Healing in 99 Nights in the Forest: Every Source of Health, What Each One Costs, and Why the Clinic Beats the Anvil

There are six ways to get your health back in 99 Nights in the Forest, they cost six different things, and they are unlocked at six different campfire levels. Almost every guide on the game files these under separate headings — "how to get bandages", "how to get medkits", "how to heal" — which is fair while you are playing, but it means nobody has ever put them on one page and asked which one is actually the cheapest.

This page does that.

Last verified: 2026-10-05.

Quick Answer

The section we would read first if you only read one.

• The cheapest health in the game is a building, not an item. A clinic can hold three Medkits — one on the table, one in the seats, one in the lockers — plus bandages on the floor and in the cabinets. That is roughly 300 HP of Medkits alone for zero materials. Our Pelt Trader arithmetic, below, says five bandages cost 20 Bunny Foot and 20 Wolf Pelt for 200–250 HP.
• The clinic opens at Campfire Level 4. The anvil opens at Campfire Level 5. The free source unlocks a level before the paid one, and it holds more health.
• Bandages are the only consumable in the game whose price goes up every time you make one. Two sources state the rule in identical words: each bandage raises the next one's ingredient count by one. The tenth bandage costs 11 Bunny Foot and 11 Wolf Pelt for the same heal as the first, which cost 2 and 2.
• Medkits cannot be crafted. The only recipe any source publishes is the Fandom wiki's "2 Berries and 1 Cloth" for 50 HP, and no other guide lists it. Every other source says Medkits are drops. That makes the strongest heal in the game a pure find.
• Bandages and ammo want the same shelf. The Wolf Pelt rung at the Pelt Trader accepts a Spear or a Revolver, and one bandage eats two of those pelts. Healing and firepower are bidding for the same trade goods.
• Nothing about this survives Hard Mode. At 25% Corruption passive healing slows; at 80% it stops entirely and consumables are your whole budget. See Hard Mode.

the same question asked of inventory instead of health, and answered sack by sack, is our sacks and inventory capacity guide.

The Six Heal Sources, Ranked by What They Cost

Two things jump out of that table even before the arithmetic. The clinic is the only entry with a zero in the cost column, and it is the only one whose gate is lower than the anvil's. The campfire needs no materials at all, but it needs you to be somewhere you are not supposed to be standing still.

Bandages: What One Costs, and Why the Price Climbs

The recipe is stable across every source we found: 2 Bunny Foot and 2 Wolf Pelt at the anvil inside the Tool Workshop. What is not stable is the price.

Two sources — one wiki, restated by a second guide — put the same rule in effectively the same words: every Bandage you craft raises the next Bandage's ingredient count by one. That rule, and the table it produces, are set out in full on the Tool Workshop page. This is only the consequence, which is the part nobody writes down:

Every row heals the same amount. By the tenth bandage you are paying 5.5 times what the first one cost, per point of health. Write that number on the wall.

The useful thing to compare it against is the Hammer, which the same sources note never rises in price no matter how many you make. The Hammer and the Bandages are not interchangeable refill tools, and the sources say so in passing and then never follow through on the comparison. The consequence is that the anvil is not a strategy, it is a backup — a way to top up when a clinic is not on your route, not the reason you survive a run.

The third thing worth knowing about the bandage is where its materials come from, because that is where it gets expensive.

The Pelt Trader Collision

Neither ingredient grows on a tree, and both come from the Pelt Trader, which means both come from something you could have kept.

The chain runs Bunny Foot → Wolf Pelt → Alpha Wolf Pelt → Bear Pelt, and the two bottom rungs are exactly the ones a bandage spends:

So one base-price bandage costs you two Good Axes and two Spears, handed over at a trader who will be gone again within three to four days. The Wolf Pelt rung is the sharp edge: it wants a Spear — a mid-game melee weapon — or a Revolver, which is the entire early ammo economy built around.

That is the collision. The ammo guide prices revolver rounds at 0.5 Scrap each from the Ammo Crate and calls the shotgun's shell the most expensive thing in the game to keep firing. Bandages draw from the same shelf of trade goods and are inflationary on top of it. A run that crafts ten bandages has spent roughly the equivalent of a small arsenal on health, and paid an extra surcharge for the privilege.

Medkits: The Heal You Cannot Buy

A Medkit is the strong heal and it does almost everything a Bandage does — it restores your health and it revives a teammate — except it costs roughly double and you cannot make one.

Every source agrees on where they come from:

• Gold, Legendary and Vine chests — the highest tiers on the chest ladder
• Two classes on spawn: the Berserker and the tier-3 Medic (the Medic starts with two Bandages and upgrades one of them into a Medkit at level 3)
• The Bone Pond at Campfire Level 5–6, the fishing route our fishing guide covers — the Medkit is one of the four things that only the Bone Pond reliably produces
• The clinic, three of them if the spawn points are empty

What no source gives is a recipe. The Fandom wiki lists "Medkit: 2 Berries + 1 Cloth, restores 50 HP" alongside its survival recipes, and that is the only crafting entry anyone publishes. rblxguide's item page lists no crafting at all. Treat the 50 HP figure and the recipe together as one unverified source, and treat the Medkit elsewhere on this page as a drop-only item.

