Baldur's Gate 3: How To Beat The Phase Spider Matriarch (2024)

Players exploring the Blighted Village in Baldur’s Gate 3 may come across the Whispering Depths and the large Phase Spider Matriarch that calls these caves fairly early on in their adventures. It is tempting to take on this fight as although the Matriarch is level 5, she is only accompanied by two Phase Spiders who are relatively weak monsters that can be taken out with a bit of planning.

The Matriarch has more up her sleeve than just the two smaller spiders and adventures who are unaware of what she can do. They might be caught off guard and die before they can even properly formulate a response. This guide covers what the Phase Spider Matriarch can do and how to counter her before the fight even begins.

How To Defeat Phase Spider Matriarch

The Whispering Depths fight is deceptive because of how early in the game you can access this area. If you’re really rushing it, encountering the Phase Spider Matriarch and her minions at level 2 is possible.

Do not approach the spiders at low levels, especially on higher difficulties. Try to come back to the fight when you’re at least level 4, any lower than that, and you’ll need to rely on RNG to carry you through the fight. When you’re ready, here is how the fight should go.

Destroy The Eggs

See Also

Baldur's Gate 3: Phase Spider Matriarch Guide - How to Defeat and Loot

The Phase Spider Nest at the back of the cave has two groups of spider eggs (pictured above). If you start the fight without destroying them, multiple spiderlings will spawn from them, making the fight extremely difficult.

Anyone with a crossbow can easily destroy the eggs before the fight even starts by sniping them from far away. Unless you fire at the eggs when the Matriarch is looking directly at them, none of the spiders will notice. Destroying the eggs before the fight begins will also net you an achievement.

Take Out Phase Spiders

Equip everyone in your party with ranged options like a Crossbow and position them as high up as possible so they get the high ground advantage by firing from above. Split the party and approach the spiders one by one. If done correctly, this means that only the character who performs the sneak attack will enter combat, allowing all party members to get a single ranged attack in before the fight even begins.

Focus on taking out the two Phase Spiders first; you want the Spider Matriarch to be alone once before the fight even begins properly. Splitting the party is important because the spiders have some AoE options at their disposal. A complete party wipe is not out of the question if your party gets caught out of position and grouped up together.

Fight The Phase Spider Matriarch

Once the Matriarch is alone, the fight becomes easier. Since you’re positioned on the high ground, the Phase Spider Matriarch will try to reach you either by teleporting or crawling toward you on the web bridges. If you can catch her in the middle of a web bridge, burn the web she’s standing on (Fire Bolt does the trick), and she’ll take a decent chunk of fall damage. This can be anywhere from 20-44 fall damage, depending on the height she falls from.

If the AI is particularly stupid that day, you might be able to use this strategy more than once, as there are three webs the Phase Spider Matriarch can ‘phase’ to. If you destroyed both groups of spider eggs before the fight, the Matriarch alone is easy enough to handle. Just keep piling on her with direct damage spells and attacks, and she’ll go down fairly quickly.