Giant Spider

Verified against the spelunky.ai port v0.1.8 on 27 October 2026.

A Giant Spider is two blocks wide, and at most one is made on a level, only in the Mines. It hangs from a ceiling above two webs until the player comes close or hurts it, then leaps at him like a Spider, twice as hard. It has 10 hit points and ignores a hit that comes too soon after another, but a single Bomb kills it, and it leaves treasure: big gems and a Paste.

A Giant Spider starts out hanging under a block, with two webs just below it ^[5]. It drops when it's hurt at all, when the block it hangs from is gone, or when the player is below it, within 8 pixels of its middle across and within 90 pixels of it ^[6]. The clip shows one dropping as the player walks beneath it, leaping onto him and taking two of his four hearts.

Once down, it moves as a Spider does, by leaping. It waits 5–20 steps (0.17–0.67 seconds), then jumps up at 2–5 pixels per step and across at 2.5 pixels per step, toward the player ^{[7] [8]}. While he's within 120 pixels, it jumps at him again each time it lands, higher, at 3–6 pixels per step, up, with a 1 in 4 chance each time of stopping to wait instead ^[9]. Farther away, it makes a single leap toward him after each wait ^[10]. In a tunnel too low for it to stand, where it touches the ceiling and the floor at once, it crawls toward the player at 1 pixel per step, turning at walls, until it has room again ^{[11] [12]}.

It also spits webs. A timer of 100–1,000 steps, counted down every step it's on screen, lets it spit once it runs out and the Giant Spider is between leaps; then it starts again ^[13]. The ball of web flies 1–3 pixels per step to the left or the right at random, not at the player, in an arc that starts upward ^{[14] [15]}. When it hits a block, an item, water, another web or a monster other than a Giant Spider, or after 20–100 steps, it turns into a web where it is ^{[16] [17] [18]}. A web holds items and most monsters still and slows the player down ^{[19] [20] [21]}; one made this way fades out over about 550 steps (18 seconds) ^[22]. The clip shows a web ball arcing away from the player on his ledge and landing on the floor as a web.

A Giant Spider only acts while it's on screen ^[23].

When the player touches a dropped Giant Spider without stomping it, he loses 2 hearts, is knocked away from it (and upward, if he's above it), and blinks, invincible, for 30 steps (1 second) ^[24]. While it still hangs, touching it costs 1 heart instead, through the touch code most monsters share ^[25].

A Giant Spider has 10 hit points ^[1], and for 10 steps after each hit from a whip or a thrown item, it ignores the next one; it ignores them for its first 10 steps after dropping too ^{[26] [27]}:

Still hanging, it takes a whip's or a Machete's full damage, through the code most monsters share, and drops ^[34]. Its step event doesn't run the one most monsters share, so Spikes, Lava, Spear Traps and water don't affect it ^[35].

When it dies, hanging or not, it leaves 1–3 big gems, each a Big Emerald, Big Sapphire or Big Ruby at random, and a Paste that costs nothing ^{[36] [37]}. The clip shows a Bomb placed beside a hanging Giant Spider killing it; the Paste and the Big Sapphire it leaves stick in its web ^{[19] [38]}. Giant Spiders killed count toward the player's kills, and the screen between levels draws a Giant Spider icon for each ^[39].

Level generation makes Giant Spiders only in the Mines. Each Mines level has a 1 in 6 chance of being allowed one ^[40]. On such a level, each block with open space two blocks wide and two deep below it (with no water there and no monster right under it), outside the starting room and shops and above the level's bottom 64 pixels, has a 1 in 40 chance of a Giant Spider hanging from it, rolled before anything else that hangs there, until one is made ^[41].

In custom levels, it's the level editor's tile S ^[42].

• A Giant Spider drops as soon as anything hurts it, so a whip hit or a thrown item brings it down.
• Whipping it faster than once every 10 steps does nothing; a Bomb does three times its health in one explosion.
• Its webs aren't aimed: a ball goes left or right at random.

• Its code names a drowned state, and an alarm whose only line, commented out, would show a drowning sprite; nothing ever enters that state ^{[43] [44]}.

• Its touch event begins with a comment copied from the one most monsters share, which names other monsters:

  // jumped on - oCaveman, oManTrap replaces this script with its own
  if (abs(other.x-(x+16)) > 16)