The Spider Caves
In SLASH'EM, SlashTHEM and Hack'EM, The Spider Caves is a single-level dungeon branch accessed by a stairway down that is located between levels 26 and 29. It's essentially filled with spiders. Monster generation in this branch is biased toward chaotic monsters.
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Contents
Map
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Objects
Scattered randomly throughout the level are two potions of invulnerability, a wand of make invisible, an amulet versus poison, a pair of speed boots, a ring of conflict, a wand of death, 48 eggs, five piles of gold, 22 giant spiders, Shelob, Girtab, 10 random s, and 48 webs.
Strategy
This level is of no major difficulty by the time you'll reach it.
Shelob and Girtab are unremarkable and probably the greatest threat is that a werespider wastes the wand of death on you or throws you a potion of amnesia.
The Spider Caves level is quite annoying, due to the large amount of very weak enemies and the abundance of spider webs. It is worth the trouble, however, due to the valuable loot.
One way to deal with all the spider webs is to name Sting, which will not blast a non-orcish hero; another is to bring a strong pet, then rip the webs apart by leading the strong pet over them; you can also polymorph into a strong monster or wear gauntlets of power and destroy the webs yourself. Additionally, the fireball spell, the wand of fire and other means of shooting fire rays can vaporize the webs.
Avoid using teleportation on squares you haven't explored, since it will often fail due to the large amount of spider webs.
The eggs will mostly be giant spider eggs, which will begin hatching into (initially) cave spiders as soon as you enter the level. You should stash them as soon as possible so that they don't hatch. You could also come back 400 turns later so that they all rot on the ground.
See also
Reference
From file spiders.des.
