How to Get the Raygun in 99 Nights in the Forest (Damage, the Alien Class Shortcut and Why the Numbers Are Low)

The Raygun is the cheapest ticket to infinite ammo in 99 Nights in the Forest. It never needs reloading, it never runs dry, and at 100 Diamonds for the Alien class that hands you one, it is the most affordable ranged weapon in the game.

It is also much weaker per shot than most players expect. This page gives you the real numbers, every route to one, and a straight answer on whether "one of the best weapons in the game" holds up.

Last verified: 2026-10-02. For the full tier list, see Best Weapons.

Quick Answer

What the Raygun Actually Is

A small pink alien blaster, roughly pistol-sized, with a fin along the top and a green bar on its side that shows the charge. It fires aqua-coloured beams from a coil-like barrel.

The mechanics that matter:

• No ammo, ever. It draws from the Alien Tech Energy bar in the bottom-left of the screen, near the hunger bar. There are no bullets to find, craft or carry.
• Hit-scan with aim assist. The beam connects the instant you pull the trigger — no travel time, no leading a moving target — and it tracks toward your crosshair. That is why it feels accurate even on fast enemies.
• Roughly 10% of the bar per shot, which works out to about 13 shots from full before it overheats.
• Overheating locks it out. When the bar hits zero the gun is unusable for about 9.5 seconds while it refills.
• The bar recharges even while the gun is stowed. Fire to around half, swap to something else, and come back to a fuller bar. This is the single biggest habit difference between players who think the Raygun is good and players who think it is useless.
• The charge bar is shared. It is the same pool the Laser Cannon and Laser Sword draw from, and the Alien Armour refills it when you take melee hits. Carry two alien weapons and they compete for one meter.

One thing worth knowing before you raid a crash site: the aliens guarding the crashed shuttles carry Rayguns too, and each of their hits takes about 10 HP off you.

The Damage Numbers

The number nobody publishes: sustained damage. Every source says the Raygun is "fast-firing" but no source gives a shots-per-second figure, so we are not going to invent one. What we can derive is the ceiling: a full bar is 100% and a full recharge takes 9.5 seconds, so the bar returns roughly 10% per second — which is about one shot's worth. Sustained output therefore lands around 10 damage per second, or about 15 if every shot is a headshot. Treat that as our arithmetic, not a published stat.

Put that next to the rest of the game and the picture is honest but unflattering:

• Wolf (75 HP): about 8 body shots, or 5 headshots.
• Bear (350 HP): about 35 body shots — nearly three full charge bars.
• A Rifle, by comparison, hits for 60–90 per shot.

So the Raygun is not a weapon you kill bears with. Its case is built on three things instead: it never runs out of ammo, it always hits, and it costs you nothing to fire.

About that "1,015 damage" listing

One aggregator lists the Raygun at 1,015 damage per shot. That is the same concatenation bug that inflates other weapons on those sites — the stat fields run together without separators. Here it is simply 10 (body) and 15 (headshot) written as 1015. The real number is 10.

How to Get It: Four Routes

1. The Alien class — guaranteed, 100 Diamonds. Buy the Alien and you spawn with a Raygun at the start of every run. This is the only deterministic source, and at 100 Diamonds it is one of the cheapest classes in the shop. If you want a Raygun rather than hope for one, this is the answer. Check active codes first — free Diamonds often cover a 100-Diamond class outright.

2. Broken UFOs. During an alien event, crashed shuttles appear as saucer icons on your map. The Raygun has a chance to be part of that loot. Search both outside and inside the wreck — wiki mirrors disagree on which one it is, so check both.

3. Mothership UFOs. The flagship raid is a source too. Boarding it is the hard part — see The Alien Mothership.

4. Alien Chests. The same alien-themed chests that drop the other alien tech. In the current version these also appear at the alien structures you farm Alien Batteries from.

Routes 2 to 4 all require a live alien event and all are dice rolls. Route 1 is the one you can plan around.

Signals that an alien event is starting: one guide reports the first hint as "backup is on its way", followed by the real tell — "something mysterious is flying above you" — after which UFOs cross the sky and crash.

Where It Actually Shines

The Raygun's reputation comes from situations where infinite ammo matters more than damage:

• Cultist Stronghold runs. This is the tip every source leads with. You can hold a choke point and keep firing from cover indefinitely, with no resupply run breaking your position.
• Alien Mothership raids. Enemy density is high enough that running dry on real ammo is a genuine risk; the Raygun is not.
• Headshot chains. High fire rate plus aim assist means a decent player lands headshots reliably, which is the only way to push its damage up.
• Cheap safe-zone farming. A commonly repeated trick: use it inside the safe zone to pick off small creatures like Bunnies for food, without stepping into melee range or attracting the Deer.
• Finishing, not opening. Like the Revolver, it works well for softening or finishing while you save your real ammunition — and if you are levelling the Alien, the kill credit counts as long as the Raygun lands the last hit.

