Survival is a brutal teacher. In the world of 99 Nights in the Forest, that lesson usually comes in the form of a jagged tooth or a misplaced step in the dark. You’re bleeding. Your health bar is ticking down. This isn't one of those games where you just hide behind a rock for five seconds and magically heal. If you don't know how to make bandages in 99 nights in the forest, you're basically just a walking snack for whatever is prowling in the undergrowth.
It's stressful.
The first time I played, I spent twenty minutes looking for a "medkit" that doesn't exist. I died in a bush. Honestly, the crafting system in this game is refreshingly tactile, but it doesn't hold your hand. You have to understand the environment. You have to scrape together what you can find before the sun dips below the treeline and the temperature drops.
The Core Ingredients for Crafting Bandages
To get started, you aren't looking for sterile gauze from a pharmacy. You’re looking for Cloth. In 99 Nights in the Forest, cloth is the foundational currency of survival. You can find it by scavenging old campsites or, more reliably, by tearing up spare clothing you find in abandoned crates.
Don't just hoard shirts. Use them.
Once you have cloth in your inventory, you need to open your crafting menu. It’s a simple recipe on the surface: two pieces of cloth. But there is a catch. Using "Dirty Cloth" is a death sentence in the long run. Sure, it stops the bleeding immediately, but the infection mechanic in this game is unforgiving. If you use tattered, filthy rags, you’ll see a purple haze start to creep over your health stats. That's sepsis. It’s much harder to cure than a simple laceration.
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Finding Clean Water and Boiling
If you want to do this right, you need to disinfect your materials. This requires a campfire and a metal pot. Fill the pot with water from a stream, get that fire roaring, and toss in your rags. This converts "Cloth" into "Clean Bandages." The difference is night and day. Clean bandages provide a small healing over time (HoT) effect, whereas the basic ones just stop the "Bleeding" debuff.
Managing Your Inventory During a Bleed Out
When you're actually wounded, the UI gets shaky. It’s a cool effect, but it makes navigating the menu a nightmare. This is why you should always keep at least three bandages in your quick-access slots. If you’re digging through your backpack while a wolf is circling you, you’re already dead.
You've got to be fast.
The animation for applying a bandage takes about four seconds. During this time, your movement speed is cut by 60%. Don't try to bandage while running across an open field. Find a tree. Put your back against it. It sounds like common sense, but the panic of seeing your screen turn red makes people do stupid things. I've seen players try to bandage while literally on fire. Don't be that person.
The Role of Herbs in Advanced Healing
Once you've mastered the basic cloth wrap, you’ll want to look into Forest Herbs. Specifically, look for the small yellow flowers near the base of birch trees. Combining these with a clean bandage creates a "Medicated Wrap."
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These are the gold standard.
They don't just stop bleeding; they actually restore a significant chunk of your base health. In the late-game stages of 99 Nights in the Forest, especially around night 50 when the predators get more aggressive, these are the only things that will keep you upright after a heavy hit.
Common Mistakes When Learning How to Make Bandages in 99 Nights in the Forest
Most players think they can just craft on the fly. They think, "Oh, I have cloth, I'll be fine." Then they get hit, realize they don't have the "Clean" variant, and realize they forgot to gather firewood to boil water.
It’s a chain of dependencies.
- Mistake 1: Using rags found in caves without checking the "Rot" stat.
- Mistake 2: Forgetting that bandages stack, but only up to five.
- Mistake 3: Thinking a bandage heals bone fractures. It doesn't. You need a splint for that (two sticks and one cloth).
The game rewards preparation. If you spend your daylight hours just wandering, you’re failing. Spend your daylight hours processing cloth. Every single piece of fabric you find should be converted into a bandage immediately. There is no reason to carry raw cloth unless you’re planning on building a tent.
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Strategic Healing: When to Hold Back
There is a weird nuance to the health system. If your bleeding is "Minor," sometimes it's better to just eat high-calorie food and let your natural regeneration kick in—assuming you aren't in combat. Save your bandages for "Major" or "Arterial" bleeds. You'll know it's major because the blood splatter on the UI is much more pronounced.
If you waste your last clean bandage on a scratch, and then five minutes later a bear swipes you, you’re going to regret it.
Nighttime Crafting Risks
Making bandages at night is a gamble. The crafting sound—that "ripping" noise—actually has a sound radius that can attract nearby entities. If you’re hiding in a cabin, try to do your crafting while the wind is howling or during a thunderclap. It masks the noise. It sounds like a tiny detail, but in a game titled 99 Nights in the Forest, these tiny details are exactly what determine if you see the sun rise on day 100.
Everything in this game is a trade-off. You trade time for safety. You trade resources for health. By the time you reach the final stretch of the game, your inventory should look less like a survivor's pack and more like a mobile field hospital.
Actionable Next Steps for Your Survival Run:
- Scavenge the Starting Cabin: There is always a piece of "Old Curtain" in the first building. Tear it up immediately to get your first four cloth scraps.
- Prioritize the Pot: Locate a metal cooking pot within the first three days. Without it, you cannot create Clean Bandages, and infection will kill you faster than the monsters.
- Hotbar Management: Assign your bandages to the '4' or '5' key. Practice hitting that key without looking at your keyboard so it becomes muscle memory for when the screen starts shaking.
- The Herb Map: Mark birch groves on your map. These are the most reliable spots for spawning the yellow herbs needed for Medicated Wraps.
- Check Your Stats: Always hover over your cloth items in the inventory. If the durability is below 20%, the chance of infection upon use triples. Scrap low-durability cloth rather than using it for medical needs.