Rotwood: How To Beat Mother Treek

Rotwood is a roguelike dungeon crawler that will throw many lesser enemies as you pass through each location’s many clearings. Each of these enemies will behave differently and have different means of dealing damage. However, these foes are nothing compared to the game’s bosses.

The first real test of your mettle will come in defeating Mother Treek, which lies at the end of the game’s first area, the Great Rotwood Forest. This game is one of many Roguelikes in Early Access, and there might be some changes for the full release. But for now, here’s how to get past the game’s first big fight.

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Play Some Preparation Runs

You will make plenty of attempts to get through the Great Rotwood Forest before you are able to fell Mother Treek. Prioritize your earlier runs to optimize success for later runs, rather than attempt to complete the run. Each time you finish a clearing, look to see if any adjacent clearings will give you a Corestone, as you will need a lot of them to get the best armor and weapons.

Upgrading gear is important in any dungeon crawling game. Another clearing icon to watch for is the small sack icon, as this will lead you to materials to upgrade your gear. Upgrading each of your armor pieces and your weapon at least once will significantly raise your chances of success.

Best Armor For Mother Treek

Each area of the game will feature different items for you to buy. The Great Rotwood Forest will offer you two complete armor sets, along with some other pieces. The Rillo Armor will keep your weight around the middle mark, making your dodges no different from your starting gear dodges. This is great for players who find it hard to time their dodges just right, and want to take less damage from Mother Treek’s vine traps.

Your other option will be the Bulbin Armor pieces, which are great for a light armor build. Wearing all the pieces of this armor set will change your weight type to Agile, allowing you to dodge further. While the Bublin set’s pants will give you increased dodge speed, the chest piece is what makes this set shine the most. It will increase how long you are invincible while dodging, allowing you to avoid damage much more consistently.

Both of these have their pros and cons, but the Bulbin set, combined with the right powers, can give you plenty of shields to keep you alive until the very end of the fight.

Best Powers For Mother Treek

Once you have all the right gear, it is time for a serious attempt to beat Mother Treek. You are not guaranteed the same Powers and Fabled Powers, or upgrade combinations for any given run — this means you will need to use what you get. There are some notable Powers that will drastically improve your odds no matter what others you have found along the way, such as Iron Brew and Mulligan.

To have the best odds, from the very first clearing, prioritize getting more Powers. These will all compound and give you the highest odds of getting the ones that will help you. Fabled Powers are in the clearings with the star-looking symbol. Occasionally, you may see a much more elaborate ring around the next clearing’s icon. This means the foes will be harder, but give greater rewards. Avoid these for serious runs — or risk having low health or no health potion once you reach the boss arena.

A brilliant Fabled Power is Thinking With Portals, which lets you place two portals in the Boss Arena and move between them at will. This can help you get right up next to Mother Treek to deal damage, and then teleport away by dodging into one of your portals.

The longer a fight goes on, the more likely you are to fail, so having Powers that will up your crit rate should also be high up on your list. If your weight class is Agile, you will want Tuck And Roll, which will cause all your perfect dodges to build to give you more shields throughout the fight.

Otherwise, you will want to Heavy Defense paired with Resolute. These Powers will give you shield segments for hitting multiple enemies with your heavy attacks and finishing them with Focus Hits. These powers can be put into effect when Mother Treek summons multiple allies into the Boss Arena to help.

Defeating Mother Treek In Rotwood

Now that you are fully prepared, understanding all the elements of this fight is very straightforward — with little strategy compared to beating a boss like Owlitzer. Mother Treek will open the fight with vine traps that spring up and then go back underground. Once they go back down, they will trigger again in a clockwise direction. This will occur 5 times, and then give you a window to deal as much damage as you can. If you have the Rillo armor set, just walk normally so that you stay in the safe zones. However, if you went with the Bublin armor set, you have a greater invincibility window — and will have greater mobility thanks to being an Agile weight class.

When Mother Treek raises its branch up while you are close to it, move away to dodge the upcoming attack. Then get right back into dealing damage before the next set of traps starts. There are different types of vine traps in addition to the opening clockwise one. One is a ring pattern that moves outward and then comes back to Mother Treek. There is also one that will cause straight lines from the top of the screen to the bottom that will alternate side to side. An easy trick to avoiding every kind of vine trap is to move into where the previous traps came from, as those areas will not have any traps at that moment.

Whenever a vine trap pattern resolves, it will give you a window in which you can deal out damage. It does not matter which weapon you use, so long as you know how to use them and can maximize damage through combos. When Mother Treek raises both elbows and shrieks, it will create a protective barrier of vines that will deal out damage if you stay close to it. This will be followed by Mother Treek summoning various allies to fight for it while it is protected. Dispatch all of these other enemies to continue the fight with Mother Treek. It might be a good idea to recruit some allies of your own and play some co-op if you are having trouble solo.

Later in the fight, Mother Treek will send out trails of vine traps that will shoot up in quick succession. Once the traps start going down, dodge up through them. They will not come back towards you, and will trail off the arena. Occasionally, Mother Treek will reach up into its leaves and throw out several explosive hazards around the arena. You can manually trigger these to help you deal damage to the other enemies she summons — or you can clear them away so that they do not trigger during vine traps.

Defeating Mother Treek will reward you with the Mother Treek Hearthstone, which you can take back to the hub area to earn a permanent upgrade and unlock the next area.

Rotwood

Released

April 24, 2024

Genre(s)

Action , Dungeon Crawler