any good hint how to defeat the fat guy and his spiders sitting in a cave in Cloakwood?

this is one of the nastier fights you'll come across, what i did was make sure i got my people to position the second they walked in....

two fighters front cleric on each side, mage at back and thief shadowed if possible, cast animal summonings in front of the big spiders and waded the fighters in to take the nastiest spiders, (make sure you kill sword as quick as possible) then cast entanglement on them all, once you do that you trap about half then you can just pick them off at your leisure, use the animals to keep distance between you and the ones you dont want to fight.

oh is it just me thinks this whole scene is a homage to that crappy film khuul from a long time ago, was over 10 years ago i watched it but i remember a fat spider guy at the centre of a web in that

Fireball did it for me. Also hasted tanks to take out the spiders and antidotes in quickslots. If needs be you can retreat and come back later.

ah yeah thats what i did, 3 of my party got hurt badly so i just walked em out the door and left my tanks to it, definately was a tough fight, i dont normally have to retreat, damned sword spiders keep hitting, and poison damage from those ettercaps is annoying

Just a bit of bragging but with my protagonist fighter/thief (who is at the xp cap and going through the game again because of a computer crash that lead to a loss of savegames) when hasted and made magically stronger through potions, left the rest of the party outside and killed everyone off himself using arrows of biting. Did the same thing in the Wyvern cave two or three maps later.

I will also add let the spiders come to you, don't move any party members to far ahead or you will catch the attention of the annoying creatures at the back of the room. Keep them out of the battle until everything else as been cleared.

[ 10-24-2002, 10:46 AM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

sad thing is sometimes its easier to win a fight just by completely tanking one person and letting them do it all whilst the rest of the wimpy party sit around on their butts looking surplus to requirements, that way you dont have to reload cos half your party dies to monsters like basilisks or the like

which reminds me, in the basilisk area theres someone stoned like branwen was,i assume a stone to flesh frees them, but is there any good point to that i skipped it cos i was in a hurry to get on with other quests

No, not really! You do get some experiance for freeing the girl and a reputation point if you choose the correct speech.