Once Human: How to find and defeat the Treant

The Treant is one of the earlier Great One bosses you’re tasked with bringing down in Once Human, and new mechanics introduced leading up to and during the fight paired with a bugged quest description make it a bit more confusing than past boss fights.

Some elements of the fight make the Treant a difficult boss, but for me personally, I had the most trouble with actually starting in the first place. It may happen that you get to the Gaia Monolith and interact with it only to find you aren’t able to actually search for a group or start the boss battle. Don’t worry; there’s an easy solution if this happens. Read on to learn exactly how to find and defeat the Treant in Once Human.

How to find the Treant boss in Once Human

One thing I found a bit confusing about this boss is the fact there is a clone of the Treant, which is aptly named “Treant’s Copy.” You have to fight this copy earlier in the same quest line that leads you to the fight with the Treant, and the similarity between the two will make you wonder if this Treant’s Copy is the same Treant you’ve probably heard about in the world chat.

Allow me to clear this up now—the Treant’s Copy is not the same thing as the Treant, and defeating the Copy doesn’t mean you’ve finished the Gaia Monolith arc. When you’re completing Murmurs in the Forest, you will come to a sort of confusing quest description, “Meet Mary at the Gaia Cliff Monolith or investigate the Abandoned Hideout.”

The Treant’s Copy is found at the Abandoned Hideout, while the actual Treant is found inside the Gaia Monolith. You can theoretically defeat the two in any order, but I suggest starting with the Copy in the Abandoned Hideout—particularly because there are other requirements you need to meet before you can actually enter the Gaia Monolith, and the game doesn’t make that entirely clear.

How to unlock the Gaia Monolith

After clearing the Abandoned Hideout, Murmurs in the Forest will update to a new description: “Control four Rift Anchors in the Broken Delta.” The quest will no longer mention the Gaia Monolith in any way, and particularly because the previous objective gave you an “or,” this makes it look like the quest is going to move on without bringing you to the Gaia Monolith because you chose the other path.

If you’re at all like me, this probably prompted you to head straight back to the Gaia Monolith, where you found you were unable to actually enter the Monolith and start the fight against the Treant. It turns out (much to my embarrassment) that after controlling the four Rift Anchors per Murmurs in the Forest, your next objective will be to head to the Gaia Monolith to fight to defeat the Treant.

I’m not sure why the game gives you the option to go to the Monolith earlier, and I imagine it’s just some wonkiness that inevitably comes with a beta. I suspect the quest description will be different when the full game releases. The actual required quest path is to defeat Treant’s Copy at the Abandoned Hideout, and then unlock four Rift Anchors in Broken Delta, then go to the Gaia Monolith and defeat the Treant.

Now, the game also doesn’t do an amazing job actually explaining what parts of the map qualify as the Broken Delta, so you might be a little unsure about what to do next.

There are two ways you can go about this. On the bottom right corner of the map, you can see the name of whatever area you’re panning over even though the borders aren’t actually shown. However, I found it easier to just start from the Gaia Monolith itself and work outward—traveling to and unlocking the four Rift Anchors that were closest to the Monolith all counted as Broken Delta Rift Anchors.

How to defeat the Treant in Once Human

I’m lucky enough to have been playing alongside a friend in Discord when I fought the Treant, or else I would have no idea why so many people seemed to be struggling with this boss. For me, the fight started and I immediately got a new objective, “Clear three Tangled Vines to remove the Treant’s invincibility.”

The friend I was playing with remarked that his shots weren’t damaging the boss, and when I pointed out the Tangled Vines, he was stumped at how I could possibly know that.

It turns out, his quest didn’t update in the same way mine did, and so he had no idea the Tangled Vines were even there, let alone that destroying them would make the Treant vulnerable. I have no idea what caused the objective to only show for me, though I suspect it may have been because I was the party leader (I had the opposite happen later on during a different fight where I wasn’t the group leader and an objective didn’t show up for me).

Regardless, in case your quest doesn’t update to tell you this, there are large root-like vines on elevated platforms surrounding the outside of the Treant arena, and you need to destroy all of them before you can damage the Treant at all. When you’ve destroyed all three, the Treant will then become vulnerable to damage for two minutes, after which the vines will respawn and you’ll need to repeat the process. Simply do this however many times it takes you to finish whittling down the Treant, and you’ll be good to go.

There are small red gravity lifts you can use to get close to the Tangles Vines, but even so, I highly recommend using long-ranged weapons for this fight. It will save plenty of commuting time, and the Treant is tall enough that shotguns and melee weapons aren’t able to reach its Weakspot (the gnarled human growing out of the top of its “back).

The Treant is also highly vulnerable to fire, so Molotov Cocktails are going to be your best friend here. Outside of the Tangles Vines, there are no tricky mechanics or quirks to this fight. The Treant will spawn some adds occasionally, and there is a Death Star laser attack that you definitely don’t want to get hit by—but the fight is ultimately straightforward after you take down the Tangled Vines.

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