Home Invasion 101

Cylence · 2014-04-09 07:31:01

Summary

These are just my thoughts on my experience of learning to successfully rob houses.
This mainly focuses on your first big score when you have nothing to lose and much to gain. Burglary after you have a house is only lightly covered.

Note: Chills will prevent you from re-entering houses within 24 hours ONLY if you have died or attempted a tooled robbery of the house in a previous life.

This post goes hand in hand with House Design 101.
The better burglar you are, the better houses you will design.
The better houses you design, the better burglar you become.

I'll make updates if I feel any are necessary.
created 2014.04.09

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Skills

Patience and Observation
Real heists require meticulous research and planning. Thieves will study and case a place. Coming prepared is mandatory. It's no different in TCD. If you can't put in the time to map a person's place, write notes, record steps, states, and reflect upon them, then you won't be successful. Understand that you're not gonna crack a place in one trip. The more observant you are, the less trips will be needed. Use safe confirmation movement and don't be too hasty.

Speed
Cops will kill you if you spend too much time in a house (20 mins). This means when you're in the house, you've gotta work fast. Map it out, make smart, quick decisions, and map some more. Houses fall frequently and also change. A good map is only one edit away from dropping in value.

Knowledge
The more you know about what is possible, the more cost efficient you will be. The tool less path will open itself to you. Learn everything you can about different types of traps, their strengths and weaknesses. Know exactly how to control pets. Understand the camera shifts and robber vision.

Experience
This comes with time. Every house is a reflection of its owner. You will learn what type of builder they are as you case the place. This will allow you to know what tools will be useful. Eventually, what was luck in choosing the right multiple choice path, will become a calculated psychological decision based on what you have seen and determined.

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Recording

Castle Draft
Your blank slate template http://castledraft.com/editor/boDKEP. If you start from a set of empty floors, you'll come to a point were you'll wonder if you mapped a path to walk or just didn't record anything. Turn grid ON for faster visual counting. Zoom your browser out (Ctrl - on most browsers) so that you can see the whole map and reach each tile without scrolling. It may be smaller, but it'll save you time compared to scrolling.

Timer
I use my phone and set it to a countdown from 18 mins so I always know how long before the cops show up. The 2 min buffer allows me to not have to rush to an exit (if not a suicide run).

House Log
Record as much as you can in an organized format.
The format I use is:

Name: First Middle Last
Visit 1: Date/Time, Cash Value, (Attempts/Deaths), Paintings, Wife Dead/Alive/?
Map: http://castledraft.com/link
Notes: Everything you noticed on this run. Is there a path for a wife, major trap types, wall materials used, when pets hit buttons, what step you died to, possible intended path, which sections are not passable without tools, and list goes on.
Plan: What sections are you targeting next run, and what tools you'll need.
Visit 2... and so on.

Recorded Game Folder
Always attempt each robbery after a fresh login. This will create short, manageable recorded games to playback. You can review the theft to see if there's anything you missed.
This thread for more info on use of the folders (or you can search)

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Progression

Note: You should have home design finalized in case you come into a big score. You'll need to put up a house as soon as you get back from the robbery. Refer to my house thread House Design 101 for more details

Part 1 - Naked Runs
You only receive chills in houses you've died in or brought tools into. Naked (or Tool less) runs will not cause chills. You need to be able to get as much information as you can, in order to maximize the potential of your tooled runs.

1. Design a quick, threatening home with 1 shotgun for your family and pit bulls dogs. Make sure it's something quick to build, because you'll be doing it every time after you die. You need to deter people from making you reset your vault all the time. Don't worry about saving money for tools, since this part is all about learning how to scout without them.

2. Starting at the lowest house of at least $4k value, work your way up and visit EVERY house you can. Remember that your goal is to map as much as you can with no tools. Revisit houses even if dogs chase you out. It also means that in some houses, the most you can do is take one step in and back to the mat. You should still map the entrance and take notes though. Do not be tempted to find the vault. Also, don't be too afraid to die, or else you won't improve.

