How to Get Kelvin & Virginia Back – Sons of the Forest

Whether through simple accident, poor “decision making”, or a glitch, it’s sometimes the case that one of your faithful companions in Sons of the Forest winds up dead. We aren’t judging! However, we know you probably want them back, and without having to totally restart your game. In this guide, we’ll explain how you can edit your save data to return Kelvin and/or Virginia from the grave.

Technique #1 – Modify your save file

Here’s how to get Kelvin & Virginia back in Sons of the Forest:

1. Press Windows+R to bring up the Run menu, then type appdata and press Enter.
2. Open the LocalLow folder.
3. Open the Endnight folder.
4. Open the SonsOfTheForest folder.
5. Open the Saves folder.
6. Open the folder with the long string of numbers (this represents your Steam account’s ID).
   • If there’s more than one folder here, you can find the one that matches your Steam account Id by going to your Steam Community Profile, clicking Edit Profile, and then looking at the numbers at the end of your URL under the Custom URL box. If you do have a custom URL, you’ll need to delete it in order to see your SteamID.
7. Open either SinglePlayer or MultiplayerClient folder, depending on if your save is for a Single Player or Multiplayer game.
8. You’ll see a bunch of folders with numbers for names. Select your save’s folder by looking at the Date modified column and picking the most recent save (assuming you most recently modified the save you want to fix). It’s also a good idea to make a copy of the save folder, in case something goes wrong in the next steps.
9. In the save’s folder, open GameStateSaveData.json with Notepad or WordPad.
10. Control+F and search for Robby or Virginia to find the line with “IsRobbyDead”:true (or IsVirginiaDead), and replace true with false, then save the file.
11. In the same save folder, open SaveData.json
12. Control+F state”:6, then change 6 to 2.
13. Look at the lines below the line you just changed, and you should see a line that reads “Health”:0 (or something close to zero). Replace the number there with 100.0, then save the file.

When you reload your save, your companion should be alive and healthy! This trick was shared on the Sons of the Forest subreddit by user u/PUSClFER. While we’re glad this tip will help bring some Kelvin’s and Virginia’s back to life, we regret what we had to do in the name of testing this solution…

Technique #2 – Use the debug menu

Some players have been reporting that the above fix doesn’t work; we’re looking into possible solutions for that, but in the meantime, here’s another option for people who accidentally killed Kelvin or Virginia and want to get them back:

1. Create a backup copy of your save folder (in case using this mod breaks your save) — see above for instructions on finding your saves
2. Download the Thunderstore Mod Manager, run it, and go to Game Selection
3. Search for Sons of the Forest and select it
4. Select a profile (you can use the default profile, or create one)
5. Select the DebugConsole mod, then click “Download with dependencies” — this will install the DebugConsole mod as well as the required dependency BepInExPack IL2CPP
6. Once the mod is downloaded, click the button at the top right of the mod manager that says “Modded” to launch SotF with the mod
7. Once in game, press F1 to open the debug console
   • Type addcharacter robby 1 and then press enter to spawn a new Kelvin
   • Type addvirginia and press enter to spawn a new Virginia

If you want to get your companion back but don’t want to be tempted by the debug console, you can spawn a new Kelvin/Virginia, save your game, then quit and relaunch the game from the mod manager by clicking “Vanilla”. We’ve also tested launching the game from Steam — it appears to load in vanilla, with no mods.

Let us know if this trick worked for you — or tell us how your companion died — in the comments below!