Sons of the Forest Drying Rack Guide for Food Preservation

Key Highlights:

• The drying rack preserves raw meat and fish far longer than cooking.
• It requires only sticks and is found under the storage section in the guidebook.
• Dried food lasts up to nine in-game days, making it essential for base survival.

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In Sons of the Forest, where survival often hinges on efficient resource use and preparation, preserving food is just as critical as acquiring it.

Cooked meat spoils fast, and raw food rots even faster, leaving you vulnerable at the worst times. The drying rack solves this problem with minimal setup and massive utility, making it a must-have at any base.

What the Drying Rack Does and Why It Matters

The drying rack is a simple but vital tool for prolonging the life of your food. Once meat is dried, it no longer spoils quickly, giving you up to nine in-game days of freshness.

This makes it an ideal solution for storing fish and large game meat, especially if you’re preparing for extended exploration or fortifying a permanent settlement.

How to Build the Drying Rack in SOTF

You’ll find the drying rack blueprint under the Storage section of your survival guide.

Requirements vary slightly across builds, but typically you’ll need 9–13 sticks, which are easy to gather near trees or from cutting saplings.

Step-by-step:

1. Open the build guide (default key: B) and go to Storage
2. Select the Drying Rack and place it in your chosen location
3. Add sticks by approaching the blueprint and pressing E

Place it somewhere accessible, preferably near your cooking area or central camp. Multiple racks are recommended if you’re playing co-op or gathering food in bulk.

How to Use It Properly

Once constructed, collect any edible meat like fish, deer, squirrel, bird, or even cannibal meat, depending on your approach to survival. Approach the drying rack with meat in your inventory and press the interact key to open your backpack. Select a piece of meat and hang it up.

Drying is a passive process:

• It takes around half to a full in-game day to complete
• Dried meat appears darker and more leathery once finished
• You can leave it on the rack indefinitely or remove it for travel

Quick Tip: Placing a fire directly underneath the drying rack will significantly speed up drying time. While the exact timing can vary, tests show that racks without fire take notably longer to dry meat compared to those with fire underneath. One fire is sufficient, adding two does not further accelerate drying.

While slower than cooking, drying offers long-term storage with no need for fire or repeated gathering. It’s not for emergency meals but for strategic stockpiling.

Tips for Preservation and Protection

• Build multiple racks to ensure a rotating supply of dried food
• Protect your racks: animals and even Kelvin may accidentally remove food
• Don’t rely solely on cooked meals – they spoil within hours
• Rotate meat out of your bag and onto the rack before it turns green

Whether you’re playing solo or co-op multiplayer, drying racks let you move from reactive survival to proactive sustainability.

Combined with fish traps and hunting, it forms the foundation of any well-planned food strategy in Sons of the Forest.