Editing v0.34:Giant cave spider

{{Quality|Exceptional|18:39, 13 May 2012 (UTC)}}
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'''Giant cave spiders''' are far different from your regular [[cave spider]]s; those are just treats for your [[cat]]. Giant cave spiders are as big as [[grizzly bear]]s and will make treats ''of'' cats, dwarves and the occasional careless adventurer. You can find giant cave spiders in, obviously, caves, caverns and most underground areas.  They are extremely dangerous as they feel no pain and thus cannot be stunned, can [[syndrome|poison]] creatures and have the ability to shoot [[web]]bing to ensnare their prey.

Giant cave spiders are not a rarity with dozens present in the underground caverns, deep below the surface.  They can be extremely hard to kill. On occasion, however, a lucky dwarf might pound one to death within a few attacks by punching its skull into its brain, which can be a godsend after an unfortunate cavern breaching excercise.

Webs can be quite a boon to a fortress, when they aren't being used in a direct attack. Giant cave spider [[silk]] is worth much more than ordinary [[cloth]] and, given the proper setup and victims, can be produced in endless amounts. 

If you see one in adventure mode, an announcement, "You've spotted a Giant Cave Spider!" will appear.

==Fighting==

Giant cave spiders are ''not'' to be engaged in melee by a lone dwarf, especially if its armor is lacking. If the attacked dwarf is fully armored, then it will eventually die of hunger or thirst. Even a legendary axedwarf will be unable to do anything, due to the immobilizing webs and subsequent deadly bite. You may attempt to flank a giant cave spider with two melee dwarves, one serving as bait and the other killing the giant cave spider, but it is not a foolproof tactic and you will probably lose one or two dwarves. Marksdwarves, cage traps, and weapon traps are better.

Despite being regular animals, giant cave spiders are arguably much more dangerous than all of the semimegabeasts and can kill (or at least knock unconscious) any single blooded, non-armored, melee attacker with ease, including rocs and cave dragons and anything in the caverns.

Giant cave spider venom appears to be a neurotoxin which causes progressive [[syndrome|paralysis]] and is ultimately fatal due to suffocation as the victim's diaphragm succumbs and ceases to function. The poison's effects set in relatively quickly with complete paralysis at phase 5 (360 seconds) and death usually occurs at around 1300 seconds.

Due to the spider only attacking the head of a webbed dwarf, a pair of dwarves with steel helmets and weapons is more than a match for a lone GCS. The coding for all creatures sets headshots as the number one priority if possible, and the web ensures that a headshot is indeed always possible. You may want to avoid using untrained dwarves for this though, because the spider will still counterattack if the dwarf misses, potentially landing a blow on an unprotected area of the dwarf.

==Capturing==
Due to the considerable value of giant cave spider silk, many players attempt to capture a live spider and set up a silk farm to boost their fortress's economy. While simply opening a path to the [[cavern]]s and lining it with cage traps may eventually work, a much more effective method is to take advantage of one peculiar behavior of [[building destroyer]]s: simply build a '''[[wood]]en''' [[door]] within the caverns and surround it with cage traps (to a distance of at least 2 tiles), and any giant cave spider (or [[giant toad]], [[giant olm]], [[cave crocodile]], etc.) that wanders relatively close enough to the door will immediately charge toward it and be captured. Or, if you have enough mechanisms, cages and dwarfpower to spare, cage trap all of the cavern exits. If you are extremely lucky, a migrant will arrive with an already tamed GCS. Be aware that since they lack a [CHILD] tag, giant cave spiders will not breed.

==Farming Silk==
Several setups have been devised to harvest giant cave spider silk in large quantities. Working silk farms have a few traits in common:

# The spider must be aggressive toward its bait.  Tame spiders are aggressive toward invaders, while wild spiders are aggressive toward tame animals. Tame spiders are not aggressive toward animals on restraints.
# The spider must not be able to reach its bait; if it can, the bait (or spider) will die and no further silk will be generated. Spiders can destroy wooden doors but not stone or metal doors. They cannot pass through forbidden doors or doors that have been "tightly closed".
# Web collection cannot occur in sight of wild animals or invaders; either the spider or its bait will interrupt collection.  Drawbridges work well to block line of sight in either case, as webs will not prevent them from raising.