3. After each house that you've explored the maximum amount of space allowed (even after multiple visits), review your notes and plan out where you should go, and what tools you'll need to scout further. Don't forget to log out and log back in so you can keep your recorded games short for playback.

Result:
You've gained information and experience. You now have maps of different types of entrance traps. You can incorporate them into your own house design. Maybe you couldn't figure out how they work. Build them out yourself using a fresh 2k and play with them in a self test and try to solve them. Go over all your notes and see if your perspective on your future plans have changed.

Once you feel like you can enter any house and KNOW you can map out what's allowed and get out alive, it's time to move to part 2.

Part 2 - Suicide Scouting
This part should be easy if you did your homework in Part 1. Everything should already be planned out for you. The mentality that you don't have to get out alive will allow you to get further in and reveal more of their map.

1. I usually leave my home unprotected and spend all my money on tools, but that also means you risk having no family after a successful heist. Decide whether or not you want to shave off $320 for a shotgun. Validate your house and then double check to see if the house you recorded is still available and if it has changed or not. If it has, do another naked run to see what's different. If it hasn't, return home and buy your tools.

2. Your main goal is to penetrate as far as you can and to record as much as you can. If you get trapped, and walking into a pit bull will shift the camera and let you see more, you might as well get some more info upon death. I usually try to waste my tools before death to not to give too much to the owner.

3. Buy Tools, enter, map out, record notes, die, review notes, plan next visit, log out, log back in, next house. Rinse and repeat until all the houses are chilled.

Result:
You now have more information that you can use to get even further. It's only a matter of time before you break one of these houses. Just like in naked runs, review your notes again. Play with any new trap designs you've seen. You might be able to even solve them in your self tests. Also, double check your future plans. While waiting for the chills to wear off, you can adjust your house design to use any new tricks you've found.

Once you feel like you've learned the strengths and weaknesses of common trap designs you should move to part 3.

Part 3 - Selective Targeting
Time is a limited resource. Early on, visiting as many houses as you could was an investment in learning. Now that you have more experience, it's time to focus and be selective of which houses to target. You should focus on traps and owners you understand well and have a knack for. These will be easier for you to break. You can also take into account the payoff in paintings and cash. Remember that if the wife is still alive, you may not get the full value. You could also target ones you don't understand to expand your knowledge. It's really up to you.

Part 4 - Your First Score
If you are persistent, this is inevitable. I hope you have your house design finalized and ready, because you are gonna need to build it out right after you return from your heist.

Part 5 - No More Suicide Runs.
Now that you've got something to lose, you'll naturally be more cautious. However, all that time spent on naked runs and suicide scouting should give you the confidence to continue your thieving lifestyle. The only difference is that in order for you to survive you have to bring tools to allow safe passage back to the welcome mat which will be more expensive. Luckily you'll have a house that provides some income to fund your thefts. Honestly, if you've gotten to this point, you'll have learned enough to be able to scout houses safely.

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The Backpack

You've got 8 slots, and 12 possible tools types to bring. Your scouting trips should tell you what you need, but here are my general tips on the tools

Bricks - the most versatile tool and easy to burn off by just toggling buttons. You'll want to buy these in pairs since the cost is $150. Killing cats, smashing doors, fixing buttons, breaking windows. I usually have at least 2 on my trips.
Drugged Meat - don't drug every dog you see. Understand its location before putting it to sleep. You may need it for a leap of faith or need to walk past it. If it's one of those dogs behind a door that leads to no where and isn't properly spaced for a leap, they I'd say drug it easily. Also, note choke points where you can hold off multiple dogs with well placed meat. Also, a lot of people take way too much drugged meat. Unless the house is scouted to be dog behind doors galore, 2-3 should be enough.
Water - pretty obvious whether stacks of water will be useful or not from scouting. 1 or two may be handy for dousing power sources.
Wire Cutters - With the prevalence of cheap electric floors, this will usually be pretty useful. Make sure you know where to cut and are aware of any possible paradox circuits. This can also be used to open powered doors. These are on the more expensive end. I usually only get 1 or 2.
Saws - I try not to take these unless the scout revealed lots of wood. Then I take at least 3.
Doorstop - As a suicide scout, I hardly buy these unless it allows me to check out two sections reactions to power. Even as a high budget thief, a water, wire cutter, or saw will serve the same purpose.
The rest is pretty obvious.

