The staff, after getting the play-by-play, begins theorycrafting with you on how to best tackle this. Evidently, attacking it with your own repertoire isn’t working out, so the question soon becomes about what will penetrate it’s defences. Right away, your mind goes to hostages, but the staff advises against that, making the very good point that showing it one of the girls’ statues will just make it unpetrify them and Element them up, drawing attention to the distinctly Element-shaped spots on the Tree.