Combat / Hostile Mob
Fight a Spider
Spiders are fast, they climb, and they pounce. One on its own is trivial; a nest of them in a dark mineshaft will swarm and poison you in seconds. Win it the same way every time: deny the dark, take a step of high ground, and bait the leap.
Below: the pounce telegraph, the sweep window that clears a cluster, and how to handle cave-spider poison without burning a healing pot.
The high-ground bait loop
- 1Read the daylightSpiders neutral in light level 12+, hostile in the dark. In daylight a hostile spider keeps attacking, but new ones never spawn. Fighting near a lit ledge or after dawn cuts the swarm to whatever is already aggro.
- 2Take the high groundSpiders climb walls but they are clumsy on a 1-block step. Stand on a single raised block: the spider pathing stalls below you while it tries to climb, and you swing down for free. A 2-wide pillar with a lip stops the wall-climb pounce cold.
- 3Bait and dodge the pounceA spider winds up, then leaps ~3 blocks to close distance and deal 2 (Easy) to 3 (Hard) damage. Watch the crouch-tell, strafe sideways the instant it commits, and it overshoots. Punish the landing recovery with a charged hit.
- 4Sweep the clusterSpiders arrive in groups and stand side by side. A diamond/netherite sword Sweeping Edge hit clips every spider in the arc. Reset to full attack cooldown (~0.625s), line them up, and one sweep can chunk a whole nest.
- 5Respect cave-spider poisonCave spiders are smaller (0.7 wide), squeeze through 1-tall gaps, and inflict Poison for ~7s (down to half a heart, never kills). Drink Milk to clear it, or hold a golden apple's Absorption. Block off mineshaft spawners with torches and a wall before clearing.
What you need
Sword w/ Sweeping Edge
Shield (block the leap)
Golden Apple (Absorption)
Milk / cure PoisonQuick answers
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How much health does a spider have?
Both the regular spider and the cave spider have 16 HP (8 hearts shown is wrong; it is 16 health points). A Sharpness-free diamond sword deals 7, so it is a 3-hit kill; with Sharpness III it drops to 2 hits.
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How much damage does a spider do?
A regular spider hits for 2 on Easy, 2 on Normal, and 3 on Hard. Cave spiders hit for the same melee but add Poison on Normal and Hard, draining you over ~7 seconds.
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What is the spider pounce attack?
When you are roughly 2-4 blocks away, a spider crouches and leaps at you to close the gap and land a hit mid-air. Strafe perpendicular the moment it jumps and it lands past you, open to a counter.
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Can spiders climb walls and see through walls?
Spiders climb any vertical surface like a ladder, so a flat wall is no defense. They cannot see through solid blocks; break line of sight or stand behind a fence and they lose the path.
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How do I stop cave spider poison?
Drink Milk to instantly clear Poison, or pre-eat a golden apple for Absorption + Regeneration. Poison alone never kills (it stops at half a heart), so the real danger is poison plus a follow-up melee hit.
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How do I farm spiders for string and eyes?
A dark spawning platform with a 0.5-block-high kill chamber filters by hitbox: regular spiders are too tall to fit and starve in flowing water, while a cave-spider spawner farm funnels them past a safe poke gap. Spiders drop 0-2 String and a chance at Spider Eye (used in Fermented Spider Eye for potions).