish naturally, you likely wont notice the jump in XP requirements. Especially if you’re doing a mixture of exploring, base building, plant and log cutting, and of course, fighting cannibals and mutants.