For high budget heists, you should be well informed so you know what to take to limit the cost. However, I almost always bring at least 1 gun in case a dog somehow gets in between me and the exit.

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Trap and General Tips

You'll learn more as you run through, but here's some of what I've learned.

Combo Locks - As a suicide scout, unless you can find a way to test multiple different combinations, I'd avoid them, although most of the time they are a big sign letting you know what area the vault is in. As a high budget thief, just bring enough saws to figure out the combination, or force your way through whatever it's locking.

Clocks - You should always, Always, ALWAYS be checking for the existence of these. If there's no dog chasing you or any wandering pets tied to your movement, you should dance back and forth whenever you see a new set of traps that you couldn't isolate the power source. Once you do know the timing, however, you should be able to use it. When figuring out clocks at entrances, it's always better to know when they trigger, than to randomly try to cross the first time. Don't forget that using items will cause a clock to cycle.

Magic Dances - These vary wildly in size and difficulty. Some are easy to break, and others, once broken allow you access to a lot of the house. Sometimes triggering them is not bad if you can just water your way through electric floors. You'll have to decide which ones are worth breaking.

Multiple Choice - Try to bring tools to see as many of the choices as possible. I usually like aiming to check out the ones in between other options just in case the walls will give me a hint of the correct path. Understand the psychology of what would be the most common path if you were to watch the tapes of that house. The owner will have seen this and not places the correct path there.

Paradox Circuits - Just look for electric floors that possibly form a loop and wire cut to break the loop before you stand in it.

Search for ways to get rid of pit bulls using the traps provided (pits, electric floors, a wall corner that will trap it)

Tracking dogs is easier than tracking cats. Be sure to note where you are and when electronics trigger from a wandering cat.

Don't forget to map out those broken houses.

You can usually see through 1 set of walls. However, if there's a door with nothing behind it, all that it means is there's no wall back there. It could be anything. Note how wall lines continue or stop.

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Dealing with Mistakes

Luckily, suicide scouting involves little risk and all reward.
However, if you care to venture out while you've got a big house made, you will eventually slip up, be it a mistake, finger twitch, misread, cops, or disconnect. At least your bounty will add to the economy. At the moment you want to rage, just remember you took your nest egg from someone else, and you can do it again .

iceman · 2014-04-09 08:03:13

Great post! One little tip for mapping on castledraft is to snap it to a side of the screen (If you're using Windows), and have Castledraft on the other side. It saves you a lot of time going back and forth between the two.

1 suggestion:
1. To me, when suicide scouting there's 2 options to what you want to do: "solution scouting", where you figure out the no-tools or cheaper solution to getting past a trap, and "map scouting", where you just brute force past everything to see as much down the map as you can. I prefer scouting solutions when suicide scouting, since it will let me go further with the same tools the next robbery. The catch is that, if the owner is paying attention, they can switch the solution on you, making that life almost useless. Paying attention to visit numbers is very important to catch that.

Kimenzar · 2014-04-09 09:53:57

iceman wrote:

Great post! One little tip for mapping on castledraft is to snap it to a side of the screen (If you're using Windows), and have Castledraft on the other side. It saves you a lot of time going back and forth between the two.
1 suggestion:
1. To me, when suicide scouting there's 2 options to what you want to do: "solution scouting", where you figure out the no-tools or cheaper solution to getting past a trap, and "map scouting", where you just brute force past everything to see as much down the map as you can. I prefer scouting solutions when suicide scouting, since it will let me go further with the same tools the next robbery. The catch is that, if the owner is paying attention, they can switch the solution on you, making that life almost useless. Paying attention to visit numbers is very important to catch that.

depends on the kind of trap. Some magic dances are difficult to figure out, like if there is only a pit.

iceman · 2014-04-09 10:13:55

Yeah, it definitely depends on the trap. For combo locks, unless you can tell that 1 saw will get you to a voltage switch, I'd say don't try to find the solution- it's trivial for the owner to change, and you'll usually only find out 1 button per suicide, so they'll have plenty of time to change the solution.

