Getting past the bloody spider.

[MoonLite22]

I was almost no-loss before this fight on mage/impossible. I'm glad I didn't try for a no-loss playthrough because this boss showed me I'd have to concede it anyway.

I went in with Jarls/Jotuns/Berserkers/Axethrowers and Polar Bears (kept all my range in reserve), lvl 16 soothsayer afair (I up to this point still have only 2 maidens in shop :/).

After 3-4 really bad tries the fight ended with me killing the boss with everything wiped out except my leftover 2 Jotuns, who then valianty defended in the corner of the map vs 6 leftover stacks of spiders, 2 being 200+. A lot of heals were used.

I'm glad I pulled it off at all, scares me to even think of doing this no-loss.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by MoonLite22

I'm glad I pulled it off at all, scares me to even think of doing this no-loss.

Yeah, the spider is a no-lossers killer
I strongly suspect certain WoTN can't be done no-loss although I'd love for somebody to prove me wrong.

[cbone]

18/mage/hard

trolls trolls trolls. abuse these suckers hard. they are boarder-line cheating IMO. I managed to squeeze 3 into a stack with some leadership items. just had them hit the boss every turn, backed by some offensive magic for about 1k damage a turn. 1.5k with double cast.

the trolls usually shurgged off the damage and full healed at the beginning of the round, although once the baby spider stacks get big enough you could get unlucky and lose a troll before there turn starts to full heal.

the other stacks are simply throw-away troops to tie up the baby spiders. hitting the boss with anything else just gets them counter attacked and chunked badly. the boss is even capable of multiple counter attacks per round.

try parking your baby spider diversion troops in the corners so they cant get surrounded and mobbed by more then 2 baby spiders at a time.

what makes excellent tanks in this battle are snakes. you can mass purchase them from the witch chick in the cave. snakes have 90% poison resist and the baby spiders are 100% poison damage, so you buy 3 full stacks of snakes/swamp snakes/royal snakes.

another suggestion would be to pick up the calm rage spell. turns useless rage at boss fights into usable mana. the conversion ratio is like 2 rage for 1 mana.

[xhan]

Great idea with the snakes! I need to pay attention to resistancess more - the info is way too hidden on the unit chart imho.

Originally Posted by cbone

18/mage/hard

trolls trolls trolls. abuse these suckers hard. they are boarder-line cheating IMO. I managed to squeeze 3 into a stack with some leadership items. just had them hit the boss every turn, backed by some offensive magic for about 1k damage a turn. 1.5k with double cast.

the trolls usually shurgged off the damage and full healed at the beginning of the round, although once the baby spider stacks get big enough you could get unlucky and lose a troll before there turn starts to full heal.

the other stacks are simply throw-away troops to tie up the baby spiders. hitting the boss with anything else just gets them counter attacked and chunked badly. the boss is even capable of multiple counter attacks per round.

try parking your baby spider diversion troops in the corners so they cant get surrounded and mobbed by more then 2 baby spiders at a time.

what makes excellent tanks in this battle are snakes. you can mass purchase them from the witch chick in the cave. snakes have 90% poison resist and the baby spiders are 100% poison damage, so you buy 3 full stacks of snakes/swamp snakes/royal snakes.

another suggestion would be to pick up the calm rage spell. turns useless rage at boss fights into usable mana. the conversion ratio is like 2 rage for 1 mana.

[Fatt_Shade]

the boss is even capable of multiple counter attacks per round.

Every Boss in previous games had multiple retaliations, this is not bug or new thing in WotN.

[FromWisdomToHate]

Killed the giant spider on impossible in 4 rounds with viking. Tried to finish the fight with no-loss, but no matter what approach i tried ti seemed 'impossible' so i gave up on it, so guess ill do the very low-loss run

[Xargon]

Originally Posted by FromWisdomToHate

Killed the giant spider on impossible in 4 rounds with viking. Tried to finish the fight with no-loss, but no matter what approach i tried ti seemed 'impossible' so i gave up on it, so guess ill do the very low-loss run

Would you mind posting your strategy for the battle (which seems to work very well)? Looks like many people have problems beating it...

[Monstruel]

Just killed him as Viking on Hard at level 13. Three types of Snakes, Bear Riders and Trolls (3). Only the Trolls engaged the Spider himself, the other four stacks spent the battle fighting the baby spiders.

Frenzy (level 2 for me) was very important here. My Snake stacks got to ~100 attack, after a bit, and the Trolls got up to a whopping 259 attack (from their own property, though, not from Frenzy).

It should be noted that without the snakes (poison resistance) and the regenerating Trolls the fight would be impossible at this level.

[FromWisdomToHate]

Originally Posted by Xargon

Would you mind posting your strategy for the battle (which seems to work very well)? Looks like many people have problems beating it...

I used biggest DMG dealers (pirates and sea dogs, i also had weapon called driller which gives 25% DMg bonus to melee troops and maxed berserker skill)
i almost did 9k crit dmg on him

here is the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-undkI6d-Xs

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Yeah, the spider is a no-lossers killer
I strongly suspect certain WoTN can't be done no-loss although I'd love for somebody to prove me wrong.

Pretty sure it's doable. I did it with minimal casualties when I wasn't trying to no-loss. You just need to have a high armor stack get stone skinned and hopefully mana spring'd. Have maiden's around for ressurrect, and other units that are good at killing spiders. It doesn't look like the big spider does ranged attacks except as retaliation. It'd take a while, but is probably a fairly good sure bet.

Also, you can get exactly one wanderer scroll before this fight, so that might be an important thing to twink. Get it early, of the right variety, and then duplicate it a few times with the bird.