There are several ways you can optimize the game to prevent stuttering, crashes, freezes, and low FPS. We have mentioned all the solutions, from basic to advanced. Kindly follow them one by one to resolve your issue. Before applying the following solutions, make sure you meet the minimum system requirements of the game.
1. Verify the game files.
The first solution on the list is to verify the integrity of the games, which is known to fix all issues that occur during gameplay. If you have already done that and the issue persists, move on to the other methods.
2. Update the GPU drivers.
The outdated GPU drivers often cause freezing and crashing issues. Hence, it is necessary to keep the GPU drivers updated if they become outdated. An outdated driver not only impacts gaming performance, but also affects overall PC performance due to a lack of communication. Regardless of having outdated drivers, you may also face this issue if the drivers are corrupted. Hence, try updating the GPU drivers, which will overwrite the corrupted ones. Follow these steps:
3. Reinstall the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables.
Microsoft Visual C++ is a library containing various versions of MS Visual C++. It is used to run applications and games developed using C++ or C language. Hence, if the DLL files of MS Visual C++ are corrupted, causing this issue, reinstalling MS Visual C++ will restore them, which will fix the issue. To do so, follow these steps:
4. Reset Sons of the Forest Settings.
Using high graphics or incompatible settings can also lead to crashes, freezing, and low FPS. For that reason, you can try resetting the Sons of the Forest settings to their default values by deleting the game folder from the AppData, which stores the configuration settings for applications and games.
5. Run “Sons of the Forest” with administrator permissions.
Running Sons of the Forest in administrator mode will allow the game to access the files it needs to run properly. This also helps bypass interference from the Windows firewall. Thus, the application runs without any issues.
6. Utilize different versions of DirectX.
This issue can also be caused by using an incompatible or outdated version of DirectX. DirectX is a library that contains a collection of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) used to communicate with the graphics card for various tasks, such as multimedia, rendering, etc., particularly required for games. You can try the different versions of DirectX to run the game. You can achieve this by using the launch options, which are a feature on Steam that allows users to input the commands that the game will follow to run. Here are the instructions:
7. Close background and overlay applications.
Running numerous overlays and background applications can cause computer resources to run out of memory, which leads to the main application or game freezing and stuttering. Therefore, you must close all background and overlay applications, particularly Chrome and Discord, before launching the game. If ‘Sons of the Forest’ runs without any issues after closing background and overlay applications, such as Discord, but you still want to communicate with your friends while playing the game, then disable the Discord overlay feature and try again.
8. Increase virtual memory.
Virtual memory can be allocated from the SSD or hard drive, which can be used when RAM usage overflows the limit. It is possible that the game is using a lot of RAM resources, resulting in freezing and crashes. Thus, you can try increasing the virtual memory to see whether the issue is resolved or not. To do so, follow these steps:
9. Configure graphics preference settings.
You can configure the Graphics Preference Settings to prevent stuttering and freezing. Graphics preference settings allow users to select between the iGPU and discrete GPU. If your game is running on an integrated GPU, it may result in crashing or freezing. Thus, configure the graphics preference settings to select the discrete GPU, especially if you have a laptop. To configure the graphic preference settings, follow these steps:
10. Move the game to the SSD or NVMe.
If you have a Solid State Drive (SSD) or Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe), we recommend transferring the game to it, as it is much faster than a normal hard drive and can potentially fix this issue. To do so, follow these instructions:
11. Update Windows.
In some cases, the game crashes and freezes due to outdated security features. Outdated security features are incompatible with the latest games and applications, causing them to crash and freeze. Therefore, if you do not have a habit of updating Windows, try doing so, as it can fix this issue.
12. Reinstall the game.
If your game continues to crash or freeze, try reinstalling the game; it might work for you. However, if this fails, wait for the next update. As it is a new game, the developers need time to optimize it for all users. Therefore, please be patient and wait for the next update, which should automatically resolve your issue.
