A Bow is one of the most useful and important weapons in The Forest. It’s a ranged weapon, unlike the Spear. You can actually craft a bow relatively early on into the game, as the materials required aren’t too expensive.
Unfortunately, there is no crosshair currently equipped with a bow, making it hard to hit accurate shots the further away a target is. You can actually use a small piece of wood sticking out as a reference as to where your shots will hit, however it isn’t always accurate.
You can hit animals and cannibals with a head-shot, usually causing them to die instantly. Bows will use arrows as their ammo type.

There are different upgrades that can be added to arrows, making them deal more damage. Other upgrades allow you to apply incendiary and poisonous damage when hitting enemies. If you found this guide useful, you may be interested in some more The Forest guides here at PwrDown!
Crafting a Bow & Arrows in The Forest
Crafting your first bow is easy, and can be done so by combining 1 Stick, 1 Cloth and 1 piece of Rope. You should already have sticks from hitting bushes, and cloth can mostly be gathered from suitcases. Just open up your Backpack where you can find the Crafting Mat to begin crafting.
When it comes to Rope, the easiest place to find some would be by heading to cannibal camps. They usually have some inside the tents hanging from the ceiling. You can combine ingredients by right clicking them in your backpack. Once you have a recipe ready to be crafted, click the gear icon in the centre of the backpack. Below, you can see the crafting recipe for the bow.

Obviously, you can’t fire your bow until you know how to make arrows too. Thankfully, they are super cheap and easy to craft. You can make arrows by combining a single stick with 5 feathers, which will net you 5 Arrows. Again, you can see the recipe below.

You can get sticks from hitting bushes, usually the tall thin ones. Whilst feathers are most easily obtained from killing birds. Your best chance is to go along the coast and find seagulls. Occasional feathers will drop from them, whilst killing them will send 5 feathers flying into the air which you should collect.
Once you have your bow and arrows in The Forest, your ready to fight! For a shortened guide, just follow these steps. To craft a Bow in The Forest, you should:
- Collect 1 Stick (from bushes), 1 Cloth (from suitcases) and 1 piece of Rope (from cannibal tents).
- Open up your backpack, and combine each item on the crafting mat. You will now have a bow.
To craft Arrows:
- Collect 1 Stick (from bushes) and 5 Feathers (from birds, especially Seagulls).
- Open up your backpack, combine the Stick and Feathers to get 5 Arrows back.