Let's stop the discussion of exploits. The quest is to get the items. It does not say you have to kill the snake. If you can get past the snake without killing it and get the item you have satisfied the quest. In my opinion, If the developers intended the quest to be to kill the snake then they would have made it so, like in most of the quests. When I fought the snake I was on autoquest and I was surprised that that it took me around it.
