We're trying something a little different to normal with this update, and are announcing the major serpent patch a day early so people can get an idea of what to expect and give any feedback. The goals of this update were:
- Modernise the class.
- Retain the unique feel of serpent.
- Make it more fun to play as and against.

So, here are the changes!

General
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- Major refactors of various venom and hypnosis things to make them easier to work with going forward. This should all be invisible player side.
- Sileris timer has been extended to ten seconds (how long it takes for it to come up).

Hypnosis
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- You can now SUGGEST and SEAL off balance.
- Hypnosis all works inline. I.E:
* DSTAB MAKARIOS CURARE KALMIA IMPATIENCE to dstab curare+kalmia and suggest impatience.
* DSTAB MAKARIOS CURARE KALMIA SEAL 3 to dstab with curare + kalmia and seal a trance for 3 seconds.
* Sub bite/flay for dstab as appropriate, it all works.
- The serpent is now informed when their hypnosis trance ticks a suggestion on a target, if they are in room.
- Hypnosis suggestions have been split into two categories: trivial and complex.
- New hypnosis ability: IMPULSE. This is an eq based ability that lets you fire a trivial suggestion on a target without a trance or similar.
* Note: this possesses illusion functionality, so you can impulse then bite off equilibrium.
- IMPULSE supports inline bite. I.E: IMPULSE MAKARIOS MASOCHISM CURARE to impulse with masochism and bite with curare.
- The ablist has undergone major revisions (mostly layout so its just easier to read and such).
- DISRUPT no longer fades after a time delay, it must be concentrated off.
- SEAL now has a minimum seal time of three seconds. Tickrate is unchanged. Unless the target has deadening at the time of sealing, in which case:
* Seal has a minimum time of one second and the tickrate drops to a fixed three seconds. Fixed in this case means the inate randomness to hypnosis tickrate is removed in this situation.

Subterfuge
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- Snake pet reworked. It now strips sileris, and if no sileris, gives the new aff (see loki).
- FLAY SILERIS now applies a venom from the whip similar to rebounding.
- FLAY rebounding/shield now also strips sileris in the case where it strips the targeted defence (so if you flay rebounding and strip rebounding, you also get sileris).
- The SNAKE loyal now immediately strikes your target on a successful PINSHOT.
- EXECUTE now bypasses STARBURST.

Venom
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- New trans venom ability: ekanelia.
* Functionally, this gives you a list of options. Each option has a set of conditions, a trigger, and a result. If you bite with the trigger venom when all conditions are true, the result happens. Ekanelia results relapse under the scytherus venom.
- Loki bite reworked. It now gives a new serpent unique affliction, and does the old rng venom effect if bitten on top of said affliction. This new affliction:
* Is a major negative poison resist debuff.
* Causes impulses to relapse if used when they have said affliction (think similar to scytherus, but for the impulse part of the combo).
- Transcretion moved down in the skill significantly.
- Envenoming with transcretion is no longer a hacky mess and is not treat as its own command similar to standard envenom. The implications of this is that it no longer counts as a command for the purposes of aeon or stupidity/etc.
- BITE now hits shields (though not in PVE).