Serpent Soldier

Description

Tall soldiers, half man, half serpent. Equipped with a huge sword and a wooden shield. They either attack with their sword or try to bite the player.

Location

Drops

Man-serpent Greatsword (2% drop rate)

Attacks

• Bite - They raise and then lunge their heads, biting the player. Does a fair amount of damage and can still inflict a small amount of damage even with a shield up.
• Forward sword stab - The thrust their sword in a straight line towards the player. Easily dodged, leaving them wide open for attacks.
• Normal sword sweep - Default attack, sweeps sword from right to left.
• Heavy sword hit - Lunges out and charges up a heavy hit. Easily dodged and leaving their guard open for several counter attacks.

Weakness

• Lightning-based attacks do a lot of damage
• Fire does a good amount of damage (use Firebombs or Combustion)

Strategies

This type of enemy differs from others in a particular way: they have high poise and therefore are quite hard to stun, making very difficult to hit them more than once; but, on the other hand, all of their sword attacks can be deflected even with medium deflection (i.e. normal shields), leaving them staggered and open to a retaliation from the player. Also, they're quite slow; you can easily circle around them for a backstab or land several consecutive quick attacks (with, for example, thrusting swords or spears) in a row. They are also weak to bleed as I have been able to kill them in 2 hits using a plus 5 lifehunt scythe on NG+3 the first hit will not do much but the blood loss should finish them on the 2nd hit