Aranea Cave|
|
Aranea Cave |
Spiders/Formello |
| hostile |
Navigation: General Hints, Notes
List of all towns and shops in Avernum
 |
 |
| Aranea Cave | upper level |
There is a Temple in the middle of the caves. There are naturally lots of Araneae all over the place. It is better to circle the caves first in oder to eliminate the araneae. Then you can try to get into the temple.
The Aranea do not drop many items except some Fangs but there is a lot of gold lying around. There are lots of bright white SpiderWeb-Runes on the walls. These can be selected (by typing u or with the mouse) and act like chests: i.e. they can contain something or trigger a special encounter. In the NW corner is a corpse with 3 Beautiful Crystals.
A Quarz Crystal for the Crystal Cave is on a corpse near the NE corner.
There are three hidden passages leading towards the temple. Two of them lead to dead ends. The only entrance is from the North. There is a rather cramped passage before the actual temple. Here you should prepare for a battle. In the temple you will find 2 Arachanid Servitors and 2 Aranea Seers. They are not particularly difficult. The hard nuts are waiting upstairs. When you climb the staircase you find the Aranea Queen flanked by two Cave Widows waiting peacefully at the other end of the room. When you talk to her, the only sensible response is to challange her. In this fight it is a good idea to concentrate on the queen, because she continually spawns new opponents. When you kill her you automatically take her fangs, for which Phyllea in Fort Draco will reward you. She drops a Shadowstep Chitin which is worth 4000 coins and provides a lot of protection. I noted that would not equip it as it has a 20% penalty on “chance to hit”! That was with the alternative version of the game “Avernum Remix Version 1.1”. By a run through with the original version the penalty was only 10%, so check everything carefully. Nothing else drops anything and all the SpiderWeb-Runes are empty.
So back downstairs, where some nice things like 4 Lovely Crystals, a Quylthug Cloak and some Aranea Fangs are lying around. If you take the treasure out of the blue chest in front of the altar you get 1000 coins, a Purging, a Battle, two Wisdom Crystals and the Dread Curse, which Throndell in the Tower of Magi will cure for 500 coins!
The Dread Curse is listed under Traits on the Statistics-Window. I find it worth getting the curse in this case, because the cost of curing it is more than offset by the profit you make. At this stage in the game my party is usually advaced enough to rob the treasury in Formello, where I can find some nice gauntlets, but also get the Dread Curse. Since I have already been cursed I take the gloves and Throndell can cure me in one go.
If you go to Fort Draco, do not sell all your Aranea Fangs to Aife because you nead one pair for Ward Hodgson in Fort Emerald.