Getting past the bloody spider.

[Mattias]

Gritting my teeth here from trying to beat this creature so bear with me.

I'm at my first 'real' boss fight. Cave of the frozen tears is the location. The largest issue I have with these is the take-away of rage powers for bosses (this comes across as lazy by the way, more on that later). I'll provide some statistics here first:

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.

Because more focused on warrior tree, I don't have memorized level 2 or 3 tiered spells. I think I'm at a standstill because I cannot access any of the other continents to continue grinding my way up the levels to possibly come back and unleash hell on the arachnid. Incredibly sloppy to have the message 'Sorry, we know this seems unfair but the bosses need a chance to fight too'. When I try to access the rage powers. Really? Why not make the boss sectioned timed so that rage-powers worked after countering an assault of baby spiders?

I have not found the game to be a significant difficult yet. Found the challenge to be similar to the last two Kings Bounty games. It's on hard mode, yet I'm just scratching the 'yellow' on the big spider when the last of my units fall.

Is there anyone out here who's actually beaten this spider from this version? I've beat the same spider (also a little frustrating cutting and pasting previous bosses) from the previous games by doing two things not possible:

KB 1: Using a mage and double spellcasting.
KB AP: Progressing further into the game and getting paladins/knights who worked incredibly well on the creature. I've not noticed those at all in the game yet.

Anyone give me a bit of a hand? Really would appreciate it.

[Rubaniboi]

Learn the warrior skill frenzy...

then try to kill as many spider stacks as possible without attacking the boss...
when you have killed sufficient stacks, the attack of all your troops will be tremendously high

then start attacking the boss to make each attack do as much damage as possible. use defence runes to reduce damage from the spider boss's retaliation

YUP GOOD LUCK!

[windezz]

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.

Anyone give me a bit of a hand? Really would appreciate it.

Warrior here too, took me a couple tries to figure it out.

Put your ranged units in reserve and hire two more stacks of melee units. I also first brought two stacks of ranged units to that fight and found them constantly being tied up in melee by the spiders.

I was able to replace them with about 20 warrior maidens and a couple jotuns, and finished that boss fight easily. In my game there were a couple huts at the high mountain ridge that you can only reach via flying horse, and I think one of them was labeled house of jotun in the same map with the cave of frozen tears. Jotuns are 780hp melee tanks, and one of the huts also had trolls for sale, so you might find some more heavy melee units.

I just used a stack to stay in the middle of most spider spawns while rest of my units bum rushed the boss. Took some losses but it's doable.

Also, you might want to switch your ranged stacks back in after that fight, and replenish your troops, because there will be another more conventional encounter with a npc hero shortly after. Put your reserved stacks back in town if you want to use them later, because a certain event will wipe out your entire army. I didn't expect that, and lost my stacks of maidens and jotuns.

[Fatt_Shade]

I still havent try this game, but in previous KB spider had same characteristics : it`s head attack were poison and did lots of dmg to all non poison resistant units, but it you attack it from sides left/right legs retaliation is physical so get some high def troops on it`s sides cast stone skin/magic spring if available and start hacking.
As windezz said try that hut for trolls or jotuns, but if fight is underground troll is better choice with his regeneration, and i`m not sure if this still stands but every retaliation is in 2 hex area so dont attack with 4 units at same time, because when you hit 1 spider leg it retaliate on 2 hex dmging 2 of your units (to much losses for your no revive unit setup). Good luck

[Mattias]

Originally Posted by Rubaniboi

Learn the warrior skill frenzy...

then try to kill as many spider stacks as possible without attacking the boss...
when you have killed sufficient stacks, the attack of all your troops will be tremendously high

then start attacking the boss to make each attack do as much damage as possible. use defence runes to reduce damage from the spider boss's retaliation

YUP GOOD LUCK!

Thanks for the replies.

Tried killing the baby spiders till round 20. Not very effective as the boss continues to pump out higher and higher strength baby spiders. I've got level 2 frenzy but with baby spider batches coming in drops at 200 strong, it takes its toll. In just two rounds from attacking the boss (it did go more zippy, but at a heavy cost) I lost half my Royal snakes (tried them out since I found critical damage happened more with them) and 1 of my jotuns. I'm still making no real progress. Boss also spits out that goo which does 3-400 damage at will. Nowhere is selling trolls I'm afraid.

[lowsx]

Use Vikings and Berserkers. Make them berserk when fighting spider. They will hit huge damage to the spider (> 2000 damage).

Did not use much spells (I am a skad). Using this strategy, I got the achievement - killing the spider in less than 15 rounds.

[Mattias]

I had to cheat. I just couldn't do it any other way. I tried for over 2 hours (plus made an account here, so I feel it a tad justified).

Here's what I did:

shift + ~ key to bring the menu up during the game. I had the bear warrior chicks in group one. I did 'doublyarmy 1' so I had 38 or so of those ladies. I only had enough leadership for 19. When the battle started....

The bosses won't fight anything that's over your leadership limit. So she basically beat down the boss while the rest of my ragtag crew fought off the babies. Yet the babies went for her too, so when the boss spider died she was down to 24 ladies. Just killed off a few extras and the battle was won.

Feels good.

Originally Posted by lowsx

Use Vikings and Berserkers. Make them berserk when fighting spider. They will hit huge damage to the spider (> 2000 damage).

Did not use much spells (I am a skad). Using this strategy, I got the achievement - killing the spider in less than 15 rounds.

[coRex]

i had some issues with this spider too... (warrior - impossible)

waiting and killing those spider stacks does not work for me... because the stacks become higher and higher...

so i tryed the boss with a different lineup...
polar bears, ancient bears (with stone skin huge defense and they do some good dmg - especially with the warrior skill double dmg - you have to be a little bit lucky)
sea dogs (for some good aoe dmg against those anoying spiders)
canoneer (you can use any ranged i guess, but these can take some hits from spiders and still do good)
vikings, berserker (for some insane crits and attacks)

i tryed to kill as many spiders in every round, but i also tryed to focus on the boss and hit him at least 2 times every round...

i hope this helps!

[Zechnophobe]

Skald, hard. I did all previous content before fighting him, and was level 20 or 21 when I fought him, with 22/22 Jarls (for comparison)

I used Jarls, Soothsayers, Royal Snakes, Battle Maidens, Jotun's.

I used Valkyrie to give more leadership (900) and stomped the spider fast enough to get the achievement.

I think the problem you have is that your troops look very weak. Axe throwers and Berserkers really don't cut it that far into the game. Need some stuff with higher damage and health.

[xhan]

Did it with a lvl17 Soothsayer. After 2 failed attempts I killed it on the 3rd.

Jarls
Warrior Maidens
Slingers
Assassins
Skalds

What did the trick was a change in tactics. All my troops only focused on killing the small spiders as soon as possible - except for the Jarls. The Jarls got Stoneskin+Hell's Breath+Persistence (amazing underrated synergy with skalds, made my buffs last 9 turns!) and meleed the spider. Her counterattacks only dealt about 50-100 dmg this way and he kept hitting for about 1K.

The trick with skalds is to FIRST buff your unit manually, then use their ability. It will almost always cast persistence on the unit that has multiple buffs.

No other troop except the Jarls attacked the giant spider to avoid counterattacks, save for a few spears from the Maiden. I spent the turns hacking away small spiders and casting flame arrows on the spider. Took about 20 turns, lost around 30% of my army.