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Welp.  I'm dead.

In the newest iteration of my house, I installed several pits (that do nothing because they're practically in corners).  While running through the test, I was so mesmerized by the new dark gradient tile that I had to touch it.  I gazed into the abyss and I needed to be one with it.

Even though I am dead, the system has never been cracked.  Though I do admit, the expansive wiring came at the cost of my family.  Day 2, a raving lunatic killed my son.  Day 3, a manic robber shot my wife before getting mauled by the family dog.  Minutes later, a misanthrope bludgeoned my daughter then wandered away like nothing happened.

But the vault is safe and has never been impregnated.  Countless people have tried and at least 130 have been laid to rest here.  I will also never use this exact design again so I've decided to share my system with everyone.  Feel free to critique it.  And if any of you recognize the house, give a shout out and let me know!

1. The First House

Before creating my mystery murder mansion, I designed this basic first house.  Hit the right button and the drawbridge gives you access to treasures galore!  Hit the wrong button and you have the heavy decision of choosing death by electrocution or asphyxiation.  I later added the electric grate and the powered door at the entrance to pique the interest of would-be robbers.  Sadly, no one ever messed with it.

It got its fair share of kills but eventually fell.  I don't remember the exact moment though I'm certain someone just hopscotched to the end then threw down a ladder.  I started again.  Using the same design but giving the powered door at the entrance more use.

I had many good chuckles as little Timmy or Johnny or whatever his name was released the hound and trapped the robber between a dog and the barrel of a shotgun.  As I look at the entire map right now, I realize that I crossed some pretty vital wires.  It was never an issue but that could have left me with some horrifying results.  Anyways, soon this house fell too.

Sick of only having $2000 to work with, I went hunting.  Friday night, I died repeatedly for over two hours.  Then I lucked out.  I had the right house with the right tools and the right guesses.  There's no screenshots of the house I robbed, though their vault was in an open space in the bottom-right corner, and I had a dog on me the entire time.  My apologies to whomever I stole from.  You know what they say about hating the player.

2. Expanding the Original Design

With my big bag of cash, I took the original house design and, in scientific terms, I went bananas.

Instead of just hitting one button to lower the drawbridge, you now had to hit two.  And hitting the wrong button didn't just trap you behind an electric grate, it also broke the system.  I kept the doggie at the entrance because he was so good at sneaking up on people.

After the death of my son, my family and I mourned our loss by visiting the pound and grabbing as many dogs as we could fit into the minivan.  I also added a back-up dog dancing system after watching some close calls on the tape.  Then I replaced most of the grates with doors because people were just tossing bottled waters willy-nilly, and I sextupled the number of trap doors next to the vault.

(Later, most of these trap doors will go missing.  I forgot to replace a powered door with an indicator light while testing and lost a ridiculous amount of money.)

The open space at the entrance was more inviting than I could ever imagine.  After installing that, most of the deaths occurred because of the false sense of security that the two open tiles provided.

As I ate lunch that day, I was thinking of better ways to secure my family.  There was too much wiring at the top.  Maybe I could expand the bottom hallway back towards my vault and hide my wife and child there.

Thirty minutes later, my wife and daughter were murdered.

As per tradition, I visited the pound and gathered more dogs.  I mean, it worked for Henry Akeley.

I also installed a cat, which created some hilarious "oh crap" moments on tape.  Unfortunately, the new house entrance was suddenly very aggressive and a significantly higher percentage of people didn't even bother with it.

Early Monday morning, before logging off, I moved the vault a little lower and installed one final fail-safe, a second dancing dog, just in case someone got to the end.  Thus far, no one's made it anywhere near the vault, but being the neurotic person I am, I had to ensure its safety.

I also replaced the super obvious commitment traps near the entrance with a second cat and threw in a random electrified floor at the bottom because people loved digging through that wall.  At this point, no one's gotten a good look at my circuitry and I wanted to keep it that way.

Finally, I installed extra power sources in the central walls because burglars were coming in droves with bottled waters up to their eyeballs.  My absolute favorite robber moments were the ones when someone destroyed the exposed power source then did a double take when nothing happened.

3. Bryant John Munoz and the Conveyor Belt of Dead Greedy Thieves

For once, my high anxiety and extreme paranoia paid off.

Mr. Bryant John Munoz scouted my house a few times before returning with an arsenal at his disposal.

Watching him weave through my system and abuse gaping security flaws was terrifying.  He had gotten closer than anyone else but fell to the second dancing dog.

This tricky robber did a little jig before sprinting across the final grates.  Sadly, twerking wasn't the dance of choice that my dog yearned.

Thanks to Mr. Munoz and several dozen others, my house's value skyrocketed and I was now in the top ten.  At this point, people were getting more creative with their break-in strategies and it was way more pressure than I was prepared to deal with.  I fortified my vault even more and dumped the rest of my money on a gorgeous painting of a solitary tree.

I also added a dog next to my second cat for some extra pressure, and I placed two fake buttons near the entrance to throw people off.  The dog was always easy to deal with but those extra buttons worked.  People went way out of their way to tap dance onto them.

Finally, I put a third fake button next to my second dancing dog.  I figured if Mr. Bryant 'Twerk' Munoz came back, he'd be ready with an array of amorous dance moves to seduce his nemesis.  A single dummy button with a fake exposed wired wall could potentially send Mr. Munoz back to his electric grave.

