The Deer in 99 Nights in the Forest is one of its most challenging missions. It only comes at night, can kill you real fast and you can’t hurt it back. If you can’t learn how to approach it, you’ll die again and again.
So having slogged through 30+ games and seeing Day 99 six times now, I have figured out the formula. The Deer isn’t random — it roams through predictable behavior phases that shift as the nights go on. Here’s precisely what you need to stay alive.
Understanding The Deer’s Threat Level
I’m just gonna call it as is: you cannot kill The Deer. I have tried every weapon in the game — rifles, shotguns, tactical gadgets, even explosives. Nothing works. It doesn’t have a HP bar, or damage threshold, or anything. Developers made it akin to the indestructible stalker Mr. X in Resident Evil 2.
What you might do is baffle it for a brief moment with light. Your flashlight is no longer a flirting aid: It’s how you fend off death, not your axe. However, here’s the thing I learned the hard way — each stun after the initial one is less effective. If you spam your flashlight constantly 3 times in a row, The Deer will hardly even flinch on the fourth hit.
The real threat is how its difficulty scales up. Night 1? Completely harmless. Night 50? It runs quicker than you, goes through wooden walls and deals 50+ damage per hit.
The Three-Phase Survival System
After months of upload-induced pain I’ve managed to map The Deer’s action into three discrete acts. Each requires completely different tactics.
Phase 1: Nights 1-10 (The Watchful Stage)
This is your golden window. The Deer is quite passive and will not chase you.
Night 1 is entirely safe — The Deer will not attack no matter how close you get. Use this time aggressively. On Night 1, I like to roam far from camp, picking rare stuff from distant places and opening any chest I stumble upon. You won’t have this freedom ever again.
Nights 2-10 will now feel The Deer “observing” the player. It’s gonna show just on the edge of the light radius from your campfire, and it’s just gonna stare. Don’t panic. You’re safe as long as you stick by the fire, or have an intense flashlight. I’ve seen it likes to lurk behind trees at this part and only pop out every so often.
Key Strategy: Construct your walls of defense during these few nights. Construct walls of craft shelf or plant saplings into a ring around your campfire. Now, by Night 10 you want to have a solid wall that The Deer can’t breach. This one investment has saved my runs more than anything else.
Phase 2: Nights 11-50 (Active Gameplay)
This is the crazy part right there. The Deer goes from being a witness to an active predator.
From Night 11, it’ll pathfind straight to you if you step out of the safe zone. Base movement speed is 35, that is one or two points faster than walking but about the same as sprinting. The problem? Sprinting drains your stamina rapidly. I usually sprint in short stabs between trees—The Deer has terrible pathfinding, and the environmental obstacles buy you precious seconds.
What really takes you up a level in this phase is learning how lights work. Your campfire provides a safe area, but only when it is lit with 50% or more fuel. Let it tilt down, and The Deer can start shoving into the light radius. I never let my fire die too far down in the 60%+ corner, which I fire up every night.
Flashlights have diminishing returns. First stun? The Deer staggers back with a pause of 3 seconds. Fifth stun? Maybe 1 second. You need to save your battery for when it matters: when The Deer is hungry.
Phase 3: Nights 50-99 (All Out)
After Night 50, The Deer becomes an ice cold killing machine.
It has sprint-speed that can outrun players. Wooden structures? It’ll bash through them. Your flashlight? Barely slows it down. Three runs in and around Nights 60-70 that I lost until I found the counter-strategy.
The answer is advance base engineering. But a plain shelf wall won’t cut it anymore. You need:
- Double walls with space in between
- Lightning rods to stop the campfire going out
- Teleporters for exploring get-out-of-jail emergency escapes
- A second secure structure away from the main camp
I also found that a few places are innately immune to it. The Fire Tower is also treehouse ladders in the center, as well as certain places above-below create “glitches” for The Deer on AI pathfinding where it can’t reach you.
Surviving The Hungry Deer State
It does this every other night—on about 30% of its visits, The Deer places itself in a “hungry” state where its eyes turn red, it runs on all fours and is twice as dangerous.
Two messages: “The Deer is hungry tonight” and “Night falls, the Deer hungers.” When you spot these, do not explore far into the forest. Get back to camp, or hunker down in a building.
