Bonemaw Serpent
| Bonemaw Serpent | |
|---|---|
 | |
| A lava-scarred serpent that surfaces to spit fire at ships crossing to the Ashlands. | |
| Biome | Ashlands |
| Alignment | Aggressive |
| Faction | Demon |
| Health | 1100 |
| Damage | |
| Weak To | Frost |
| Resistant To | Poison |
| Immune To | Fire, Spirit |
| Stagger | - |
| Tameable | No |
| Trophy | Bonemaw trophy |
| Spawn ID | spawn BonemawSerpent
|
The Bonemaw Serpent is the toll the ocean charges for reaching the Ashlands. It is a blackened, fire-breathing cousin of the northern Serpent, living in the water that rings the southern continent. Most Vikings do not so much meet it as get ambushed by it: three burning lights arc over the mast, the deck catches fire, and suddenly the crossing is a fight. You rarely choose this fight, and with 1,100 health and only a hull between you and the sea floor, you often have to win it fast.
Behaviour
It patrols deep water alone, always awake, and only rises to the surface to attack before sinking back into the swell. Between ten and thirty metres it dips under the water, then swoops up out of it to launch a barrage of three fireballs. Each one carries 40 blunt, 20 fire and 20 poison: the blunt part is what chews through a ship, while the fire and poison stack on whoever stands at the tiller. That volley comes round roughly every twenty seconds, which makes mid range the worst place to be. Closer in, inside three metres, it bites for 140 slash in an eighty degree arc, an attack that will flatten an unprepared player in one or two hits. It never calls for help, never flees once it has locked on, and cannot be staggered out of anything it starts, so pressure is the only thing that ends the fight.
Where to Find It
It lives in the ocean around the Ashlands, the band of open water you must sail through to reach the black beaches in the far south. It is a rare spawn, and the world only holds one at a time, day or night, with no star variants, so it is not something you farm so much as something that happens to you. No boss kill gates it, which means an over-eager early voyage south can run into it long before you have any gear to answer it. It prefers deep water, so hugging the coast and keeping a shoreline within swimming distance is the difference between losing your cargo and losing your run.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Frost is the answer and fire is wasted effort, so leave the flame-infused Flametal weapons and any Fire Arrows in the chest. Bring Frost Arrows, Frostner or a frost-gemmed blade instead. Nothing you do will stagger it, so parrying pays nothing and you have no window to fish for: treat the fight as a damage race, not a duel. The safest options are to break away entirely under full sail or to commit and fight it at the rail, where its bite is the only threat and your melee actually reaches. Hanging around at twenty metres just feeds it free fireball volleys. Drink a Fire Resistance Barley Wine before you leave port and carry a Poison Resistance Mead, since both of its side effects come from that one spit attack. A Drakkar with a repair hammer and a spare crew member on the helm turns the crossing from a gamble into a chore; in anything smaller you are gambling.
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