Spider Staff



The Spider Staff is a Hardmode summon weapon. It spawns a spider minion that follows the player and attacks by latching on to enemies. If enough of them attack the same enemy, it can be stun-locked. The spiders inflict the Acid Venom debuff for 2-4 seconds, can climb background walls, and jump high.

Interestingly, the Ruthless modifier on the spider staff grants it +19% damage, rather than +18% damage.

Tips

 * The spider minion's ability to move freely on background walls makes it much more effective in areas with good wall coverage. It is otherwise limited to walking and jumping, and since it cannot fly (for the purposes of attacking) and has no projectile attack, its effectiveness is limited against flying enemies.
 * The Spider Staff is easily acquired when first entering Hardmode, as most players will have already found a Spider Cave before it begins. Simply return there to kill the Black Recluses that begin spawning in Hardmode. Black Recluses hit hard and can take a while to defeat with pre-Hardmode equipment, but the effort is worth it.
 * The Spider Staff has the highest base of any pre-Plantera minion.
 * However, the Spider Staff's lack of local immunity caps the hit rate of a hoard of spiders at 6 hits per second. Since spiders tend to clump up on one enemy, this makes any more than 3 spiders redundant. The player can use other minions alongside the spiders if they have more than 3 minion slots.
 * Although the game does not allow the player to summon 4 spiders while having 3 whole minion slots available, if the player summons more than 3 spiders through other means (e.g. Bewitching Table) and then has their maximum minion slot count reduced back to 3, the player will keep 4 of their spiders as originally deserved.
 * If several spiders latch onto a single target that can receive knockback, the target will often be carried away from the player, but in some cases can carry the enemy towards the player faster than the enemy itself could normally approach.

Trivia

 * Each time the spider is summoned, it has a random one of three possible sprite graphics. The first is an unidentifiable purple spider, the second resembles a Mexican red knee tarantula, and the third resembles a black widow. They are all functionally identical.
 * The different types of spiders are summoned in order, rather than randomly.
 * This and the Queen Spider Staff are the only items that can inflict the Acid Venom debuff before any Mechanical Bosses have been defeated.
 * The staff appears to be a four legged spider.
 * It is one of only four weapons in the game that can inflict Acid Venom without any buffs or bonuses, the others being the Queen Spider Staff, the Pygmy Staff, and the Venom Staff.