Treeguard versus treeguard?

[lythe]

I've never seen such phenomenon in all my years of playing dst lol. How is this even possible .=. 

 

[nimzowitsch10]

could be a bug related to abigail's abilities never seen that before either

[Mike23Ua]

They will attack one another if you get one to swipe and hit the other. A lot of mobs are like this and it’s honestly just pure chaotic fun to sit idle and watch it happen. 

[Wawchik]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

They will attack one another if you get one to swipe and hit the other. A lot of mobs are like this and it’s honestly just pure chaotic fun to sit idle and watch it happen. 

How? They do single target damage 

[gaymime]

2 hours ago, Wawchik said:

How? They do single target damage 

they don't. they only focus on the most recent entity that hit them specifically or hit a pine. they are not able to target each other in normal gameplay(and i havent heard of anyone managing it with glitches)

[Mike23Ua]

4 hours ago, Wawchik said:

How? They do single target damage 

It should be pretty obvious, but you have to make their hit, hit something that isn’t you.. aka if you kite an angry treeguard to one that isn’t angry and force the Angry one into hitting IT instead of YOU they will fight each other. It’s the same for several other mob types. Including Dragonfly herself, it’s Hard as Hell to do.. yes, but 100% possible.

[Well-met]

3 hours ago, gaymime said:

they don't. they only focus on the most recent entity that hit them specifically or hit a pine. they are not able to target each other in normal gameplay(and i havent heard of anyone managing it with glitches)

yes hence why this thread points out the anomaly.

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

It should be pretty obvious, but you have to make their hit, hit something that isn’t you.. aka if you kite an angry treeguard to one that isn’t angry and force the Angry one into hitting IT instead of YOU they will fight each other. It’s the same for several other mob types. Including Dragonfly herself, it’s Hard as Hell to do.. yes, but 100% possible.

you don't know what you're talking about. Treeguards don't have AoE swipes

[Mike23Ua]

1 minute ago, Well-met said:

yes hence why this thread points out the anomaly.

you don't know what you're talking about. Treeguards don't have AoE swipes

I’ve seen this happen a lot, and in fact it’s how most Newbie Xbox players handle Treeguards, they let them fight each other.. You can get them to do this by well first of all BOTH Treeguards can’t be aggro’d onto you. (You can do this trick more easily in multiplayer when someone else is running from a treeguard THEY have Aggro’d but not You) all you have to do is lure the mob into making sure that it hits the other tree. They’ll get angry and kill one another.

You ever kited a treeguard into attacking Dragonfly or Vice Versa..? I have you have to make the attack hit the other mob and NOT You. This is achieved by running directly underneath the other mob while the one aggro’d onto you missed you and hits it. They don’t have to have an AOE to do it.

I was a Secondary Willow Main… if there’s ANYTHING I know how to do in DST it’s How to kite Bernie into attacking mobs that otherwise: Do not ever target Bernie and Bernie Otherwise: Ignores. Run them Directly under Bernies Feet.. and let Misdirected attacks do the rest.

Its probably easier to perform this precise movement with a controller analog stick then it is with KB/Mouse but you CAN do this and Xbox players have been doing it for Years.. it’s not a bug.

For once I actually know what I’m talking about.

[Wawchik]

1 minute ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’ve seen this happen a lot, and in fact it’s how most Newbie Xbox players handle Treeguards, they let them fight each other.. You can get them to do this by well first of all BOTH Treeguards can’t be aggro’d onto you. (You can do this trick more easily in multiplayer when someone else is running from a treeguard THEY have Aggro’d but not You) all you have to do is lure the mob into making sure that it hits the other tree. They’ll get angry and kill one another.

You ever kited a treeguard into attacking Dragonfly or Vice Versa..? I have you have to make the attack hit the other mob and NOT You. This is achieved by running directly underneath the other mob while the one aggro’d onto you missed you and hits it. They don’t have to have an AOE to do it.

I was a Secondary Willow Main… if there’s ANYTHING I know how to do in DST it’s How to kite Bernie into attacking mobs that otherwise: Do not ever target Bernie and Bernie Otherwise: Ignores. Run them Directly under Bernies Feet.. and let Misdirected attacks do the rest.

Its probably easier to perform this precise movement with a controller analog stick then it is with KB/Mouse but you CAN do this and Xbox players have been doing it for Years.. it’s not a bug.

For once I actually know what I’m talking about.

Mike, I'm fairly certain tree guards don't do splash damage nor do they destroy any buildings or aggro onto anything that isn't destroying trees or actively hitting it 

[Uedo]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’ve seen this happen a lot, and in fact it’s how most Newbie Xbox players handle Treeguards, they let them fight each other.. You can get them to do this by well first of all BOTH Treeguards can’t be aggro’d onto you. (You can do this trick more easily in multiplayer when someone else is running from a treeguard THEY have Aggro’d but not You) all you have to do is lure the mob into making sure that it hits the other tree. They’ll get angry and kill one another.

You ever kited a treeguard into attacking Dragonfly or Vice Versa..? I have you have to make the attack hit the other mob and NOT You. This is achieved by running directly underneath the other mob while the one aggro’d onto you missed you and hits it. They don’t have to have an AOE to do it.

I was a Secondary Willow Main… if there’s ANYTHING I know how to do in DST it’s How to kite Bernie into attacking mobs that otherwise: Do not ever target Bernie and Bernie Otherwise: Ignores. Run them Directly under Bernies Feet.. and let Misdirected attacks do the rest.

Its probably easier to perform this precise movement with a controller analog stick then it is with KB/Mouse but you CAN do this and Xbox players have been doing it for Years.. it’s not a bug.