How It Compares

The trade is stark and worth stating plainly: the Raygun does roughly one-sixth of a Rifle's damage per shot, and the Laser Cannon — the other infinite-ammo alien gun — does seven times as much per shot. What the Raygun buys you for that is a 100-Diamond price tag against the Cyborg's 600, and a fire rate high enough that chip damage adds up.

Is It Worth It?

Yes, as a utility weapon. If you want a gun that is always available, never needs resupply, and lets you hold ground in the Cultist Stronghold, nothing else at this price competes. It is also the cheapest way to stop carrying a Flashlight, since the Alien class brings night vision with it.

No, as your main damage source. At 10 per shot it will not carry a fight against a bear or a boss, and the 9.5-second overheat is a real window where you are unarmed. Every source that rates it highly is rating the package — infinite ammo, hit-scan accuracy, headshot uptime — not the raw damage.

The honest framing: buy the Alien for the class and the night vision, and treat the Raygun as the reliable sidearm that comes with it. Do not buy it expecting a Rifle.

Where Sources Disagree

Does the Alien class speed up recharge? One structured wiki says level 2 Alien recharges the gun faster and boosts damage output; the fandom page says the Alien class does not change the standard 9.5-second overheat and only affects the deeper "maximum overheat" state. Both agree recharge happens regardless of whether the gun is equipped.

Recharge timings. 9.5 seconds is the standard figure. The fandom adds that draining the bar almost completely is slower — about 12 seconds with no class and about 10 seconds as the Alien — which is the opposite of intuition and worth knowing.

Outside or inside the wreck? Two mirrors of the same wiki give opposite sentences: one says the Raygun appears around the crashed UFO, the other says it is inside the ship's interior if it does not spawn outside. Search both; it costs you nothing.

Fire rate. Everybody calls it fast; nobody publishes a number. We did not invent one.

FAQ

How do you get the Raygun in 99 Nights in the Forest? Buy the Alien class for 100 Diamonds and you start every run with one. Otherwise, find it as a random drop in Broken UFOs, Mothership UFOs or Alien Chests during a live alien event.

Is it "Raygun" or "Ray Gun"? Both spellings are used across guides and wikis. It is one weapon.

What damage does it do? 10 per body shot and 15 on a headshot, with about 13 shots per full Alien Tech bar.

Does it need ammo? No. It runs on the shared Alien Tech Energy bar and recharges on its own.

How long does it take to recharge after overheating? About 9.5 seconds. Draining it almost fully is reported to be slower — around 12 seconds, or 10 as the Alien class.

Is the Alien class worth 100 Diamonds just for it? Not just for it — you also get the best night vision in the game. But if you want the gun reliably, it is the only way that does not depend on an alien event.

Is it one of the best weapons in the game? Some players rank it that way for its DPS and infinite ammo. On published damage it is well below the Rifle and the Laser Cannon; its case rests on never needing ammo and always hitting.

Sources

Checked 2026-10-02. The damage figures (10 body, 15 headshot) are identical across the fandom wiki, the Miraheze wiki, 99-nights-in-the-forest.com, Backyard Drunkard and TheBackdash. The charge mechanics — roughly 10% of the bar per shot, about 13 shots per bar, a ~9.5-second overheat lockout, hit-scan projectiles with aim assist, and the bar recharging while the weapon is stowed — come from the same set, with the fandom page adding the 12-second / 10-second near-full-drain variant. The four obtainment routes (Alien class, Broken UFOs, Mothership UFOs, Alien Chests) are stated by 99-nights-in-the-forest.com, the fandom wiki, Backyard Drunkard and TheBackdash. The event signal messages ("backup is on its way", then "something mysterious is flying above you") are Backyard Drunkard and TheBackdash. Aliens carrying Rayguns that hit for 10 HP is TheBackdash alone and is flagged as a single source. The Cultist Stronghold and safe-zone farming tips are the fandom wiki, Miraheze and Backyard Drunkard. The 1,015 damage listing is rblxguide and is rejected as a concatenation bug for the reasons shown above; that site is not used as a source anywhere else on this page. No source publishes a shots-per-second figure, so none is given.

Related Pages

• Best Weapons — the full tier list and where every weapon drops
• Alien Class — the 100-Diamond class that starts you with this gun, and how Alien Tech Energy works
• How to Get the Laser Cannon — the alien gun that trades the same energy bar for 70 damage
• How to Get the Laser Sword — the melee alien weapon, and the only one with no class route
• How to Get the Alien Armour — refills the same charge bar when you take melee hits
• The Alien Mothership — the raid that drops alien tech, and how to board it
• How to Get Diamonds Fast — farm the 100 for the Alien class