TomeNET

(4.7) Traps & trap kits                                                         
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About traps:
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Traps are hidden until either set off, found by searching or detected by magic.
They can be on the floor, on doors or on chests. Note that practically all
chests you find (except for ruined ones) are trapped. So first find the trap on
it, then disarm it, and finally open it.

At the beginning you will encounter traps that can do little damage, some will
decrease your stats temporarily, they are annoying but not a big danger.
However, later on traps will become extremely nasty and you should either get
a very high searching skill or make sure that you have staves, spells or
scrolls that can detect traps. If you encounter a dangerous trap do not try to
disarm it if you are not very sure that you can do it without setting it off,
or if you don't at least know that setting it off won't have too bad effects
(some traps aren't very harmful, so you can just keep trying to disarm them).

If you manually disarm a trap (ie via the disarm command instead of relying on
magic spells or magic devices that do the disarming for you) you will get a
certain amount of experience points depending on the trap type; it can pay off
to disarm a large patch of traps.

Note that detected traps might be obscured visually if there are items lying on
top of it. In this case you can either look at the grid and you will see the
item name prefixed with a "^" smybol and postfixed with either "(trapped)" if
you don't know the trap type yet or the actual trap's name if you do, to
indicate that the grid below the item(s) is trapped. You can disarm traps even
if there is something on top of them, the grid does not have to be clean.
Another way to spot all traps currently covered by items is to toggle Searching
Mode via 'S'. This will slow you down but make you search for traps on every
step you take and at the same time prioritize displaying all known traps over
items.

Later on, disarming traps will become an essential part of the gameplay. Vaults
will have *lots* of traps and if you haven't got superior disarming skills (or
wands of disarming / trap destruction) every single move of your character will
have to be planned! This can be especially annoying and dangerous if there are
multiplying or extremely tough monsters inside the vault. If your searching
ability is 'Heroic' or 'Legendary' you will discover most traps instantly just
by coming close to them without having to explicitely search for them.
If you look at an object that is on an already detected trap, you will be
notified about the trap by an ^ symbol in front of the item name and the trap
type appended to it in { } brackets. It looks like this:
^ A potion of Constitution {Chaos Ball Trap}

Trap symbols ('^') come in different colours. Here's an overview:
  blue            stat traps (STR/INT/WIS/DEX/CON/CHR) in three difficulties:
                  1) only reduces an attribute temporarily, heals on its own.
                  2) reduces an attribute, requiring you to use restoration.
                  3) permanently reduces an attribute. Counter with stat
                     potion.
  bright white    teleport traps
  orange          dungeon/trap rearrangment traps
  violet          summoning traps
  yellow          traps that affect your items or money or give you items
  red             character status-affecting traps
  green           elemental bolt traps
  light blue      elemental ball traps
  light red       arrow/bolt/dagger traps
  white           miscellaneous traps

While many traps have obvious effects, here are some less obvious ones:
  Bowel Cramps              If you don't have FA you get paralyzed instantly.
  Calling Out               Calls the highest level monster on the floor.
  Ale Vendor                It doesn't hand out free ale, you're paying for it.
  Seasoned Traveller        Does not touch items of value 150 Au or more.
  Lost Labor                All non-uniques on the floor turn into 100% clones.
  Despair                   Your stats are reduced and you gain two potions,
                            Augmentation and Death. Quaff the correct one!
  Cleaning                  Deletes all nearby unowned loot.
  Animate Coins             The animated coins are from your own purse..
  Remittance                You share some of your money in your purse with
                            everyone online of compatible mode (not in IDDC).

Note that there are even some beneficial traps that grant an item or boon.


About trap kits:
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The 'Trapping' skill allows a player to set up 'monster traps'.
The ability to set up a trap can be accessed by pressing the 'm' key
or by utilizing the macro wizard (press % and z to start it).

A monster trap consists of
-a trap kit (get a trap kit bag from the general store to save inventory slots)
-an item (or a stack of items) to load the trap kit.

Each kind of trap kit requires different items serving as ammunition:
Catapult Trap Kit       -       Sling ammo (fires with 3x base might).
 (orange)
Arrow Trap Kit          -       Arrows (fires with 3.5x base might).
 (red)
Bolt Trap Kit           -       Bolts (fires with 4x base might).
 (bright red)
Fumes Trap Kit          -       Potions. The effects are very similar to the
 (dark blue)                    effects when throwing a potion at a monster,
                                the trap will greatly increase the potion's
                                effectiveness though, by generating a thick
                                fume that envelops nearby creatues and
                                possibly gets inhaled as well.
Magic Trap Kit          -       Scrolls or runes. Even scrolls that are usually
 (violet)                       only used on other items might have effects on
                                certain creatures.
Device Trap Kit         -       Wands/Staves/Rods.
 (slate)                        The charges of wands and staves will be
                                decreased by 1 each time the trap sets off.
                                Rod-traps will have timeouts, same as the rod
                                itself.

