Chop A Forest Beginner Guide: How to Start Your First Run

Chop A Forest drops you in front of a forest with empty hands and one job: cut down every tree. Your first run runs on a single loop — break a tree, pick up the log pieces it drops, sell them at the sawmill for Coins, and spend the Coins on tools and upgrades. You don't need to buy anything before your first chop; your fists are enough for the very first tree.

How to chop your first tree

1. Punch a tree with your fists. Every new player starts with no tool, and punching is how the first tree comes down. Keep hitting until it breaks apart.
2. Collect the pieces. The felled tree breaks into chunk-shaped log pieces on the ground. Hold E to collect them — these pieces are the wood you carry and sell.
3. Work around your small carry limit. Before any upgrades you can only hold a few pieces at a time — one first-run player couldn't pick up more than about five. Short trips, or dropping a pile and shuttling it over, work fine at the start.

Selling logs for Coins

Carried logs turn into Coins at the sell point, which the game calls the sawmill. Walk your load over, sell, and repeat the cycle. Don't expect a fortune from the first load — one brand-new player's first batch of about five logs sold for around 60 Coins, and that was already enough to buy his first upgrade.

The sell point is easy to miss at first — one first-run player had to ask where to sell (“Let me sell the wood first. Where?”). Once you know the route, chop – collect – sell becomes the rhythm of the whole run. We go deeper on this in how to sell logs and how to get Coins.

A full first-session walkthrough on video, if you'd rather watch the opening loop played end to end:

What to buy first

• The axe — 150 Coins. The first tool purchase you'll face in the shop, and it cuts trees faster than punching. Saving your opening earnings toward the axe is a sensible first goal — one player simply saved until he hit the full 150, then bought it.
• Upgrades from the Tab menu. Press Tab to open the upgrade menu and spend Coins on improvements — the game lists strength, speed, and backpack capacity among the upgradeable stats. Two things to know before you spend: when one player tried to buy a later upgrade first, the menu blocked him (“We have to go in order”), so be ready to buy earlier entries before the one you want. And double-check each entry — one first-session player bought the wrong upgrade by mistake (“I just upgrade the wrong stuff”).
• Backpack upgrades. Carry capacity is a Coin upgrade and directly fixes the tiny starting bag. One player bought his “so then I can collect more wood in one time,” paying 175 and then 750 for successive backpacks in a single session; after upgrading, a bag held 10 pieces instead of a handful.

For the wider shopping trip, see how to get tools, tool upgrades, and the full tool progression.

What to aim for next

The premise of the game is a large sum of money offered for cutting down all the trees — and getting there means working through the forest zone by zone:

• Clear the current zone. When you fell the last tree and the area is completely clean, the next stage unlocks.
• Expect to finish your zone before moving on. In one run, a player who tried switching to another biome was blocked — “we have to finish this one first” — so don't count on jumping ahead to fresh trees.
• A boss waits after the last tree of a zone. The game stretches across 5 forest zones, leading toward the best classes and tools — see how to get classes when you get there.

A few things worth knowing before you go

• Some shop tools cost Robux. Later tools such as the saw and chainsaw were shown as Robux purchases in first sessions, so don't count on early Coins to reach every shop entry. More on that in our chainsaw guide.
• Your progress saves. The game states that solo and friend runs save, so you can log off and pick the same forest back up later — details in how to save progress.
• Check for codes. Before settling into the grind, a quick look at our codes page never hurts.

That's the whole opening loop: punch, collect, sell, upgrade, clear the zone — then do it again. The forest, and the money behind it, is just a matter of time.