The Psych Ward - House Breakdown

iceman · 2014-04-12 19:29:50

It has long hung heavy on my heart the mental state of pretty much everyone in this neighborhood. Because I, Keith Anthony Weaver, was a psychiatrist before I was fired for alleged insanity, I realized that I could use my training to help everyone. After thinking about it long and hard, I finally realized that the best way to cure everyone of their insanity was to provide them with the ultimate cure: death. And so, the Psych Ward was born.

The idea behind this house was to test my idea of defense through sudden killing, not defense through brute force prevention. I was really looking forward to making this thread with a bunch of tapes of well tooled robbers dying on my favorite trap; alas, it fell on the second try of the first high-class thief to rob me.

First of all, the solution, and then a breakdown of the different parts of the house.

House Breakdown

Let me explain section by section:
A. This whole area was designed prevent as many robbers as possible from reaching my death trap in D, and to throw suspicion off that path. The electric floors start off, and on your first step, the ones right in front of you turn on. Although it might seem like a normal paradox circuit, if you didn't have the cat press a button in the different part of the house, it actually becomes a "normal" circuit on that step. If you try stepping on it again, instead of turning everything off again, everything turns *on*, crushing the dreams (and life) of toolless scouters. Past the electric floors is a dog in between you and a doggie commit. How in the world are you supposed to get past that? Well...

B. This whole area lets you get past A. First of all, you have to get a cat to press the button at the top of C, to let you get past the electric floors in A. Luckily for you, the cat also serves a second purpose- saving your life by priming the second doggie commit so that you can get by safely. I actually got the idea for that from ukuko's house from the real money contest. Past that deadly hallway are the dance rooms. Bring the dog from A to get you access to the more sociable dogs in B, do a little dance to get them the correct distance from each other and from you, and you're being chased on your way past A.

C. I was stuck with an interesting dilemma when I wanted to fill up the empty space you saw at the end of my solution. I wanted there to be alternate paths coming from B for robbers to have fun exploring, but I also had a wire coming down from the top of my house that had to get near the bottom of my house. My solution? Disguise the wire as a magic dance! The whole section was designed to make it look like power was coming up from the bottom of the dog's dance room, while really power was going to be passed down from above the whole thing. But of course, it's not just a front- I like making my houses where you can reach *anywhere* with no tools, to make it easy to move the vault defensively, so there is (I believe) a way past the magic dance and a solution that is very similar to the actual one that lets you get to the top right of the map.

D This is the trap that I had such high expectations for, and it's most likely my favorite trap. If the safety button hasn't been pressed, then it does something very, very sneaky. It looks like the setup to a paradox circuit - press the sticky switch, and either the whole thing shuts off or the whole thing turns on. Of course, if it all turns on like the robber is probably expecting, he can pass it for 3 water. So he presses the switch, and everything shuts off. Wow! He must have solved something by accident, or maybe it was just a feint, but either way, he should start moving forward before th- ZAP! The next step, without warning, suddenly everything turns on and all of the tools that you were expecting to use are suddenly in my vault! One of the biggest issues with this trap is that the electronics backing it up take up a LOT of space, but I think that the effect is deadly and effective enough to justify it.

E. This was my backup psychological trap. The screen shifts when you step on the trapdoor. Then, you can see that, if you go down, the cat to the right will *have* to press a button in 2 steps that will definitely turn on all of the trapdoors permanently. There is a catch, of course- there's also a cat above you that will quite possibly press a button that will kill you if you make the wrong choice. The whole trap was meticulously designed to make cutting the wire below you as safe as possible- I tried to make the fact that that electric floor could potentially be carrying a paradox circuit as obscure as possible. If the robber falls for it and cuts that wire, the trapdoors stop receiving half of the electricity they need, and they suddenly open underneath the robber. Honestly, I wasn't expecting this to be as effective as the other trap- it smells much fishier, and at that point, the robber is probably not taking any risks after surviving the trap in D.

Really, what I knew was the biggest weakness to my house was knowledge. The traps really relied on doing something that robbers (who have been trained to expect the unexpected) don't expect. Although they might die once on the electric floor trap, they'll know somethings up, and they'll get past it next life. Similarly, the biggest weakness to a single, well prepared robber was that they tunnel into the circuit room. The moment they do that, they realize that *something* is going to happen at the electric floors, and they'll be on their guard (and most likely pass unscathed). I was really considering simplifying the wiring in A and walling it off from everything else, but in the end, I decided that a robber wouldn't spend the resources to tunnel that deeply into something that didn't seem that important.

