---

concept: "Weather"

Weather and Night Events in 99 Nights in the Forest

Most nights in this game are just nights. Then the sky turns red, the server announces that it is on fire, and every plan you made for the evening is obsolete. This page covers all of it: the ordinary weather that quietly drains your campfire, and the one event that drops the best armour set in the game onto your map for a limited window.

The reason to read this in advance rather than during the event is simple — the Meteor Shower is the only source of the entire Obsidiron equipment line, it carries four badges worth twenty Diamonds between them, and it is random. You cannot make it happen. You can only be ready.

Quick Answer

There are two kinds of event, and they ask for different preparation.

Everyday weather — rain and thunder. Rain makes your campfire burn down faster and soaks any logs left out in the open, so soaked wood cannot be used as fuel. Thunder brings lightning that can hurt you and damage structures. The answer to both is preparation rather than reaction: keep coal or fuel stashed by the fire, and build a Lightning Rod once your Crafting Bench reaches level 3.

The Weather Machine is the permanent answer. Built at Bench Tier 5, it stops rain and thunder for three in-game days on activation.

The Meteor Shower is the big one. A global message reads "The sky is on fire", the sky turns deep red, and meteors crash into your map leaving craters guarded by Meteor Crabs. Those craters are the only source of Meteor Shards, Gold Shards and Raw Obsidiron Ore — which means the only source of the Obsidiron armour and every Trim Kit. The event arrived with the Meteor Shower Update on 27 September 2025, and everything from it only exists while a shower is running.

The four badges it carries — Astrogeology, Exogeology, Seismology and Astrophysics — pay five Diamonds each.

Cold weather costs you fuel and bullets at the same time, which our Ammo and Guns guide leaves with an ammunition note attached.

The ordinary weather gets very little coverage compared to the meteor event, and it probably costs more runs. Rock Paper Shotgun's beginner guide is the clearest source on it, and what it describes is a compound problem rather than an atmospheric one.

Rain does two things, and the second is the nasty one.

• Your campfire depletes faster while it is raining. That is a fuel tax applied at the worst possible time.
• Any logs left out in the open get soaked, and soaked logs cannot be used to fuel the fire. The wood you were counting on is not gone — it is just unusable until it dries, and "drying" is not a mechanic the game gives you control over.

Their advice is the practical one: keep coal or petrol near the fire at all times so a downpour cannot starve it. Our Biofuel Processor page covers the longer-term version of that same idea — converting meat and logs into fuel that burns far longer than raw logs ever will.

Thunder brings lightning, and lightning hits players and structures — which is a real concern for the layouts on the best base design page. Two things reduce it: standing inside a building, and building a Lightning Rod. See the beginner guide for the wider set of night rules these sit inside. The rod is a Bench Tier 3 structure costing 8 Scrap, and it does exactly what its name says — it attracts the strike away from you and your base. Sources list it as unlimited craft, so there is no reason to run one rod if your camp sprawls.

Cold is the third one, and it lives in the Snow Biome rather than in the sky. Extended time in the cold without proper clothing causes freezing damage, which means the biome has its own drain layered on top of everything else. See Warm Clothing for what actually stops it, and note that cold also interacts with the hunger bar — the two meters punish the same mistake.

What all three have in common: none of them are avoidable by playing well. They are taxes, and the only counter is stock in advance.

The Weather Machine — and the Two Names Every Level 5 Machine Has

This is the Tier 5 answer to the weather, and it is also where this page has to stop and flag something nobody else flags.

What it does is agreed on everywhere: activate it and rain and thunder stop for three in-game days. Of Zen and Computing, Noleep and Roonby all give that same three-day figure, and they are joined by Fragtop and the crafting-recipe roundups.

What it costs depends entirely on who you ask — not because anyone disagrees about the numbers, but because they disagree about the names:

Those are the same recipe. Scrap is Screws, Wood is Logs, and the Gem of the Forest is what three sources call a High-Tech Component — a rare green item, in their description, found in raids, boss fights and high-tier crafting. The numbers are identical in every version; only the vocabulary moves.

