Elden Ring’s Tree Sentinel now infinitely respawns… for some reason

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve played Elden Ring, there is always something to discover. This is especially true with rare bugs that are reportedly being found still, a month after the game came out. Souls games have a reputation for having tons of secrets, with a lot of things being hidden in plain sight. It is unclear if this newly discovered, infinitely respawning enemy is one such bug, or if it might have some lore significance.

One such mystery is being called into question now, with the discovery of a Tree Sentinel enemy who seemingly keeps respawning, when they absolutely should not do that. Throughout the entirety of Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree, these enemies have never respawned once you kill them. There are a lot of foes in the game that do this, staying dead for good when you’ve already dealt with them, but this Tree Sentinel doesn’t want to play by the rules. If the enemy isn’t already annoying enough, it now has to cheat death just to annoy you. Granted, there are steps to take to trigger this, but still.

This was reported on the Japanese website Gamespark, detailing the discovery. On YouTube, there are also videos popping up seemingly showing the method of how to get the Tree Sentinel to respawn. This is only the case with this specific enemy found near Scaduview, outside the Shaman Village and it doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else you find Tree Sentinels in the base game or the DLC. Supposedly, there is some method to getting the foe to respawn.

Even on the Elden Ring Fextralife wiki, someone has commented: “You can infinitely respawn a third tree sentinel (which doesn’t drop any runes or items) by going to the edge of shaman village and then returning. Not sure if this is a glitch or a neat easter egg to rematch tree sentinel as many times as you want for leisure”.

Another on YouTube commented on the video, saying “It surprised me”, expressing the same sentiment surely shared by many. Whether or not this is a bug, however, is hard to say. There is some speculation on Gamespark that mentions it might be tied to a cut boss in the Shaman Village that triggers the appearance of this Tree Sentinel, while others might think it has some story significance. Sometimes crumbs are left for us to follow in FromSoft games, but sometimes a rock is just a rock.

The problem with any speculation is that you can go down a rabbit hole very easily. In Dark Souls and Elden Ring, you can simultaneously read too much into one thing and not read enough into another at the same time, and these mysteries are part of what the community loves to debate. The Tree Sentinel doesn’t drop any runes, which seems to indicate that it is a bug, but it’s hard to know.