Getting past the bloody spider.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Mattias

Level 17 Warrior.

9/14 alchemists (no more to buy).
78/78 bowmen.
12/12 Jarls.
65/65 Berzerkers.
32/32 Axthrowers.

550,000 gold in my pockets.

This fight is an excellently balanced progress check imo. It's not easy but if you don't mess your character up and think a bit, it's doable.

I found for a Warrior it's crucial to rack up as much leadership as possible. So I got me a Grand Strategist 3 medal, the warrior valkyrie, Glory 3 skill and some items with leadership. With that all I was able to get to 6,5k points and that's enough to kill the spider WITH the achievement.

As ppl before me pointed out, the best way to do it is with high def melee units like bears, jarls and jotuns, although jotuns are quite disappointing so far. I'd probably recommend warrior maidens (if you can get enough), all three kinds of bears and jarls. The jarls would wreak havoc on the baby spiders with their area attack and the bears would maul the boss spider to death in no time.


By the way money in this installment is horribly unbalanced, you have always like 100x more than you actually need. Weird.

[blacklegionary]

Jarl is usually avaiable in decent number but Warrior Maiden can be problematic. Early game they are the best unit for me but sometimes I cant even get 10 of them...

Most of the Viking troops level 1-3 in shop are fixed, but the level 4 is random while they are crucial at this early time.

[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

I didn't expect that, and lost my stacks of maidens and jotuns.

[Zhuangzi]

No trolls on first four islands in my game.

Anyway, I managed to beat the spider (Impossible Skald) at level 18 with 6600 leadership. I always prioritise leadership in KB games, so I have the Valkyrie that gives leadership up to level 3 and as the leader. I wanted to try for a 'bear team' but I had a real problem purchasing anything decent in quantity. This is really annoying as I just don't have access to high level units (other than Jotuns) on these islands. Even Jarls were in fairly short supply.

Anyway, I had to go with a hodge-podge team of Jarls, Jotuns, Blue Snakes, Axe Throwers and I forget the fifth unit. Not a good mix, and Morale was not great either, but it did the job within 11 rounds. My tactic was a simple one: go for the big spider as much as possible, and whack the small stacks if I have to. I had Frenzy Level 2 which helped a bit, and Distortion 3 (which I always go for early for Mass Haste + Stone Skin, Trap etc). For the boss I just cast Mass Haste on turn 1 (which is needed for when the spider moves location) and Stone Skin thereafter. Then I just whacked the big spider for 1k-2k on a critical. Jarls seem to be really useful here. Lost about 1/3 of my troops but it wasn't too hard overall.