In addition to the usual climbing hazards in Peak, players will eventually face a more insidious threat—ticks. These parasitic creatures first appear in the Tropics biome, the second major region, and can silently latch onto your character, causing progressive poison damage that drains stamina and can eventually become fatal if ignored.
What Are Ticks in Peak?
Peak throws all sorts of hazards at climbers as they ascend through each of the island’s biomes, but ticks are one of the first truly unique and subtle dangers players will encounter. These small, silent parasites don’t announce their presence, making them especially dangerous during solo expeditions where no one else is watching your back.
Ticks can attach themselves while you’re exploring the Tropics, often without any obvious trigger. They appear to latch on passively, and there’s no sound cue, UI pop-up, or attachment animation to alert the player. You might not even realize you’ve been bitten until your stamina bar starts draining and poison begins stacking with no clear source.
Where Do Ticks Come From?
Ticks are found exclusively in the Tropics biome, which unlocks after reaching the first campfire in Peak. They can attach at random while climbing, and contrary to some confusion in the community, they are not tied only to poison plants or vines. Even players who avoid obvious environmental hazards have reported picking them up while standing still.
One Steam user reported poison stacking “while literally doing nothing,” leading to frustration in co-op sessions. These cases are almost always due to hidden ticks.
Once attached, ticks cause poison buildup, reducing your maximum stamina over time and making all actions—especially climbing—far more taxing.
Detecting Ticks: Signs to Watch For
Ticks are nearly invisible when they first attach, particularly in solo play. There are no UI alerts or sound cues. Instead, players must infer their presence based on unexplained stamina or poison loss. This has led to confusion, and even frustration, with some players mistakenly assuming they’ve encountered a bug or glitch.
Key indicators of a hidden tick:
- You’re taking poison damage without any visible hazard.
- Your stamina max is dropping, even though you’ve avoided known toxic plants.
- Antidotes have no lasting effect (because the tick is still attached).
- You’ve just transitioned into the Tropics biome and poison starts shortly after.
- Teammates keep dying of poison one by one in co-op, even when no vines are nearby.
How to Remove Ticks in Co-op (Multiplayer Mode)
Ticks are much easier to deal with in multiplayer. Friends can spot ticks on your legs and remove them directly.
Steps to remove a tick in multiplayer:
- The affected player should stand still.
- A nearby teammate should approach and press E when the tick is visible.
- The tick will be removed, immediately halting poison buildup.
- Use an Antidote afterward to cure remaining poison status.
Multiplayer teammates have a clearer line of sight to your character’s legs, making ticks more obvious than in solo play. However, gear like backpacks can sometimes obscure the tick from view, causing players to die unknowingly.
How to Remove Ticks in Solo Play
Removing ticks while solo is more difficult, requiring the player to manipulate the camera to locate the parasite once it’s large enough.
Here’s how to remove a tick by yourself:
- Wait until it grows: Ticks must be fully engorged—roughly the size of a tarantula—before interaction becomes possible.
- Adjust your view:
- Climb a wall or ledge, then look down toward your legs.
- Or back into a wall and slowly pan the camera downward.
- Once the prompt appears, press E to remove the tick.
- Like in co-op, use an Antidote to cleanse the poison status afterward.
PC players have discovered that flicking the mouse side-to-side and spamming E may allow early removal, but this method is unreliable.
Controller users face extra challenges. The slower turning speed and lack of fast camera flicking make tick removal more frustrating, especially before the tick is fully visible.
Tip: Using the landing animation from a short jump can help expose your legs temporarily to spot the tick faster.
Common Issues: Invisible Ticks in Peak
Several players have complained about invisible or undetectable ticks, often caused by:
- Backpacks or gear obscuring the tick’s visual on the character model.
- The tick being on a part of the leg that’s hard to reach with standard camera movement.
- A lack of animation or audio cue when ticks attach.
A Reddit and Steam thread shows many users thought ticks were a bug or poison glitch until they manually spotted them during a landing animation or by dying multiple times.
What to Do with a Removed Tick
Strangely, ticks don’t just disappear when removed—they’re treated as an inventory item, and Peak allows you to interact with them in unusual ways.
After removal, you can:
- Eat the tick to recover a small amount of hunger and stamina.
- Use it to progress the “Foraging Badge”, which requires eating five unique berries—yes, ticks count as berries for badge purposes.
- Ticks provide more food the larger they’ve grown, so there may be a gameplay advantage in delaying removal if survival becomes a concern.
- They can also be fed to other players in co-op to help with hunger if needed, making them a strange but viable emergency food source.
Multiple users have confirmed ticks don’t cause poison when eaten, making them safe emergency food.
Final Tips for Surviving Ticks
- Always check your legs regularly in the Tropics, especially if poison starts stacking with no visible source.
- Communicate clearly in co-op. Let others inspect you if you suspect something’s wrong.
- Solo players should practice camera positioning and use the “ledge jump” technique to trigger landing animations that briefly expose their lower body for easier inspection.
- Don’t ignore unexplained stamina loss—it’s usually a tick.
- Consider keeping a tick in your inventory for Foraging badge progress or in case food supplies run low.
- If playing with a controller, anticipate delays in spotting or removing ticks and avoid heavy gear that blocks your legs.
Ticks in Peak aren’t just a nuisance—they’re a cleverly hidden hazard that tests your awareness, teamwork, and resource management. While they can ruin an unprepared climb, knowing how to identify and remove them turns them into just another step in the game’s broader survival challenge. And if you’re truly desperate… yes, you can eat the tick.
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