Boss Fight: Spider Guardian

The Spider Guardian is a fairly unique boss fight, in that you're locked into morphball mode for the duration. The guardian itself will stick to the blue energy grids on the rear of the wall, making it not too difficult to avoid him, which is good, as he has an energy shield on his body that will greatly damage you if you come into contact with it.

You'll need to keep the Spider Guardian in his green mode in order to access the bomb slots here.

Unfortunately, you'll probably have to hit the Guardian more than a few times during your battle, since you'll need to lay bombs in front of it to force it to change its form. It has three forms in total: a blue one with average speed, a red one with high speed, and a green one with low speed. These will be cycled through as you lay bombs along the Guardian's path; it's the green one that's the most critical, as while the Guardian's green, the bomb slots in each little section of the maze will become powered, and the platforms that allow you to access the bomb slots will extend from the wall. Thus, your goal is to force the Guardian to shift to its green form by bombing it, then quickly making your way through the room to the bomb slot and activating it. The bomb slots will trigger small dividers to cut off the Guardian's pathway, forcing it into small electrical pillars, which is your only method of really damaging it. The Guardian doesn't stay green forever, though, so you'll need to get to the bomb slot within 30 seconds or so of the phase shift in order to actually activate it.

The only really difficult room here is the fourth, where there are no fewer than three different energy pillars that you're going to need to maneuver the Guardian into. The Guardian will, by default, pace back and forth on the lowest level of the room, leading to some sticky situations where it can corner you; in order to ensure that this doesn't happen, get used to boosting through it after you hit it with a bomb, while it's changing form; its energy field will drop at this point, letting you by without taking damage.

You'll need to get all of these platforms lowered in order to usher the Guardian to his final energy pillar.

The first pillar is easy enough to hit; just turn the Guardian green, bomb jump up to the first bomb slot and activate it. After the Guardian impacts the pillar, you'll need to turn it green again, hit the first bomb slot, then bomb jump up to the second bomb slot and activate that one as well. The same formula applies for the third bomb slot, as well, but for the last two, you're unlikely to have enough time to hit them all before the Guardian changes from green to blue, which will erase your progress. The key here is that you can actually bomb the Guardian while he's in the green form to reset its decay timer, giving you more time in which to complete the sequence. You'll also need to be careful to activate the bomb slots while the Guardian is on the correct side of the panel; if he can push it back to its normal position, then he will.

Power Bombs

After you activate all three bomb slots and finish off the Guardian, bombjump up to the passageway that opens up and grab the Spider Ball. Now that you can attach yourself to walls, a number of new paths have opened up to you around the Sanctuary. To begin with, head back through the fourth room of the Guardian's lair until you come to a gap where you can bomb jump up; you should be able to hear a Missile Expansion nearby, so grab it and follow the tunnel beyond it to reach the other side of the Dynamo Works. You can now spider your way up to the upper ledge here to the Central Area Transport East. Take the elevator here down to the Hall of Combat Mastery, where you can use your spider ball to grab another Missile Expansion. This one's on the borderline of being worthwhile, though, as you'll have to maneuver through a series of tricky little rooms in order to reach it. Most of them are simple enough to figure out, albeit difficult to properly execute your way through; the only one that's obfuscated is the phazon room, where you'll need to use your morphball bomb to boost yourself up to the spider magnet that'll take you across the danger zone. When you reach the missiles, bust through the block beneath them to grab them, then exit the little habitrail to return back to your starting point.

Every other ball here will periodically electrify, so be sure to wait for them to get done before boosting onto them.

Make your way to the Reactor Core, where you can pick up your ninth energy tank by maneuvering through the little puzzle around the core itself. First, hit the kinetic cannon and stick to the reactor with your spider grip. Make your way up the reactor in between electric pulses, then jump off of the second ball with your boost; when you activate the boost, you'll essentially jump off of whatever you're sticking to, allowing you to make your way across the balls by jumping from ball to ball. Be careful, though, as every other ball will intermittently electrify and drop you off, so be sure to wait for the pulses to dissipate before jumping. If you stick to the trail, you'll eventually reach the energy tank.

After you make your way back to the Sanctuary Entrance, Dark Samus will appear and destroy the bridge; now you know why it never appeared on your map. No worries, though, as you can use the spiderball track to pass back to the Agon Wastes and. From there, you'll need to work your way back to the Torvus Bog. You'll probably get a hint as to the location of your next item on the way, if you haven't already, but when you reach the Bog, you'll definitely want to make a little side trip to get another Energy Tank, which is located in the Torvus Plaza, located near the Forgotten Bridge.

When you reach the Plaza, use your dark visor to kill off the Dark Commandos, then use the boost to get yourself up the halfpipe to a point where you can attack to the spider track. You'll notice a Sporb in position to knock you off the track eventually; if it bothers you, drop down and kill it from below, then resume your passage. The tricky part to this track is that it's disjointed in many parts, forcing you to use bombs to get from path to path. Keep in mind that you don't need to release the R trigger to get your boost, though, and you should be able to stick to it. When you reach the cannon at the end, blast off to find your tank, then blast off to the bottom of the Main Hydrochamber (after saving your game in the Hydrodynamo Station), where you received the Gravity Boost not so long ago. There's a portal at the rear of this room that you can spider your way to.