Clans of the Forest Beginner's Guide

The clans of the forest beginners guide has to start with a warning about what this page is: the game releases on 23 October 2026 and has not been played, so there is no walkthrough to give you. What follows is the opening of the game as its developers have described it - the first choices you make, in order - built only from officially announced systems.

• You create and name your own Warrior Cat before anything else happens
• You choose one of the four Clans, which decides your campaign and shapes your base stats
• You start as an apprentice in a Clan struggling under a new prophecy, and rise through the ranks
• Outside combat you forage for materials, craft den items, hunt prey and solve environmental puzzles
• No demo exists, so none of this can be tested yet

The developers describe their audience as both readers who grew up with the series and someone discovering Warriors for the first time, in the IGN interview. That is the brief this page is written to. Every system described below is taken from the Steam store page or the publisher's game page.

What do you actually do in the game?

You play a Warrior Cat in the Lake Territories, working through Clan life. The published systems are a story layer, a combat layer and a world layer, and they interlock: you take part in Clan business, you fight in turn-based 3v3 encounters built around Stances, and between fights you go out into the world and do things for yourself.

The world layer is the one most newcomers underestimate. Outside combat, the store feature list describes foraging for materials, crafting den items, hunting prey such as birds, rabbits and squirrels, and solving environmental puzzles. So this is not a corridor-of-battles game - the den is built by what you bring back, and the crafting is the connective tissue between exploration and your cat.

How do I choose a Clan when I start?

You select which of the four Clans you will belong to before you start. That choice is the first real decision in the game, and it is a bigger commitment than it looks: the Clan drives your base stats and it decides which of the four campaigns you play, and each Clan has its own story with its own prophecy, rivalries and characters.

What it is not is a tier decision. The only published statement on Clan differences is that your Clan, level and training shape your base stats - there are no numbers. Our four Clans and territories page lays out the four campaigns and the six locations, and it also explains why the "best Clan" rankings currently floating around are invented.

What happens outside of combat?

Four published activities, and they are the backbone of the non-combat loop:

The honest limitation: the only den items anyone has named are bedding and a scratching post. There is no recipe list, no material table and no drop rates published, so this page cannot tell you what to craft or what to gather - that documentation becomes possible on launch day. What is worth knowing now is the shape of the loop, so that when you land you are not looking for a crafting menu that the game does not have.

Is there a walkthrough, or a class system?

Neither, and both absences are deliberate. There is no walkthrough because the game generates its content - characters, quests and stories are procedurally generated, and the store page says no two playthroughs are the same, so a fixed route would be wrong for most players. There is no class system because there are no classes: the player is locked to the warrior path by design, Medicine Cats appear in the story but you cannot play one.

The one system with real pre-launch documentation is the cat creator, which covers fur, patterns, markings, eyes, tails, whiskers and ears - and it is worth spending time in before launch, because your cat visibly ages and scars as the run goes on. Combat is the other documented system: Stances and the 75 moves are the part of this game that has an actual design rationale behind it.

What should I check before launch day?

Four practical things. First, the release date and the full platform list, including the fact that PC is Windows-only - see release date and platforms. Second, hardware: the system requirements are published, but the Steam Deck rating is not. Third, controller and Steam Cloud support are confirmed, so a pad is a safe assumption. Fourth, the pre-order question, including the deadline and the fact that physical pre-orders do not qualify for the bonus pack - see pre-order bonuses.