Why this matters: if you are cross-referencing two guides while a storm is closing in, the names will make you think there are two different machines, or that one site has the recipe wrong. There is one machine and one recipe. This naming split runs through every Tier 5 structure, including the Respawn Capsule, which is why the figures on our death and respawn page read differently from some of the guides it cites.

One more disagreement worth knowing: how many machines Tier 5 actually unlocks. Most crafting roundups list three — Weather Machine, Temporal Accelerometer, Respawn Capsule. Fragtop lists four, adding the Recycler. Our own Cultist Gem page has a section on the Recycler and treats it as real, so the four-machine reading has support; just do not assume the count.

"The Sky Is on Fire": What a Meteor Shower Is

The event announces itself. The global message reads "The sky is on fire", the sky shifts to a deep red, and glowing trails arc overhead toward impact points.

Everything about the event's structure is unusually well documented, because it arrived as a named content update — the Meteor Shower Update (Volcanic Biome Part 3) on 27 September 2025 — rather than as a quiet patch. The update introduced:

• Meteor craters across the Forest Biome. One source puts it at roughly seven craters per game, each with a 25% chance of being one of four variants: small obsidiron, large obsidiron, small lava, or large lava. Every crater spawns one Meteor Crab, or two if it rolled a large variant.
• The Meteor Crab, a hostile that guards both the craters and the special workshop.
• A whole material chain: Meteor Shard, Gold Shard, Raw Obsidiron Ore, Scalding Obsidiron Ingot, Obsidiron Ingot.
• Morsel?, a discoloured version of the ordinary Morsel that drops from the crabs. According to the wiki it has no functional difference from a normal Morsel — it just looks off. Given that raw food damages you, this is a trap for people who assume the question mark means something.
• Four badges and the Obsidiron Chest.

The reason this event matters more than most content drops is downstream: the Obsidiron armour line and every Trim Kit in the game can only be made at the special workshop, and that workshop's recipes are only reachable while a shower is active. Once the event is over, that gear is off the table for the run.

A thunder strike on a locked cave run costs you the same day as a bad night, and our Keys and Locked Doors guide prices the lock-farming in run time.

When It Starts — Three Sources, Three Answers

Nobody agrees on the earliest night, and unlike most of this game's disputes, the spread here is small but real:

Our own Obsidiron Hammer page records day 5 onward, following our Infernal Helmet page. We are flagging now that this figure is contested by two credible alternatives, and the honest summary is: be ready from night three, and do not assume it will have fired by night five.

What every source agrees on is the part that actually matters — it is random. You cannot force it, you cannot schedule it, and several guides note explicitly that you should not build a run plan that depends on it happening, the way the speedrun route can rely on day multipliers instead. One source adds that it is time-gated rather than purely random: progress past the early nights first, then watch the sky.

Practically: if the red sky has not appeared by day five, nothing is broken. It may simply not fire in that run.

Finding a Crater When Nothing Is Marked

Here is a detail that catches people out, and one source states it directly while others gloss over it:

Meteor craters are not marked on the map or the minimap. You find them by the fiery trail in the sky and by sight — smoking ground, glowing rock. Pro Game Guides recommends following the trail with your camera and noting a landmark in that direction, then walking to it. If you miss the impact, search where you saw the trail end.

Two pieces of good news sit alongside that:

• Craters persist until mined. They are not on a timer. A crater that lands on a night you could not safely reach is still there in the morning, which is why several guides describe finding them "the next morning" as routine rather than lucky.
• The red anvil building is locatable once you have built Map. During the event it shows as an exclamation point marker, and afterwards it remains marked as a red anvil. So the one structure you most want to find is the one the game helps you with.

The standard advice from every source is the same: clear the crabs first, then mine. You do not want to be interrupted mid-swing.

The Two Rock Types and What They Drop

Craters contain large rocky outcrops in two colours, and what each colour gives you is where a real disagreement sits.

So: one source says colour is cosmetic, and our own page (following Deltia's Gaming) says the colours gate which resource you get. We have not settled this, and we are flagging it as an open split rather than quietly picking one. If you need one specific resource, mine both colours and sort afterwards rather than trusting either claim.