Which leaves the clinic, and the clinic is where this whole page points.

The Clinic Is the Best Deal on the Map

Once your campfire reaches Level 4 — one level before the anvil opens — clinics begin spawning around the middle of the map, and each one is a small red-and-white building stuffed with medical supplies.

The spawn points are specific, and rblxguide is the only source that names them: one Medkit on the table, one in the seats, one in the lockers. Beyond those, sources agree there are Bandages on the floor as you come in and more in the cabinets.

Clinic versus Anvil, Head to Head

Read the gate column twice. The clinic answers one campfire level earlier than the anvil, returns more health than five bandages, and costs nothing. One clinic is worth more than the first five bandages of a run, and if you find a second and third clinic on the map, that is more than the first ten.

The honest caveat is in that table too: Of Zen and Computing's hospital survey reports 0 to 2 Medkits per visit rather than rblxguide's three spawn points. Plan for two. Even two is worth more than five bandages, and it still leaves a bandage or three on the floor.

Two side benefits make the stop worth the walk even when the Medkits roll empty. Metal chairs in clinic buildings break down into scrap — a small source that is easy to miss while you are reaching for bandages. And it closes the loop this page is arguing for: the cheapest health you will get all run is free, and the way to collect it is to walk somewhere instead of crafting something.

The Cheapest Heal Is Not an Item

Before you spend anything at all, two sources need nothing but standing near something.

The campfire. Being in the fire's light regenerates health over time, faster the closer you stand, and Level 4 heals faster than earlier levels. Every guide on this site agrees, and one wiki's blunt summary is that the fastest trick in the game is simply standing on top of the fire when you are low. Its cost is opportunity — the fire is a standing-still decision in a game that punishes standing still — and in Hard Mode it is not a cost you can defer.

The Chef. Jar o' Jelly at Chef Level 3 is four Jellyfish plus anything plus anything, and it restores a full heal with five minutes of speed attached. That is more health than two bandages and it comes with a perk. Jellyfish come from the Algal and Bone ponds on the fishing route, which is the one loop in the game that pays for itself. The weaker relatives are honest too: a Hearty Stew from the Chef's Level 3 about 15 health, a Carrot Cake with the heal disputed between 10 and 40, plain Cake at 15. None of those will save you, all of them are nearly free, and in Hard Mode they stop rotting, which is the entire argument for them.

Then there is the one heal that is not an item at all. The Vampire turns melee hits into health on any melee weapon, banks it in a meter, and pays out in chunks — including the Vampire Cloak's night-only 25%. None of it touches your bandage budget, which is the reason the class is the answer to "I keep running out of heals" rather than a variant of it.

When Healing Stops Being Free

On the normal map, passive healing is a cushion: it is why a bad trade does not kill you. In Hard Mode the cushion is measured in Corruption, and it is removed on a schedule.

That last line is the whole reason this page exists in the form it does. Above 80% Corruption, the clinic is still free and the campfire is still there, but the rate is zero — so the run becomes a question of how many consumables you carried, and consumables have a price. Budget for it the day you start Hard Mode, not the night it happens.

Healing by Class

The two quiet ones are Brute Cultist, for which every guide asks for roughly 4 to 6 bandages on a full caverns run, and the Frog King, where the poison ticks constantly and every guide says the same thing: top up early rather than waiting for low health.

Healing by Stage of the Run

Days 1–5. Nothing is craftable yet — the anvil wants Campfire 5. You have the campfire, bandages out of Common and Good chests, and the two starter classes. This is the window where a dropped Revolver at the Pelt Trader feels like a heal; it is not, and the speedrun page has what your wood is better spent on.

Days 6–20. The clinic opens at Campfire 4. This is the turn. For the next several hundred nights, the heal economy is dominated by a free building, and the anvil is a top-up you use between visits.

Day 20 and past. One source reports clinics appearing more frequently after day 20 — single source, uncorroborated, but consistent with the pattern. Your Medkit supply now comes from Bone Pond fishing, Gold, Legendary and Vine chests, and repeat clinic visits. Bandage crafting should have stopped by now; the tenth bandage costs more than the first five did.

Hard Mode at any stage. Everything above is the normal budget. At 80% Corruption only consumables count, and the count is fixed at the day you walked in.

Where Sources Disagree

How much a Bandage heals — 40 or 50. rblxguide, Rosenberry Rooms and our own death page say around 40. Beebom, TechBoltX and Of Zen and Computing say 50. We could not resolve it, and it matters: the whole cost table above is drawn on a 40-versus-50 spread.

