How do the Ents spawn and what’s the best way to deal with them

dont-starve

Sometimes, when chopping down trees, an Ent can be generated. (look at the picture below for reference)

Ent

These guys are pretty hard to kill, destroy you in a couple of hits and tirelessly follow you around the map.

My questions are:

  • What triggers an Ent generation? Are they spawned randomly or they just stay hidden until you cut down trees near them? If the latter is true, is there a way to recognize them?

  • How to deal with them? Do they eventually give up on following you or you just have to turn and face them? In this case what's the best setup? (I've been thinking Logsuit+Torch, but I've never been able to test it)

  • Do they drop something valuable when defeated or just the usual logs+pine cones?

Best Answer

Whenever you cut down a tree there is a small chance (larger at night) that a nearby tree will turn into one of these, some call them an "Optimus Pine".

Also, burning trees down will increase the chance of waking it up.

There are several popular strategies to deal with them:

  • Lay a campfire and kite the monster over it to set it on fire.
  • There is a bug where if you use a tent to change your skin it will stop chasing you.
  • Get a pig man to attack it and it will stop chasing you.
  • Kite it to a swamp and have it kill tentacles for you until it dies.
  • Plant several pine cones between you and the Optimus Pine, it will eventually settle down and turn back into a tree.

I have only killed one once, and if I recall correctly it dropped logs and pine cones. It didn't drop anything special.