A normal trap kit can be loaded with 1 item of the according ammo.
After it went off (and is out of charges for device traps or out of ammo for
automatic traps) you can pick up the trap kit to use it again.
If it was a catapult/arrow/bolt trap kit you can often recover the ammunition
too, in case it didn't break. (Magic ammo and artifact ammo never break).

Note that if you use magic ammo or artifact ammo, you only need 1 as it is
neverending, except for 'Extra Shots' trap kits - because they fire multiple
simultaneous shots, they will require the appropriate amount of ammo.
Ego traps that damage specific monster types always come with extra shots too.

Extra shots means that the trap kit may fire up to +x additional shots after
its initial triggering; note that you will only see message feedback for shots
that actually hit the target, but no "miss" messages.
If you load a trap kit with less than optimal ammo, it will still work though.

Physical-missile trap kits, those are catapult, arrow and bolt trap kits, can
also be enchanted to hit and to damage with enchant weapon scrolls, same as any
other weapon.

Trap kits can have special (ego) powers:

Pprefixes:
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Automatic       - Can set off up to 99 times, with a 20% chance each time of
                  ceasing to function. Requires the according amount of ammo
                  though, if it's not a device trap kit. (AUTOMATIC_5 flag.)

Fully Automatic - Sets off up to 99 times. Requires the according amount of
                  ammunition if it's not a device trap kit. (AUTOMATIC_99.)

Well-hidden     - Makes it harder for monsters to spot the trap.
                  This is the STEALTH flag, which uses the (+pval) bonus.

Complicated     - Trap gets an extra AC bonus, making it harder to disarm.
                  This AC bonus is given in [+AC] brackets as usual.

Obvious         - Curses the trap and makes it practically useless.
                  It has the STEALTH flag but a negative (-pval) malus.

Suffixes:
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of Extra Might  - Fires with +x (bonus shown in round brackets) extra might.
                  ("It fires missiles with extra might.")
                  This flag increases the base might multiplier by +1.

of Extra Shots  - Fires +x (bonus shown in round brackets) extra shots/round.
                  ("It fires missiles excessively fast.")
                  This flag causes the trap to fire additional ammo each round.

for Dragons     - Only triggers against dragons.
                  Has a stealth bonus and fires +x extra shots/round (+x).

for Demons      - Only triggers against demons.
                  Has a stealth bonus and fires +x extra shots/round (+x).

for Animals     - Only triggers against animals.
                  Has a stealth bonus and fires +x extra shots/round (+x).

for Undead      - Only triggers against undead.
                  Has a stealth bonus and fires +x extra shots/round (+x).
                  Able to damage creatures in wraithform (PASS_WALL).

for Evil        - Only triggers against evil.
                  Has a stealth bonus and fires +x extra shots/round (+x).
                  Able to damage creatures in wraithform (PASS_WALL).

Trap kits can also have two special properties (flags):
KILL_GHOST      - trap kit will also harm creatures in wraithform (those are
                  all creatures that can pass solid walls, aka PASS_WALL flag).
                  Trap kits without KILL_GHOST flag cannot hurt these monsters.
                  This flag occurs on the Undead and Evil ego traps.

TELEPORT_TO     - after triggering, if the monster is still alive, it will be
                  teleported to the player.
                  This flag occurs on an artifact trap.

If monsters notice a trap they can try to disarm it:

- A trap kit that has the STEALTH flag will add the pval (the number in round
  parentheses, eg (+2)) to the trap's "stealth", making it harder for monsters
  to notice and disarm ("well-hidden").

- A trap kit that has an "armour class" bonus, shown in brackets (eg [+8])
  increases the trap's complexity, making it harder for monsters to disarm.

- Animals, empty-minded and stupid monsters have practically no chance to
  disarm traps. Rogueish or ranger monsters and similar have a good chance
  to disarm traps.

- Shooter traps (catapult, arrow, bolt) are somewhat easier to disarm than the
  other, more elaborate types.

- If your trap is located on a grid that is dark instead of lit, the monster
  will have a significantly lower chance to disarm it. In general, you always
  want to have your traps on non-lit grids for this reason, if possible.

You can disarm your own traps to get back the trap kit (and ammunition).
Make sure to check out the easy_disarm_montraps option or the /edmt command!


Hints for quick and easy handling:
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It is a good idea to inscribe trap kits and their loads.
For example you could inscribe all trapping-related items  !=  so you will pick
them up from the floor automatically when you want to retrieve trap kits that
went off.

Also you could inscribe the ammo/load items  @m1  so you can macro them easily.

In the macro wizard you could even make a macro that prompts you for which trap
kit to use if you enter a blank line (just hit ENTER key) when it asks you
which item you want to load a trap with.

Last but not least when your trapper is low level and you pick up all sorts of
bad potions you could make a macro to load a fumes trap kit with a potion
inscribed  @m1 . Now make another macro that lets you inscribe all the bad
potions you pick up  @m1  so you won't have to do that manually for each of
them. That inscribing-macro could look like this:
{-@m1\r
where the '-' will cause the { inscribe command to prompt for inscription first
and the item afterwards, effectively simply asking you to specify the item.