Each different biome in Peak presents its own unique threats to your climb, and unfortunately ticks are one of the things you'll have to deal with once you're in the tropics biome. When you know what to do, they are easy enough to deal with, especially compared to the rest of the hidden dangers waiting for you in Peak. Knowing how to identify them, though, is the biggest challenge.
If you're taking poison damage and don't understand why, since you haven't touched any plants or eaten any dodgy mushrooms, the chances are you've been bitten by a tick. You'll gain a very small amount of poison damage every few [[link]] seconds thanks to this parasite, but if you don't have an antidote to hand, you'll need to remove it as soon as possible. Here's what you need to do.
How to remove ticks in Peak
When [[link]] you know you've been bitten by a tick, you'll need a friend to find it on your body. From my experience with ticks, they usually cling onto the legs of your character. Ticks aren't easy to miss either; they are massive black bugs that hang off your body. Their size in comparison to your character does make them easy to remove when you interact with them too. Grab them like you would an item, and it'll instantly stop causing poison damage to the player it has been removed from.
If you're playing solo (or have strayed from your friends), you can still get ticks. As you can probably imagine, getting rid of them is a lot harder. You'll need to wait [[link]] until it's caused enough damage to double in size, which does mean you have to take a bit of poison damage, before looking at your legs and removing it yourself.
Interestingly, you can also eat the ticks you pull from yourself or your teammates. Although they aren't the most nutritious snack you'll find in the Tropics, they will resolve any hunger points dominating your health bar. You also won't take any further poison damage from consuming them. If you are concerned about the side effects of eating a tick though, you can always feed it to a friend first.
There's no way to avoid ticks, or predict when you'll get one. Unfortunately it seems the Tropics are just crawling with these little bugs looking to cause you some trouble. But, given you've got a good friend to help get rid of them, or a decent enough stamina bar if you're adventuring by yourself, you should be alright.