The three things that come out of a crater:

• Meteor Shard — the core crafting material, and the most common drop.
• Gold Shard — rarer, used in Trim Kits and the Obsidiron Chest. One source notes it can also come from gold nodes elsewhere.
• Raw Obsidiron Ore — must be refined before it is useful.

Noleep adds a yield figure of roughly 3 to 6 shards per meteorite, with the crabs potentially adding a few more. That is a single-source number and should be read as an estimate.

Meteor Crabs: 75 Health, 20 Damage

The guard on every crater.

Individually these are not dangerous. The problem is arithmetic: several landing at once on an early night, around an under-equipped camp, is enough to end people. rblxguide's advice is to engage them one at a time rather than letting a cluster form, and to avoid letting 20-damage swings stack while you are building or repairing.

Note the damage number in context. If your health pool is average, two crabs landing hits in quick succession is most of your bar — which is the situation described on our death and respawn page, and exactly why clearing them before you start mining is worth the extra thirty seconds.

Mining Them: Axe or Pickaxe

Mining works like chopping trees, only tougher. Both an Axe and a Pickaxe are effective, and no special tool is required — Noleep's FAQ answers this directly.

Pro Game Guides ranks the axes for the job as Old Axe, Good Axe, Ice Axe, Strong Axe, Chainsaw, Admin Axe, and lists the Chainsaw as the practical winner once you have it. Our own chainsaw coverage notes it doubles as both a weapon and the best logging tool in the game, so if you already own one this is another thing it is good at.

Storage is the constraint people forget. Shards and ore stack, a crater can drop three different resources, and you will be visiting several. Pro Game Guides recommends carrying a large sack — Old, Good, Infernal or Giant — rather than your starting one.

The Obsidiron Chain: Break It, Burn It, Quench It

Raw Obsidiron Ore is not usable. It has to be refined, and the refining process is one of the more unusual crafting steps in the game.

Pro Game Guides publishes the full sequence:

1. Break the raw ore into pieces by tossing it from a height.
2. Throw the pieces into lava, which produces Scalding Obsidiron.
3. Plunge the scalding pieces into cold water, which hardens them into Obsidiron Ingots.

Our Obsidiron Hammer page carries the shortened version of this — dip the raw ore in lava, then dunk it in water — which is the same chain minus the initial smashing step. We are flagging that omission rather than papering over it: if the full version is correct, ore that has not been broken into pieces may simply not take the lava step, and the short version of the instructions would have you stuck at step two wondering why.

Given that the Volcanic Biome is where lava is reliably available, plan the trip: mine the craters, then process at the volcano rather than trying to do it in two separate expeditions.

The Workshop With Four Names

The building where you spend everything you just mined has more names than any other structure in the game, and the name you read depends entirely on which site you are on.

All four appear to describe one building. A few things about it are consistent across sources:

• It arrives damaged. Before you can craft anything you must rebuild the anvil by dragging the Anvil Front, Anvil Back and Anvil Base onto the outline in the middle of the chamber. Jugo Mobile documents this step in detail; skip it and interacting does nothing.
• It is not inside the volcano. Pro Game Guides states this explicitly, which is worth knowing because "Lava Anvil" strongly implies otherwise. It spawns out on the map.
• It is connected to the normal Tool Workshop, though sources describe the relationship differently. Our Obsidiron Hammer page records that a Meteor Shower leaves the ordinary Tool Workshop permanently lava-lined, which is what unlocks the Obsidiron recipes there. rblxguide instead describes the Meteor Tool Workshop as replacing the regular one during the event. Same outcome, different framing — and like everything else here, unresolved.

One useful navigation note from Jugo Mobile: once you have built Map, the building is marked with an exclamation point during the event window, and stays marked as a red anvil afterwards.

The Recipes Nobody Agrees On

This table is the single most contested set of numbers on this page, and we are publishing every version rather than picking one.

Two separate disputes are tangled together here:

The Trim Kits are 8 or 10 Meteor Shards. Jugo Mobile says ten, the crafting roundups say eight. Nobody else publishes a figure. Given that a crater yields roughly 3–6 shards per rock by one estimate, the difference between 8 and 10 is the difference between two rocks and three — worth knowing before you commit.