One design is as follows:
{{diagram|spaces=yes|color=#888|\
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║+++++++++++║
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[#0FF][#088]X++++++[#080]╞[#080]═[#080]═[#080]═[#080]╡║
║++++++[#080]╥[#F00]╬[#F00]╬[#F00]╬[#F00]╬║
║++++++[#080]║[#F00]╬g[#F00]╬S║
║++++++[#080]╨[#F00]╬[#F00]╬[#F00]╬[#F00]╬║
[#0FF][#088]X++++++[#080]╞[#080]═[#080]═[#080]═[#080]╡║
║+++++++++++╣
║+++++++++++║
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╚═══════════╝
}}
# Dig out (and optionally smooth) a sufficiently large room (example shown is 11x11).
# Channel out the "S" square and the "g" square and build retracting bridges over the gaps. Link these bridges to a lever and place a cage trap underneath whichever square will eventually hold the hostile creature. Separate levers for each bridge may also be used. Do not use any creatures with a size of over 1,000,000 as bait! The weight of these creatures will jam the bridge in place. This step is optional, and allows a creature or corpse to be removed from the silk farm and either repositioned or recaptured without military involvement.
# [[Construction|Construct]] all of the red [[fortification]]s.
# Build the 3 green [[bridge]]s, all raising lengthwise to form long walls.
# Construct a [[lever]] somewhere convenient in your fortress and link it to the 3 bridges.
# Build one of the 2 [[floodgate]]s and link it to the lever. Pull the lever to open the floodgate and allow access to the room, then build the second floodgate and link it to the lever. Pull the lever until both floodgates are closed.
# Using a pit/pond [[activity zone]] on the Z-level above, drop a tame giant cave spider into the gray "S" square and a hostile creature (such as a goblin) into the gray "g" square. Alternatively, use a hostile spider and a tame creature - the main concern is that the spider must be hostile toward its target.

At this point, the spider will begin blasting the bait creature with webs, and most of the webs will fly through the fortifications and land on the floor to the left. Once enough webs have accumulated, pull the lever to open the chamber for collection and raise the 3 bridges. These bridges enclose both spider and bait, and while the spider will continue to web the bait this does not cause the same lag as the old door method.

Silk can be farmed just as easily from a wild spider with a few changes.  Domesticated pets can be used in place of goblins for wild spider, but avoid grazers; other animals may need to be replaced when they die of old age.  It's recommended that you place a backup cage trap to reposition the spider if your first design doesn't meet your needs, but remember that should any webbing fall on the cage trap, it will trap your dwarves as easily as it will the spider.  Wild spiders can be placed via lever-controlled deconstructing cage (which would have to be placed inside the chamber prior to building the fortifications).

Note that tame spiders are hostile to wild animals. This means that you can use a benign wild animal, such as a grasshopper man or a large rat, as a bait animal, instead of a hostile creature like a goblin. Dwarves are not as frightened of wild animals as they are of hostiles, and this can make the shutter bridges and surrounding walls entirely unnecessary--the weaver can simply walk up to the webs as the spider shoots them. This may cause the occasional cancel spam when an errant web hits the weaver directly, but there is no real danger.

==Live training==
:''Main article: [[Live training]]''

Pit an entirely metal-armored dwarf (the metal used seems to be unimportant) against a wild giant cave spider. Enjoy as the dwarf gets webbed, then the GCS attempts to bite the dwarf, but fails due to armor.

As it will never attempt any other attack, the GCS will keep biting metal, fail to injure the dwarf, and each attack will train your dwarf in armor using far faster than training or sparring.

As you probably don't want to kill something as rare and precious as a giant cave spider for just training armor user on a dwarf, you may want to set the training area on a lever-linked bridge, then pull the lever and fling/let fall the GCS on cage traps, therefore separating harmlessly the dwarf and the GCS.

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