Magic dances are still fairly easy for the owner to change, but not as easy. If you can reach the dog's hallway with starter tools, I'd say do it, especially if you can still get out alive. That way, in 1 visit you'll have everything you need to get past the dance, giving the owner *much* less time to change it. If you can't get into the dog's hallway, you can still figure out the solution slowly. Run straight through the magic dance once, noting what step the power turned on. Next life, bring a wire cutter, cut the deadly electric floor(be sure it's not paradoxed, of course) and step on it- the floors in front of you should turn on. Go back until the power turns off- next time you rob, you know to step on that tile twice. Repeat until you reach the end of the magic dance. For magic dances with latches, this solution won't work, but you can still just try different dances- usually, you'll have to step on the electric floor either 1 (occasionally 2) step away from the deadly one.

For other, non-combinational traps, I'd say it's usually worth it to find the solution (unless it just costs a water to brute force). Spending one life all on saws to figure out where the power to a trapdoor is coming from is better than having to spend almost all of your money on ladders each life.

Of course, this is only valid if you're planning on deeply scouting a small set of houses. If you want to go through *every* house, then I'd say to just brute force through traps- in that case, you're looking for a weak house more than weaknesses in a medium house (which most houses are going to be).

Cylence · 2014-04-09 13:28:52

iceman wrote:

Great post! One little tip for mapping on castledraft is to snap it to a side of the screen (If you're using Windows), and have Castledraft on the other side...

This is exactly how I have it setup. Browser on the left, game on the right. I didn't think to mention it. Thanks for the reminder.

iceman wrote:

...To me, when suicide scouting there's 2 options to what you want to do: "solution scouting", where you figure out the no-tools or cheaper solution to getting past a trap, and "map scouting", where you just brute force past everything to see as much down the map as you can...

I consider scouting with the purpose of finding the cheapest solution you can to be the ultimate goal. The cheapest solution is the no tool solution. Sometimes map scouting is a way to open that up for you. I see no need to separate the two since it will always depend on the house.

iceman wrote:

Yeah, it definitely depends on the trap.. easy for the owner to change.

Not surprisingly, many people don't change their houses. I think it might be fear of a self test death. Or, it might be that they want that person spending lives and working things out to get in. It'll depend on the house which is I always recommend jotting down the attempts and deaths so you can track it. Magic Dances vary so much, it's a learning process that will reveal what to do after paying attention to the details. Playing around in self test sometimes reveals solutions as well, since there's only so many ways to wire something. Thanks for your tips on how you try to deconstruct them.

iceman wrote:

...If you want to go through *every* house, then I'd say to just brute force through traps- in that case, you're looking for a weak house more than weaknesses in a medium house (which most houses are going to be)...

I think it's up to each individual robber on what their focus is. But everyone should start by mapping EVERY house above $4k and maybe some of the broken houses under $2k. In the beginning when you know nothing, your goal isn't to get to the vault, it's simply to learn. And the best way to learn is by seeing what's out there. And after you've seen what's out there (part 1 and 2), you should be able to decide on what to spend your time on (part 3). I know I like the harder houses just because I learn more, and they are less likely to change/fall off the list.

FreeLove · 2014-04-14 16:49:26

Argh! I wanted to write this exact tutorial but you beat me to it! Well done.

Cylence · 2014-04-14 18:48:08

FreeLove wrote:

Argh! I wanted to write this exact tutorial but you beat me to it! Well done.

I'm sure you have ideas to add that I haven't covered or thought of. Just share them here

FreeLove · 2014-04-15 12:30:34

You know me too well, friend >:)

I'm still working on it, though. Will try to get it up again tonight.

FreeLove · 2014-05-08 03:50:19

Ok well, it's finally done. I might go back and add pictures, maybe not. Been extremely busy lately, and will be for a while.

Anyway, here's my contribution to this promising thread!

...presenting...

HOME INVASION 110: The Art and Joy of 2K Scouting

All right, class! Now that we're back in session, we're going to go back over the material we learned in Professor Cylence's HOM101.