The Obsidiron Chest has two complete recipes. Jugo Mobile and the roundups say 10/5/3; Pro Game Guides says 20/15/10 — exactly double, plus rounding. Our own Obsidiron Hammer page uses 10 / 5 / 3 and flags it as single-source. Pro Game Guides is now a second witness, which means the cheaper figure has support from two families of sources and the expensive one from one.

Note what the Chest actually gives you when opened: it is a random roll, not a guaranteed weapon, and how it sits against the ordinary ladder is covered on chest tiers. Our Obsidiron Hammer page is blunt about this — you may get the Hammer first try, otherwise you repeat the whole chain. Sources also credit the Chest with a badge, Diamonds and a themed weapon.

The Four Badges, Now Corroborated

This is a small correction to something published elsewhere on this site, and it is worth making explicitly.

Our All Badges page lists these four as appearing on one guide and nowhere else, which was accurate when that page was written. That is no longer the case — there are now at least three independent sources naming all four, including the community wiki and Pro Game Guides.

What has not improved is the Diamond column. Five each is still a single-source figure. The requirements are now well corroborated; the payout is not.

The cross-check matters for a practical reason: twenty Diamonds is real money in this game, and it is concentrated in one event window that you cannot schedule. If a shower fires, these four are the most efficient Diamonds available to you that night.

What to Do the Moment the Sky Turns Red

Assume you have maybe a night and a morning. In order:

1. Build Map if you have not. It is what makes the special workshop findable, and the marker persists after the event.
2. Note where the trails land. Track them with your camera and fix a landmark in that direction. Nothing is going to be marked for you.
3. Bring an axe or pickaxe and a big sack. A Chainsaw if you have one. This is the difference between one trip and three.
4. Go in daylight. Every source's crater routine assumes you are doing this in the morning after the shower, not during it.
5. Clear the crabs before you swing. Two of them hitting you repeatedly is most of your health bar.
6. Mine everything, sort later. Until the black/red question is settled, mining both colours is the only safe play.
7. Find the workshop and rebuild the anvil before you have a bag full of materials you cannot spend.
8. Process ore at the volcano rather than making a second trip.

The one thing not to do: assume you can come back to it later in the run. The craters persist, but the special workshop's availability during the event does not — and without that building, Meteor Shards are just inventory clutter.

What the Shower Is Actually Worth

Stepping back from the numbers, here is the honest value proposition.

What it uniquely gives you: the Obsidiron equipment line and both Trim Kits. Trim Kits modify gear you already own — one boosts axe damage, the other armour damage resistance. That puts them in a different category from pieces like Iron Body or Thorn Body, which are replacements rather than upgrades. Nothing else in the game does that.

What it competes with: everything else Tier 5 wants. The Gem of the Forest behind the late machines is the same gem behind the Weather Machine and the Tier 5 bench itself, and the Meteor Shower has its own separate demand for your time on the exact nights you would otherwise be building.

What it costs to chase: four badges, one armour set, and two upgrade kits — against one random event that may never fire in your run.

Our read: take the shower when it comes, never build a run around expecting it. That holds in Hard Mode too, where a random event lands on top of the Corruption thresholds rather than instead of them. The opportunity cost of dropping everything for meteors is highest in exactly the early-to-mid nights when the shower can first appear, and your base is least able to spare you. Grab the craters you can reach safely, spend what you mined, and let whatever you miss stay missed.

If the alternative interests you more, gear that does not depend on a random event is covered on Best Weapons — including the Morningstar, which by the numbers is a statistical twin of the Obsidiron Hammer and available on any run.

