Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General [Spoilers] Damn that spider fight was intense

Just downed the big a** spider with my lvl 3 party and with some "help" i wont spoiler here, but damn that fight was intense.
Liked the whole design of the area too. Nicely done Larian.

I spent half an hour on that fight, did pretty well too (especially with three characters, as Wyll slept through it, as usual), dispensed with its minions, got it down to about ¼ health... at which point it basically said "I'm bored, imma pwn you all now", took out my two main hitters reducing them to a non-revivable state leaving my archer stranded on a pillar of rock wondering what to do with herself. Grr etc. Okay, maybe if I'd persisted I could have persevered, but half an hour of listening to battle music was more than enough for me.

It was easier when I found out you can shoot the Web bridges, preferrably with spiders still on them

I still haven't found where this spider boss is in about 5 playthroughs, going to have to look up its location.

Is it actually harder than Ethel though?

And I see why I missed it, I never entered the blighted village well.

there are other entryways in the village as well and a few hidden magic items along the way

Use one character to start the fight while the others hide.

Use your wizard to take down the 3 egg clusters with fire bolts away from the fight. He wont aggro and you can kill them all while all the enemies are stuck in turn attack mode.

Use the rest of your party to go behind one of the spiders (the one below is the easiest to reach. Bring your three characters to surprise hit one of the phase spiders. This should kill him before the spiders can attack.

Use your wizard to firebolt the webs if the Matriarch is standing over them. With 1 hit they are destroyed and she falls to 30-40 damage. More often she jumps to a new web so repeat the process at least 1 more time.

Congrats now you only have to kill 1 phase spider and a matriarch at 40 health at most. With your entire group still ready to strike.

With a DEX-based character with good Stealth abilities (Astarion probably qualifies; my ranger certainly did) and a good ranged attack, it is possible to sneak around the cavern and draw away and kill the two phase spiders and destroy the egg clusters, all before aggroing the matriarch. This makes the fight much more manageable, since you now only have the matriarch to deal with. If you also burn down the bridges (with or without the matriarch on it), the fight becomes cheese.

Yeah, a very memorable encounter. Lae'zel pushed her off a web bridge and she fell into the Underdark >=D

A fitting death for her, really, if you read her journal -- she was a crazed devotee to Lolth who turned herself into that spider permanently.

I think the fight seems scarier than it is with all the summons. And it's its best feature. It keeps pressure on the player, which is what a boss fight should be. In comparison, the boss fights in the goblin camp are too straightforward and would be much better if some surprise mechanics were involved (once you understand the potential drum call, it's just rinse and repeat)

The githyanki raiders give a tuff fight too. They strike hard and are very mobile. I have some good hope for a challenging tactical mode in the future.

Yeah, I was actually a bit disappointed that I didn't have any unique options with my drow (Lolth) pc.

It's kind of stupid somehow that a phase spider would die falling from heights. She could just phase again before crashing down. I hope Larian addresses this issue before release. Because it's a good fight and it shouldn't be cheesable so easily.

Well, I cheesed it with Astarion stealthily taking down the eggs and the phase spiders from range.

Basically, I turned stealth on all the companions, moved them far away so the matriarch and the 2/3 patrolling phase spiders wouldn't aggro on them, took down the eggs real quick with melee attacks, started the fight, made sure Astarion was out of their vision range and it was constant: ranged sneak attack => stealth, up until her death.

At some point I was curious about dipping the bow in poison (since the big mama spider is resistant to poison) and used the wyvern poison on the bow out of curiosity. Big mama spider got 3 shot with the wyvern poison coated bow... is it a bug or a feature I wonder?

They are going to add a difficulty level so at it's highest levels I imagine there will be some significant challenges. BG2 and NWN had easy modes where aoes were enemy only, higher difficulties increased armor class and hp of mobs, potentially more mobs and the like.

Heh. My [turns-out-not-so] mighty Dwarf Warrior had quite an issue in this cave....
My rogue/thief however, murdered everything with more than two legs on her own. Hide, snipe, break eggs, hide, run like hell, shoot webs, scroll-of-magic-missle... Lots of fun.

Yeah it's a tough fight. My first time with the encounter I just went into the room and got spotted by a phase spider below me. Opening shot from the matriarch was a crit on Wyll that KO'd him. After a few rounds fight was looking grim until Gale cast a thunderwave that tossed the matriarch into the pit to the underdark! Had a good laugh, healed up then got curious if she had treasure on her and sent Wyll's imp into the hole to find out. Game crashed and I hadn't saved after winning the fight (EA woes).

Yea, this is what I was talking about.


Pretty sure it's not a bug. Different poisons have different DC. A spider that is resistant to poison can still get poisoned by a higher-level poison like the wyvern one.

Being able to push her off the bridge was a total accident for me, actually. It was a fun surprise, and I dont consider that yo be cheese. I dont consider anything that happens without foreknowledge to be cheese. Now, enemy ai just standing and doing nothing at all when we're at a sufficient height could use some tweaking... though I did *mild spoiler*

Aye, that was a great fight ..had three scrolls of ressurection and needed them all!

Did anyone else have problems with the camera during this fight? I haven't beat it yet and I think its an awful encounter in an awful location. Half the time I can't even find the so I can't use that tactic or take a shot.

They also way too much.

was it the same music, or the awful DOS mechanics of shifting through imaginary playlists is back?