New at the game - need help with treeguard

[drako125]

Sooooo... I just started a fire in my logging area for no reason? Well there goes that.

[muadw]

If you later decide you want to kill the treeguard instead of just pacifying him (Say if you want some living logs for the magic trees) I would highly recommend letting tentacles do the work. Unlike other hostile mobs they won't take twenty minutes running back and forth to take a swing at the treeguard and do pretty good damage. And when they do go down there's almost always plenty of other tentacles to fall back on.

[nathanael]

i froze it with an ice spear. it' still hasent broken out. maybe it's a glitch, a helpful glitch, but a glitch none the less

[Prince143]

Hey. I'm at day 19 right now, I've got some basic stuff.I just got the attention of a tree guard which is current 5 feet away from my base, in tree form (planted pinecones).I can't kill him, I manage to hit once and then retreat before he hits me, but he often still manages to hit me so now I'm almost dead, and I'm not going to risk that.I tried burnign him on my campfire (the bigger one, used about 15 logs on it to get it big enough lol, wanted to be sure) but it didn't work. Tried attacking him with a torch, didn't do much.Is there a risk-free way to get rid of it? :s I really don't want to die.. ~rocket

Let the Army Pigs Handle it

[TeoSS69]

This thread is old. Stop replying to it.

[Apra]

Dear helpful forum posters;

Please carefully read that to which you are responding before you respond and refrain from saying "You can just time your attacks" when the original poster has already said that they know about timing but have been unsuccessful with it and has specifically asked for an alternative solution.

It is rude and disrespectful to the person who asked for your help to ignore what they asked for and give canned advice which doesn't answer their question or take into consideration the situation as they have described it. What is "easy" for one person may be "challenging" for another, or "overwhelming" for a third. Trust me, you would not want me to assume that what is easy for me would be easy for you and belittle you for your inability to keep up with the things that come naturally to me.

This seems to be a recurring theme in these forums, where those who find something challenging or wish the game to be less overwhelming or frustrating are regularly belittled as inept or just ignored as irrelevant. I don't mean to target anyone in specific, but merely to attempt to draw attention to the mistaken behavior in hopes that some will see the value in avoiding it in the future.

I believe, sincerely, that Rocket will learn in short order how to time a Tree Guard, and find most of this advice unnecessary, as I did once I saw a post explaining that it was possible. But Rocket didn't ask about that. Rocket asked if there were other options.

Also, while I can now time Tree Guards, I am not at 100% on this, even now, and while I find I am "close enough" on this particular mob, I have found I prefer to use alternative measures against certain other mobs, especially if my armor is weak or I am short on the resources to replace it, or if I am just far from a base-camp and concerned with the long-term durability of my armor.

I'd also like to point out that the nature of a Beta forces experienced players to repeatedly experience the beginning phases of a game, until it becomes hard to remember how difficult they were the first time they played. The target audience of every good game ever designed is not people who have played it over and over again until it was easy, but people who have not even bought it yet (indeed, the most important segment of the audience for Don't Starve are those who have not yet heard of the game.) The very use of words like "casual" is dismissive and insulting to the people for whom the game should be designed. Don't Starve is meant to be played without any instructions, meaning that it should be playable by someone who chooses never to visit the forums or the wikis. That doesn't mean that it should be easy, but it should not be so frustrating that they don't play past the demo, or that they quit the game from frustration and tell their friends the game has too "steep" a learning curve (sorry. I'm OCD about that. Learning curve describes ability as a function of time, and a "steep" learning curve would be one where you very quickly become awesome... A shallow learning curve describes a situation where you need to spend a lot of time learning before you start getting good at something... But that's unimportant.)

One solution to this, which has many positive impacts on game design, is to have multiple ways of dealing with a problem. E.g. in Don't Starve, all mobs except Warrior Spiders (so far) can be timed, and some, if alone or nearly alone, can be kept continually stunned. All mobs except Tallbirds, Werepigs and Hounds (and warrior spiders in packs) can be effectively fled, and most can be fled past, if they are not already aggro'd. Most mobs are vulnerable to some sort of trap, and as far as I know, there are no mobs yet which cannot be killed by setting a forest on fire while they are in it. Many mobs (Tallbirds, Tree Guards, Pigs, Spiders of all sorts) can be pacified. There are also often ways to avoid mobs entirely. We each find the solution which works best for us and try to learn some alternatives for when that one might not work (e.g. when you don't have traps, or when there are four spider queens attacking you together-- for the record, my max has been three, but I know what to do if it happens.)

My apologies if I have been too harsh. It is not my intention. I want to repeat that this isn't targeted specifically at the people I quoted or anyone else, but just at what I see as a bad habit I try to avoid myself.

as a third party reading this post to see what options I have for treeguards, the "attack timing" thing was useful information to me. Your post, however, was not.