Everybody load up their homelog.txt. Lists up? Alphabetical by owner? Castledraft loaded?

Great!!

Now Let's Review…

• Rob! Rob again! Rob some more! ROB THEM ALL HAHAHAHA!!!! ….and do take notes.

- The more you rob, the more you learn.

• Aim for PROGRESS

- Every step is progress, enter the house and you've already started. Always try to improve on what you know.
- Use tools to explore, not to escape.

• Tools 110

- A balanced toolkit (e.g. 2 cutters or saws, 2 bricks, 4-5 meat, 4-5 waters) is best.
- ... but look for clues that might weight your possessions (ie. into a house full of dog-doors, take 17 meat + 2 bricks)
- … but you should know all this already from Professor Cylence's class.

• Always remember, EVERY HOUSE WILL FALL!

- Every house has a tool-less solution. Ruminate on THAT.
- Every house also has limited space. Meaning: the more you reveal of a house, the less there is to solve.
- Many tool-less solutions are EXTREMELY complicated… and yet many houses are extremely easy to rob, and cheaply. There are many skilled home-builders, but none are perfect.

Okay!! Now on to more advanced topics!

Traps Revisited: Tips & Tricks

After a few runs, every robber comes to the realization that most traps are of the same basic type. These are the successful traps borne of devious innovators, and have proven to be effective, efficient killers. The basic forms are easy enough to understand & implement yet quite difficult to solve.

Nevertheless, each class of traps has its weak spot, and the skilled robber rejoices at the identification of each successive trap, because he then immediately knows where to start. Here's a roadmap to solving the most common traps in The Castle Doctrine:

Combo Locks

The bad news: a well designed combo lock may be the only trap that is both impervious to 2K scouting, and impractical to guess. It's also perhaps the easiest trap for an owner to modify, which instantly erases any significant progress made on mapping the house.

What? Already a house that defeats 2K scouting?? Oh noes!!!

On the FLIP side…

Combo Locks are by FAR the easiest and cheapest trap to brute force!

All combo locks necessarily require a trail of wooden wiring, which can always be surpassed by a metric ton of saws and meat (easily the cheapest and most readily available tools to even the lowest of the middle class). And if the lock is so big that it is impractical to scout the button combinations, then the vault itself is likely easily and cheaply reachable by many saws and a few ladders (and an explosive or two might save a ladder as well).

THEREFORE, your goal should never be to crack a combo lock house, but instead make note of it, note how to cheaply reach the lock, and scout where the best place is to blast into the lock mechanism. The very first big score you make will then cause EVERY combo lock house you've found to fall like dominoes, and that's how a 25K payout can easily be 100K from just one day of robbing. (Did I mention I <3 combo lock houses?)

Clocks

Oh boy! I LOVE it when I encounter a house with a clock in it for two major reasons:

1. Clocks take up space. SO much space.

This is a HUGE weakness, because as soon as you reason out the source of the clock, you can safely rule out, like, 1/6 to 1/3 of the TOTAL HOUSE AREA!!! That's so much house, and you don't even need to see the mechanism to know what it does (activate every 4 steps. or activate every 8 steps. or whatever). It's like playing a mini-version of TCD, an even less time-consuming version of an already impressively casual game!

and

2. If you stop for 5 seconds to figure out the timing, then it's practically childsplay to dance through the corridors of scary death until you find another relevant part of the house.

If you can count to 2, 4, or 8, then you can reduce most clock houses to just a find-the-right-path maze. Sort of like a doggie-death-door maze without dogs.

<3 Clock houses!

The Magic Dance

I could probably devote an entire class to this breed of trap, and it probably has more variations than any other trap out there.

The bad news is that a very clever builder can construct a dance that is… I don't want to say 'impossible', but still pretty damn obnoxious to deduce.

The good news, of course, is that most people aren't very clever builders. So let's start with the basics and upward for attacking Magic Dances:

First: Can you see the dance?

The easiest way to beat a dance is if you can get right to the hidden toggle mechanics with a few bricks and meat. Do that, map it out exactly as it was unpressed, and you should be able to easily 'read' the steps 24 hours later. Next time, you can get by that section for free, and figure out the next. Piece of cake.

