I'd say, just suck it up and recurse,

sub deep_hash {
  my $h = shift;
  return $h unless @_;
  deep_hash($h->{shift()}, @_);
}

$xml = { 'depTar' => { 'name' => 'c_p20', 'loc' => 'srvr1' }};

print deep_hash($xml, qw/depTar name/);
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