Help with Begegnung am fluss

I’m completely lost in the forest, and I have some branches. I’ve tried climbing, listening, dropping branches, etc. How can I get out?

I’ve figured out that step, but I’m stuck in the combat.

Okay, so I figured it out, too.

For the forest

You have to put the sticks in the earth.

For the man:

You need to speak to the man and fight him alternately

For the ending:

You need to talk a lot.

Something about this makes me irrationally happy: a request for help solving an obscure German game that placed 36th in the 2001 IF Comp, written in an obscure-but-surprisingly-popular German IF language I had never heard of before; and then, like the classy netizen he is, the OP comes back to update the thread when he figures out the correct solution.

Mathbrush is an IF hero. Long live Mathbrush.