The Treeguard is a Boss Monster in the Don’t Starve base game that transforms from Evergreen trees when you cut too many of them down. It’s just nature’s way of getting back at you—an eye for an eye. The Treeguard will come alive as your worst nightmare to take revenge for killing all his friends. Resembling an Evergreen tree, it has black holes in the leaves to demarcate its eyes and mouth, the trunk turning into wide leafy legs and leaves for arms that pack a powerful whoop. If you’re not armored, this could kill you in around three hits. Killing one of these will reward you with Living Logs which is one of the rarer items in the base game but immensely useful in magic. This guide will take you through how to defeat it.
How to Defeat the Treeguard in Don’t Starve
Treeguards have high HP, and what’s worse than one Treeguard is upto three Treeguards—a fair possibility when you’re past day 80 in the game. However, it would be safe to assume that you’d have a more powerful set of weapons and armor at your disposal to take them down.
While they are strong and heavy-handed, Treeguards have lived as trees all their life, and that’s probably why they’re so slow. It’s easy to dodge their leafy handed attacks, and run back to strike at them with a high damage-dealing weapon. Don’t set fire to it, however, because if it dies while it burns, you’re going to end up with Ash instead of Living Logs.
Not feeling like you can take it, but still want the goods? You can get other mobs such as Pigs and Tentacles to fight it.
If you don’t plan on killing it, you can temporarily placate the monster by planting pinecones. As you probably were cutting trees when it spawned, you should have plenty of them lying on the ground or in your inventory.
In the Shipwrecked DLC version, you get Palm Treeguards instead of the regular, which shoot coconuts like cannonballs at the player. It’s a good idea to land in a few hits before they use their ranged attack. Even if there are multiple Palm Treeguards, they tend to attack at the same time, so you can get 5-7 hits before running for cover.
Killing Treeguards is the most effective way to farm Living Logs—which you need to craft the Shadow Manipulator and perform magic.
