The Lava Golem is an enemy in Serious Sam: The First Encounter, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter and Serious Sam HD.
Overview
Lava Golems are piles of lava magically brought to life. While the first one that appears in the Serious Sam series is a guardian summoned by the collected elements, the rest of the Golems in the games appear to be made by Mental himself, as they spawn with Mental-allied enemies.
There are three types of Lava Golems; small, medium and large.
Occurrence
In the First Encounter, the first Lava Golem encountered is a boss in Alley of the Sphinxes (Metropolis in Serious Sam Xbox). Subsequent Lava Golems appear mainly in Karnak.
In the Second Encounter, Lava Golems are more common, starting to appear from the first level on. The large Lava Golem appears only on Co-Op in The Grand Cathedral.
Lava Golems usually serve the role of supporting the main attacking force with their fireballs. They often appear few at a time, despite their size.
Attacks and stats
Each size has different health, damage dealt and point value. If a medium or large Lava Golem is close to death, it will spawn small and medium Golems, respectively.
The Lava Golem has two attacks: throwing chunks of lava and pounding the ground when the player gets close to it. Medium and large Lava Golems will attempt to predict where the player is going and will try to throw a lava ball to what direction it perceives the player is going.
Lava Golems are immune to the XOP Flamethrower and lava environment, logically.
Tactics
- In general, small Golems are the least threatening of the Golems. Their attacks do little damage and they are the easier out of all golems to kill. They should be medium-low priority targets.
- Small Golems can easily be dispatched with the M1A2 Thompson. It takes about 10 bullets to kill one. The Double Barrel Coach Gun is an alternative to the Tommy gun but only effective at short range.
- Medium Golems are much more dangerous than their small counterparts. Their lava balls do much more damage and are harder to avoid because of their size. In addition, their greatly increased health makes them much harder to kill.
- If the medium Golem spawns with other enemies, the medium Golem should be medium-high priority targets because the need to change moving direction can lead the player to other enemies. There are still more immediate threats like Arachnoids.
- Medium Golems can be significantly harmed by a charged up cannonball so it would be so wounded that a few bullets will finish it off. A quick follow-up shot with the XPML21 Rocket Launcher or MK III Grenade Launcher can finish it off.
- Despite their size, large Golems are not significantly more dangerous than their medium counterparts. Their lava balls are usually as easy to dodge as a medium's.
- Large Golems can be wounded with either rockets, grenades or charged up cannonballs. However, no matter what weapon is chosen, it will require a lot of ammo for the chosen weapon to kill it because of how much health it has. Thankfully, when the large Golem appears, a health bar will appear, letting the player know how much damage has been dealt to the Golem.
- The minigun allows the player to destroy the rocks thrown by medium or large Lava Golems.
- While Lava Golems are slow, it's not advised to approach them too closely. Their melee attacks do a lot of damage and are difficult to avoid.
Behind the scenes
Originally, there were supposed to be other enemies made out of in-animate materials and were called Elementals. They were to reside on a specific planet, such as the Water Elemental being on the Water Planet, that would be visited after the player completed the Egypt section of Serious Sam 1. However, the planets and most of the Elementals were cut before the game was released. The only Elemental that survived was the Lava Golem; the others (Ice Elemental, Water Elemental, Air Elemental and Stone Elemental) were cut.
Trivia
- In The Second Encounter (Classic), the Golems have fire on their body.
- The old version of the rock thrown by the Lava Golem can be found in the models/Elementals folder.
- Ironically, in some parts of Land of the Damned in SSHD, Lava Golems will be damaged by lava, if they're standing on it.
- As it has been found out, the Lava Golem was originally supposed to possess four abilities rather than three; they are supposed to have the power to project small, medium, to large-sized fireballs, but this was dumped for an unknown reason. Like two of the Elementals that have been fought in the prototype version, namely the Ice and Stone Elemental, they are able to throw 3 molten rocks in a scatter pattern, but this was also scrapped.
Gallery
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