Sirian Sphinx

Overview

Looking like an Iron Maiden album cover, this devil incarnate is very tough to kill. Fast moving and tough the Sirian Sphinx likes to avoid direct combat, instead summoning others to do it's dirty work. For every 10 sec it still has half it's energy it will generate 3 Bladderbeast for Sam to deal with, up to a maximum of 5. After that it raises boiling mini cyclones from the ground right underneath Sam's feet. Once the Sirian Sphinx is down to it's last 10% Hit Points it will attack with it's mace in a fast attack. The Sirian Sphinx looks like an un-dead cat standing up on it's hind legs, wearing traditional Egyptian priestly garb and carrying a mace.

Behavior and abilites

The Sirian Sphinx stays in the middle of the back of his room and fires blue electrical orbs at the player. These orbs will split into three when the orb reaches the middle of the arena. After taking a certain amount of damage, the Sphinx will summon 4 Cyclopses and 4 Methug Soldiers, then continue shooting electric orbs. When his health is low, he will summon more Cyclopes and Methug Soldiers, but stop firing his electric orbs. While enemies are around, he is immune to attacks from the player.

The in-game description states that the Sphinx will summon Bladder Beasts every ten seconds, but this never happens.

Tactics

• The Sirian Sphinx's electric orb attack can be avoided by simply strafing either left or right from a distance. The orbs are slow enough that they can be dodged by constantly strafing in one direction. However, the player will most likely be hit by its orbs if they're close to it because they won't be fast enough to dodge its orbs in time. In addition, the gaps between the orbs when they split is big enough that the player can squeeze between them to avoid being hit.
• The biggest threat in the battle are the monsters that the Sphinx will summon. They can do much more damage than the Sphinx can do with its projectiles, especially if they get close to the player. Wiping them out ASAP will make the battle easier and give the player a chance to harm the Sphinx again.
• The best weapon against the Sphinx are the minigun and rocket launcher. The minigun can inflict a lot of damage in a short amount of time against the Sphinx and can quickly deal with the monsters that he summons. The rocket launcher can also do a lot of damage to the Sphinx and quickly kill the monsters, but there are a few downsides. First, the rockets can hit the projectiles fired by the Sphinx, making the rocket harmless, and the rocket launcher can be dangerous if the player fires it close to an enemy.
  • Considering these factors, it's best to use the rocket launcher to finish off the Sphinx if they run out of minigun ammo before killing it, or to conserve minigun ammo for the Sphinx if the enemies are far enough away that they won't be harmed by the rocket's explosion radius.

List of appearances

• Serious Sam Advance (First appearance) (non-canonical appearance)