Missing Kids: All 4 Locations & Keys

There are four missing kids, and rescuing them is the main quest of 99 Nights in the Forest. Each one is locked in a coloured-key cave guarded by a pack. Clear the guards, take the key they drop, open the door, carry the kid home.

Those rescues are also the account gate on Hard Mode for the one source that states one, which pairs 20 days survived with a single kid rescued. What the unlock is claimed to require is spelled out on Hard Mode.

Every rescue permanently adds +1 to your day-counter multiplier for that run. That is the whole reason to prioritise them: four kids is four days of progress gained without surviving four extra nights.

Last verified: 2026-09-29.

Rescued children eventually produce food at camp, which is the same job one cheap class does with a rod. See Fisherman Class for that comparison.

Every one of those campfire level gates is listed in one table — Campfire Level Gates puts all fifty-nine of them in level order, from the Level 2 Frog Cave to the Level 6 Bone Pond.

Plan this step against the end game rather than in isolation: a winning run has to finish all four rescues inside the day counter, and the last one is campfire Level 6 gated. The full win condition is on how to win 99 Nights in the Forest.

The Four Kids at a Glance

Two details that trip people up:

• The last guard killed drops the key. Leave one wolf alive and you get nothing.
• Cave placement is procedural. There is no fixed map to memorise — the caves are in different places every run, so the arrow is the only reliable guide.

That +1 is the multiplier half of speedrun in 99 Nights in the Forest, and the reason the caves are a speedrun objective rather than a sidetrack.

Orienteering is what the detour pays for, and it cannot share a run with Self-Preservation — the two are listed side by side on our All Badges page.

One of the reasons is that rescued children end up producing food at camp, which is the same job the cheapest food class does. See Hunger.

the rescue loot has to fit in the sack you arrived with, and the cost of every sack on offer is priced in our sacks and inventory capacity guide.

If you want the whole crop in one place, Pumpkin covers where pumpkins come from now, what a farm plot yields every two days, and which item really gates an apex tame.

Crops that are not on the Farm Plot list come from Seed Packs — our Seed Packs page explains which.

Why the Detour Pays

The day counter. Each rescue is +1 multiplier, permanently. Stacked with beds, all four kids push a run towards the 9x maximum — the difference between crawling to night 99 and getting there comfortably.

Cave loot scales with difficulty. The Dino cave holds Common, Good and Iron chests. By the Koala cave you are looking at Gold and Ruby, with a Ruby Chest close to guaranteed. The tiers behind those chests, and their campfire cost, are on Chest Tiers. The later caves are among the best loot rooms in the game.

Two badges, and they oppose each other. Rescuing all four earns Orienteering (plus 4 Diamonds). Finishing a run with zero rescues earns Self-Preservation (also 4 Diamonds). You cannot get both in one run — pick which one you are chasing before you start.

How to Actually Find Them

1. Use the Missing Kids board next to your campfire. Click a child's poster and a red arrow appears at the top of your screen pointing to their location.
2. Craft a Compass if you have one — it marks the same spot, and saves you re-clicking the board.
3. Listen. The guarding pack is audible before you see it, and you can hear the children crying softly just outside the cave door.
4. Clear every guard, take the key from the last one.
5. Open the door, loot the chests, pick up the kid and carry them back in your sack. They settle at the edge of the firelight and pitch a tent.

A small detail worth knowing: the tent colours are tied to rescue order, not to which child. The sequence is always Red, Blue, Yellow, Purple. Save Koala Kid first and she still gets the red tent.

Each cave on this page is one padlock with one key, and our Keys and Locked Doors guide adds the cost column that this page leaves out.

If you are mapping the late game, the gate behind this is the Gem of the Forest — four fragments make one gem, and tier 5 wants five of them. The Gem of the Forest page is the one that says so.

The wolves that guard these caves also spawn inside cabins, and our Cabins page covers that fight.

The Four Caves

Dino Kid — Level 2–3, Red Key. Five wolves with red collars, on a fenced hill. This is the easy one and the correct first target: do it as soon as your campfire reaches the level. Recommended for a first run even with starter gear.

Kraken Kid — Level 4, Blue Key. Four Alpha Wolves, noticeably tougher than the red-collared pack. Bring a ranged weapon and pick them off from a vantage point rather than trading hits in the open. Some sources put the unlock anywhere from Level 3 to 5, so check the board.

Squid Kid — Level 5, Yellow Key. Two Bears. Reaching Level 5 also unlocks the full map, which is its own reward. Bears are tanky — craft bear traps and bait them in — the kill order and the reset rule are on our Bear Trap page — rather than standing and shooting. Morning Star or Tactical Shotgun if you have one. Going in with one or two teammates is a very different fight.

Koala Kid — Level 6, Grey Key. Six Bears, and the hardest encounter in the main quest. Upgrade armour, stock ammo and bandages, and be willing to clear it across multiple days — disengage at dusk and come back. Pushing on after dark into six bears is how runs end.

Six bears is a heal problem before it is a combat one, and our Healing, Bandages and Medkits guide counts what a rescue actually consumes in health.

The four cave fights are pet fights as often as they are player fights, and the Steak behind those pets is what our Steak page prices per tame.

The Assassin's sprint is advertised as the class for these rescues, and our Sprint Speed guide ranks it against the other boosts.

Fighting Notes

• Wolves: aim for the head. Headshots save you bandages over a long run.
• Bears: traps, not trades. They survive far more damage than you want to absorb. Lay traps and pull them through.
• Keep a strong ranged weapon — revolver, shotgun, raygun — for the later caves specifically.
• Night is the deadline. The Deer hunts after dark, and its pathing is bad enough that a cave mouth is a bad place to be cornered.

Every rescue on this page is behind a campfire level, so this is a fuel ladder more than a combat one. The six levels and their costs are on Campfire.

It is also the hard ceiling on a speedrun in 99 Nights in the Forest, which cannot reach 9x without this rescue.

That is the sentence our Kiwi page borrows straight: Level 6 is not one reward but eleven, and the Kiwi is the only one of the eleven with nothing to show for it.

Campfire level 6 is also the gate on the Carrot-fed Bunny loop, and the two goals share the same day.

Campfire level 6 lands on roughly the same day a Chili planted on Day 4 comes in, so those two goals share a day, on our Chili page.

Campfire level 6 is also the gate that separates the Bunny from the Kiwi, the two one-cycle tames, on our Bunny page.

Reaching Level 6 Is the Real Work

All four rescues are gated behind campfire levels, and Koala Kid needs Level 6. That is a wood problem before it is a combat problem — see How to Get Wood Fast, because a run that fails to raise the fire never sees the last two caves at all.

Once they are home, the kids are not just decoration. Since the Kids Have Jobs update they each take a passive camp job and generate resources in the background; the details are on Update Log & Patch Notes.

Quick Reference

Related Pages

• How to Get Wood Fast — the campfire levels gate every cave
• The Deer — the thing that took them, and why you go home at dusk
• Beginner Guide — where the kids fit in your first run
• Update Log & Patch Notes — the Kids Have Jobs update that gave them work