Dying to orb weaver jr

[chicken jockey]

I left the first lab after speaking to the robot but keep dying in the hedge? What am I supposed to do?

[sno0ks]

sneak using CTRL. I had trouble there too but you can just avoid him entirely. it's funny because they become total pushovers later in the game once you get better gear.

[SwiftFart]

climb into the hedge, there's a lab there to beat. You can find plenty of guides online that will show exactly what paths you'll need to take but the beginning is towards the west end of the hedges, with a paperclip and branch leading up to a field station right at the beginning

[ulzgoroth]

Are they only juniors up in the hedge lab? Probably are aren't they. Still scary at the time, yeah.

Have a shield, definitely, and make sure to block. Try to get perfect, but try really hard not to get hit without it! (If you were super good at parrying this advice wouldn't apply, but if you were super good at parrying you wouldn't be asking this, you'd just beat them into the ground.)

I think a larva blade might be the best available weapon for chopping them up, unless you've gone in the pond and made a bone dagger. Unfortunately its poison trait doesn't help, but it avoids the spiders' damage resistance and has a little more base damage than a pebblet spear.

However, if you carry several pebblet spears and aim well, you can just straight up kill an orb weaver junior by throwing them at it. Five or six would probably do it?

You can definitely get a smoothie maker before going through the hedge, right? Making some smoothies (just the basic no-recipe slop even) for fast healing can be a life-saver for fast healing. You probably can't make any smoothies that will seriously help your fighting ability yet, though green machine or fuzz on the rocks certainly don't hurt.

[The SSIKness]

i just took my time and got max poison resist mutation and just got better at blocking

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

i just took my time and got max poison resist mutation and just got better at blocking

...You got max poison resist mutation, which you get by killing wolf spiders, in order to be able to beat the orb weaver jr in the hedge lab? Are you sure about that?

[Serpiko82]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

However, if you carry several pebblet spears and aim well, you can just straight up kill an orb weaver junior by throwing them at it. Five or six would probably do it?

I started a new fresh run (on medium) after 1.1 and I'm amazed at how useful throwing spears has become. Or was it always this way and I didn't know? Especially once javelineer mutation is available, they deal SIGNIFICANTLY more damage than a normal spear attack, they make early game life so much easier because they're great to soften up the first tough guys you need to kill.

Thanks to the enlarged inventory, I currently carry a pack of 6 spears to throw at large bugs. By the time I throw the last one, the first one has usually fallen off (or there's one I missed with). The best part is, I found out this way I can reliably kill isolated stinkbugs in 6-7 hits with basic, non upgraded pebblet spears! A GREAT shortcut to the insect hammer.

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

i just took my time and got max poison resist mutation and just got better at blocking

...You got max poison resist mutation, which you get by killing wolf spiders, in order to be able to beat the orb weaver jr in the hedge lab? Are you sure about that?

Practice blocking a wolf for half an hour, and then go around the map and murder them. You can do it with a pebblet axe, and you don't even need armor or a shield.

[ulzgoroth]

Yeah, throwing spears is pretty great, though the inventory capacity eventually gets annoying. (And non-thrown-spear weapons improve while your throw-away spears basically stop improving unless you're willing to chuck much more expensive items around.)

Originally posted by LittleBlueDuneBuggy:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

...You got max poison resist mutation, which you get by killing wolf spiders, in order to be able to beat the orb weaver jr in the hedge lab? Are you sure about that?

Practice blocking a wolf for half an hour, and then go around the map and murder them. You can do it with a pebblet axe, and you don't even need armor or a shield.

I'm not saying killing wolf spiders is impossible. Thanks to the perfect block system you can 1v1 almost anything with almost anything, in principle. (I can't - I kill wolf spiders pretty handily by the power of tier 3 armor, a shield and upgraded tier 2 sword, and level two poison resist mutation. Before that, I killed them not handily at all with much the same gear but tier 2 armor, a fair amount of panicky dying, and a bunch of smoothies.)

I'm saying that killing several wolf spiders as preparation for killing orb weaver jrs is ludicrous, because if you can kill one wolf spider you're already over-prepared to kill orb weaver jrs.

[LittleBlueDuneBuggy]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

I'm saying that killing several wolf spiders as preparation for killing orb weaver jrs is ludicrous, because if you can kill one wolf spider you're already over-prepared to kill orb weaver jrs.

I think you're basically saying "If you can kill a wolf, you can kill the others." I agree with that. But for those times you miss a perfect block (which always is at the worst possible time), it's handy to grind out ten wolfs to get that mutation maxed. Helps when you miss those blocks on the JR's. Plus, you need to kill wolfs anyway, so it's as good a time as any!!

[The SSIKness]

just cheese a bunch of wolf spiders for the mutation, then the game is easier vs poison

[The SSIKness]

for spiders that your having a hard time just cheese em (cough black widow /wolf spider)

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

just cheese a bunch of wolf spiders for the mutation, then the game is easier vs poison

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

for spiders that your having a hard time just cheese em (cough black widow /wolf spider)

What on earth does that mean, in practical terms?

[Pyro Penguin]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

just cheese a bunch of wolf spiders for the mutation, then the game is easier vs poison

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

for spiders that your having a hard time just cheese em (cough black widow /wolf spider)

What on earth does that mean, in practical terms?

stand on a leaf or something else that they can't jump to and shoot them with arrows until they die

[Serpiko82]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

just cheese a bunch of wolf spiders for the mutation, then the game is easier vs poison

Originally posted by The SSIKness:

for spiders that your having a hard time just cheese em (cough black widow /wolf spider)

What on earth does that mean, in practical terms?

Exploit the game in some way that messes up with theit AI or attacks and lets you stand somewhere and hit them with ranged attacks while preventing them from reaching you and fighting back.
- Climb somewhere high that requires parkour to reach (NOTE: this doesn't always work, spiders may occasionally lunge at you at impossible distances).
- If you find a spider lair with the spider sleeping inside, block the entrance with walls and spikes (let some openings for your arrows). Then attack it while it can't get out.
- Otherwise, before engaging, build a fort you can hide in and shoot from.
- Empty soda cans are your friends. Wolf spiders can't get in.
- Neither can they enter lab doors.
And anything you can come up with that keeps spider fangs off you without the need to tank/parry bites.