How to Become a Tree Expert

"Tree Expert" is the most out-of-place, annoying achievement for this game. At the time of writing, only 1.5% of players had obtained it. All of the other achievements can be obtained through the course of the campaign, but this one requires some grinding. This guide will present my method of obtaining the achievement, and it should be easy to duplicate.

Introduction

I am a completionist. If an achievement is even remotely obtainable, I will do what I can to get it. This is especially the case when it's the last achievement needed for 100% completion.



With games like this, I spend an abnormal amount of time messing around. I don't blaze through to win. So, by the time I had completed the campaign, I reached around 3k out of the 10,000 wood needed. That comes to around 33% done.

Since I was busy doing other things, such as crippling the enemy with disasters and creating an army to fight back incoming warriors, the tree harvesting was mostly just a background task as part of the process. I didn't really pay attention to how the trees worked until I got to the sandbox level to tackle this achievement.

Getting Started

In order to go after the achievement, you need to be able to focus on just the harvest. You have to be able to create forests. This isn't possible if you're having to fight back an enemy, especially if they are hurling firey meteors or creating volcanoes that torch the trees you do have. So, you'll need to do this in the Sandbox level, Paradise Regained. It is available when you complete the campaign.

If you are starting the sandbox level from scratch after completing the campaign, you can come back to the game and choose "Continue". This will take you right to Paradise Regained. You can also get to it the long way by clicking "Replay Levels", followed by "More", and then B3.

Obtaining this achievement took me an additional 4-5 hours on top of the main gameplay. Your mileage may vary, but be prepared for it to take a while. You can do it in multiple parts by saving your progress and loading it later. I did the entire grind in one go.

Intial Preparations

The sandbox island is fairly rugged. It has multiple elevations and not much to work with at the start. You'll need to do a lot of terraforming to make room for what you need to do.

Starting off, there isn't any wood. So, a couple of Woodcutters will be needed. Another farm will be needed to support the new Furlings. Once this basic infrastructure is in place, level out the land all around the starting point. This will make room for the additional growth to come. It will take a bit for the Mana to refill for leveling each time, but we don't want to go crazy with more Furlings just yet.

Time to Expand

Once the area is leveled out, more Farmers and Woodcutters will be needed, as well as Blacksmiths and Priests. Keep in mind that we don't want the forest to be overwhelmed, or you'll end up with something that looks like this:



This screenshot was later in the run, but the same effect will happen if you build too many Woodcutters at the start. So, only make a couple more to boost wood supply a little.

Once you've done that, create more Farmers. If you haven't done so already as part of the leveling process, expose the nearest Iron Ore and level out the terrain again. Create some Blacksmiths to start gathering iron for the Priests.

More Mana, More Leveling

Now you should have around a dozen Furlings. Your Mana will refill a little faster now. Start leveling out more terrain to make room for some Priests. I did this by expanding out into the surrounding water a little, as well as pushing the elevation out some into the lower steps. You could probably just keep it all on one level, but I liked the stepped terrain, so I tried to leave some of it behind.

Once there is enough room, create some Priests. Keep creating Farmers as needed. Do some more terrain leveling for more Priests and Farmers. After you have enough Priests to refill the Mana enough for leveling at a decent pace, terraform the island to make a lot more room.

This is what my island looked like by the time I was done with the achievement. It should give you an idea of how I left the stepped terrain as well as the ramps I made for the Furlings. It also shows you where my various Furlings set up shop. Notice that I completely filled in the center area, too.

Time for a Priest Party

If you pay attention to the tips that appear while a level is loading, it mentions that you can use Rain to grow more trees. Well, you're going to need a lot of rain for what's coming up. So, you will want more Priests to make the Mana fill up even faster. This will require more Farmers and Blacksmiths. I finished it with 15 Farms, 4 Blacksmiths, and 14 Priests. You don't have to do this all at once, but if you have leveled the terrain enough, go for it. The faster you can generate Mana, the better.

Grow the Forests

By now, your Mana should be filling up at a pace that will cause it to be full in a matter of a few seconds. Rain is the first elemental magic available, but it still takes a chunk of the meter away. To get enough trees to grow, it's going to look like thunderstorms have covered chunks of the island.

