How to Get the Morningstar in 99 Nights in the Forest

The Morningstar is the heaviest-hitting melee weapon you can actually get your hands on in 99 Nights in the Forest — 70 damage in a single swing, the highest documented melee figure among obtainable weapons. It is also tied with the Trident as the game's rarest weapon, because it drops from exactly one place: Gold Chests. This page covers the numbers, the explosion mechanic nobody explains, and where to actually farm it.

Last verified: 2026-09-30.

Quick Answer

What It Does

The explosion bar is the part worth understanding. Every hit fills a meter; when the meter tops out, the Morningstar detonates and deals area damage to everything nearby. Nobody documents the exact fill count or the blast radius, so treat the timing as something you learn by swinging — but the effect is real and consistently described. Against a packed cultist group it turns one weapon into a small bomb, which is why it is the recommended backup for Cultist Stronghold raids.

Brawler is the class that unlocks its ceiling. The melee bonus is a flat +30%, which takes you from 70 to 91 and changes real breakpoints: a Bear dies in 4 hits, a Polar Bear in 6, a Mammoth in 10. Without that bonus those are all longer fights. See All Classes for what the Brawler costs (100 Diamonds) and what you give up (no ranged weapons).

Bring a Riot Shield. This is the standard pairing and the reason is simple: a one-second swing leaves you standing still for a long time. The shield covers the window where you cannot dodge. If you do not have one, plan to fight near cover or in open ground you can back through.

One caveat on the damage figures: 70 / 91 / 112 all come from a single wiki source. BloxSwaps and the tier lists corroborate the 70 base independently, but the scaled values have one source. The internal maths checks out though — 91 is exactly 70 × 1.3 and 112 is exactly 70 × 1.6, the same multipliers that reproduce the Ice Sword's 45.5 and 56, so the scaling is at least self-consistent.

The Only Source: Gold Chests

There is no other route. Not crafted, not sold by the Pelt Trader, not carried by any class. Every source we checked agrees the Gold Chest is the sole source of the Morningstar.

Two things to know before you start farming:

1. It is not guaranteed per chest. A Gold Chest is a loot roll, not a Morningstar dispenser. Other documented Gold Chest results include the Strong Axe, Iron Body and Giant Sack. Expect to open several before one pays out — which is exactly why "the Morningstar and Trident are the two rarest weapons in the game" is a fair description.

2. Gold Chests spawn in specific places. Sources point to the area around the Cultist Stronghold and higher-level exploration zones. The Stronghold is the practical one, because it resets roughly every 20 minutes and is the most repeatable chest source in the game — the full farming loop is on Cultist Stronghold.

So the real strategy is not "hunt the Morningstar". It is farm the Stronghold loop and let Gold Chests come to you, the same way you would farm for anything else in the game. If wood and campfire levels are what gate you from pushing out there, start with How to Get Wood Fast.

One Stronghold-specific warning that catches people out: inside the Stronghold, a Ruby Chest that another player has already opened shows up to you as an unopened Gold Chest. So a Gold Chest in there is not always a Gold Chest in origin. The detail is explained on Cultist Stronghold — worth reading before you plan a session around counting chests.

A nice piece of trivia that ties it together: the Morningstar's wiki entry dates it to 4 July 2025 — the same date our Update Log & Patch Notes gives for the Stronghold Update, the patch that added the Cultist Stronghold itself. The weapon arrived with the place you farm it.

Morningstar vs Obsidiron Hammer

These two are statistically identical: 70 damage, 1-second swing, and the same explosion mechanic. The only difference is the acquisition route, and it is a big one:

Neither is strictly better. If the Meteor event is running and you can complete the crafting chain, the Obsidiron Hammer removes the RNG. Otherwise the Morningstar is the one you will trip over while doing things you were already doing. Both sit in the S tier on Best Weapons.

Morningstar vs Ice Sword

This is the comparison that actually matters, because the two weapons are closer than they look — and our Ice Sword page already covers the other half of it.

They are equal at every tier. That is not a coincidence we invented — it is what the published numbers produce when you divide damage by swing speed, and it looks deliberate: the game gives you the same output whether you want it delivered as one big hit or two small ones. (This arithmetic is ours; the underlying figures come from the sources listed below. It also depends on the Ice Sword's 0.5-second swing — if the 0.6-second figure some wikis list were correct, the tie would break.)

So the choice is about shape, not power:

• Morningstar — one 70 hit ends a threat immediately, and the explosion bar adds area damage. Slower, riskier, better against single tough targets.
• Ice Sword — same output in smaller pieces, plus a slow that lets you disengage. Safer, better against packs.

The Morningstar is also rarer: Gold Chests versus Silver Ice Chests, and the Ice Sword's two spawn points are fixed locations you can revisit.

FAQ

Can I craft the Morningstar? No. Gold Chests only.

Can I buy it from the Pelt Trader? No. His ladder tops out at the Rifle and Strong Axe.

Does any class start with it? No. Class starters are things like the Katana, Revolver, Good Axe, Flamethrower, Laser Cannon and Infernal Crossbow — you will not find a Morningstar in any class loadout.

Is it guaranteed in a Gold Chest? No. It is one of several possible results, alongside the Strong Axe, Iron Body and Giant Sack.

Which class is best with it? Brawler — 91 damage per hit, four hits on a Bear. It has the highest single-hit ceiling of any obtainable melee weapon.

Is it better than the Ice Sword? Same damage per second at every tier. The Morningstar has better burst and area damage; the Ice Sword has a slow and is easier to find.

What pairs with it? A Riot Shield, to cover the one-second swing where you cannot move.

Sources

Checked 2026-09-30. Damage scaling (70 base, 91 Brawler, 112 boosted Berserker), the 1-second swing rate, the Gold Chest as sole source and the Brawler breakpoints (Bear 4 hits, Polar Bear 6, Mammoth 10) all come from 99-nights-in-the-forest.com's item page, which also recommends pairing with the Riot Shield. 70 base damage is independently corroborated by BloxSwaps' weapon table and by the tier lists at Of Zen and Computing and Dino Kid. The explosion-bar mechanic is described identically by rblxguide (twice, on separate pages) and by Dino Kid's situational guide, which recommends the Morningstar specifically for packed cultist groups; no source documents the fill count or blast radius, which we state rather than guess. The Gold Chest's other documented loot (Strong Axe, Iron Body, Giant Sack) comes from rblxguide's rare-items cheat sheet. The Obsidiron Hammer equivalence — same damage, swing and mechanic, different crafting chain — is stated by rblxguide and matches our own Best Weapons page. The "rarest weapon, tied with the Trident" framing is BloxSwaps'. The damage-per-second comparison with the Ice Sword is our own calculation from the two sources' published figures.

Related Pages

• Best Weapons — the S tier the Morningstar sits in, and the disputed Cultist King Mace
• How to Get the Ice Sword — the DPS-equivalent alternative, and how to farm its chests
• Cultist Stronghold — the strongest Gold Chest loop, and where the Juggernauts carry Morningstars
• How to Get the Katana — the other end of the melee spectrum: fast, light, class-locked
• All Classes — Brawler at 100 Diamonds, and every class's starting weapon