This is not a complete guide to Woods. It’s just a collection of tips to help you start exploring and get familiar with the map.
Woods is one of the most difficult maps to navigate because it’s mainly forests, mountains, valleys, and plains, with trees blocking your view. There are very few buildings to serve as landmarks, but there are some recognizable areas that can help.
In addition to recommending the excellent Ultimate Woods Beginner Map Guide by Pestily, here are a couple of tips I think will help you.
Even though the map has few landmarks, there are three very useful ones:
The large mountain in the center of the map. When you’re south of it, it’s very visible and helps you determine where north is.
An image from Pestily's Woods Guide I linked above When you’re north of the mountain, use the two landscapes in the northwest and northeast as references. They’re easily recognizable and marked on some maps.
(Note: this image is low resolution; here’s the original high-resolution version that you can zoom in on to better see the northwest and northeast landmarks).
Other important tips:
Watch out for mines (USEC CAMP and the west/southwest edges of the map) and restricted areas guarded by snipers (north and east edges of the map).
Some spawn points are near minefields, so when you spawn, avoid running around until you figure out where you are. Mines are usually marked with skull signs.
The minefield near USEC CAMP isn’t marked with signs or other indicators!
As shown in the image, two spawn points are very close to it (the 2 yellow arrows).
The image also shows the left edge of the map, which is also a minefield. The border of this minefield marked with skull signs.
If you look at the full map, you'll notice that this minefield extends along the entire west edge and continues to the southern edge as well.
While watching Pestily’s video, and then when you will be exploring the map yourself, memorize the main areas of the map (like Old Sawmill, Sawmill, Sunken Village, Scav Bunker, etc.) and extraction points.
Woods is the hardest map to orient yourself on when spawning. It’s already challenging during the day and even harder at night. There are players with thousands of hours in the game who still take time to figure out where they are when they spawn in. Try to identify spawn points on the map while exploring.
Power lines and pylons are great landmarks to help you figure out your location and direction.
Woods has many hidden cashes (also known as hidden stashes). Since the map is large and spread out, you can avoid risky areas where players are likely to be and do a “cache run” (or "stash run") to fill your inventory with loot to sell or use. Give it a try!
The compass you get from one of the first quests, Search Mission, is very handy for exploring Woods. However, be aware that the compass is currently bugged (it doesn't open correctly so you can't see the arrow, but you can still see the bearing number in the bottom right corner of your screen, but the north and the south are swapped).
WARNING: Avoid attempting to reach the hidden cache north of the Power Line Passage extract. Since the introduction of the new flare extract point, Power Line Passage, newly added snipers who protect the extract point have been reported to fire at players who venture too close to the western map border in that area.
Previously, players could safely reach the hidden cache despite its location within the minefield marking the map border, as a known safe path allowed access.
However, with the addition of new sniper Scavs, that area is now considered too close to the extract, and they will open fire on anyone attempting to reach it.
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