Hexen/Enemies

These basic enemies can be encountered during the game:

• Ettins are the lowest level enemies you can encounter, often times they serve as meat shields for more powerful adversaries. Their HP and damage are not the lowest among all monsters', but they are slow, possess only melee attacks and have no special abilities. They only pose a real threat when in number and/or cornering a player in a wall.
• Afrits look like burning Gargoyles from Heretic, and they can fly as well. Afrits attack with three consequent fireballs, so standing on one spot is not the wisest decision when you fight them. They also know how to strafe when you attack them, especially when you’re using weapons with slow projectiles. More to be told, Afrits can attack and strafe at the same time, and like to counterattack. Fortunately, they are frail and will go down with a couple well aimed hits by any weapon.
• Green Chaos Serpents look like D’Sparil’s mount, but are much weaker. They breath fire clouds which are very accurate and can fly really far. Luckily, Serpents are very slow, and their melee attack is weak.
• Brown Chaos Serpents are just like green ones, but brown, and they breath poison instead of fire.
• Wendigos are monsters made of ice. They attack with frozen bolt, which shatters on impact, creating a few shards which deal damage to targets nearby if the main projectile misses (sounds like an explosion, but unlike explosion can be avoided if you’re lucky). Despite Wendigos have a really small amount of HP, they are pretty dangerous because of their painful ranged attacks.
• Centaurs are really dangerous enemies. They are not too fast, and they attack only in close combat, but due to their shields they can become invincible from the front. Moreover, most projectiles shot at their shields ricochet back and can hurt you (your own poisonous bolts will be dealing damage over time if they hit you after being deflected). Here are a few hints how to fight these foes:
  • First of all, Centaurs shield up only after being hit. It doesn’t happen always, but with a high chance, so after a Centaur blocks with his shield, stop attacking it unless you know what you do.
  • Time of raising the shield is constant, so if your timing is good, you can hit Centaur right after it lowers his guard, keeping him pinned down.
  • Your projectiles, deflected by the shield, can hit you back, but they can also hit other monsters. If there’s a Centaur behind other enemies, you can perform a trick and make enemies attack each other. Hit the Centaur, then try hitting his shield with your ranged weapons. Good ones are Fighter’s Hammer of Retribution (for explosion), Cleric’s Serpent Staff (for 2 bolts it fires), Mage’s Frost Shards (for a whole lot of shards). If you’re lucky, and your projectiles will deal damage to other enemies after being deflected by the shield, monsters will start attacking the Centaur.
  • Mage’s Arc of Death not only can’t be blocked by the shield, but also deals tripled damage to the shield wielder. Need to deal some damage to a Centaur to make him raise the shield or it will deal just basic damage.
  • Cleric’s Wrathvenge works fine since ghosts can’t be blocked or deflected by shields. Still, if the main bolt of that weapon hits the shield, all your ghosts will begin fighting you instead.
  • Flechettes can bypass the protection offered by their shields, the mage and the cleric should particularly use that to their advantage; drop the flechette then run away and watch it explode.
• Slaughtaurs are Centaurs’ captains. They have a little more HP, but that’s no big deal compared to their new attack. Unlike Centaurs, Slaughtaurs can perform a ranged attack, firing two consequent blue bolts, each of them dealing a high amount of damage. The really dangerous thing in this attack is that Slaughtaurs use shields to cast their magic. In other words, they have the same animation for blocking and firing bolts at you. The difference is that while firing, they are vulnerable to attacks despite they look like with shields up.
• Stalkers are water reptiles. They cannot be moved by force (immunity to Disc of Repulsion and Banishment Device), and they can hide themselves underwater becoming invulnerable to all attacks. On the other hand, they cannot get out of water, and they can perform only melee attacks. If you see a tail appearing and disappearing on the water surface, then the Stalker is near. If you step into the water, it will eventually pop out, attack you and hide back. To know the perfect time for attacking move forward in the water, and at some point invisible wall will block your movement. This means, you’ve accidentally stepped on Stalker, and it will jump out of water to hit you in less than a second, so prepare to deliver an attack (or receive a great amount of damage).
• Stalker Bosses have the same stats as Stalkers, but they will pop out of the water to perform ranged attack even if you’re on the surface. It’s really hard to fight back standing too far away (they show and hide themselves pretty quick) or too close (their projectiles do a nice amount of damage). In fact, it’s hard to fight them being on the surface, because when you’re in the water, Stalker Bosses don’t usually fire at you, preferring close combat.
• Dark Bishops float in the air, attacking you with some spiral sparkles (similar to F-weapon in original Contra). These sparkles can hit you when you’re standing round the corner, or you can evade them standing too close to Bishops depending on your luck and level design. Dark Bishops explode on death, dealing damage in a small radius. Just like Afrits, Bishops can strafe; unlike Afrits, Bishops never strafe when they perform an attack.
• Reivers fly, moving really slow, and their HP is low (even lower than Ettins’), but they perform painful attacks with projectiles and can drain your HP in close combat, converting your life force to their own.