The island has 4 or 5 good clusters of trees. There is one to the north and south of the starting point. The few Woodcutters you do have are probably cutting away at one or both of them. You'll probably want to set off some Rain side by side in each of them. The clouds travel right-to-left, so you can stack them to make a rain bank that strafes the trees. Keep an eye out for little saplings to Rain on. The more trees you have, the more saplings will appear.

After setting up the initial clusters, you can focus on the ones that aren't being cut down. On the far south part of the island is a good cluster to expand. There's another one to the southeast that can also be expanded. You can see in the overhead view above how I have created a forest out of both. Keep making it rain all around the perimeter of the trees. It will make younger trees grow to full maturity, and new saplings will appear.

This is the grinding task that you just have to keep repeating all over each tree cluster. Sometimes saplings will appear away from the main clusters. Rain on those, too, to encourage even more growth. If you do it right, you can end up with trees all in-between your existing buildings in an hour or so. Obviously you want to leave enough clear space for Woodcutters. But, I think you'll get tired of watering after you get a forest the size of the one to the south of my island.

Time to Harvest!

You've been cultivating your trees and making forests out of them with excessive amounts of Rain. What started out as a decent cluster of trees has become something ready for harvest.



Now it's time to make a bunch of Woodcutters. Since you'll probably have many thousands of units of wood to collect, you'll want to go as fast as possible, but not so fast as to obliterate the forest. At the peak, I had 30 Woodcutters. The smaller groups of trees were completely wiped out. 6 of the Woodcutters even tore down their huts.

You're probably wondering how you're going to get 10,000 units of wood when you are only showing less than 300 at the top. Well, the Woodcutters never stop. They are always cutting down trees even if the available quantity never changes. You can see this in action by checking on the progress of the achievement.

Obviously, you won't have enough trees to reach the achievement just by idling. So, you'll need to keep nurturing the forests while the Woodcutters are cutting them down. More saplings will appear in various spots. Just keep Raining on them and the perimeter of your trees. If you're fast enough, you'll keep ahead of the Woodcutters so that a steady supply of trees will be available.

Completion

It's only a matter of time before the achievement is completed. You can check on your progress every now and then to get an idea of how much longer you have to grind. At certain intervals, it will also pop up the achievement progress in the corner. If you're getting tired of the grind, you can save your island and come back to it if you wish. Just remember to keep Raining all over the place to keep the trees growing until you do get the achievement.

Thank You!

Thank you for taking the time to read my guide. I hope that it helps you obtain the achievement that so few people have done so far.

This is my first guide, so ratings and comments are appreciated!

[AbbydonPrime]

Rhyming_Rogue: Maybe this guide and some complaining got them to patch it. When I wrote this guide, the trees would all be cut down, and the huts would get dismantled. It sounds like they made the trees grow at a faster rate in the 3 years since I last played.

[Rhyming_Rogue]

Thanks for the guide. It’s actually one reason I got this game, knowing that I could probably get all the achievements. The other reason was that it was on sale. In any case, I let the sandbox game idle for a bit and actually saw some trees growing, so you can actually just idle to obtain this achievement.

[AbbydonPrime]

Unless they did an update after I posted the guide (which was almost 3 years ago), when I had too many woodcutters, they'd decimate the island and end up dismantling their huts. Rain was the only way I could get more saplings to appear. If I manage to get some time away from my other games, I might give it a try to see what happens now. Thanks, Vampire_DKC!

[Vampire_DKC]

I just noticed that the more woodcutters you have the more saplings will spawn around your island, so you do not have to be carefull with building up a forest.

[AbbydonPrime]

I'm glad you liked it. I agree, it's very boring, especially since it takes just as long as the entire campaign did. But, I'm compelled to complete any achievement that's within my grasp (i.e. not multiplayer or brutal difficulty). So, I went for it. The insanity of it led me to make this guide.

[Birdmaster]

nice guide, thank you for it, but tbh, i cant be bothered to farm an achievement as boring as that.