The Forest FAQ — Ping, Servers, Network

Yes, and it works without any compatibility concerns. The Forest has no kernel-level anticheat — only optional VAC which monitors cheat signatures, not network routing. PingAim uses a WFP (Windows Filtering Platform) kernel driver that operates at the network stack level without injecting into any game process. It routes TheForest.exe traffic through your best available connection — whether that is your phone's 5G hotspot, Ethernet, or a second adapter. No bans, no game modification, no conflicts.

Cannibal and mutant movement is processed on the host's machine and broadcast to all guests. When your ping to the host is high or unstable, you receive position updates too late — so you see an enemy at one location while the host (and other guests with better ping) see it somewhere else entirely. This creates the classic rubber-band effect where a cannibal appears to snap back to a previous position after you've already moved past it. The fix is reducing your latency to the host: use Ethernet, close background bandwidth consumers, or have the host move to a better connection.

Both matter, but differently. As a guest, your ping to the host determines how smoothly the game state reaches you — high guest latency causes rubber-banding and inventory delays for you specifically. As the host, your upload bandwidth to all guests simultaneously determines their experience — a host with a slow or congested upload degrades the game for every connected player at once. PingAim helps guests get a better path to the host. Hosts benefit from PingAim if they are also connecting to a dedicated server or if their home connection is congested — but the primary lever for host quality is upload bandwidth, not routing.

Up to 8 players in total (1 host + 7 guests) via either P2P or dedicated server. The PS4 version was capped at 4 players due to performance limitations, but the PC version supports 8. Dedicated servers can be configured to allow more, though the default maximum is 8 and performance degrades at higher counts.

Both options exist. The default multiplayer mode is P2P — one player hosts from their PC and friends join via Steam invite. Dedicated server support was added in update v0.59, allowing players to run an always-on server binary on their own machine or a VPS. There are no official Endnight-operated game servers — all sessions are player-hosted or community-run dedicated servers. For dedicated servers, PingAim provides the most direct optimization since the server has a fixed IP and your traffic goes directly to it.

In P2P mode, your ping to the host is one factor, but the host's PC performance is another. If the host has a slow CPU or too many entities loaded (many cannibals, large base, lots of physics objects), their game loop runs slowly and sends updates to all guests less frequently — this creates lag that looks like high ping but is actually low server tick rate on the host's machine. Ask the host to check their FPS; if they are running below 30 FPS, the lag you feel is host-side, not network-side. PingAim cannot fix host PC performance.