Megarachnoid is a chunky boss and one of the first ones that will give The Ascent players some trouble. Everything is possible though and here's how we managed to do it during our playthrough.
The Ascent's "Empowerment" quest has a beefy boss standing between you and your goal of carrying on with the story.
Megarachnoid was the first major boss I've encountered that had me scratching my head, switching out my loadouts and generally flailing around the circular arena so you don't have to.
Know your enemy
Megarachnoid is a giant mech with many legs, a focused flame lance and pods that deploy deadly spiderbots armed with proximity detonators.
Not fun at parties, but the spiders do telegraph when they're about to pounce so you can evade them fairly easily: they stand up on their hind legs right before jumping at you. This is your cue to get out of dodge.
Choosing the right loadout
Bringing the right guns to a fight in The Ascent is crucial and your best bet against most of the game's mechanized enemies is any kind of energy gun.
That said, we've also managed to kill the Megarachnoid using the P1 Protector pistol and HMG42 Detonator machine gun (both upgraded to Mk.4), so don't fret if you missed out on picking up some energy weapons.
One general tip for all of The Ascent: take advantage of the fact that you can change your loadout and armour on the move and try out new weapons if you feel like you're not killing the enemies fast enough.
The Ascent: Megarachnoid guide - loadout
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Dress for the part
Megarachnoid has the flame lance and its trusty exploding spiders. As both do quite a bit of fire damage, we suggest you switch up your armour to some of the more flame-retardant pieces.
As mentioned, The Ascent does let you change your loadout and armour on the fly so this shouldn't be a problem.
Augments are an indent's best friend
The Ascent has a bunch of different augment options available and we'd suggest going with the Mono Ranger and the Neutron Beam (because that's what we used).
The Mono Ranger will soak up the damage from the Megarachnoid while doing some itself, but that's not all: the trusty robot will keep the big boss busy as you sneak up from behind and resume damage pumping the thing danger-free.
Neutron Beam is a good crowd control augment that will come in handy if the little spiders hatch from their pods and launch kamikaze attacks on your person. The augment also slices through armour and deals huge amounts of damage to its target (in this case, a giant robot-spider and its cursed children).
Don't change your augments before or during the fight because doing that will fully deplete your energy and you'll be unable to use any of them anyway.
If you remember to slot in an augment and the fight hasn't broken out yet, you can set it up and then wait around for your energy to recharge. Just be careful not to trigger the creepy cutscene.
Neon Giant
This one hack will change your life
Megarachnoid's spider pods can be hacked. The game chooses to divulge this information after you've already defeated the guy so here it is now.
Hacking the pods will prevent the spiders from hatching and make your life generally easier. Just be sure you're not standing close to the pods when they're destroyed as they also send out fireballs.
Safe to say that we tried to hack anything and everything after this mission.
Good luck and have fun.