And of course, that's exactly what the player who robbed me did on his first try:

Unfortunately for him, he followed the wiring back to my fake vault section, and didn't reach the vault that time, but armed with the knowledge of where the vault wasn't, along with the caution needed to survive my house, he made it to the vault the next time.

At this point, I was planning on retrieving money from one of my secondary vaults (i.e. neighbor's houses), get about 40k, and be right back where I was, but, unfortunately, I was dumb enough to not even check if my path would be clear, and this happened:

And thus, the psychiatrist cures himself of his own insanity.

Last edited by iceman (2014-04-12 19:34:07)

iceman · 2014-04-12 19:33:33

I was wondering- someone (I think Blip?) mentioned that he found out the solution to my front porch after fooling around in his own house. How far did you find out?

Lord0fHam · 2014-04-12 21:59:08

My main question is where do you upload gifs that are that long ?

Nakula · 2014-04-12 22:06:02

just gotta say epic house. clever puzzles. gj

Lord0fHam · 2014-04-12 22:17:42

Also, I though my house was complicated. Then I thought Gyuri's house was complicated, but damn dude! that tops the list. Unfortunately it was vulnerbale to brute forcing. If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure the guy who robbed you was the streamer AkuWelkin and he's a pro robber, probably the best I've seen. If this is true and you want it, I can probably find you a recording in real time with him talking while he robs you.

iceman · 2014-04-12 22:36:37

Lord0fHam wrote:

My main question is where do you upload gifs that are that long ?

mkerala.com
It lets you upload gifs up to 30 MB, which is about 6 times more than anything else I've seen. The only problem is that they delete it after 30 inactive days.

Lord0fHam wrote:

Also, I though my house was complicated. Then I thought Gyuri's house was complicated, but damn dude! that tops the list. Unfortunately it was vulnerbale to brute forcing. If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure the guy who robbed you was the streamer AkuWelkin and he's a pro robber, probably the best I've seen. If this is true and you want it, I can probably find you a recording in real time with him talking while he robs you.

Haha, thanks! Also, thanks for letting me know about his stream. I've started the beginning of yesterday's video, and it definitely looks like it will be profitable to listen to him more often! He really goes deep into why he does what, which is great to hear! For now, I'll just see his thoughts while robbing my house

HardKor · 2014-04-12 22:38:29

haha, it was him ham, watching the video now. I must have been playing D3 at the time.
http://www.twitch.tv/akuwelkin/b/519186716 @ 52:20

iceman · 2014-04-12 22:49:02

He actually starts prepping around 38:00, looking at his map of my house, deciding what pieces of my house are, deciding what tools to take, etc. He stops at 43 to play FTL, then gets back at 52:20. I think that this might be one of the best ways to learn how to build better- have a top robber give detailed thoughts on how to beat your house!

Also, this is what I dreamed of when making that circuit room: *saws into the room* "Whoah. Whoah! There's some major schematics going on in here!"
Later: "Double voltage triggered switches? What the hell is going on here?!?"

EDIT: Apparently, he almost didn't bring wirecutters.... it was so close to that trap actually working!!!
EDIT2: And he didn't even suspect he would have died.... he just cut it to make sure he wouldn't kill himself when he sawed back through the circuit room. D'oh!!!
EDIT3: If I had just put cement to the left of that line of trapdoors...

Anyways, I reached the end of the video. Like you said, Ham, he definitely seems like a very, very good robber. Very entertaining/educating to watch!

Now, to exact my revenge....

Last edited by iceman (2014-04-12 23:26:25)

Cylence · 2014-04-13 00:35:40

clap clap. Awesome house. I was in there trying to figure out the first jump. I ended up breaking someone else, but I really wanted to check out the electronics behind the paradox/not paradox circuit.

Bravo on the place. That solution would take forever to figure out. I gift you with the gif I dropped on blip. Was a fun read.

Welkin · 2014-04-13 02:10:48

iceman wrote:

Now, to exact my revenge....

