Crafting Bench in 99 Nights in the Forest

Every run in 99 Nights in the Forest starts the same way: a campfire, a pile of logs, and one station next to it where the whole build tree lives. Upgrade it five times and it takes you from a 3-Wood Map to machines that skip a night. Ignore it, and you are still crafting Old Beds on Day 30.

This page is the build tree in full: the tier ladder, every recipe the bench owns and how many of each material it eats, what each tier unlocks, what the whole ladder costs in total, and the naming problem that makes half the guides on the internet sound like they are describing five different buildings when they are partly describing one.

Quick Answer

Where It Is, and the Name Five Sources Cannot Agree On

Where. The fandom wiki puts it "to the east of the Campfire right next to it." bloxboom says you "find the Crafting Bench right behind your campfire." Both agree on the one thing that matters, that it sits in your base and never leaves — the two are describing the same corner of the camp from different camera angles. Do not go looking for it out in the forest.

What to call it. This is the part that makes search frustrating, so it is worth laying out plainly. The same station goes by at least five names in published material:

Two things follow from that table, and both matter:

1. The Crafting Bench and the Tool Workshop are not the same building. The Tool Workshop is the three-floor stone castle with the Anvil — four top-tier recipes, one craft at a time, an anvil map icon. It has its own page. Every recipe in this article is a bench recipe; none of them need a trip to the workshop. See the Tool Workshop page for the other half of the crafting system.
2. The flute upgrade is not a bench recipe, and we are not going to pretend the sources say it is. The taming guides put it at a structure called the Skills Building, the Upgrade Building, or the Workshop with a crossed-tools icon; PC Gamer and Digital Tech Explorer both note it "typically unlocks around Campfire Level 3" and sometimes closer to 4. Our own Taming Guide sends you there by the Upgrade Station name. What none of the recipe databases do is list a flute upgrade recipe. If you are looking for the flute route, the Taming Guide is the page — and if you are looking for the recipes, you are in the right one.

One corroboration worth having: the Tool Trader, the merchant inside that same cluster, is described by Escore News as selling an Old Taming Flute "for 20 coins" from the tool station. That is a separate transaction from the upgrade, and it is the trade our Pelt Trader page ends on.

The Five Tiers, and What Each One Unlocks

Select a recipe, hand over the materials, and it is instant — there is no craft timer at this station. Many items "can be placed down more than once," so the tier tables are a menu, not a one-off shopping list. A few items carry a use counter: the fandom wiki notes that items show a white circle with a number inside, which is how many uses they have left before they die. Farm Plots give 20 carrots. Bear Traps reset 10 times.

Tier 1 — the only three items you start with

The Map is the single best-value craft in the game and every source we checked lists it first. Spend 3 Wood on it on Day 1.

Tier 2 — the camp starts defending itself

Tier 3 — the utility tier, and where most runs actually stall

Tier 4 — the gem wall begins

Four Cultist Gems per rung is what turns Tier 4 into a Cultist grind rather than a wood grind.

Tier 5 — the endgame machines, all on one Gem

All three sit behind the same single Gem of the Forest, so the tier is not a wall you grind past — it is a material you have to have earned elsewhere first. Where that Gem comes from is covered on the How to Get Diamonds Fast page.

The Upgrade Ladder as a Budget

Four rungs, and this is the arithmetic the recipe tables bury:

That total is our addition of the four rungs. The per-rung numbers come from the sources below, and the Wood, Scrap and Gem columns are corroborated by three or more of them. The reason it is worth adding up: 81 Scrap on the ladder alone, before you buy a single Bear Trap or Lightning Rod. Scrap that goes into rungs 2 and 3 does not go into your defenses, and the ordering argument below is entirely about that.

The same ladder, with its sourcing notes and the Blacksmith shortcut, is documented from the scrap side on the How to Get Scrap Fast page. This page is the menu; that page is the money.

What the Numbers Are Actually For: A Craft Order We Would Defend

Stated as reasoning rather than as fact — this is our judgement built on the tables above, not a published tier list.

1. Map — Day 1, 3 Wood. No argument. It is Tier 1, cheap, and changes how every other step goes.
2. Farm Plot (Tier 2) second, not the beds. Carrots every 2 days, permanently, is the only renewable food source on this list. The Regular Bed that costs 5 Scrap and buys one day is the weakest thing you can spend Tier 2 on.
3. Wood Rain Storage (Tier 2) before anything perishable. Rain destroying stacked wood is the kind of loss you notice a week later.
4. Bear Traps (Tier 2) in real numbers. 3 Scrap each and they reset 10 times. What a trap does to each animal, and the eight-trap cap, are on our Bear Trap page. They are the cheapest damage in the game and they are why a Tier 2 bench still survives a bad night.
5. Sun Dial and Compass are comfort crafts. The Sun Dial's cost is itself disputed (below). Nobody's run has ended because they skipped them.
6. Tier 3 is where you pause and think. Radar, Crock Pot, Torch and Good Bed all compete for the same 15 Wood and 10 Scrap, and Tier 4 is about to demand 2 Cultist Gems. Craft Tier 3 for the specific problem you have, not for the tier number.
7. Do not craft Tier 5 until the Gem is already in your pack. Rushing to Tier 4 to reach 5 does not skip the Gem, it just spends the Scrap first.

