My guess is that you accidentally hit your own Karve. My 2nd guess is that it got knocked into rocks.

Originally posted by Maelstrom:

My guess is that you accidentally hit your own Karve.

That seems likely especially if trying to use melee on the serpent, OP needs to get back on how it went in more detail.

i wonder if theyll ever add 2 star serpents. or any other kind of sea monster. my first serpent made me nearly crap my pants as i really didnt expect sea monsters in this game.

till then ill refer to them as seameat i guess.

Originally posted by Nerevar:

till then ill refer to them as seameat i guess.

The higher level variants will just be "more seameat" then, considering how they should drop even more loot?

The longboat could have been damaged since i never checked its health so that's on me.

The second karve, as i remember, was cap-sized/tipped over by a really bad combination of a large wave and a serpent attack. I had never before suffered a cap-size, didn't know it could happen.

The first karve that was destroyed had full health and went down in SECONDS from what i can remember just 2 attacks. I'm pretty sure there was no wave damage so it still seems like a mystery to me. There were no witches(rocks) nor was i near shallows. There is a chance i may have hit it with 1-3 arrows from draugr fang with obsidian arrows but could that be enough?

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i wonder if theyll ever add 2 star serpents. or any other kind of sea monster. my first serpent made me nearly crap my pants as i really didnt expect sea monsters in this game.

till then ill refer to them as seameat i guess.

I guess with the oceans update there will be other „sea monsters“.

No boosts that I am aware of. I have never encountered a 1 or 2 star serpent (not sure if they exist?) but if it were it's probable that damage output would have been much higher. It's also probable that your boats had some damage you forgot to repair. I always carry some wood with me in my cargo hold to periodically pull over and repair the boat. If you equip the hammer while on the boat, you can catch a glimpse of the health status of the boat so you know when you should pull over or not. Do you use any mods or are you playing vanilla? This could just be really bad luck?

Maybe you were using magic to fight the serpent? It crushes ships with awful efficience!

I just encountered a serpent yesterday and it attacked my Karve for 60dmg / bite. I believe that is the same damage they have always done. As stated above there was probably existing boat damage, you took some new damage from large waves sailing in a storm, or perhaps hit your own boat while engaging the serpent.

Longboats shouldn't die to a few serpent hits but karves will--they're smaller boats. If your longboat was destroyed "within seconds" then it was already damaged before you encountered the serpent.

sometimes boat health doesnt make sense. i once crashed into a mistlands rock at full speed with a full repaired longship. the ship got destroyed INSTANTLY by the collision. thankfully water was very shallow so i could recover the precious nails with your lord and savoir the hoe. thankfully it was on a exploration trip with no metals in the boat yet.
this never happed again. despite tryingt it out and hitting the same rock with full speed again. my guess is that boat health is sometimes not saved correctly by the game for some reason. or dmg caculations go haywire once in a blue boon during collisions.

serpents arent a threat anymore now so they rarely hit my boat and when i spot one all i can see is MEAT to make more stew. let one bite just now after seeing this thread. it did like 50+ dmg to the longship.

so you probaly had a dmg caculation go haywire aswell?

or its a mod issue if you use any.

big waves can also dmg the boat and that dmg is often not noticed.