Snakes was added to the game to teach players about surprise attacks, so far so good. But since starter weapons deal so low damage, it’s not always possible to kill the snake by one hit. This force you to run around, searching other doors to kill them.
Since snakes were supposed as a lesson in doing surprise attacks, otherwise quite useless mobs except for dropping an occasional seed, I think their hp should be cut in half. This is especially true if a room have several snakes.
There are also other mobs that can appear in the sewers also teaching you this lesson, wraiths.
Even for experienced players starting a new games, snakes are an annoyance that served their purpose ages ago.
An alternative is to just reduce their spawnrate by half.
I disagree, and there’s other ways to kill them than just through straight surprise like environmental or zaps (wraiths too). Plus snakes have a “very high” dodge chance, but not a zero chance to hit. I can usually kill one that’s running (slithering?) at me with the spirit bow as a hunter. Mages can always kill them with the wand, rogues can cloak for guaranteed surprise, the only potentially tough one would be warrior but then just go for another door.