If that doesn't work…

Second: Do you even need to dance?

Clever magic dances involve trap doors, and often invoke leap-of-faith steps. Not-so-clever (but cheaper) dances will just use wired floors.

Some of these don't even use that many wired floors, due to space concerns.

So, like, why study some intricate series of steps when you can pass the whole damn thing with a few waters?

Just remember to note the how and the minimum cost of bypassing the trap so if you need to come back later with a few more tools, you know to the dollar how much you need

but if that doesn't work...

Third: Is it a fire floor of death? Can you bring wire cutters?

One nice weakness to linear magic dances is that they depend on toggle switches. Additionally, wired-floor-death magic dances suffer from a unique weakness, and that is: you can map out all the buttons if you can turn it "on" with out dying.

Procedure: find such a dance, and on your first life, count how many steps it takes from the first pet sight until the first step that turns on the wired floor and kills you.
Next time, go back to the house with wire cutters + waters, take the same number of steps MINUS ONE until you're right in front of the "death step," and cut the wire.
Then step forward. The floor should turn on. Now, go back on your tracks, and imagine where the dog or cat is moving (are you up on your pet movement? you better be!!). Find out what step turns the floor off, and then back on again.

At this point, you can pretty much take as long as you like to deduce where the toggle buttons are, and your best guess (easily refined later) as to what positions they're in when you first begin. When you're ready, turn the trap "on," and then water the next step. Try and determine whether that step invokes a button. Whether or not it does, mark it, then move on. Repeat until you've deduced the dance.

but if that doesn't work…

Fourth: Can you count?

Sometimes there's nothing for it but to go step until you die. But even in that case (such as a magic dance over nothing but trapdoors, for example), you have certain advantages.
Besides the clue that you know the circuit's being broken somehow, you don't even need to know how it works to just count how many steps until you die, and then with each next life, just 'double step' each tile once per life until one works. Pretend you know where the buttons are, and how they're positioned, and test your hypothesis. If it fails, rinse and repeat.

There's much more to be said here, and I haven't even touched the subject of cats much at all, but here's a few parting tips:

Keep in mind pet spacing (sometimes dog dances aren't straight across, but a step or two behind)

If it's extremely complicated and involves multiple (like, 4+) pets, the solution is likely constrained by these factors, and severely limited. In other words, you're more likely to guess it by trial & error.

Speaking of which...

Multiple Choice/Guessing games

Hallways. Lots of Hallways! Most lead to death… but some lead to progress! So how do you choose the right path?

These are far less nefarious than they may seem.

The common thread is the hallway, either aligned parallel or in opposite directions, and the difference is the type of commit used. Some examples:

Wired floor (often leading to a cat, a button, & instant death)
Powered door (often leading to just a dead end. Many of these are often poorly constructed, and easily negated with saws or water)
Doggie doors
Leap of Faith (everyone's favorite)

The nice thing about being a suicide robber is that you can confidently charge down these paths with abandon, without worrying about the cost of backing all the way out. Still, some of these houses can contain many, many guesses, so in the interest of efficiency, the smart robber will try to maximize the amount of guesses they get per life.

The trick is simply to bring the right tools.

Wired floor paths can often be defeated by one wire cutter and tons of water. Encounter one cat that turns on the house, and you can cut, step, and water your way around all the rest. Sometimes, if the house is cheap enough, you can saw your way across multiple hallways, scouting three or four at a time. Sometimes, you open a door and find a cat next to a death button…. 4 steps away. A few bricks will let you explore some more and die another day.

Powered doors fall to doorstops, obviously, and, somewhat less obviously, if the power source is exposed, they can be cheaply overcome by simply one water.

Leap of Faiths can be daunting, but instead of bringing a hundred ladders, one can often brick past the door(s) beyond. One subtle weakness of Leap of Faiths is that it takes a good amount of house space to make it seem like it leads somewhere important.

Finally, as I'm sure you're well acquainted with castledraft by now, you can also note that not all guesses are equal, and if you've only progressed about 20% into the house, and you see a path leading seemingly into the border (or into a dead wall), then the odds are quite against taking that route.

