Don’t Starve – Can you kill Treeguards?

There’s nothing better than taking a stroll along the forest in Don’t Starve. The birds are chirping, the pigmen are roaming, and all is well. Maybe you stop to cut down some free to make a campfire or some log armor and are suddenly besieged by a massive, angry-looking tree that is taking swipes at you. This mighty creature is a Treeguard.

Treeguards are boss monsters that live within forests and around all manner of evergreen trees. They have very high health and can quickly kill you in three hits if you’re not wearing any armor. They have a 1.33% chance of spawning any time you cut down an evergreen tree. In the first thirty days of Don’t Starve, only one Treeguard can spawn, but after day eighty, so can another. They’re intimidating for new players, but rest assured that you can kill them and even have the means to deflect aggro from them.

Firstly, if you’re having an issue with killing a Treeguard, you can get them to become a normal tree again by planting pinecones around them. If you get close enough to them, planting a pinecone will give you a 33% chance that they will return to normal, which is much safer than fighting. Treeguards will follow whoever was caught chopping trees around them and will chase them indefinitely.

The thing about Treeguards is that they’re actually one of the easiest out of all the bosses in the game. Since they’re so slow, they’re easy to kite and then get a few hits in. Since they’re a tree (duh), you can also set them on fire for some good damage. It may take some time due to their high health, but all you have to do is be out of reach when they swipe at you, run in and attack them two or three times, and then run back out of reach of their swipe attack. Rinse and repeat. If you want the fight to be even easier, make the Treeguard follow you to a pig village, and the pigmen will surround it and continuously deal damage.

Even if you’re a new player, there are good reasons to look for Treeguards, as they drop living logs. These living logs are needed to craft a lot of magical items and can be used as an additional food source if you use them to craft mushroom planters in Don’t Starve Together.

In Don’t Starve, there are certain places called set pieces. These are areas where certain items are enemies spawn in certain ways that could greatly benefit or harm the players. They’re rare but you’ll come across them during your time in Don’t Starve. One of these set pieces is the Living Forest, where up to 10 Treeguards can spawn at once and start attacking you. It’s random, but just be wary of this set piece as you can find it as early as day one.

Treeguards may seem scary, but they’re all bark and not much bite if you’re careful. There are plenty of ways you can kill them or even dismay them from attacking you, so exercise all your resources.