Madagascar Man-Eating Trees: The Lonely Tree Strategy Guide (Patreon)

The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.

-- South Australian Register, Fiction account, 1881

Carnivorous trees/plants have been a part of popular culture since the late 1900s where fictional accounts of them were brought to European attention by writers. And they have captured the imagination of authors for a long time, with entities like the Japanese Jubokko, H.G. Wells's "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid", Day of the Triffids, Little Shop of Horrors, and even as far as a non-fatal one being a part of the Harry Potter series (which is a fine series despite it's author) with the Devil's Snare, Life of Pi and The Woman Eater (Which is as terrible a movie as you would think it is, but sadly Mystery Science Theater didn't seem to cover it), there are even murderous trees that attack sleeping victims such as Old Man Willow in Lord of the Rings and the "Dead" White trees from the Coldfire Trilogy.

The Lonely Tree follows in this vein, but combines the lore of the tree with the concept of a dryad/cursed soul/siren being the core of the entity. When we drill into Kingdom Death's folklore we get a pretty extensive breakdown of what it's about and how it behaves.

There was once a woman who loved a sad man with a hole in his heart. The harder she tried to fill it, the more drained she felt. When there was nothing left of her, she killed herself under an old tree and let its roots drink her blood. Soon after, the sad man disappeared from the settlement. The tree bore a tear-shaped fruit.

If you can see the Lonely Tree for what it really is, it's probably too late. This carnivorous organism hypnotizes anything that comes near, luring prey with hallucinations of their innermost desires. Once they draw near, the hallucinations turn to ceaseless dreams, while the roots consume the victim in their sleep.

With each meal, a grotesque bulge, appears on the Lonely Tree's branches which slowly swells and takes on certain qualities of the devoured as they are digested. This "fruit" of the Lonely Tree is its true prize, as eating these conglomerations of phytohormones and human gristle can have beneficial (albeit bizarre) side effects. However, make sure to handle them gently while they are close to the tree, as the chemical volatility of the unripened morsels doubles as the Lonely Tree's primary form of self-defense!

There is a lot of hyberbole in this text, and to be honest the pseudoscience is not amongst Adam's finest work, but the concept is rather simple. The tree is allegedly possessed by the spirit of a woman who was in a terrible relationship, her blood soaked into the tree and it took on her aspects before taking revenge on the 'sad man'.

Now that part of the story is likely apocryphal, like much of the folklore the game has it's meant to be echoes and whispers of the actual truth, told by the few people who hold onto scraps of the past. However, the rest of it is relatively straightforward (scientific buzzwords aside), because it lures survivors with its "dryad/siren" then drains them and turns their remains into fruit. This fruit has a bunch of different abilities depending on who/what was drained (Saviors for example become drifting dreaming fruit) and they are also very explosive. Which the tree is more than willing to use as a weapon.

I'm on record saying that I think the Lonely Tree is poor value for money when you consider pure game content, but the model does justify the price. However, despite this low value for  money, it is one of the expansions that is 100% of the time always in my campaigns. The thing that holds that back though is, you don't automatically encounter it every campaign, and even when you do, the odds are you're only going to face it once (though you can face it multiple times).

Finding the Tree

There are two ways that the tree can be drawn into your campaign, either you can encounter it as a "top level" basic hunt event (something that occurs before random hunt events are drawn) or as a piece of terrain drawn from the event deck. We looked at the Tree as a piece of terrain recently and you can see the discussion on that one here. I will not repeat myself there, I try not to recycle content too much. :)

However, it is important to note that there are oddities between these two methods, the Object of Desire card archives itself to guarantee spawning the tree into the fight, but the terrain card never archives itself. This is the 'multiple times' situation I referenced before.

Once you have completed the fight and managed to keep the monster away from the fruit, you'll have the Lonely Fruit in your hands.

Deciding when to consume this and trigger the Lonely Lady event is something you want to consider carefully, because the tree's rewards change based on the level of the tree and its relative power level when compared to your settlement also changes, because it plateaus in comparative power at Lantern Years 12 (First time it is L2) and LY 16 (the L3+ version). 

The rewards for each version also change, and you have to weigh what type of fruit you want to get. The fruit (and other rewards) potentially available at each level is:

• Level 1- Jagged Marrow Fruit
• Level 2 - Blistering Plasma Fruit
• Level 3 - Porous Flesh Fruit, Drifting Dream Fruit, Super Hair Ability

Each of these main fruits (Marrow, Plasma, Flesh) provide a unique ability that can allow you to construct new and unique builds, or support existing ones. However, they cannot be passed on to any other survivors, so you typically want to lock these onto durable, ageless survivors who can get the best returns (or hold onto them until near the end of the campaign, where survivors will not retire from max hunt XP before the final fight).