***

Those are the big guns. Nearly every house in the top 50 will have at least one of those traps. The ones that don't are innovative and AWESOME… and sadly they're probably easier to solve.

Now here are a few extra surprises I've come across that you may or may not find with any frequency:

Appendix A: Less common, but still interesting trap mechanics

The Circuit Maze
A few houses I've seen have wires that span across the entire house, and require a sequence of buttons to be pressed in order which involves walking back and forth across the house.

These tend to involve no more than a single power source, so that the use of tools to bypass any one area may break the whole rest of the house.

Sadly, these impressively clever houses are easily defeated by castledraft, as wiring is easily seen, and the mechanics, especially revealed, are quite simple to understand. Just do your due diligence and map correctly.

Pet Movement
A couple houses have combined pets and toggles to make interesting, easily-mappable yet difficult-to-solve traps that are in plain sight of the robber. These can involve any combination of cats, chihuahuas, pit bulls, and buttons, and can rely on spacing, timing, line-of-sight, and many other tricks to make them work.

The best way I can explain this is to simply say: LEARN YOUR RULES OF PET MOVEMENT!!

If you know the game mechanics as well as you should, the answers to these traps can be plainly determined by a few minutes thought.

Sight Traps
Likewise, it's important to study how sight-change works, as a number of recently popular traps have used this mechanic very cleverly.

Load up a test house, and figure out how sight-scrolling works. And/or look up a sight-change trap in the forums and figure out how it works, and you should be well prepared for any of these you come across in the future.

Look, the game only has so many mechanics. I know it seems daunting at first, but once you know what to look for, everything becomes easier for you (the robber), and harder for them (the builders).

Fire floors
This is probably already covered, but as I've seen quite a few houses with an extensive series of wired floors, it's worth mentioning that a pair of wire cutters and a bunch of waters are your friends. If you make an error, snip, scout some more, then come back and go further next time.

Appendix B: Freelove weighs in on house-building

It should be obvious by now that I don't believe in unbreakable houses. In fact, I haven't run across a house yet that's truly discouraged me from 2K cracking (except combo locks, which, again, are like free money to anybody with saws).

If you buy in, even a little bit, to my theory that every house can be robbed, and often more easily than people tend to expect, then you may be wondering: Okay, so what is the best way to defend a house?

Welp, here's my theory:

The best defense of a house in TCD requires adherence to these three factors:

1. Build a house you can modify.
- The ideal house can be modified in such a way that the modifications require a minimum of effort, but inflict the maximum amount of confusion upon a robber who has made any significant progress on the house. The modifications must also take care not to open the house to any fresh avenues attack to which it was not previously vulnerable. Tactics include:
* Changing the combination on combo locks
* Changing the sequence of a magic dance
* Changing the "correct" pathway for multiple-pathway mazes
* Moving the vault to an entirely new location
* Adding wrinkles to existing traps
* Remodeling traps entirely

In short, the biggest exploit my entire tutorial uses may be that the puzzle stays constant while you chip away at the solution. Changing your house regularly will help deter a diligent 2K robber.

(the downside, of course, is that you have to pay regular attention to your house. And that's a lot of time and effort, which nobody short of an autistic child would be able to keep up forever)

2. Wreck the other top houses.

What's that you say? The best defense is a good offense?

That's damn right. The best way to combat brute-forcing is to relentlessly annihilate every house with any worth that might challenge you. If you're in any doubt whether someone may be dangerous enough to challenge you, just ask yourself: What would Nero do?

3. Be popular.

I'm half-kidding. But seriously, even if you do (1) & (2), you're still susceptible to crowd-sharing. An angry mob of 15 accounts or so, hell-bent on taking out a tyrant is nothing to be trifled with, and I hesitate to imagine how effective a team of even more than 4 accounts working in unison would be at taking down a top house.

So yeah, in order to prevent this, maybe say nice things on the forums or something. I don't know, ask a tyrant.

Cylence · 2014-05-08 12:16:10

Free Love, awesome contribution!

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-04-09 07:31:01