You remember the previous version, in which the Spider Mastermind was able to annihilate you in 2 or 3 shots if you weren't at melee distance ?
And so you really needed to get a chance in destroying to reach melee distance, in which the damage the monster was dealing was very reasonnable, so you could actually kill that thing
Well, that's a thing of the past, oh not the "can destroy you in 2 or 3 shots at a distance" because it can always destroy you that quickly, but the melee thing : now the Spider Mastermind hits you as much or even more than the Cyberdemon does at melee (wiki is not updated to this from what i see as it lists always the 0.9.9.5 damage.
It will then kill you in 2 or 3 hits at melee too.
So basically to destroy that monster i think you'll need :
- a blue armor, the only item you can easily find that gives you 20% of plasma resistance (the kind of weapon the Spider Mastermind use) , but even with 20% resistance, don't expect much because a blue armor, well ... it's an armor that will be destroyed in no time and have weak protection, so you'll need to pack an enormous punch to destroy the thing before it ruins your armor, then you.
- if you are extremely lucky (so don't count on that) you'll find
this or
that or whatever very very rare item can give strong resistance to Plasma , and keep it until you're facing the Spider Mastermind, (that would make the battle a walk in the park as long as you stay at a distance.)
- find a nuke or an item that has a nuke ability, and obliterate the whole level, you (unless you're lucky and got an invulnerability, or you got a strong character that could clear the Lava Pits to get the lava element) and the Spider Mastermind, that's probably what will be the most used method
- teleport with phase device and if you're -really- lucky you end on the stairs to the "secret spoiler" (happened to me once in 0.9.9.4), bypassing the Spider Mastermind fight (though this may or may not be possible depending if this was seen as a bug by the dev)
-get 2 level of the Whizkid trait and assemble
this to benefit of the 50% of protection against plasma, good thing is that it requires only "regular" mods (so no very rare nano, firestorm etc...), but Whizkid means that if you're a Marine you're blocking Army of the Dead if you're a Technician, you're blocking Entranchment
- Have 3 Shockwave packs (and be more than very lucky so it deals near the max damage everytime and do not knock around the monster too much) and play at lowest level of difficulty (or you'll need much more Shockwave packs) , and of course survive at least 3 turns (not really possible considering it will knock the monster back that will then deal to you plasma death without any walls around to take cover), very unlikely to beat the thing though
- You have Intuition level 2 so you can see a few tiles beyond the fog of war, allowing you to shoot before it does. But be warned, the Spider Mastermind does not feel knockbacks, so your rocket launcher will not really be that helpfull. Bad thing is that Intuition will block some other traits.
- Fight and very likely die in 2 shots