Jagged Marrow Fruit

Nightmare Spurs: Once per showdown you may spend all your survival (at least 1) to lose all your +1 strength tokens and gain that many +1 luck tokens.

The L1 fruit has an obvious synergy with things that provide a lot of + strength tokens, such as Acanthus Doctor, Red Fist, Brawler Armor or Monster Meat. It is the ultimate Deadly DPS ability and with the right build construction you can be critically wounding on 2+ consistently every fight. 

The two downsides to this are the complete survival drain (which can be fixed with items that activate to gain survival, or Abyssal Sadist) and the need to find and slay the L1 tree before it becomes L2. That's only 11 Lantern Years and because you'll mostly be on L1 and L2s during that period the chances of finding the tree are relatively low. It's also quite tough as a L1 Nemesis goes, so you may not be able to kill it anyway.

If you are confident, and you have a way of generating a lot of strength tokens, this fruit is a huge farming boost for your settlement and worth going for.

Blistering Plasma Fruit

Nightmare Blood: Whenever you gain a bleeding token, add (+1 Armor) to all hit locations.

Our L2 Fruit is tanking orientated and requires a little set up, because you want a reliable way to bleed yourself. The best thing about this is you can use the White Speaker event (via Storytelling) to score a Bloodskin (White Speaker White Box Promo) and gain the Story of the Young Hero on the same survivor. The Bloodskin gives you an immediate +2 armor to all locations when you depart and it drains away bleeding tokens every turn, while Story of the Young Hero gives you a way to just generate endless armor (as long as you bandage/first aid/bloodskin away the bleeding tokens afterwards).

There's also a bunch of other bleeding support items you can use, the most famous of which is the Red Ring. But in essence, you get this fruit, you have a fresh survivor gain Story of the Young Hero, then consume this fruit and you've got an amazing tank with incredible endurance.

Porous Flesh Fruit

Nightmare Membrane: You may spend (Activation)(Move) to exchange any 1 of your tokens for a +1 strength token.

So, this one, it's not great. It does allow you to have a way of stripping off any negative token (stat, priority, bleeding) and gain strength. But the cost of activating it is staggering, you just don't typically have time to use this. 

As such, this fruit isn't one you build around, it's instead a nice little bonus you give to one of your ageless/end game hunters so they can have personal bandages. Or you can spend it as a hide in a recipe. It's a very balanced piece and compared to the other two it is weak.

Drifting Dream Fruit

The Drifting Dream Fruit is very simple to understand, you can get yourself a(nother) savior. Check out my savior article for details on which one to pick and how to use them.

Super Hair

So, if you have cooking when you beat the L3+ Lonely Tree (and you should because that innovation is very good), then all victorious survivors gain the Super Hair ability above. This ability is a fun one and it cements a group of four survivors as the 'hair gang'. The best way to make use of this is to have either abilities that take advantage of gaining tokens (i.e. Surging to put bleeding tokens onto an active Red Ring user) or can convert them into positives. Such as using this:

(This is from the Dragon King showdown, it's really strong.)

Super Hair is not a super powerful ability, but it is fun and nothing but a positive even if you do not abuse it. You can do neat stuff like share +strength tokens from Acanthus survivors to the entire party etc etc.

So use your best guys for fighting the L3+ Lonely Tree if you have it. Which brings us to...

Fighting the Tree

The Lonely Tree is one of the most challenging, unique and at times, frustrating, showdown fights in the entire game. I would rank it up in the upper section of 'best showdowns' along with the Dung Beetle Knight, Butcher and Dragon King for that mix of requiring intelligent play/positioning and theme. 

The tree is the only static monster in the game (so far, Vocal Spidicules will likely change that) and this means the entire fight is very different from any other. The push/pull of the fight is your attempts to get to the tree so you can hit it, while the tree tries its best to keep you away from it with a combination of attacks, reactions and similar. It might seem a surprise, but being very mobile and able to traverse long distances quickly matters a lot against this opponent, despite her utter lack of mobility. Lets get into it, starting with its...

Statistics

The Lonely Tree has a very high level of toughness and durability when compared to other monsters, if you were going to rate its defenses, this monster is up there between the Node 3 and Node 4 quarries. They break down as follows:

• Level/Wounds/Toughness
• 1/12/11
• 2/15/13
• 3/20/17

It has no movement and gains no additional speed/damage except for the L3 (which has +1/+1).