That talk is banned! go away! shoo! shoo!

Based on what I saw I thought explosives would be more useful than wire cutters, and they ended up as over-priced saws... alas

Blip · 2014-04-13 08:38:01

iceman wrote:

I was wondering- someone (I think Blip?) mentioned that he found out the solution to my front porch after fooling around in his own house. How far did you find out?

I actually didn't scout that far into your place, but my handwritten notes were accurate, for the most part. I assumed that either the vault was up top or that it contained a button to make the bottom traps work. I also made an accurate guess about the location of the vault in the bottom right (ish). However, I expected the electric floor hallway at the bottom to zigzag a bunch, up and down through the area where the electronics were. I really didn't expect there to be that much electronics for a trap with just a few electric floors.

It's a really cool house idea, though I'm not sure how practical it is exactly, especially your complex psych trap. When I brute-force houses while I myself have a house, i.e. not chain robbing, I refuse to step on any tiles that could kill me (even deactivated electric floors - of course, I did once, but that was by accident). In your place, I would just wire-cutter and water over most of the cleverly set up trap, making all that wiring just a big wooden waste of space.

Welkin · 2014-04-13 09:47:19

Blip wrote:

It's a really cool house idea, though I'm not sure how practical it is exactly, especially your complex psych trap. When I brute-force houses while I myself have a house, i.e. not chain robbing, I refuse to step on any tiles that could kill me (even deactivated electric floors - of course, I did once, but that was by accident). In your place, I would just wire-cutter and water over most of the cleverly set up trap, making all that wiring just a big wooden waste of space.

I agree that the connection to the magic dance as well as most of the wooden circuit could have been simplified (as well as most the top area, I think in the video I call it a waste of space), but he uses signal generators and paradox circuits to try and make you miss-step.

I feel there are 2 real ways to protect your home in TCD, one is to make it difficult to brute force and difficult to guess, but you need to be both as one without the other is lacking. There is also a ticking clock of brute force cost to value you can store in your house safely.

The other is to make it dangerous, where actions of floor panels do not behave as you expect them to. This house is a perfect example of it. A signal generator in the wall so reactions are delayed and let a player step on a 'safe' area and die? Paradox circuits set up so if you cut the wrong wall or floor you'll kill yourself? As Iceman noted, I was 1 step from accidentally killing myself, I only didn't since I cut a wall for a different reason. If you don't expect traps they are dangerous.

I could probably write an entire post about it, but I enjoyed this house more than most I've visited lately as it seemed inspired.

mala · 2014-04-13 15:05:54

Blip wrote:

It's a really cool house idea, though I'm not sure how practical it is exactly, especially your complex psych trap. When I brute-force houses while I myself have a house, i.e. not chain robbing, I refuse to step on any tiles that could kill me (even deactivated electric floors - of course, I did once, but that was by accident). In your place, I would just wire-cutter and water over most of the cleverly set up trap, making all that wiring just a big wooden waste of space.

that has been my first thought while reading your post to understand how it worked (btw... you've made and amazing job, great circuit, very hard to figure out), the trap is really clever, but from a bruteforce point of view you can solve/map 1/4 of the house relatively cheap, and we all know that no one will ever get past your second trap but very well tooled robbers

FreeLove · 2014-04-14 16:50:29

Ugh. LOVED this house. Wish I had more time to go through it. Haven't played in a while, and my first (and only) scout spent about 15 minutes playing with the cats.

iceman · 2014-04-14 16:58:25

I actually have a recording of that, although I recorded it going just a bit too quickly. Still, I had to, considering you took over 800 steps!

Watching this really made my day, though

Cylence · 2014-04-14 19:06:17

I love coming home to videos with a huge number of steps.

Also, just wanted to point out an awesome trap that is so subtle.
The dogs in the four corridors. 2 of them are behind 2 doors, and one is behind 1 door.
I love these types of traps where you lead the robber into a false sense of security. Moving too fast will get them killed if they assume all those doors are 2 doors deep.

gyuri · 2014-04-15 00:47:48

That cat room reminds me of this game none of you might know because you are not that old and not from Hungary ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieh-wssCFFc

Shinnbob · 2014-04-15 16:49:48

Browsing the forums at all the old houses & this goes down as one of my favourites. Just the cat room and the timing required - love it.

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