The Serpentman adventurer is a rare breed. Few Serpentmen ever leave the swamps, as they are not well adjusted for human society. Their heads and feet are not shaped properly to use boots or helmets made for humanoid folk, but their unusual build has given rise to a cultural habit of wearing pieces of bracelet- and ring-like jewelry on their tails. They possess a tough hide and strong legs which enable them to leap further than most folks. Their nasty claws can also double as weapons.

They are only partially warm-blooded, and are as a result somewhat susceptible to cold.

The serpent man is selectable by players as their race. It has the following modifications:

• +30 fire
• +30 electricity
• +30 acid
• +30 poison
• +5 physical
• -20 cold

• No boots/helmets

• 3 ring slots
• 2 bracer slots

• Clawing

Has the same number of equipment slots as most humanoid races, but the shape of their heads and feet means that lizardfolk serpentfolk can't wear helmets or boots. Instead, they get to wear an extra pair of bracers on their ankles, and an extra ring on their tails. The extra ring slot is generally very useful as there are many rings in the game that provide a variety of resistances or immunities, and having a third ring slot is generally quite versatile. The extra bracer slot is less useful, at least early on where bracers with noteworthy enchantments are simply not readily available. The extra bracer slot is useful though very late in the game, particularly if you worship Gnarg who gets a respectably useful set of bracers that boosts many stats including your cold resistance. Whether not these are worth the loss of access to useful helmets and boots such as x-ray helmets or speed and levitation boots will depend on the player's preferences.

They also get a significant number of natural innate resistances which gives them a measure of protection against common attack types. Fire is an extremely common and difficult to evade element, poison is dangerous throughout the game, and the +30 acid resist makes it easy to equip a ring early on to hit 50% resistance which stops equipment damage from acid.

Works well with a variety of deities. Gnarg in particular is a recommended choice as the gift of bracers confers several stat boosts including invaluable cold resistance, and serpentfolk do not count as humans for the purposes of Cause Smallpox, making them immune to the effects of the prayer and letting them use it (as well as Cause Typhoid) safely. Ixalovh is an interesting option that loses some fire resist to fix your cold resistance somewhat as well as giving physical and magical resistance, but you're still capped at 50% cold resistance even with a lot of equipment on, so you'll never really be able to resist cold well. Other deities work well, including Gorokh (the slight -5% cold weakness is minor compared to what you already have) and Devourers. Ruggili is not recommended, as boosting your cold weakness even further is rather dangerous.

Unfortunately, the -20% cold weakness is a significant challenge for them as many enemies use dangerous, wide hitting cold spells. It's not an unmanageable challenge though, and keeping a keybinding to instantly drink a Potion of Cold Resistance to temporarily get near-immunity to cold can get you out of trouble if need be.

The weakness to cold makes them a bit more challenging to play as you'll always have a vulnerability to deal with, but they're nevertheless very capable as a race and their good physical stats and innate resistances make them an interesting and viable alternative to more typical humanoid races, both as a physical attacker or a spellcaster. A suit of Green Dragon Mail will mostly fix your cold weakness early on for casual enemy encounters, but keep Potions of Cold Resistance on hand in case a horde of dragons appears.

Note: earlier versions of Crossfire such as the Metalforge server had serpentfolk set to a whopping -50% cold weakness, the race with the highest weakness in the game. This made them arguably the toughest of all races to play as you were very susceptible to an unexpected ice elemental spell, and getting a positive resistance value required piling on many pieces of equipment or finding particularly high level gear. Many enemies use multiple spell elements and something like a sudden icestorm spell would rip up your health very quickly. In versions where their weakness is set to -20% they're pretty fun and effective, but in older versions where their weakness is -50%, they're an extremely challenging race to play that needs to avoid ice-themed maps or prepare accordingly.