Where Sources Disagree

The Blacksmith Skips a Rung

The one class that changes this ladder is the Blacksmith. It crafts one tier higher without paying for that rung, and the rung it skips is almost always 3 → 4 — the one carrying 2 Cultist Gems. On a normal run, those two gems are the difference between "Tier 4 now" and "Tier 4 next week." What that is worth, and the point at which it stops being worth anything, is argued out in full on the Blacksmith class page.

What the Bench Does Not Do

Worth stating, because the naming table above causes this confusion as often as the rest of this page combined:

• No Anvil recipes. The Chainsaw, Riot Shield, Tactical Shotgun, Thorn Body, and the two helmets all come from the Tool Workshop, not here.
• No pelt trading. That is the Pelt Trader.
• No flute upgrade. See the Taming Guide for that route.
• No campfire upgrade. Feeding the fire is its own loop — see How to Get Wood Fast.

FAQ

Do I have to upgrade in order? Yes. Every source that addresses it states the bench must be upgraded sequentially; you cannot buy Tier 4 recipes from a Tier 2 bench. The one exception is the Blacksmith class, which is allowed a one-rung skip.

Is upgrading the bench consuming? No, it is permanent for the run. The bench stays and keeps its tier. Recipes, by contrast, are not permanent — items with a use counter die when it runs out.

What is the cheapest useful thing I can craft? The Map, at 3 Wood. It is Tier 1 and it is the reason you can plan anything else on this page.

Why is my Tier 4 item greyed out? It needs 2 Cultist Gems per rung. Gems are not a bench currency and cannot be substituted — see the Ice Temple for the most reliable source.

Can I craft several of the same thing? Yes for most structures. Farm Plots, Wood Rain Storage, Shelf, Bear Trap and Lightning Rod are explicitly placeable more than once. Farm Plots cap at 20.

How many Farm Plots can I own? The fandom wiki states a maximum of 20 per player. Single-source, so treat it as likely rather than certain.

Sources

Checked 2026-10-03, listed by how much weight they carry.

Two or more sources agreeing: the five-tier structure of the bench; the Map as the first and cheapest craft; the 3-Wood / 20-Wood / 5-Wood Tier 1 costs; the entire Tier 3 and Tier 4 cost columns; the Radar at 15 Wood and 10 Scrap; the Tier 5 trio all sharing one Gem of the Forest; the sequential upgrade rule; and the Farm Plot cap.

Sources that disagree, and where: the Bench 2 → 3 Scrap cost, the Sun Dial material, the Tier 2 item list, and the Bench 4 → 5 figures — all set out above rather than silently resolved.

Single-source, flagged: the Freezer and its 4-Scrap cost; the Farm Plot maximum of 20; the use-counter mechanic on items with a white circle; the Hammer recipe of 5 Wood and 5 Scrap; and the Bench 4 → 5 alternative figures from the calculator listing.

Not published anywhere we could find: any official statement of the total ladder cost (the 100 / 81 / 2 / 1 figures here are our addition), the exact per-scan behaviour of the Radar beyond its 15-Scrap cost, and — importantly — any source that documents the flute upgrade as a bench recipe. We have deliberately not written one.

Structure names, which vary by source and are recorded rather than reconciled: Crafting Bench, Grinder, Upgrade Station, Skills Building, Upgrade Building.

Related Pages

• Tool Workshop — the Anvil castle, and the four recipes this bench never offers
• How to Get Scrap Fast — where the 81 Scrap on this ladder comes from
• How to Get Wood Fast — the 100 Wood, and the campfire level that gates the map
• Blacksmith class — skips the 3 → 4 rung and its two Cultist Gems
• Taming Guide — the flute route that lives somewhere else entirely
• How to Get Diamonds Fast — the Gem of the Forest that gates Tier 5
• Ice Temple — Cultist Gems, and the Boost Pad recipe tablet
• All Locations — where the bench sits in the base, and what else is inside it
• Beginner Guide — the first-day order these recommendations come from
• Best Base Design — what to do with the walls, traps and storage once you have them