Tree

Trees are a natural, harvestable entity that populate the surface of Nauvis and other surfaces. They function as a source of wood, absorb small amounts of pollution, and interact with fires and agricultural systems. Trees appear in several visual variants (green, red, brown, dry, dead stumps), each with defined harvesting yields and pollution-absorption behavior. Mature live trees yield wood when mined; dead trunks and dry trees have distinct yields and mining times.

Trees can be harvested by hand or tool to collect wood. Live trees and the dry tree yield 4 wood when mined and have a mining time around 0.55; dead trees (except the dry tree) yield 2 wood with a mining time of 0.5. Many other methods of removal (guns, explosives, flamethrowers, tanks, grenades, atomic bombs, or poison) will destroy the tree and its wood, preventing any wood collection. Construction robots can harvest trees automatically if a deconstruction planner is used; agricultural towers can harvest and replant trees within their range.

Trees act as persistent pollution sinks at the chunk level. Each living tree absorbs a small amount of pollution per second; the absorption rate depends on the tree’s leaf-density stage. Fully leaved trees absorb the most (about -0.001 pollution/sec each), and absorption declines as the tree loses leaves until trees with minimal leaves stop absorbing pollution. Some tree variants (dead trunks, dry trees, desert dead tree) have a much smaller fixed absorption (about -0.0001 pollution/sec) and no progressive leaf stages. When chunk pollution exceeds 60 units, trees in that chunk periodically absorb pollution but may suffer visible damage: they can lose leaf stages or gain grayness as they absorb pollution. A tree stops progressing once the sum of its gray percentage and leaves-lost percentage exceeds 120%; about half of trees will stop one stage earlier, so heavily polluted chunks can contain trees that are either leafless but less gray, or leafier but more gray. Leaf-density affects absorption rate; grayness does not.

Trees can catch fire from flamethrowers and flamethrower turrets. Once ignited, fires cannot be extinguished and will spread rapidly from tree to tree, leaving stumps and charred trees behind while releasing a large amount of pollution. Fire spread is limited to about 100 generations (the initial fire is generation one), so a single ignition will propagate but eventually stop. Fire breaks (cleared terrain without trees) stop or limit spread.

Trees are renewable via agriculture. Tree seeds are produced by processing wood: 2 wood → 1 seed. Planting tree seeds manually or using an agricultural tower grows trees to maturity in 10 minutes, after which they yield 4 wood when harvested. Agricultural towers automatically harvest and replant mature trees within range if they have seeds available; however, towers plant with at least two tiles of empty space between trees, so manual planting can achieve higher tree density. Processing all wood from mature trees into seeds yields a net increase in seed supply, enabling sustainable wood farms. Tree seeds are also usable as burnable fuel.

Practical notes and interactions:

• To collect wood, use manual mining, a deconstruction planner with construction robots, or allow agricultural towers to harvest; other removal methods destroy the wood.
• Use flamethrowers or tanks carefully: fires spread fast and increase pollution dramatically while removing trees permanently.
• Planting dense tree farms by hand provides better pollution mitigation per area than agricultural towers, though towers automate harvest/replant.
• Trees provide modest, passive pollution absorption—use them as part of a wider environmental strategy but do not rely on them as the sole pollution sink.
• Destroying many trees at once (for base expansion) yields large amounts of wood only if removed by mining methods that retain the wood; weapons and explosives sacrifice the wood for faster clearing.