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[vexxice]

I would consider myself an intermediate player of DF. On this glorious day a Giant Cave Spider got caught in one of my cage traps! 
I am really excited because I have never caught one before. Now, I would like some creative suggestions for what to do with him.

P.S. I'm not sure if this should have been posted in the discussion forum or here. So I apologize if this is the wrong spot.

[k33n]

I know you can set one up behind a fortification aimed at a prisoner and have it generate web for a silk farm. I have never done this myself, however.

[4maskwolf]

You could set it up in such a way that all creatures passing into the fortress had to go within sight of the GCS.  Basically the design of the silk farm, just keep a bridge raised until something comes along that the GCS should attack, then lower it to allow the GCS to shoot wevs.  Yes, you may lose the GCS, but it would certainly serve to slow down your enemies.  Bonus points if you make a room above the GCS chamber where the archers can rain fire down on the disabled enemies.

[m-logik]

If science is your goal, you could maybe do some research on climbing. Try different arrangements to see what will motivate it to climb (i.e. to destroy buildings, kill kittens, etc.). Maybe see if it alters its climbing route to account for different types of natural and constructed terrain.

[vexxice]

Motivation trials do sound interesting. I was looking for a way to utilize him to help my fortress, though. Will it attack anything that gets in its way? I would like to use it as a guard dog, but keep my dwarves safe. Is there a way to extract its venom, maybe to place on a blade?

Oh, I also get confused on what hauling actions make the dwarves take the creature out of its cage and lead it down the hallway (which is obviously EXTREMELY DANGEROUS with a GCS).

[Melting Sky]

You could set it up in such a way that all creatures passing into the fortress had to go within sight of the GCS.  Basically the design of the silk farm, just keep a bridge raised until something comes along that the GCS should attack, then lower it to allow the GCS to shoot wevs.  Yes, you may lose the GCS, but it would certainly serve to slow down your enemies.  Bonus points if you make a room above the GCS chamber where the archers can rain fire down on the disabled enemies.

Actually since the nerfing of range combat, I doubt that the GCS would be in much danger at all. My guess is that the spider would need to be fired at several hundred times before it went down, likely more. The one thing I could see posing a real threat to it would be a rampaging dragon or other beasts with natural ranged fire attacks.

[smeeprocket]

can't you tame it?

Well you probably don't want it tamed if you want a nice silk farm, which is the best use for it. I think the behind fortification thing works well and you get giant cave spider silk on tap.

Personally I would save the science experiments for creatures that don't produce valuable materials.

[PatrikLundell]

Taming it should be a good thing if you also catch another hostile creature to use as a web target, I would have thought?

[vexxice]

I believe that GCS' are born/hatched as adults, thereby skipping the child phase. Does this prevent me from domesticating the spider?

[Naryar]

No, GCS can be tamed. Tame it and release it around your dwarves.

Unfortunately these things are pretty fragile, so you may do better to isolate it.

Also if you tame it it will attack hostiles on sight. And throw webs.

But you can use it to:
-Make cage traps that catch EVERYTHING (especially your own animals/dwarves)
-Generate infinite silk
-Use it in a trap design (careful of enemy archers)

I'm not sure if they actually breed now. According to the child tag changes, they should.

[Niddhoger]

I'd say building cage traps that capture the trap-avoid.  You can set some up at the entrance to your fort to snag those pesky thieves/ambushers.  You can also capture trap-avoid forgotten beasts.  I've never found one, but supposedly you could capture a web-slinging forgotten beast.  Not sure if you could turn that beast into a silk farm, however... I imagine it would be ludicrously valuable to make FB cloth.  Even if it has a stupid value modifier, it would be supremely satisfying and dwarf to "tame" the great and mighty forgotten beast and use it to make socks on demand

To web the traps, you build a trap on top of the web.  So construct a mini-silk farm and have a goblin (or a cat if GCS is hostile still) pass by.  Then close the bridge/remove hostile creature and try building traps.  conversely you can build walls around the webs to force things to path past them.  You could also build some bridges to raise/lower.  to close off your normal entrance/web trap entrance so giant elk birds don't trigger your webbed traps.  Thus when that trapavoid FB finally does show up, you can flip a switch and have it pass through your webbed trap corridor.

This isn't hte only way to trap a trapavoid, btw.  Stunned/unconscious creatures loose their trap-avoid as well.  The best way to do this is set up some traps around a pillar supporting a floor above it.  This will generally only work on a building destroyer though (goes to smash support, gets cage trapped when floor collapses on it while standing on trap).  You can have a long trap lined corridor with a single support holding up a roof above it, then pop a lever to cause the cave in for something that isn't a BD. 

[PatrikLundell]

Supposedly the unconciousness trapping method for trapavoiders is fairly weak: I think the wiki states that the only trapavoiders who are not also stun resistant are kobolds and gremlins.
I think FB webs have a value on par with GCS webs. It's actually not that hard to get some webs (if such an FB show up), as the cavern is full of webs from it when you finally manages to stop its rampage. To get webs in a controlled manner is something completely different, of course.

Webbed cage traps is probably the most valuable product from a GCS (from a practical perspective), but a silk farm can be handy as well. What you really want do do is to set up a breeding program and export them, and it doesn't even have to conflict with the other usages.

[Niddhoger]

I double checked the wiki and apparently FB products have no value multipliers... so it would actually be on par with simple cave spider silk.  While this is nearly worthless it is still awesome to say you have clothed your fortress in nothing but forgotten beast silk.

How to trap one? You build a room ahead of time and prepare to close off the entrance to your fort but have a 2ndary entrance at the back of your FB trap.  You'll need to have several bridges (all on different levers) ready to properly coral the bastard.  Within your bridge sealed corridor have a collapsable floor that drops directly into a prepared silk farm.  It'll be set up like a normal farm- you have a fortification lined room that the beast resides within, and a wall of bridges around that to block the beasts site.  You pit in a kitten (or goblin) and lower hte bridge.  Beast fires like mad until you close the bridge off and collect webs.  Repeat. Now... since this is a stun and web immune forgotten beast moving it will be extremely tricky.  You'll have to be very careful only giving it a single path to something delicious (again, kitten) penned in the next room you want it.  The rest of your dwarves should be burrowed (and sealed) into your dining room near the levers to recapture it. 

Man... bridges are just too over powered in DF.  They are indestructable and used far more as either atom smashers (for clearing out trash or goblins) or temporary walls than their actual purpose of being bridges >.>

[Linkxsc]

Infinite silk farms are nice. I once caught about 3 of them which were built into webbing towers flanking my entrance. Pull a lever on the floor above (filled with marksdorfs) to open some bridges and let the things web away. Completely decimated entire seiges (human seiges at that. Somehow in the forts worldgen my civ was at war with them. Had thought it odd when they never showed up for 5 years ti trade. Year 6 though, they showed up with a 60 man seige)

[vexxice]

I know that blood can stain swords and armor, and when the blood is acidic it can create really useful weapons. Could the cave spider web be used to cover swords and create a stunning effect?