Thanks to Bugs, Charm of the Serpent Starts With a Bang

Neverwinter’s “Tomb of Annihilation” came with one new artifact that drops from the “Tomb of the Nine Gods”. A few weeks into the module more and more people are unlocking the dungeon, and hence getting their hands on the new prize. Turns out it didn’t take long for the Charm of the Serpent to rise to stardom.

Charm of the Serpent is already great

The reason is a combination of bugs and mechanics that make the artifact overpowered in its current state. Even without any weird things going on, it would already be great. The Charm comes with Power, Armor Penetration and Life Steal and applies a massive 16% debuff on foes. Thanks to the debuff changes it was already primed to become a staple in support builds.

Bugs make it better

Testing how has shown that you can even stack the debuff. It seems to be a bit unreliable and not working all the time, but three stacks and roughly a 45% debuff have already been reported. Second of all the damage of the artifact scales with all sorts of buffs and debuffs. This leads to incredible numbers in PVP and PVE. While both of these effects could actually be intentional and just a misjudgment of the impact, the next thing certainly is not. Just like the Forgehammer of Gond artifact, Charm of the Serpent’s cooldown is reduced by recharge speed increases.

Adding it all together, you might see why the Charm quickly became a favorite in loadouts. It does not only deal insane damage and hands out a sizable buff that stacks, but also can be used every 20-40 seconds, depending on the build and class.

It will get nerfed

We’re pretty sure the artifact will get fixed and nerfed at some point. It however illustrates why the devs need to make those new items available for testing on preview. They did a very good job before Storm Kings Thunder in adding lockbox loot to a preview only vendor. Thanks to that a rather hefty bug with the Eye of the Giant could be resolved before it made it to live.

This obviously hasn’t happened with the Charm of the Serpent. That’s why we now deal with the consequence in groups speed-running the content with a broken and overpowered artifact.


Have you already acquired, tested and/or used the Charm of the Serpent and can add you own experience to the topic? Share it in the comments below and visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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4 thoughts on “Thanks to Bugs, Charm of the Serpent Starts With a Bang

  • August 23, 2017 at 10:01 am
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    Sorry I don’t mean to be nit picky, but I’ve noticed in a number of articles you use the word stable referring to an item that will be/is used in a number of builds. It’s really confusing because the word you’re meaning to use it staple.

    • August 23, 2017 at 11:00 am
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      We’ve just fired our editor! No seriously, we actually appreciate if people call out this kind of stuff.

      • August 24, 2017 at 7:50 am
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        Thanks for updating it, hope your editor finds a good job lol. I’m on console so obviously haven’t tried it yet. Interested to see if Xbox gets a nerfed version in September.

  • August 23, 2017 at 12:58 pm
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    Thanks for updating it, hope your editor finds a good job lol. I’m on console so obviously haven’t tried it yet. Interested to see if Xbox gets a needed version in September.

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