Diablo III Boss Overviews: Spider Queen Aranaea

The Spider Queen is far and away the most interesting of the Act I minibosses- primarily because for large parts of her boss fight, she’s simply not there.

You encounter the Spider Queen in the depths of a spider-infested ruins, when you meet a victim of hers wrapped up in webbing.  Her initial entry is by dropping from the ceiling at the same time as a large number of spiders of various sizes clamber over the edges of the platform you occupy at the time- and this marks the salient point of fighting the Spider Queen.

The giant spider has a number of traits that make the fight against her a challenge- there is, of course, the fact that she’s accompanied by smaller spiders.  Her bite is venomous, causing poison damage over an extended time even after the initial blow.  She has a penchant for throwing webs around that will slow or even completely immobilize you by sticking you to the floor, and then remain in place to hinder you further.  Finally, she has a penchant for vanishing up to the ceiling in mid-fight, and then dropping back down in unexpected places.

The primary thing to keep ahold of when fighting the Spider Queen is some form of area attack.  Not only does this provide you a way to guarantee you hit her (considering she moves around quite a bit when she is on the ground with you) but it also keeps you ready to handle her many children that strike not only periodically throughout the fight, but also in large numbers whenever she vacates the platform you’re fighting on.

Some form of poison protection may be advisable, but on the whole you’re going to have to rely on overall sturdiness and whatever ability you have to take out large numbers of weaker monsters all at once- much like during your trip through the spidery ruins, in fact.  It’s worth noting that even getting distracted by her brood is nonfatal- even the Queen doesn’t do all that much damage herself, so if you had no worries in melee with the spiders on your way through, you shouldn’t have anything to seriously trouble you during the fight itself either.  Ranged characters will find this fight a bit more of a challenge, but overall it’s more of a ‘pleasing’ sort of challenge than an actually hard one- keeping a monitor on your surroundings and being ready with whatever special attacks you have to hand is plenty.