How much a Medkit heals — 100, 75, or 50. rblxguide, Beebom and TechBoltX say around 100. The 99nightsintheforest.net site says 75. The Fandom crafting table says 50, with a recipe. Three families, six points apart at the bottom and fifty at the top.

Whether a Medkit can be crafted. Fandom says 2 Berries plus 1 Cloth. No other source we found lists any recipe, and rblxguide's sourcing page lists none. One source against a general silence.

Clinic or Hospital — one building or two? Beebom, TechBoltX and rblxguide all call it a clinic. Of Zen and Computing writes exclusively about hospitals and never mentions clinics, and our own closure page says "hospital and clinic buildings" together, as though they were the same thing. We treat them as the same structure and say so.

How many Medkits a clinic holds. rblxguide names three spawn points and implies three. Of Zen and Computing observed 0 to 2. These may both be right on a different point — the spawn points versus the drop rate — but nobody has published which.

When clinics spawn. Beebom and TechBoltX both say Campfire Level 4. Rosenberry Rooms says only that they "spawn randomly as your campfire expands," which is compatible but not a number.

What the Wolf Pelt rung accepts. Our Pelt Trader page records the Old Rod, the Old Taming Flute and the Revolver together with no conditionals, and our reading of the current tables is that the Old Rod is gone. Beebom and TechBoltX still list it. One of them is quoting a dead trade.

One source we did not use. 99nightsintheforest.net publishes an entire crafted medical tree — Advanced Bandages, Painkillers, Antiseptic, a Medical Case, Combat Medic Kits, Field Surgery Kits, Antidote Kits and Burn Treatment Kits — with crafting recipes for all of them. None of the six higher-quality sources we checked mentions any of it, and the page reads as generated rather than observed. The Bandage and Medkit figures on this page do not come from it.

FAQ

What is the single cheapest way to heal? Standing in the campfire. It costs nothing, and the closer you stand the faster it works. The best portable heal is the clinic, which is free and holds up to three Medkits.

Should I still craft bandages? Craft them as a top-up between clinic visits, not as a plan. The price rises every time you make one, and by the tenth you are paying roughly five and a half times the first one's price per point of health.

Where do I get a Medkit before Campfire Level 5? You probably cannot, reliably. Gold and Legendary chests are the early route, along with the Berserker's starting Medkit and the Medic's level-3 upgrade of one of her two Bandages.

Why do I keep running out of bandages? Either the anvil is being used as your main supply instead of a backup, or the Wolf Pelt rung at the Pelt Trader is being fed weapons you needed. Both are fixes, and both are cheaper than making more.

Does the clinic respawn? Sources disagree on scheduling. Of Zen and Computing reports a 20-to-30-day respawn and marks successful locations for return visits; no other source we found addresses it. Mark them yourself — that part costs nothing.

Does healing overfill? Nobody states a cap for Bandages. Beebom's wording on the point is garbled in a way that contradicts itself, so we left it out rather than repeat it.

Does Hard Mode affect Medkits and Bandages? No. They work normally at 25% and at 80% Corruption. It is passive healing that slows and then stops.

Sources

• Medkit — rblxguide
• Best Combat Items in 99 Nights in the Forest — rblxguide
• How to Get Bandages in 99 Nights in the Forest — Beebom
• How to Get Bandages in 99 Nights in the Forest — TechBoltX
• How to Revive in 99 Nights in the Forest — Rosenberry Rooms
• Hospital Location Guide — Of Zen and Computing
• Crafting — 99 Nights in the Forest Wiki
• Crafting Recipes — 99 Nights in the Forest Wiki
• Medical Kit — 99nightsintheforest.net

Related Pages

• Tool Workshop — the anvil, and the bandage inflation table
• Pelt Trader — where both bandage ingredients actually come from
• Death and Respawn — what a Bandage or Medkit does to a downed teammate
• Campfire — the free passive heal, and the level 4 gate on clinics
• Hard Mode — the Corruption ladder that removes passive healing
• Chest Tiers — where Medkits come out of chests
• Fishing Guide — the Bone Pond and the Jar o' Jelly route
• Chef — Jar o' Jelly, Hearty Stew and Carrot Cake
• Ammo Guide — the other half of the Pelt Trader collision
• Berserker — the class that starts with one Medkit
• Undead — the class that raises everyone's bandage bill
• Vampire — healing with no consumables at all
• Vampire Cloak — the night-only 25% heal
• Medic — two Bandages and a Medkit at level 3
• Brute Cultist — the 4-to-6 bandage caverns budget
• Frog King — the poison that drains you constantly
• How to Get Scrap — what the clinic's metal chairs give you
• Caverns — where a caverns run spends its bandages
• Keys and Locked Doors — the other gated resource worth budgeting
• Speedrun Guide — what your wood is better spent on than bandages