Cave Spider
neutralOurs, not the game's own: how a cave spider behaves. Same on Bedrock v1.26.40.05 for weight, health. Checked 2026-08-22, and here is how we check.
Added InOverview
A Cave Spider is a neutral mob: it ignores players until it is provoked, and only then turns aggressive.
You will normally come across cave spiders in the Overworld, where they appear in Mineshafts.
What sets it apart is its behaviour: same as spiders but smaller (1x0.5 blocks) and inflicts Poison on Normal and Hard difficulty.
Stat-wise it sits at 12 health (6 hearts), dropping 5 experience on death.
It was first added in Beta 1.8 and has been a fixture of Minecraft ever since.
A useful detail many players miss: Found in Mineshaft spawner rooms with cobwebs.
The Cave Spider sits in a useful middle ground, harmless if you respect it, but a real threat if you provoke it, which makes reading the situation important.
Damage by Difficulty
Spawning
Natural spawns for the Cave Spider occur in Mineshafts.
The spawn table draws that line differently: it gives the Cave Spider one biome, Sulfur Caves, and has no entry at all for Mineshafts.
Spawns from monster spawners in Mineshafts, and from the biome spawn table in Sulfur Caves.
Naturally spawned cave spiders will despawn over time when no player is nearby; naming one with a name tag or leading it away on a lead keeps it permanent.
As a neutral creature it leaves you alone until disturbed, so careful movement lets you share its space without a fight.
Where the Cave Spider spawns
Sulfur Caves is where it stands strongest: weight 20 on the monster list and 6.4% of it, arriving 1 at a time. There it shares the list with Sulfur Cube at 100, Creeper at 50, Skeleton at 50, Zombie at 50 and Slime at 25 and 3 more, 311 weight together, of which 20 is cave spider. That is the whole list.
| Biome | Weight | Share | Group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sulfur Caves | 20 | 6.4% | 1 |
Drops
Here is what you can expect to collect from a Cave Spider:
Nothing here is guaranteed: a kill can give you 0 to 2 String and 1 Spider Eye.
You also collect 5 experience for every Cave Spider you defeat.
Farming cave spiders is the standard way to stockpile string in quantity.
With nothing guaranteed, output is swingy: over many kills the averages hold, but any single Cave Spider may give you little, so farm in volume rather than expecting a jackpot each time.
| Item | Count | Chance | Conditions |
|---|---|---|---|
| String | 0 to 2 | not every kill | Looting III up to 5 |
| Spider Eye | 0 to 1 | not every kill | player kill, Looting III up to 4 |
Spider EyeIt is not the only source of Spider Eye: the spider drops 0 to 1 and the witch 0 to 2.
Cave Spider attributes
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
 Size | 0.7 x 0.5 blocks |
 Eye height | 0.45 blocks |
 Tracking range | 8 chunks |
 Experience | 5 |
 Movement speed | 0.3 |
| Follow range | 16 blocks |
 Health | 12 points |
The Cave Spider shares this stretch of the scale: the copper golem on the same 12 health.
Cave Spider: 0.1% of its category, rank 50 of 52
On 1 of the 66 biome lists (1 spawn entry in total), and 0.1% of every spawn the game puts in its monster group is a cave spider.
The ranges Minecraft Java 26.2 rolls for a cave spider give 1 String per kill, so 64 String costs 64 kills before Looting. Spider Eye runs at 0.5 a kill, 128 cave spider kills for a stack of its own. 1 of those 2 rows (Spider Eye) only roll when a player lands the killing blow, so a cave spider killed by a fall or another mob averages 1 item instead of 1.5.
| Item | Average per kill |
|---|---|
 String | 1 |
1 situational row left out. How this average is worked out
| Weapon | Attack damage | Full swings | Swings per 64 String |
|---|---|---|---|
 golden sword, wooden sword | 4 | 3 | 192 |
 stone sword | 5 | 3 | 192 |
 iron sword | 6 | 2 | 128 |
 diamond sword, golden axe, wooden axe | 7 | 2 | 128 |
 netherite sword | 8 | 2 | 128 |
 diamond axe, iron axe, stone axe | 9 | 2 | 128 |
 netherite axe | 10 | 2 | 128 |
On the receiving end a cave spider takes 10% off a player's 20 health per hit, so 10 of them land the kill; that share is the cave spider's 2 damage on Normal. On Easy the same cave spider hit is 10%, on Hard 15%, so 10 hits against 7.
Behavior & Combat
Same as spiders but smaller (1x0.5 blocks) and inflicts Poison on Normal and Hard difficulty. Can fit through 0.5-block gaps.
At 0.3 it is 17th of 72 for speed, level with the ravager at 0.3.
On the offensive it deals 2 on Easy, 2 on Normal and 3 on Hard, and you will need to chew through 12 health (6 hearts) to bring one down.
To deal with one efficiently, exploit its weaknesses: it is vulnerable to Fire and Bane of Arthropods enchantment.
A sword enchanted with Bane of Arthropods shortens the fight considerably against this mob.
The Cave Spider cannot be bred, so the only way to get more is to find them spawning naturally in their home biomes.
As long as you avoid landing the first blow, you can usually go about your business near a Cave Spider without trouble.
Cave Spider commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /summon minecraft:cave_spider | Puts a cave spider on the block you are standing on. |
| /give @p minecraft:cave_spider_spawn_egg | Hands you the cave spider spawn egg, so you can place cave spiders where you want them. |
| /kill @e[type=minecraft:cave_spider] | Removes every cave spider that is loaded around you. |
Entity id minecraft:cave_spider, spawn egg minecraft:cave_spider_spawn_egg.
Cave Spider farm
Build a cave spider farm around the one rule the game applies to every cave spider. Spawns from monster spawners in Mineshafts, and from the biome spawn table in Sulfur Caves.
Of the 1 biome spawn list the cave spider stands on, Sulfur Caves gives the cave spider its largest share at 6.4%, so a cave spider platform there fills faster than the same build anywhere else.
Each kill is worth 5 experience and up to 2 string, or 5 with Looting III, which is the number to scale the cave spider farm against.
5 experience per killString up to 2, 5 with Looting IIISulfur Caves at 6.4%Cave Spider version history
The cave spider was added in Minecraft Beta 1.8, which came out on 14 September 2011, so the cave spider has been in the game for 14 years.
2 other mobs here came with it: the enderman and the silverfish. That puts the cave spider behind 14 of the 88 mobs here and ahead of 71.
Every cave spider figure on this page is read from Minecraft Java 26.2 as it stands today, not from the version above.
What Cave Spider sounds like
Turn subtitles on and every cave spider sound names itself in the corner of the screen. These are the 3 lines a cave spider can put there, and you can play any of them yourself with /playsound minecraft:entity.spider.ambient master @p.
| Sound | What you hear |
|---|---|
| entity.spider.ambient |  Spider hisses |
| entity.spider.hurt | Spider hurts |
| entity.spider.death | Spider dies |
Advancements that need Cave Spider
2 advancements ask for cave spider by name, and each of them counts other mobs too.
- Monster HunterKill any hostile monster
- Monsters HuntedKill one of every hostile monster
