Serpent

Serpent

The reason a raft is not a boat.
Biome	Ocean
Alignment	Aggressive
Faction	Sea
Health	400
Damage	Attack: 70 Slash
Weak To	Frost
Resistant To	Poison
Immune To	Fire, Spirit
Stagger	-
Tameable	No
Trophy	Serpent trophy
Spawn ID	`spawn Serpent`

Something hits the hull, and then the water beside the tiller stands up. The Serpent is the one true monster of the Ocean: a long, scaled sea snake that surfaces in the dark and in foul weather and swims straight for anything floating. For most Vikings it is what ends a first crossing somewhere cold and far from land. For anyone who comes prepared, it is dinner for a week.

Behaviour

It hunts by closing in, with no ranged attack and no tricks. The serpent swims at you, circles the boat and bites roughly once every ten seconds when it is within about three metres. The bite deals 70 slash across an eighty-degree arc in front of its head. That arc hits the boat as well as the crew, which is why a raft does not survive the encounter and why a karve needs a pilot willing to keep the stern turned away. It swims faster than you can row, and faster than a karve moves in poor wind, so escaping depends on catching a good breeze rather than effort. It is aggressive at all times, does not sleep, does not call others and spawns alone, one at a time. The one thing it really dislikes is shallow water: dragged towards land, it turns and tries to get back out to the deep instead of beaching itself. A serpent that spawned at night vanishes at dawn whether you have finished with it or not, which is worth knowing if you have spent ten minutes whittling it down.

Where to Find It

Serpents live in the deep Ocean, the open blue away from any coastline, and do not spawn in the shallows off a Meadows beach. Two conditions spawn them, both rare and both capped at a single serpent in the area. The first is plain darkness in mid ocean, and those serpents despawn at dawn. The second is weather: during rain or a thunderstorm one can spawn at any hour, and a serpent that came with the rain stays past sunrise, which makes it the one worth hunting on purpose. Serpents come without star variants, so every one you meet has the same 400 health. No boss or event gates them, and that is exactly the trap: a new Viking crossing to a Black Forest island on a raft at night is in exactly the right place at the right time.

Where and When	At Once	How Often	Stars
Middle of Ocean during the night time, despawn at dawn	1	Rare	No
Middle of Ocean during rain or thunderstorm	1	Rare	No

Strengths and Weaknesses

Fight it from a boat with a bow, and make it a karve or a longship, not a raft, which is too slow and too fragile to survive the bite. Frost is its weakness, so Frost Arrows are worth crafting just for the trip. Fire Arrows are completely wasted on something that cannot burn, and poison barely registers. A finewood bow and a full quiver is the realistic minimum; with less than that, you are better off sailing away. If you prefer melee, fight it standing in knee-deep water at a shoreline where it cannot fully close, and block or parry the bite with a decent shield, since a single telegraphed attack every ten seconds is generous. The real problem is not killing it but keeping the loot. Serpent Meat floats, but the scales and trophy sink and are lost for good in deep water. An Abyssal Harpoon solves this by letting you drag the serpent into the shallows or onto the beach before the last hit lands. Bronze or iron gear with the rested buff and a good meal makes the whole thing routine.

Frost deals extra damage to it.
It resists Poison damage.
It is immune to Fire and Spirit damage.

Drops

Its scales make a shield and its meat the best stew of the mid game, as long as the body falls somewhere shallow enough to loot.

Item	Base	1 Star	2 Star
Serpent meat	6-7	-	-
Serpent scale	8-10	-	-
Serpent trophy	33%	-	-

Notes

A Raft is usually too slow and too fragile for a solo player to survive a serpent attack. Because of serpents, the minimum recommended setup for exploring the ocean is a Karve and at least a Finewood Bow.
Only serpents that spawn in the rain can be kept captive. Serpents that spawn at night despawn during the day.
Dragged inland, serpents try to flee back into the ocean.
Serpent Meat floats, but all other drops sink. Kill a serpent in deep water and its drops sink to the bottom of the ocean, out of reach, since you cannot dive for them. Use an Abyssal Harpoon to drag the serpent into shallow water, or even onto land, before you kill it so you can collect the drops.

All Creature Categories

All Ocean Creatures

Name	Image	Biome	Alignment	Health	Very Weak To	Weak To	Resistant To	Very Resistant To	Immune To	Drops	Level Variants	Spawn ID
Serpent		Ocean	Aggressive	400	-	Frost	Poison	-	Fire, Spirit	Serpent meat, Serpent scale, Serpent trophy	-	`spawn Serpent`

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