The Castle Doctrine Forums

Yeah please don't do this anymore.  I was one of those and I was purposely trying to keep the money limit down because I was not finished and knew I was not going to be home until late.  The saws started a cascade of attempts that ended up me being robbed for over $9800, a painting and large damage to the house that couldn't be replaced without starting over.

Agreed to a certain point.  But it IS possible to gain wealth even starting with only a $2000 house.  Sometimes the best traps are not deadly in and of themselves.  Their deadliness lies in their deceptiveness.  You would be amazed at some of the stupid-simple traps that kill huge numbers of would be robber drones.  You just have to keep trying different ideas until you find one that works.  Use your security tapes to note what works and what doesn't.  And it helps if you can keep the game open for a long time at one sitting.

No comments about my 2nd question?  I'm a little shocked to be honest...

This might explain the seemingly blind robbers who come into my houses full of tools and then literally walk directly into the pitbull approaching them.

I disagree.  This is cheating.  They are using a throwaway account to get the route down and then accessing it with their main to get the money and vault items.  BUT they never have any risk with the main because they don't care if the throwaways die.  They just make more with another $2K in tools.  Rinse and repeat until they know exactly what the main needs to bring and the exact path to take to not risk dying.  None of us regular users can do this if we only have one account.  If they get TO THE VAULT then walk away, that's a dead giveaway for a cheater.

I have often wondered why when my dogs are bearing down on someone with meat and clubs AND the safe exit RIGHT THERE THREE STEPS BEHIND THEM, they walk RIGHT INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH.

Not even this is true.  One time I spent about $6500 on a house and went to work literally with $0.  Came back to a house that was still worth $0 but had been robbed 5 times with 4 deaths.  The 2nd to last one was with tools.  The last one was with a lot more tools and they blasted through everything.  Total damage was about half the initial cost because they seemed to like clubbing dogs and frying power supplies.

This is the single largest problem with the game.  You simply cannot leave it alone for any significant amount of time and not be forced to start all over again with the tedious rinse and repeat of a brand new build out or buying $2000 in tools and hoping for the best.

So you actually enjoy starting over every time you log back on?  I cannot understand that.  There is too much danger and not enough security.  A balance would allow you to be able to keep the house for a while and the better you are at making the security, the better your reward of seeing it live another day.  I'll point you at this thread as a perfect example.  The enjoyment the owner had was seeing how many people used how many ways to finally get at the vault.  That house lasted a couple of days, and it was to quote "...a wild ride, and I had a blast".  That is what is great about the game - seeing how well you build against the onslaught.  But if no matter what you do, you fail the first time you log off, it just gets tedious rebuilding.

I feel like I am having a better time with the game if I have to use it and improve the design and build on its existing strengths and reduce the weaknesses.  Going to a job or bed shouldn't basically negate all that.  I am TOTALLY for the vulnerable house AND the Permadeath AND the loss of everything when it happens.  What I NOT for is having it happen every single time I open the game.  Reducing the tool reward would make it take a lot longer to become the target for the brute force attack.  And it would give you longer to work on an existing design to improve to see how long you can hold the brute forcers at bay.  THAT'S what I see as an enjoyable experience with Castle Doctrine.  But just rote generation of a $2000 design 87 times in the space of a week is not (numbers obviously exaggerated).

THIS.  I have seen every single day that I build my base house, it generates enough to expand a little, I leave the house in the morning or go to bed at night with less than $500.  Most of the time less than $300.  EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.  I come home or wake up and my house has been pillaged and I have $0.00 left.  Reviewing the tapes is like "Groundhog's Day".  People come in with no tools and die.  Price goes up a little bit.  Repeat a few times.  Now two or three people come in with tools and die.  Then the price goes WAY up and the VERY next person comes in with a large number of tools (but still low enough to make a profit) and they lay waste to the place and get the vault.

Each time, I have rebuilt over and over and over again.  Recently I hit it really big with an (extremely) lucky score (carrying 5 water, clubs and steaks) and took over 5 hours and more than $15,000 building a house.  Left this morning with $250 and no tools.  Come home and exact same thing.  Except now the LAST thing I want to do is go try to rob even an easy place because all that time and game money spent just poofs if it isn't so easy.

I KNOW that is the core concept, and I love Roguelikes because of Permadeath.  BUT...it shouldn't be a forgone conclusion that you have to start completely over every time you log out for 6 hours.

It would be WAY better to keep the bounty where ever it is now and drop the tool reward to 1/4 or even less.  IMO it would be well worth the effort of a version release.  As it stands now, I don't even feel like playing because of the inevitable feeling of having wasted my entire evening the night before.