The Castle Doctrine Forums

In complex houses, I write down every step of each trap and test it at least twice with the (non-)conducting lights. This is, of course, not completely safe, but much safer than the fast way. Everytime I test it with real traps before the final release, Im going to have a heart attack, but its a great feeling when finally reaching the vault. Having fun requires danger.

- It seems to me that players are more likely going up on the map then going down.. but this can also be a personal impression.

Im here for not a whole week now. I had to read the wiki and had to use my brain. And I am reading and writing here. At least the wiki is a must for new players, the rest is experience and using your mind. I have a house with a value of 30k or so now, lasting for about 36h. This game is not about getting up too fast, but it is one of the fairest games ive ever played for new players - really! Play most other online games and you will realize that youll need months or years to be able to compete with good players because the rich stay rich - the wont ever loose their whole wealth. This is all about skill. And after a week, beeing able to break in 50k houses and get 30 kills or so a day with a good design, this is great. This game has a very high learning curve if you want.

It will take a few lifes and you need a bit of luck.. but I am quite successfull with 2 saws, 2 meat, 2 water, 2 clubs, 2 bricks.

I read this and thought... we really need bosses!!!

The following design was really successful for today. I had a small startup (about 9k) from one lucky robbery at the beginning, more money came from bountys only:

the original design

About 80% of the kills came from the wife with the shotgun behind the door. The rest died at the third electric floor which only not turned on, when the correct buttons at the bottom were pressed before (Really nobody did this).
It was good about 6h or so.. gave me about 40-50k (tools and money) from robbers only. Nearly everybody who tried died in this house.

I realized that there are at least 2 weak spots: (1) the hole magic dance wont work if the dog gets killed and (2) my familiy was really in danger: one brick and a gun and my wife is dead. And so it happend. One guy killed the wife first, but died after that. Another lucky (and maybe also skilled) "Stephen" sneaked in after that, killed the dog, got the right way and was really lucky to find the vault after all. Used almost all tools he had from a starter kid I guess.. got 18k for that.

So what did I learn?
- a wife is not useless with a shotgun.. got almost all kills, but this is also very risky
- The dog (2) was the trigger for 5 very important traps (3-7). Killing it destroyed my basic defence
- at the end, he was lucky.. found the correct path, used his last meat (9), opend the door on the right side to the vault and used all two saws to the vault, two dogs behind him. Happens

True.. my current state is about 2h old, have 15 visitors and 13 kills or so. They brought 20k of tools and 3-4k of money. Breaking in more expensive houses with all those tools seems to be possible but quite risky.. maybe ill try this later

I wonder if any of the victims will come back later to kill my wife.. she almost got 80% of the kills or so.

What if I changed the design? Will the house change to the last self-tested state?

Sneaked in.. its quite easy, but his vault cant be robbed...