Blood SpiderReport
English：Blood Spider · Creatures
Kenshi's true glass cannon — one hit and it dies, the lowest health pool in the game, yet it comes in packs, deals Beak Thing damage, and will follow you into the water.
Came all this way, just to get killed by a damn big bug... — Miu, on the death of her companion Ned
The Blood Spider is the most repulsive creature in the swamplands: dark red, thin as a dead twig, and given to a hiss that raises the hair on your neck. The irony is that despite being blood-red all over, they are extremely hard to see in the dim, vine-choked swamp — plenty of players only learn they are surrounded by hearing it.
Glass cannon
The Blood Spider is Kenshi's most precise implementation of the glass cannon.
Extremely fragile: health of only 24–29, every body part sitting at just 15–31.5, and hit chance of 100 on all seven parts. Any character with a shred of skill can kill one in a single stroke.
Yet the output is enormous: its damage formula is cut = 23 + roughly 0.88–0.91×(Martial Arts + Dexterity), putting it on exactly the same tier as the Beak Thing. The 23 is composed of 13 minimum cut damage plus 10 points of pierce.
And it never comes alone. That is the actual problem.
| Key figure | Blood Spider | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Base stats | 40 (Strength 27) | Beak Thing 35 |
| Health | 24–29 | Beak Thing 190–421 |
| Movement speed | 7–14 mph | Beak Thing 19–38 mph |
| Combat speed multiplier | 2 | Ordinary animals 1, Bonedog 0.7 |
| Hunger rate | 0.1 | Beak Thing 5 |
Note that combat movement ×2 — most animals slow down once combat starts, whereas the Blood Spider doubles its speed. Their ability to dart around a battlefield, flank and block far exceeds what their paper speed suggests.
The good news is that their base speed is very low. On open terrain, outrunning a pack of Blood Spiders is not especially difficult.
Pursuit underwater
Blood Spiders can walk along the bottom of a body of water.
This creates a lethal terrain trap in The Swamp: when a spider pack drives you towards one of the big lakes, swimming will not save you — they will follow you straight in and keep attacking the whole way. Most pursuers stop at the water's edge. Blood Spiders do not.
Drained dry
Unlike the Beak Thing, which eats you a piece at a time from the feet up, the Blood Spider drains nutrients: it knocks out an organic creature and then siphons that creature's hunger value directly.
They have no sense of smell, however. They only eat prey they knocked down themselves, or downed bodies they happen to walk into; they cannot follow a blood trail halfway across a region the way a Beak Thing can.
One more mechanic must be remembered: Blood Spiders are quite weak to bleeding damage but recover from blood loss very quickly. Knock one out and it will be back on its feet shortly. The standard practice is to immediately take the 2 Fangs off it — with its death items removed, an unconscious animal dies on the spot.
Where they appear, and how often
| Region | Spawn chance | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The Swamp | 20/75 | Conditional on the local faction leaders being intact |
| South Wetlands | 1/9 | Conditional on the Red Sabres' leader being intact |
| Shem | 1/26 | Small packs |
| Venge | 2/63 | Small packs |
- Standard pack: 1–10 individuals, roughly adult age.
- Small pack: 1–3.
- Fixed nest groups: several Lost Library sites each hold 6–15 near-adult individuals; these nest and settle rather than roaming the region.
- Ancient labs: the Swamped Lab holds 5–25, the Infested Lab 5–20.
- Bugmaster: keeps 6–10 Blood Spiders as pets, along with a large number of Skin Spiders.
One world state change is also worth noting: if Big Grim, Big Darkbrow and Big Gray are all dead, Rot will be destroyed and occupied by Blood Spiders.
Elder Blood Spiders
Elder Blood Spiders exist in exactly one place: the Tower of Spiders in Stobe's Garden, which spawns 30–40 of them at once with an age multiplier of 1.6x–2.0x. Since age is a stat multiplier, their effective stats can push into the 80s.
Growing larger does not change their nature, though: health 29–33, body parts 33–45, and a decent character can still finish one with a single hit to a vital area. The real threat is quantity — thirty-odd fast units with effective stats of 80 all charging at once is enough to wipe a late-game squad.
The Tower of Spiders itself is a point of interest unlocked by reading a Tech Hunter map, and it reliably contains 6 Ancient Science Books along with Skeleton Repair Kits and other supplies, making it one of the key objectives on the Tech Hunter route.
Miu: a human spider radar
The unique recruit Miu was once an escaped slave. She and her companion Ned fled the United Cities together and had almost reached Shark when Ned was pounced on and killed by a pack of Blood Spiders right at the town gate — the spiders "sucked his guts clean out". She stayed in Shark as a result, with no skills beyond farming and labouring[V1 0:03:27]. The episode left her deeply traumatised where spiders are concerned, and any time one approaches or aggros on the player she erupts into a stream of (largely unrepeatable) dialogue.
This turns out to be a genuinely useful function: her lines often fire before a spider is even on screen, effectively giving you a free early-warning radar. Another unique recruit, Pia, has a similar ability.
How they differ from Skin Spiders
| Blood Spider | Skin Spider | |
|---|---|---|
| Base stats | 40 (Str 27) | 40 |
| Health | 24–29 | 26–52 |
| Build | Thin | Larger, brownish-yellow |
| Terrain | Dim swamp | Open plains |
| Actual threat | Higher | Lower |
Skin Spiders are bigger and tougher, but in practice less dangerous — they prefer open ground, can be seen from a distance, and are easier to shake off. A good half of the Blood Spider's lethality comes from the fact that you never saw it.
Related entries
Creatures, Beak Thing, Bonedog, Bugmaster, Tech Hunters
Video citations
- Kenshi: Unique Companions | GreenlandersCivilizationEx