This is why the L1 version is significantly harder (comparatively speaking) than the L2 and L3 versions. Its baseline durability is around the L2 Node 1/2 monsters (L1 Node 3). The L3 also brings its own special challenges with its Life Trait and Dreamer's Fruit Trait

Traits

Bear Fruit (All Levels)

This mechanic is core to how the tree works. It gets those 6 plastic fruit, and they're hung on it at the start of the showdown. It also puts the fruit back on the tree every time they are removed and it allows the Lonely Tree to call the 'bear fruit' ability, which places a fruit oor sets the trap on top of the deck if all 6 fruit are in play.

Impenetrable Trunk (All Levels)

You can't critically wound this one without an axe, that's it. Very thematic, very straight forward. Bam.

Moving Ground (L2+)

A bit of a weird one this, it essentially removes all concern about being defeated, because you can just walk away from the fight if it is too difficult. But, if you do this, you will not get a replacement Lonely Fruit (gained during the defeat condition, the showdown page text has a typo which says 'Nightmare Fruit'), so that is the end of your Lonely Tree fights. 

The main effect it has is, it stops survivors Dashing, which is core to how the Lonely Tree makes the fight more difficult. It will make sense why this is the case a bit later on.

Dreamer's Fruit (L3+)

This legendary trait has to be drawn from the L3+ deck, and when it is received, the tree becomes a LOT more offensively dangerous, with anything from +0 to +6 speed when it attacks. However, you need to defeat the tree with this trait in play in order to get the Drifting Dream Fruit (There is a typo on the trait card).

The main aim here is to try and have the trait trigger as late as possible in the fight, now as long as you draw the fight out enough, it will ALWAYS perform this trait, because the L3+ tree has the Life trait, meaning you cannot cancel its attacks with wounds, but you can also reliably control its AI all fight if you want to.

Life 20 (L3+)

Few monsters have the Life Trait and the Lonely Tree (L3+) is one of them. I discussed how this works above, it both increases the wounds of the monster and also protects the AI deck from pruning the worst cards.

Flower Funnel Survivor Status

This survivor status is a very threatening one, you are put in a position where you start to gain bleeding tokens for moving, and you cannot remove them. It requires another survivor to come over to you, remove the flowers with an (activation) and then you need to work on removing the bleed. Needless to say, Bandages/First Aid Kit matter in this fight, a lot.

Basic Action & Instinct

This is a (3/3+/2) attack that gains +1 speed for each fruit already on the board. It also then bears fruit, getting more fruit out and accelerating towards the trap. It prefers the closest threat or closest survivor.

The Instinct is very nasty (it's called Growth, but sometimes referred to as Germinate). It puts a bleeding on all NAP survivors (see below for what NAP means) and puts the trap on top of a fresh hit location deck.

AI Deck

The tree's overall behavior is to attack on three different vectors. These are direct attacks, bleeding and separating survivors so that Flower Funnel will do its horrible, horrible magic. It will also modify what it is doing with moods, quite a few moods. So don't forget your Whisker Harp.

You're going to see quite a few cards that punish not being stood next to another survivor, I recommend moving survivors in pairs. Imagine they're holding hands as they skip through the woods if that helps. I'll call this mechanic Non-Adjacency Punishment (NAP) for shorthand.

The tree  prefers to target closest threat or closest survivor most of the time. It is very simplistic in that method. However, many of its cards do not seek to deal damage the 'normal way'. So its attack targeting is not as important as it normally would be.

The notable AI Cards are:

Basic

Crack Skulls

One of the only Adjacency Punishment moves the tree has, if you can see this one coming it is very simple to avoid it (either through AI Scouting, or watching what moves have already been played). But if it does trigger, because it is again a fixed 2 damage this move becomes less and  less threatening the later in the campaign you get. 2 Damage to Rawhide Armor is scary, but it's an inconvenience against Rolling Armor.

Sprouted Thorns

This scores a bear fruit, a basic action (which has another bear fruit) and gives Bleed 1 to all attacks. That's a lot of fruit and the bleed 1 is quite the concern because of how the Lonely Tree uses bleeding as an attack vector anyway. Watch out for it, play some music.

Advanced

Bladed Leaf Tornado

No real way to avoid this one without scoring the Crippled Vines persistent wound, and that requires axes that crit (or an axe master, Axe Masters are very good vs. the Lonely Tree for obvious reasons, especially if they wear Warlord Armor). There is little to no counterplay to this move, and like many tree attacks, because it doesn't scale, it is more terrifying earlier in the campaign than later. Against the L1/L2 you want to AI Prune this move for sure (if you can't crit the Vines)

Blood Lure

This absolutely devastating move is one of the few that punishes NAP survivors and at least one survivor is going to have to suck this one right to the face. This move doesn't scale based on monster level, so it will destroy you at L1/L2. It bears a fruit next to one survivor, pulls everyone 2d10 towards that fruit and then hits everyone within 3 spaces with 6 damage to a single hit location before putting that fruit back onto the tree. It's absolutely horrifying and one of the reasons I avoid the L1 Tree. Early Game survivors just can't soak that level of damage. If I was going to criticise anything about the AI, it would be that this card should probably have been Monster Level x2 damage, not just 6 damage flat.