4. If It Ain't Broke, Fix It

Later that day, a lot of people were being very particular with their movement, bringing several doorstops to move freely and several bricks to test the system.  I don't think they were people that died in my house earlier and I don't think they were friends of friends or even holders of multiple accounts.  But I don't believe in coincidences and paranoia was hitting me hard.  Too many people knew which doors closed and which doors stayed open.  I had to rewire the system.

A lot of people use Castle Draft, others enjoy using graph paper, and I imagine even others load the game on private servers to test things out.  I took a mapshot and messily scribbled onto it in Photoshop.

Rewiring the system was easy and testing went smoothly but I was so paranoid that I'd die to my own traps.  I kept this piece of paper in front of my monitor as a constant reminder of how the new system worked.

Ignore the old switches, hit the new switches, and Christ you better remember to say hello to that doggie in the window.

After installing and testing the rewired system and being fairly satisfied, I laid in bed thinking about how much wood remained near my vault.  Minutes later, I was back at it again.

This time, testing went awry because I replaced the pit with a safety light.  You know, for safety.  Little did I know, it crossed streams that weren't supposed to be connected.  It took me forever to figure out what was wrong.

Despite the minor hiccup, my house was now more secure than ever, and at least $7000 worth of particular tools were needed to get to the end.  I logged on frequently and made sure to keep my total value well below that to stay off of the general public's radar.

I needed to fix a couple of other holes and replace the lost trap doors before letting my wealth accumulate again.  But for now, I was safe.  Any real threats would be bitter rivals who remembered my name.  Or my own foolishness.

5. Death

I ditched the four hundred or so drugged meats that I was hoarding.  I initially held onto the meat because I thought that whoever reached the vault would have a good laugh and realize my entire wealth was based on leftover robber dog food.

Maybe it was my undoing, but I used the money to purchase a painting of a strange square animal that I wanted more than anything.  Here's the last screenshot I took while I was alive.

The final recordings were very banal.  No real threats.  Just people dying to the same old things and always trapping themselves into corners.

But I did realize that a lot of people were looking up 'Corridor B' because a pit was there.  A single solitary pit was giving my window dog unnecessary attention.  I needed to be symmetrical so I placed pits next to each button.  And as you already know, it was my downfall.

This post was way more wordy than I had expected, but I do hope you've enjoyed the evolution of my house and my paranoia-laden tale.  This was the first time I've played Castle Doctrine in over seven months and I had an enormous amount of fun with it.  But the stress and responsibility that came with keeping a secure house was too much for me.  Every break I had, I was checking Castle Doctrine, and for several nights in a row I literally dreamt of waking up to a broken house.  For now, death isn't so bad.  It's quiet, peaceful.  Death is actually kinda nice.  I'll be back again some day.  Maybe in seven months.

What happens if a powered door is activated while standing on it?

Just a quick question.  I can't really test it out right now and I'm extremely curious.  I also did a few searches in Google, and in the official and Steam forums, and couldn't find any results.

Before anyone accuses me of being a Communist, hear me out (lol).  I've been playing the Castle Doctrine heavily for a little over a week and I noticed a few things that bothered me.  Mainly, how newbie unfriendly the game is, how unbalanced the economy is, and how those things discourage people from playing the game.  Now, I absolutely love this game, and I would love to see more people play it, which would diversify the house list and bring more money/activity/fun to the server.  But let me state a few things before I suggest a fix.

First, the economy in the Castle Doctrine is based on a system where we take each other's wealth, instead of mutually working together to build wealth.  And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's something to consider when thinking of ways to stabilize the economy.  Sure, money slowly trickles in, but we can't rely on those hourly wages for anything.  That extra cash's true purpose is to put a target on our backs.  (Because the wages are earned while the person is away, and they obviously can't build or occupy their house while they're away.  Unless they figured out a plan to gain the money then instantly return to their house to spend it, but that's really a lot of effort just to conceal a few dollars.)

I noticed the Castle Doctrine has two very distinct classes:  The rich (people who understand the system and how to abuse/break/manipulate it) and the poor (people who either don't play the game anymore, don't know what they're doing, or are purposely keeping their homes in shambles to avoid upkeep/harassment).  Sure, there's kind of a middle class, but they're very temporary and are usually reduced to the poor group (or sometimes skyrocketed to the rich group) within a few hours.

I also noticed that money in the Castle Doctrine is either a dire necessity (to build/complete a competent security system which protects your family and/or vault) or worthless (a number to fatten your game ego or access to unlimited tools to destroy people's houses with).  I know what some of you are thinking.  "What's wrong with that?"  Because I thought the same thing a couple of days ago.  Well, a heavily unequal distribution of wealth discourages people from playing, and we all want more activity on the server.

With all of that said, I have an idea for a simple feature that can help promote equal distribution of wealth:  (tl;dr Starts here:)  When a burglar successfully steals from a household or does permanent damage by killing family members, don't allow that burglar to return to that house for a period of time.  (I was thinking until after the house's owner returns or after a certain amount of time has passed, like 24 hours.  Or maybe both.)  This will allow the victim to recover faster and force overzealous players to sit and plan out a burglary instead of just bringing in unlimited tools (over the course of several burglaries).  As of the current patch, blueprints of everyone are accessible to everyone, so if you're one of those malicious/overzealous players, you can still enjoy the destructive nature of the game with this feature.  It isn't that hard to cause major damage to most security systems with the information that is available.  Those players just won't be able to completely cripple other players by using their knowledge and wealth to overwhelm them.

If the problems that I've addressed is the unique culture of the game, then let me know.  I personally want more diversity and more activity, but like I mentioned I haven't been around here long.