Spider species (from left to right): Yellow sewer Spider, Green huge Spider and Chaos Spider.
Spiders in the Thief world are an oversized version of regular spiders that come in three varieties: a small Yellow Spider or sewer spider, a big Green Spider and the rare Chaos Spider. All of them are dangerous.
They are one of the most common enemies found when exploring caves, underground areas or abandoned areas but are somewhat of a scarce sight in the inhabited areas of The City, as they are usually exterminated on sight.[1] They can, however, still be encountered in the sewers or in isolated underground caves or cellars.
Strategy[]
Since spiders do not count towards the "Don't kill anyone" objective, the best option is to simply kill them from a distance with Broadhead Arrows as they can be killed in a single shot (the bigger ones when unaware). Or knock them out with Gas Arrows or mines in case of large groups.
Guards and spiders can also be lured together and they will start to fight each other but it's not sure if the guards can hurt the spiders. De different kinds of spiders are hardly encountered together but if they are brought together the yellow spiders will attack the green spiders.
Patch[]
Spiders can be a most terrifying threat for players who are arachnophobic. For this, someone has made a patch called "No Spiders patch" that removed and/or disables all spiders and can be downloaded here.[2][3]
Trivia[]
I could tell you where it is, but that would spoil all the fun...
This section contains spoilers! Read on your own peril.
- In the Thief II: The Metal Age mission "Life of the Party" there is a non-hostile spider with the name of Longdaddy.
- It appears that Mynell's uses spider meat in his steaks.[4]
Behind the Scenes[]
The original spider beast, the albino.
- Originally there was also an Albino Spider in Thief: The Dark Project but this one never got released.
- There is concept art of a "black widow" spiderdemon creature and there also exists an skin in DromEd called "spidera" which has distinct human features but looks very different from the concept art, see more at pre-thief unused content.