Legendary

Absorbing Roots

A relatively simple, but terrifying mood that makes all those pesky knockdowns become very worrying. This only turns up against the L3+ Tree, and is countered by the Whisker Harp + Encourage. But it its existence is why the Lonely Tree is one of the few monsters that cannot be automatically soloed by the Red Ring of Death build.

Hit Locations 

This 23 card deck contains some absolutely brutal reactions and a trap that can feel absolutely devastating if you are not prepared for it. This is where all the Lonely Tree's preparation with bearing fruit pays off and it can feel overwhelming if you are not ready.

We'll start with the terrifying Flesh Pollination Trap card.

Flesh Pollination - TRAP!

This card detonates every single fruit on the board at the same time. Any survivors foolish enough to be adjacent to a fruit suffer 6 damage to a hit location and knockback 5. This also returns the fruit to the tree, which has significant impact if the Dreamer's Fruit trait is in play.

In addition, anyone adjacent to the monster is knocked back 7, which typically means they need 2 turns to get back into range (Reach/Range is always good, but especially so here) and the Attacker is cracked with the Flower Funnel Status card (If they already have it because you're a fool, that survivor gains 3 bleeding tokens and the tree heals 3, so remove Flower Funnel asap).

The ways to mitigate this trap as much as possible are:

• Do not stand next to fruit
• Remove Flower Funnel ASAP
• Use Reach 2+ or Ranged weapons

Gnarled Trunk/Tangled Trunk

These two hit locations introduce the 'sneaky root' mechanic. Gnarled Trunk is the weaker of the two, with the ability to cancel the root (and not being First Strike), but what this hit location does is it displaces the attacker (unless they crit/cancel) and sticks them in the Tall Grass far, far away from the tree (along with a bleeding token). This means that a) They have a long walk to get back and b) They and their hand holding partner are now isolated and vulnerable to NAP attacks.

Iron Bark

Big oof on this one. More than any other reaction in the deck, this one is a huge killer. This is because it is a wound reaction tied into a basic attack, so the attacking survivor has to soak whatever the tree throws at them via evasion, armor points and maybe a block. For bruisers (Sword & Board & Blood Paint) this is less of a problem than others, but I can say right here that this hit location is the one that the tree has managed to score more kills with than any other against my various settlements. It is never pleasant, never safe and there is little you can do other than the above mitigation or critically wounding with an axe.

Blood Siphon

Did you remove those Flower Funnel statuses before attacking? Well you should have.

Pollen-Soaked Branches

Hooray, enjoy your Flower Funnel status!

Safe Spot

Just wanted to mention that this is the only spot that can be critically wounded by non-axes and it can give you the most useless loot in the game. A Bone Axe. Woo.

Super Blood Siphon

Simple HL Location to used, but I wanted to note the odd reference to 'an acanthus plant'. I suspect this is a typo/relic from an earlier iteration of the tree. Because the showdown cannot have Acanthus Plants on the board (at all in 1.31 where this tree was designed) except for ones spawned by Screaming Armor. 

Summary

I am aware that I criticize the designs of APG's monsters when appropriate, some of their monsters are close to complete flops (Lion Knight, Flower Knight, Lion God) while others are nearly amazing but let down a little bit at the end because of a few key issues (Dragon King, Spidicules). I have to give credit where credit is due on this one, the Lonely Tree is nothing short of a spectacular piece of design and Scott Copeland's programming is tight as heck; typos aside, this monster is one of the best designed ones in the game right now and it is only the combination of the unappetizing price tag along with the rarity of its occurrence that makes people believe it is worse than it is. 

There is no doubt that the expansion is pricy, and the tree is hard to find; and that some of the attacks/reactions need scaling for earlier in the campaign; but the content of fighting the tree (gotcha on the Lonely Lady event aside) is nothing short of phenomenal and the rewards for the fight are appropriate (because this is an additional, bonus fight, it doesn't take away from your quarry hunts). 

However, it has to be acknowledged that the L1 fight is REALLY hard, like insane damage, so bare that in mind. 

As such, I do want people to take away from this that the Lonely Tree is overall a net positive expansion, while I still recommend you wait for sales before getting it, and you need to play a lot to encounter it, the nemesis is worth it and the ability to use it as a Nightmare Tree the rest of the time adds a lot of value.

It's good.