After a week of solo playing this quest, i finally beat it (well kind of - i did not quite include everything forced).

I am a solo player with one deck, i largely go for themed decks (dwarf, elven, hobbit) rather than specifically trying to cherry pick cards to win. I am more into the adventure and journey really. I prefer to play standard level.

I really like the Spider theme, and this is a brutal search quest with a boss ending, perfect for me. It is however really tough i found, especially in the staging area where forced effects and surges can really mount up. After a lot of plays i came to a conclusion that i needed to balance it a little to make it a closer challenge, so i started playing with removing the forced effect of adding the 'on track' card to the staging area - i still deal 3 cards to look to stay on track, but i discard and do not add one if successful. Likely adding these additional staging cards, alongside surges and travel effects works better with 2+ players when you can manage the staging area a little better between you.

Even so it has taken many plays to take down the brood mother, i got to 8 damage on it once before my threat ran to 50 (sooo close). But finally a perfect combination of steward of gondor resources, Gimli with citadel plate and courage, some neat feints and a lot of allies got a success.

I do plan to try more, maybe on easy level and with the forced on track effect properly played to see how this works. You may wonder why i just do not do this first, well i do not really like removing encounter cards, so for some quests solo i initially look for areas that multiple players gain a big advantage, and see if there is a way of mitigating this to give the closest i feel i can for a solo test. There is a video out showing this scenario beaten solo, but with a very specific and clever deck and using mounts, i decided i did not want to take mounts underground into a spider burrow, just did not feel right.

I wonder if any other solo players review specific quest rules to try and make them slightly fairer v multiplaying (i realise purists may be shocked at the approach).

Anyway - this has been one of my favourite quests, and one day i will beat it solo all in i am sure, but it will take a near perfect card draw i suspect - or probably i just need to be cleverer at deck building.