Serpent scales need to float.

[Davidesonar]

Fighting the serpent seems a lot like a battle only fought in the sea, but when you kill it the scales sink. Because there's unfortunately no diving system it's impossible to get the scales unless you kill it close to land. It's too random to get the serpent close to land in order to kill it, even with the harpoon because the stamina drains fast. Making all the serpent drops float is an easy fix and i don't see a reason why the scales dont also just float? Dragging it onto land cannot have been a design choice because it feels very tedious and random.

[Soulstinger]

The new harpoon change makes it much more difficult than it used to be, for sure

[FTZ35]

You can get the serpent to follow you even without the harpoon. As long as it can do one attack per minute it won't swim away (unless it is a night-spawned one and morning has come). So just let it attack your ship every now and then.
Then once you are on land, drag it onto the shroe and kill it.

[luponix]

the whole idea that gives the scales and serpent trophy value is that you have to drag or bait the serpent into shallow water in order to get them. they have taken the fun out of the harpoon but atleast the valuable part still stands. i doubt that it is not intentional that the scales and trophy sink

[boydston01]

I totally agree that getting serpent scales is too hard. I think making them float would go too far in the other direction, though. Maybe instead, make the harpoon more reliable and then make the serpent have a very hard time getting back into the water.

[Chiller]

Problem is that when you are progressing in Swamps you have a plethora of shields to choose from that you probably ain't gonna do any serpent hunting for its scales. For that, i had suggested some time before to move serpent scale shield to silver tier (and change stats accordingly ofc.). Then it could have some value as a mid-game shield with anti-pierce resist.

[Cellar_Cat]

In my experience if you use a longship, you can simply sail around shore just far enough out to be in 'ocean', bait the serpent to shore without leashing it, leave your snake with one arrow of life left, and tank the damage until it swims right up near shore—then finish it.

This does really require a longship though, as a karve can't take many hits. I have used this technique to get scales many times because this game's multiplayer is too laggy and weird to mess with harpoons near other people.

[Lil brekky]

You should be able to craft rare bait just for serpents. I think their spawn is too random