This is what goes down in hungry mode:
| Attribute | Normal State | Hungry State |
|---|---|---|
| Damage | 25+ | 40-60+ |
| Speed | 35 | 50+ |
| Stun Duration | 2-3 seconds | 0.5-1 second |
| Behavior | Predictable pathfinding | Aggressive pursuit |
The Deer also goes into hungry mode instantly if you let your fire go out at night. It actually spawns on the out fire. Never, never let them see you run out of fuel.
Survival Strategies Across Night Ranges
| Night Range | Best Strategy | Recommended Equipment | Danger Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-10 | Aggressive exploration, base building | Basic flashlight, stone axe | Low |
| 11-30 | Farming started, controlled scavenging | Upgraded flashlight, shelf walls | Medium |
| 31-50 | Efficient base, optimal light sources | Stronger walls, teleporter | High |
| 51-75 | Fortress mindset, limited night travel | Lightning rods, dual walls, biofuel | Very High |
| 76-99 | Endgame efficiency, calculated risks | Full defensive setup, emergency supplies | Extreme |
5-Step Guidelines for Long-Term Deer Survival
Step 1: Maximize Night 1 Freedom (0-6 hours)
You’ve got guaranteed safety for a reason, push that boundary as hard as you can. Just try get some good chests, coal and scrap metal. I usually spend a trip to the second biome ring and return. Common mistake: You’re gathering basic wood on Night 1 near your camp.
Step 2: Create Your Perimeter (Nights 2-5)
Build six walls of shelving (20 to 30 length wise) or plant more than 40 saplings tightly in a circle. The walls, they have no gaps — a tiny one and The Deer can slip through. On Night 5, try testing out your perimeter by spending some time outside of it at night deliberately. If the walls keep The Deer out of your way, you’re good to go.
Step 3: Building Sustainable Resources (Nights 6-15)
Upgrade your crafting bench to Level 2 and build farm plots. Plant carrots right away — they mature quickly and make for a dependable food source. Also make bear traps at your camp entrance. They don’t deal damage to The Deer, but they will slow it if your walls happen to go down.
Step 4: Plan Your Escape Routes (Nights 16-40)
Always have an escape route. Personally I keep a teleporter in my inventory after Night 20. If night has fallen and I’m caught far from camp, one click brings me home. Also, memorize safe structures—the Fire Tower and particular cabins have safespots where The Deer AI bugs out.
Step 5: Optimize for Endgame (Nights 41-99)
Work on being efficient. Construct lightning rods to avert fire extinguishing, create biofuel processors for more efficient fuels and save children to fast forward nights. Each child you save adds time multipliers, with which you can go from Night 60 to Night 75 in one sleep cycle.
Advanced Tactics From 50+ Hours of Testing
The Zig-Zag Method: If The Deer is chasing you, don’t run a straight line! Ease around trees at sharp angles. Its AI thinks in straight lines, too, so every turn makes it recalculate things again and gives you a little more distance.
Audio Cues Matter: The Deer makes noise. Loud breathing: it’s less than 20 meters away. A clicking sound? It’s directly behind you. I wear headphones to follow its position without seeing.
Cultist Raid Immunity: The Deer will not hunt you outside your campfire during Cultist attacks. It just stands there. If the raid happens while you are out of camp, stay calm—you’re temporarily safe.
First-Night Child Rescue: Save Dino Kid on night 1 with a spear or ranged weapon while The Deer is still passive. This gets you a huge time multiplier from the start, and brings your progression up by 15-20 nights.
Never Look Up: Some random nights after Day 40, The Deer stands on the treetops. When you look up, a jump scare springs and your sanity bar is depleted. Keep the camera level or shoot down.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you kill The Deer in 99 Nights in the Forest?
What happens when The Deer is hungry?
Does The Deer attack on Night 1?
How do you protect your base from The Deer?
What is the best flashlight for stunning The Deer?
Can The Deer enter buildings?
Why does The Deer spawn at my campfire?
Your Next Steps
Begin your following run by exploring Night 1—slap the second biome ring and get some high-value resources while the deer slumbers. You should have your wall perimeter done by Night 5. At Night 15, your farm plots will be very established and producing reliable food, so you can safely leave during the day.
The Deer feels impossible at first, but it’s just a pattern to learn. Respect the power of it, know its phases and be sure to have adequate defenses. You’ll start out dying on Night 3 and a few runs in you’re slashing your way casually to Day 99 on 99 Nights in the Forest.
Good luck out there. The forest is waiting.
