P.S. It's possible to kill them if you quickly run away and shoot at them, they are not that fast and they don't spit webs from distance.
Hmm, I usually don't notice forest spiders for a couple of steps after being taken into the local map. I just see a bunch of trees and think "Hmm, I don't see any raptors or bears or giant ants..." move around a bit, thinking they're behind trees where I can't see and BAM! webbed. Last time that happened some raptors came along too so it was basically me against 3 forest spiders and 3 raptors... not good odds, but I got lucky and managed to kill enough of them by my next webbing to survive the whole thing with my right ear missing and a bad-ass scar on my left cheek, a bad-ass scar on my right leg, and other scars on my upper/lower body and arms.
I like that you can get jumped by nasty stuff like this that isn't just something lame like instant-death-due-to-melting from wyvern breath with temperature on, though. It makes the game interesting and makes you a little more cautious about deciding to travel through that otherwise harmless forest
Oh yeah! After I tried Vherkin's changes to the illithds/goblins, I also tried setting nords and osman starting group sizes to 15 or 20 from 10. I found that this helped to make sure some of their civs survived the first century... I ended up with a world which had every civilization survive except the Dusk elves! Forgot to also bump their group size up as well, whoops.
But basically my point is, with... 11? different civs, there's always one or two that don't survive until the year 1050, and increasing starting group size seems to help with survival without upsetting the balance too much.
Edit 2: Well, my world for the 2.99 version has finally finished generating, and all the civs are alive at 1050. Maybe this isn't really necessary after all?
Edit 3: My dwarf's civ capital is an elven forest retreat. Something tells me this could be a very Interesting world
Edit: I forgot to point out, that wrought iron's pretty crappy, as far as weapons and armour go. Steel, or better yet, crucible steel, is the dwarven/adventurer way!