Elephant cactus spider farm (SW)

Overview

DisclamerIt’s my very first time having fun with steam guides, so if i make any obnoxious mistakes sorry in advance.

Introduction

Having problems with spider farming on shipwrecked? Fear not then, I’m gonna show you how to farm monster meat, glands and silk easily.

Required materials

First of all you must gather elephant cacti (found at the volcano) and spider eggs. Volcano is found on the outer edges of map on the deep sea, so be on look for it (it also provides super important coffee later on). To get the elephant cactus outside of dry season, you need to fertilize it with ashes, kill it (each attack damages you, even if you wear cactus armor) and then dig up the stump. I recommend to wear any armor while trying to obtain cacti, because otherwise you might kill yourself while farming them. Also bring healing items and/or food. When you replace it, you need to fertiize it as well. REMEMBER!!! Cactus can ONLY be planted on volcano turf, magma turf or ashy turf. When you plant it however, you can remove underground turf and use it elsewhere. In sprite of this I do not reccomend to remove turfs under the cacti next to said farm, because you will be required to replant them from time to time.
Spider eggs drop from level 3 spider dens, so if you don’t have any right now, you need to wait couple o’ days for it to grow. They also drop from spider queen after killing her (this method is tougher and more risky, so be cautious while doing so).

Important info

Cacti have 400 health, so it’s possible they will get killed multiple times farming spiders. In that case you need to dig their leftover stump up, fertilize it and voila – works as new.
To set up this farm and to make it work properly, you need to place it on the ‘pointy’ edge of your island, so that spiders dont have any other way of leaving the farm than just walking thru cacti. If you will plant it in middle of nowhere, you will be required to set up cacti all around the dens, which is not only not cost-efficient, but its also waste of time.
Remember to ALWAYS wear cactus armor while in near proximity of the farm. It provides you with log armor damage reduction and entirely negates cacti’ spike attacks. On the guide screenshot you can see my skeleton of me forgetting to wear armor at the proper time.
Moreover, I additionally recommend to make second layer of cacti. When you forget to replant and fertilize them, it may save your butt and is used in later spider bait tactic.
Most spiders respawn after around a whole in-game day (aka 8 minutes), so to make the most of farm you might want to visit it every day.
Remember that there is no smoldering effect in SW, but there is in RoG, so if you want to make simillar farm in RoG you should place ice flingomatic(s) in range. I don’t play on RoG that much so this is why it’s without flingomatic.

How to make the farm

To make the farm, you place few spider eggs next to each other on the ‘pointy’ edge of your island, place turfs in parallel fashion and then plant the cacti. Make yourself a favor and dont barricade them completely off, so that you can enter it.
To further make farm more efficient, you can make the second layer of cacti (with enough space so you can walk inbetween) to bait spiders with monster meat. They are too dumb to exit the farm and get the meat, they will try to reach it thru cactus barrier. For some reason, they neglect the wall made of cacti, I dunno why but hey, it works.
For additional safety measure (during hurricane and monsoon seasons mainly) you oughta place lighting rod nearby to avoid lightning hitting you or spider den and burning them (cacti are immune to fire, they cannot burn but they CAN get damaged via fire damage.

The end + screenshots below

This is it folks. Thanks for stopping by and if you have any additional questions hit me up in the comment section, I’ll try to explain it all if possible. Also don’t forget to check out important screenshots below!!

Volcano localization on any map

The area with red diagonal lines shows places, where your volcano could be on your world. (remember, it’s located only on deep sea biome, but I’ve shown it as an area where it could possibly be – outer map edges).