
I managed to beat the spider with healer-druid(equipped with ice spike) /aggressive ranger & Vaelis, with relatively high SP-pools. This required hitting the restart-button, until the Big Bug started with Bite-attack and not poison. I used bleeding attacks from Vaelis on all three of them whenever I could: it helped the little guys go down relatively fast, Bramble coat on ranger and Druid was hitting Eagle's Grace and Purify. A LOT of re-tries were required for this one... Oh, but the money one gets by selling the poison glands!
Afterwards, the undead.... The fun thing about squishing the Spider before Mormont is that after that annoying bug, Mormont feels a bit easier. Plus, I had money for better equipment at this point. First three turns were given to the undead, I got the next three. After several failed strategies aiming at the mage & ranger, I decided go to straight for Mormont's head. And he went down with one attack from each party member: Ice Nuke followed by Strike Through, that staggered him nice and easy and then Leaping Strike from Vaelis. That was pretty much it.

I quite like the current NM-mode. It gives me quite the headache, but it's still doable, provided that the skills and attributes are chosen carefully (and maybe even classes, who knows what is required to beat the upcoming Acts in NM-mode). With no pelt-stealing, I had to go after spiders to get some money. The balance between spending it on better equipment and having to flush it down at the bar for healing was tricky, though.