Where Sources Disagree

1. Meteor Shower trigger night. Night 3, around day 3–4, or day 5 onward. Three sources, three answers.
2. Whether crate rock colour gates the drop. Pro Game Guides says both colours drop the same resources; our Obsidiron page says black gives ore and red gives shards.
3. Trim Kit cost. 8 Meteor Shards against 10.
4. Obsidiron Chest recipe. 10/5/3 against 20/15/10.
5. Yield per meteorite. Roughly 3–6 shards, single source.
6. Tier 5 machine names. Scrap/Logs/Gem of the Forest against Screws/Logs/High-Tech Component. Same numbers, different vocabulary.
7. How many machines Tier 5 unlocks. Three, or four with the Recycler included.
8. The relationship between the special workshop and the normal one. Replaced during the event, or permanently lava-lined afterwards.
9. The Obsidiron refining chain. Two steps (lava, then water) against three (smash from height, lava, then water).
10. Badge Diamond payouts. Five each on one source only, though the badge requirements themselves are now corroborated by three.
11. Morsel? functionality. One source says it is identical to a regular Morsel. Nobody contradicts this, but nobody confirms it either.
12. Crater count per game. Roughly seven, single source.
13. Whether the shower is purely random or time-gated. Sources describe it as both depending on the page.
14. Where the Lava Anvil is. Explicitly not in the volcano on one source; unaddressed elsewhere.

FAQ

Can I make a Meteor Shower happen? No. Every source agrees it is random. Some describe it as time-gated — it will not fire before the early nights are behind you — but nothing forces it.

What does the message say? "The sky is on fire." The sky also turns deep red with glowing trails toward the impact points.

Are craters marked on the map? No. Craters are unmarked and must be found by sight. The special workshop is marked once you have built Map.

Do craters disappear? Not on a timer — they stay until mined. If a shower lands on a night you cannot safely reach, the craters are still there in the morning.

What tool do I need to mine them? A standard Axe or Pickaxe. Nothing special. The Chainsaw is the best of the axes if you have one.

Are Meteor Crabs dangerous? 75 HP and 20 damage each. One is manageable; several at once on an early night can kill you. Clear them before mining.

Is the black rock different from the red? Sources disagree. One says the colour is cosmetic and both drop the same things; another says black gives Obsidiron Ore and red gives Meteor Shards. Mine both.

When does the event become available? Night 3, around day 3–4, or day 5 onward depending on the source. Be ready from night three.

What is the Weather Machine for? It stops rain and thunder for three in-game days. It is a Tier 5 structure.

How much does Obsidiron gear cost? Depends who you ask. See the recipe table above — this is the most contested set of numbers on the page.

Does obsidiron count toward any badge? Yes — it counts toward the Toolfinding badge's armour requirement, alongside opening the Obsidiron Chest for Astrophysics.

Sources

• 99 Nights In The Forest: Beginner's guide — Rock Paper Shotgun
• Complete Meteor Shower Guide for 99 Nights in the Forest — Pro Game Guides
• Maximize Your Meteor Shards: A Guide to 99 Nights in the Forest — Jugo Mobile
• Meteor Event — rblxguide
• Meteor Shower update — 99 Nights In The Forest Wiki
• How to Get Meteor Shards in 99 Nights in the Forest — Noleep
• Weather Machine, Temporal Accelerometer & Respawn Capsule — Noleep
• 99 Nights Forest Tools Guide: Weather Machine, Time Skip & Respawn — Of Zen and Computing
• Weather Machine, Temporal Accelerometer and Respawn Capsule — Roonby
• All 99 Nights in the Forest Crafting Recipes — Finding Dulcinea
• All Crafting Recipes in 99 Nights in the Forest — Six Storeys
• All Crafting Recipes in 99 Nights in the Forest — BloxBoom
• 99 Nights in the Forest: how to get and use the Recycler — Fragtop
• 99 Nights in the Forest — OzoGames

Related Pages

• Obsidiron Hammer — what the whole Obsidiron chain is actually for
• Morningstar — the same weapon without the event
• Best Weapons — ranked without depending on a random shower
• Chainsaw — the best tool for mining craters
• Tool Workshop — the building the event changes
• Volcanic Biome — where the refining lava lives
• Snow Biome — the cold side of the weather problem
• Warm Clothing — what stops freezing damage
• Crafting Bench — the Tier 3 and Tier 5 thresholds this page keeps citing
• Cultist Gem — including the Recycler, the disputed fourth Tier 5 machine
• Campfire — what rain actually attacks
• Biofuel Processor — the fuel answer to soaked logs
• All Badges — including the four meteor badges now corroborated
• Death and Respawn — what happens when the crabs win
• Hunger — the other bar that punishes standing in the rain