Lunarthrall Plant

Based on game build 714014 | Last updated: 2026-03-07

Overview

lunarthrall_plant is a boss entity prefab that implements the Lunarthrall Plant's gameplay mechanics in DST. It coordinates vine spawning, entity targeting, and transitions between idle, attacking, and tired states. It manages a collection of vine segments (lunarthrall_plant_vine, lunarthrall_plant_vine_end) via the vines table, handles infestation of nearby pickable plants, and triggers death sequences including vine destruction and loot dropping. The prefab uses a stategraph (SGlunarthrall_plant) for its primary behavior loop and interacts with multiple components to handle health, combat, freeze effects, and colour syncing.

Usage example

local plant = SpawnPrefab("lunarthrall_plant")
plant.Transform:SetPosition(x, y, z)

-- Infest a nearby tree to lock onto it
local tree = FindEntity(plant, 10, function(guy) return guy:HasTag("veggie") end)
if tree then
    plant:infest(tree)
end

-- Force a spawn animation (e.g., after reappearing)
plant:playSpawnAnimation()

Dependencies & tags

Components used: health, combat, lootdropper, inspectable, entitytracker, colouradder, timer, freezable, burnable, growable, pickable, planardamage, planarentity, follower
Tags added by prefab: plant, lunar_aligned, hostile, lunarthrall_plant, retaliates, NPCcanaggro, gestaltmutant, fx, NOCLICK, soulless
Tags added by vine segments: weakvine, lunarthrall_plant_segment, lunarthrall_plant_end

Properties

Property	Type	Default Value	Description
targetsize	string	"med"	Controls which idle/death animation to play (short, med, or tall). Set during infestation based on the infested plant’s visual bounding box height.
highlightchildren	table	{}	List of child entities (lunarthrall_plant_back) used for visual highlighting.
vines	table	{}	List of active vine segments spawned by this plant. Managed via vines, vinekilled, and vineremoved.
vinelimit	number	TUNING.LUNARTHRALL_PLANT_VINE_LIMIT	Maximum number of vines that may be active at once. Decrements on vine spawn, increments when a vine is removed without being killed.
tintcolor	number	0.6 + math.random() * 0.4	Shared colour multiplier applied to the plant and its back entity/vines.
back	entity	nil	Reference to the lunarthrall_plant_back visual entity attached to the plant.
wake / tired	boolean	nil	State flags for the tired/wake cycle. Set during state transitions (tired_pre, tired_wake).
waketask / resttask	task	nil	Scheduled tasks to manage transitions between tired and attack states.

Main functions

infest(target, isLoad)

• Description: Infests a pickable target plant, locking onto it for targeting. Prevents player interaction and growth on the target, tracks it via entitytracker, positions the plant at the target’s location, sets the animation based on target size, and fires the lunarthrallplant_infested event. Used on initial spawn (with isLoad = true) or during gameplay.
• Parameters: target (entity) — the pickable plant to infest. isLoad (boolean) — if true, skip animation start (handled post-load).
• Returns: Nothing.
• Error states: Silently returns if target is nil or lacks pickable/growable components.

deinfest()

• Description: Ends infestation on the tracked target. Restores pickable.caninteractwith, resumes growth via growable:Resume, and removes the NOCLICK tag. Called during plant removal or death.
• Parameters: None.
• Returns: Nothing.

playSpawnAnimation()

• Description: Forces the stategraph to enter the "spawn" state, triggering the vine-eruption animation sequence.
• Parameters: None.
• Returns: Nothing.

killvines()

• Description: Kills all vines in the vines table by calling health:Kill() on each. Used during the plant’s death sequence.
• Parameters: None.
• Returns: Nothing.

vinekilled(vine)

• Description: Removes the given vine from the vines list and decrements vinelimit only if it was not killed (e.g., manually removed). If the plant has no vines and vinelimit <= 0, it schedules a tired-state transition.
• Parameters: vine (entity) — the vine segment to process.
• Returns: Nothing.

vineremoved(vine, killed)

• Description: Removes vine from the vines list. Increments vinelimit if killed is false (e.g., the vine was manually destroyed or moved). Does not trigger tired transitions; used by vine entities on removal.
• Parameters: vine (entity), killed (boolean).
• Returns: Nothing.

OnLoadPostPass(inst)

• Description: Called post-load to re-infest the target plant if the entity tracker found a valid targetplant. Ensures state consistency after save/load.
• Parameters: inst (entity) — the plant instance.
• Returns: Nothing.

Events & listeners

• Listens to:
  • death — triggers OnDeath, which kills vines, drops loot, plays death animation, and removes the entity after animation completes.
  • freeze — triggers OnFreeze, cancelling wake/rest tasks and resetting tired/wake state and vine limit.
  • onremove — triggers OnRemove, which calls deinfest() and killvines() to clean up infestation and vines.
  • attacked — triggers OnAttacked, which sets the attacker as the new combat target (if not already switching targets and attacker isn’t a projectile).
  • newcombattarget (on headplant) — synchronizes combat target to the vine segment.
  • droppedtarget (on headplant) — clears the vine segment’s combat target.
  • animover — used in OnDeath to remove the entity once the death animation finishes.
  • timerdone (name == "idletimer") — sets mode to "retreat" for lunarthrall_plant_vine_end.
• Pushes:
  • lunarthrallplant_infested — fired when infestation begins.
  • doattack — pushed by vine segments to initiate attack.
  • moveforward, moveback, emerge — pushed by vine segments to control movement logic.