How do you kill spider swarms?

[Lora Grim]

I tried setting them on fire, splashing them with acid, throwing lightning at them... nothing seems to work. Are they "bugged"?

[Kereth]

Have the same problem...

[Jackdaw Mask]

Basically, either have tons of acid flasks/alchemist fires or aoes <_< So return when you are higher leveled.

[Terran]

How do you retreat? I lost the game because I literally couldn't run away. I tried going to the exit, but it wouldn't highlight. Went into that damned spider cave and got everyone killed.

[RafaelElendil]

I told about this encounter so many times...

"Hater, bla bla bla"

You cant flee bro, this encountar is one of the many examples of bad design by the devs. Its not in the original book.

You have to metagame to win, or basicly, know they are there before going there, will always kill a low level party wich gone there just by chance.

That said, get lots of alchemical items and equip in everybody.

If you have a mage, try to be at least caster level 3 and use burning hands... should be 2 or 3(if youre unlucky) per swarm, so try to get them together and use one high hp tank to keep the swarm together (you will have to burn the tank to, but he usually can take it)

Everybody will miss a lot with the alchemical items, but they will do always at lest 1 damage, they have 9 HP each if nothing changed from beta. So spam acids and alchemist fire.

Good luck, there are plenty of other bad designed encounters in the game (oh, and all unrunnable), be prepared, you just found the first one :)

[Qooper]

@RafaelElendil

Well this is blatant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ then. I never played Pathfinder or D&D but watched a lot of games on YT and I play and GM Shadowrun on frequent occasion, but this spider swarms are wrong.

You are telling me that swipes with a torch or a slap with a greatsword like the one Amiri is hodling doesnt fry or squash at lesat some of those buggers? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. If that were the case I will take over the world with my army of trained pet spiders.

In the games defense that was actually the first major red flag, the rest was quite good so far

[shaki92]

Originally posted by RafaelElendil:

You have to metagame to win, or basicly, know they are there before going there, will always kill a low level party wich gone there just by chance.

And that's good. This is what I want from the game, you die, you learn, you prepare better and overcome the challenge. What's the point of playing the game and learning the system if you can just walk anywhere and kill anything?


Also most low level parties will still win that fight. I didn't know anything about Pathfinder before this game, walked there, and still won, even tho it took like 10 minutes After I realized my weapons do nothing, I started tanking them all with Valerie and tried everything in my backpack, finally acid/fire flasks worked, but I ran out of them, and was still left with one swarm, so I tanked it with Valerie for the next ~5 minutes while spamming my mage's acid lvl 0 spell, which hit the swarm once in like 6-7 tries and did 1 dmg to them xD But I finally won, and it felt good. That was when I knew that this is the game I was waiting for. First time since BG2 when I'm having so much fun with an RPG.

[Falaris]

No, you do not need area of effect damage.
The swarms are immune to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage. That is all. Do any other sort of damage, and it works. Flasks of acid, the everburning torches you start with, alchemical fire all works, and you should have found plenty of it by the time you get to them.

[Billiam2920]

Yea, just throw a torch on Amira and whoever else is your melee and have them go to town.

Finished this at lvl 2 on normal difficulty, just kept MC and Linzi back throwing alch fire and acid while Amira and Val took torches to them.

[Graygan]

This is always the first thing I do after the starting bandits at Olegs.

I bring 10 alchemical fire, 10 acid flasks, and the 2 ever burning torches. At level 2 it takes me maybe 3 rounds to kill them. I just have Valerie go first to trigger them so the swarms go to her. Valerie and someone else have the torches in hand. Amiri does a wide end-run and goes after the big spider... usually dies in 2 or 3 hits. In the meantime, I have Lindzi and my main tossing alchemical fire and acid flasks at the swarms on Valerie. They die pretty fast. Valerie rarely takes more than a point or two of strength damage.

Then the third swarm and 2nd spider comes out and I rinse and repeat. Though that one usually goes after my main or Lindzi... but it's easier to kill the one swarm and one spider.

Then you get those berries, heal up to full or as close as you can get with Lindzis 3 cure lights, head back to Olegs, turn in the quest. Get the reward, but don't sell the potion yet. Go to sleep. When you get up, you'll be cured or mostly so. If you need to, use the potion on whomever still has the most strength damage. Ta-da. Done at 2nd level. Now you can go kill some bandits or chase tartuccio.

Sometimes... rarely... I'll reload if someone goes down, but it almost never happens.

[Brorodante]

Yeah, pretty much equipping your melee characters with the everburning torches and buying Alchemist fire/Acid Flask in Oleg did the trick for me. There is a quick to the point guide for this specific problem here: https://healingmuffin.com/2018/10/01/pathfinder-kingmaker-how-to-kill-spider-swarms/

[Shahadem]

If you can't smush them with a stick then how exactly do you hurt them with a torch? It's not even clear what a swarm is. Is it a swarm of Black Widows? Then you should be able to frighten them away with light. A swarm of Daddy Long Legs?

Well I killed them by using my normal weapons so I'm not entirely convinced that you need special tactics. And if special tactics were needed what about improvised tactics? Why can't we use a summon monster spell to summon a gecko swarm to eat the spider swarm or something?

[Yamcha]

Originally posted by Shahadem:

If you can't smush them with a stick then how exactly do you hurt them with a torch?

Just try and kill a fly mid air with a stick

[1_week]

FIREBALL!! + mass fireresist =D

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by Mr.Moe:

Originally posted by Shahadem:

If you can't smush them with a stick then how exactly do you hurt them with a torch?

Just try and kill a fly mid air with a stick

Try to kill it with a torch that is just a stick. A burning torch actually transfers very little energy when it is moving quickly. In order to heat something up to any significant degree you have to hold the torch steady.

[Kyutaru]

They're immune to physical attacks because killing one of them is meaningless. As a swarm they are numerous, it's like trying to squash an large number of spiders one by one. AOE attacks and magic can deal with lots of them at once, such as the torch swings burning a swath through them. As small as that torch is the fire on the end of it is still a very small AOE attack.

Swarm is an official subtype in Pathfinder RPG. Here's the description:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/creature-types/#TOC-Swarm-Subtype

Spider swarms have an entry already.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/vermin/spider/spider-swarm/

Since they are diminutive, it's basically 1500 spiders that are immune to spells that target individual numbers of creatures and all weapon damage (but not physical AOE attacks). You have to kill them with AOEs.