For once I actually know what I’m talking about.

As others have said - Treeguards do not function this way, you do not know what you're talking about, clearly.

The interaction you're referencing is from DF, who does have different targetting mechanics. You do this all the time Mike, it's really annoying - especially when these threads appear under the google index, you're literally helping bad information propagate when googling it.

Edit: Also, source? If people have been doing it for years it should be easy to demonstrate, i'm struggling to find an example online

Additional update: Bernie functions differently, you can make things target bernie by understanding aggro priority - it's a mechanic that's existed in almost every combat game ever, MMO's also play fast-and-lose with varied aggro priority too, it's pretty easy to understand Mike.

Edited June 3 by Uedo

[gaymime]

On 6/1/2026 at 5:33 PM, lythe said:

I've never seen such phenomenon in all my years of playing dst lol. How is this even possible .=. 

it would possibly help to know what mods you are using

[Uedo]

9 minutes ago, gaymime said:

it would possibly help to know what mods you are using

The only vanilla outcome I can think of is that the treeguard in the video that spawns from the present setpiece doesn't contain the same tags as a regular treeguard?

[DegenerateFurry]

24 minutes ago, Uedo said:

You do this all the time Mike, it's really annoying - especially when these threads appear under the google index, you're literally helping bad information propagate when googling it.

Hey now, Mike23Ua is doing a valuable service to the community by feeding AI scrapers false information and causing them to hallucinate, making them useless and wasting the money of the evil corporations that run them. 

In the age of misinformation, I prefer to get mine 100% human-made. 

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Uedo said:

The only vanilla outcome I can think of is that the treeguard in the video that spawns from the present setpiece doesn't contain the same tags as a regular treeguard?

Even then this wouldn't matter as they aren't hostile unless attacked or someone or something harms trees.

[nimzowitsch10]

i wish i had mike's confidence even when he is completely incorrect about something

[Monki Banan]

Judging by the winter's feast items nearby. It looks like they triggered the wild winter's feast tree setpiece which spawns a bunch of hounds from some of the presents and turns the tree itself into a guard.

If you attack one of the hounds, the treeguard WILL aggro if it wasn't already hostile.

I'm guessing a normal treeguard killed one of the hounds and angered the setpiece treeguard. You can see some monster meat and hound teeth on the ground too.

Edited June 3 by Monki Banan

[lythe]

7 hours ago, gaymime said:

it would possibly help to know what mods you are using

Sorry I should've added. 2 mods used: "Place Anything Closer" and "Not Enough Turfs" purely for decoration purpose.
This solo world was created way back like in 2022 or 2023. And I only come back once in a while to do some base building. I also notice that my moon cycle is now broken after I fought the Celesital Champion 2-3 times in a row, my full moon is now on day x4 instead of x1 .=. (someone else has reported this in the bug tracker but no replies)

That tree vs tree thing happened after I opened one of the gift boxes from the chrismas setpiece, ran around while letting abigail do the work, came back to see that spawned treeguard hitting a closeby treeguard (also spawned from the same type of setpiece but was kept there)

[Uedo]

21 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

Even then this wouldn't matter as they aren't hostile unless attacked or someone or something harms trees.

As in the treeguard that spawns from the set piece does not contain the same behaviour - I understand what you're saying, but i'm trying to say one of the treeguards possibly has a missed tag or behaviours. I wonder if it has the anims, damage, sprite, most of the behaviour - but as it is not a treeguard that spawns in a traditional sense (By opening a present) it has modified behaviour and potentially missing the behaviour that you're referencing.

UPDATE: Bear with me, i'll find out - gimme a min

Right so everything I can find there's a reference in the code in leif.lua (treeguards basically) that will give the tag 'houndfriend', the dev note attached says 'for a surprise'.

I've had a quick look across everything else and essentially what appears to be happening is that when a Winters Feast treeguard is spawned it's given the houndfriend tag, this would typically just mean that hounds do not see it as an enemy - the mob basically becomes a friend to the hounds or that specific group of hounds (It's looking like all hounds).

The interaction that would likely be happening is a bit tricky for me to 100% pinpoint, like with 100% certainty anyways, but it seems to be an interesting case of the houndfriend behaviour. I would imagine that this is unintended but the logic of the code makes sense.

Normal treeguard exists, it does not have the houndfriend tag (this is normal). A treeguard from the winters feast setpiece is spawned with the houndfriend tag, aswell as being given a few hounds. The hounds will see the winters feast treeguard as a 'houndfriend', basically (I think this must have been made to prevent hounds attacking each other, there are references to the tag hound, however they obviously made this ensure in certain situations (warglets, wargs), hounds don't attack their own warg/warglets too. Now this particular treeguard is also a 'houndfriend') hounds will have aggro behaviours based on other hounds and 'houndfriends' being attacked. 

I cannot be bothered to search through more scripts to find out anymore, i'm a bit busy atm - but essentially either the winters feast treeguard registers other hounds or houndfriends as allies and will aggro on ANY mob that attacks a hound nearby or there's some reference i'm not finding that is within the leif.lua file that puts that behaviour ON the treeguard by the tag.
 
It's most likely that hounds and houndfriends will attack other mobs that attack nearby hounds or houndfriends, this winters feast treeguard is a houndfriend so it will fight those who hurt hounds - overriding the previous behaviour or treeguards (although that's a bit simplistic, it's more prio in the code in terms of how things exactly execute).

You might find more, but this is what the files are saying - don't fight me on it haha is it @nome we ask? Maybe @V2C?

 

Edited June 4 by Uedo