Orb spider

Useful Info

Orb spiders are obnoxious and dangerous arachnids that tend to avoid direct combat with you, lingering at the edge of your line of sight and hurling Orbs of Destruction at you whenever you stop pursuing them. Their tendency to appear in areas filled with web traps only makes them more of a threat. They can be found in the Spider's Nest, particularly on the lower floors.

Tips & Tricks

• Orb spiders can deal a good amount of damage, but they are quite fragile. Use ranged attacks to kill them fast.
  • Poison darts are very effective, even with 0 Throwing skill. As these spiders are weak to poison, applying only a few darts will inflict a lethal amount of poison.
• With decent footwork or perhaps a quick Blink, you can dodge their Orbs of Destruction. Once you've managed that, the orb will take several turns to circle back around for another pass, which may take it into another spider, a wall, or even the orb spider that cast it.
• Summons can be a great way to block their orbs.
• Orb Spiders have a relatively low amount of hit dice, making them a good target for a wand of polymorph if you don't have a good ranged weapon.
• If you have trouble chasing down orb spiders, use curare-tipped darts to slow them down.

History

• Prior to 0.28, orb spiders only had 7 HD and their bites did 5 damage.
• Prior to 0.17, orb spider corpses gave inedible chunks.
• Orb spiders were introduced in 0.11.