Astral Serpent

[Forrest]

I armed 3 SC's almost the same. Sword of swiftness, luck shield, boots of quickness, black helmet, Shadow robe, and Bear claw talisman. However two of them got astral serpents and the last a Bottle of living water as I ran short of greens. All three fought in the same battle group in all the same battles.

The two with astral serpents have 93 and 95 kills. The one with the bottle has 48 kills.

I can think of a dozen reasons for this to be so that have nothing to do with the serpent.

However I was wondering if anyone else had noticed the astral serpents having a dramatic increase on kills. I had thought 3 extra damage points and a death poison roll per attack would have a effect but not a 90% increase in effectiveness.

My nation is EA R'lyeh and all battles have been against Vanheim and Arcoscephale.

[Saxon]

Wouldn't the kills from the water elemental be counted to the elemental, rather than the SC?

[Forrest]

Yes.

A water elemental does do it's share of killing. Best of all it does not get afflictions. Which is why I figured it a good item.

You just don't get the statistics. If you could add in the element's numbers the last guy might be higher, but I don't think so. Those quickened guys move fast.

Now if you could group the Elementals and cast a quicken spell on them that would be one quick, mean wall of water. A few boosts would make the terrors.

[Baalz]

Well, one thing that comes to mind is that each extra attack has a proportionally higher effectiveness against high defense troops (Vanhiem comes to mind). Not sure how the attacks are ordered, but it might be that the serpent isn't dealing so much damage itself as reducing the defense and letting other attacks land. You might try a dancing trident or stone bird to compare it to.

Just a thought, haven't tested this out.

[CUnknown]

I think the Serpent is a pretty decent item, I mean it does death poison. I think it would be more effective than the dancing trident or the stone bird.

[Forrest]

Just have to try and see.

[Cor]

Does the serpent just do one attack, or does it do one attack for each one the SC takes (IE 4 attacks for quickness plus sword of swiftness + another 4 attacks for serpent)? My observations say that its only one, but the text is misleading.

[Nick_K]

I'm pretty sure it just adds an extra weapon, so just one attack

[ologm]

A 3 armor negating damage could easily fall out higher and kill a 10 hp soldier.

[Shovah32]

And then theres the death poison...