Gwene, Rienne and I entered the Tree of Wealth tonight. Here are some things we learned.
The Tree has similar geography to the Tree of Life. (My guess is they're identical.)
The first level is populated with Child Arachnids.
The Child Arachnids were not able to hurt any of us, and, were not hard to kill. But, there are a lot of them, and they seem to repop quickly.
Bug bombs are effective in chasing the spiders out, but they wear off quickly.
The spiders seemed to always attack me first. I have the lowest level of our party. This led us to try this strategy, which seems promising. On entering a new room, the spiders attack me, Rienne drops a bomb to chase them out, and Gwene attacks any webs that are there.
The webs are a difficult challenge. We were all stuck at one time or another. In the future we need to be lighter and have higher dex.
The spiders seemed to be trying to cut off our escape. As we fought our way back to the entrance, we found that rooms we'd already cleared had been spun with many new webs. A larger party might break into two groups, with one group working on keeping the line of escape open.
The webs are a more difficult challenge than the spiders.
We used a *lot* of bug bombs. Maybe twenty, I'm not sure. It's important to bring a lot of them with you.
There was never time to search for the fabled treasures. Things happened too fast. Maybe once a level is completely cleared, it'll be possible to search.
We thought of this strategy, which we'd like to test. A Thief character could sneak and hide ahead of the main party. They could report on what's ahead, and could maybe drop bug bombs to clear the way. Or, attack the webs before the main party arrives. These ideas seem worth testing.
They're swarming. But, they can't find me. (I'm hidden.) They're all in the room with me but I'm safe (so far).
A thief and two fighters can beat them. Thief sneaks and hides. Spiders swarm the thief but can't find him. Thief draws them all to himself. Fighters clear the other rooms of webs and eggs, find the treasures. One fighter blocks the entrance so that repops can't get behind, second fighter goes to where the thief is and kills all the spiders. No bombs needed.