Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

joshwithguitar · 2013-09-15 17:38:13

Last night when I left the game there wasn't a lot of money floating around, yet in the 8 hours since then I was set upon by two separate robbers both carrying over $16k worth of tools. What makes me more suspicious is that the first did not even bother planning an exit and died in my house (carrying 90 bottles of water!) and the second followed a very similar set of moves to start and similarly had no exit strategy (though got to my vault), so I think they were the same person.

With the current low salaries the only way I can see $34k suddenly appearing out of nowhere is someone starting 19 new games and leaving all of their starter cash to be robbed. This is unlikely to be scouters because: a) scouters will tend to die before their 5 mins is up, b) chills limits the amount of scouting that can be done.

So I'd say the most likely thing is that someone has used duel accounts to amass all of this money specifically to destroy my house. The 5 min restriction on robbing new people really hasn't stopped this. It just means that it takes an hour and a half to get $34k, which compared to salaries at 10% is extremely fast.

It is also interesting that they left Temples house unscathed, so it looks like it was a specific vendetta on my house.

largestherb · 2013-09-15 19:22:13

after piecing together a map after many, many, many visits (i can post it here if you like), i decided guessing which way a cat is going to walk was almost as boring as a combo lock!

my plan was.. rob a few small houses for $4000 or so using alternative account, buy tools and then dump those tools into my safe house. use my safe houses earnings (which are kind of ridiculous) to buy a bunch more tools, consult my map of your house and go investigate! i believe a lot of destruction was paid for with the takings from your vault and partner (around $22,000?)

i have been peeking and poking around your house for a very long time! i like how many times you changed just a few wires to change up the safe route. and i appreciate you not brutally murdering my family all the times you walked right through them.. but you hurt so many of my dogs!

Last edited by largestherb (2013-09-15 19:24:53)

joshwithguitar · 2013-09-15 21:05:58

Ahh, it all makes sense now. I was wondering why Mr Temple never visited my house after I robbed him. It is because you would use your second account to scout me. And you are complaining that my house was boring after your combo lock approach (which I think is pretty closely based on my design of the most boring houses I could come up with, which Mr Lance picked up early on - http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … 3928#p3928 ).

The $34k was how much the tools were worth before I was robbed the first time. I can see how with Temple's income + a dual account dumper this would not have been too hard to accumulate though.

The entire thing was pretty harsh considering I chose not to kill your wife. I think I maybe killed 2 of your dogs?

You can see why I think this kind of dual account exploitation is pretty unfair. Mr Temple is now the undisputed king if the block and you didn't even have to risk his neck to take me out.

A copy of your map would be interesting (email it to me though as I'd prefer people pay/risk their necks to see my electronics -for now at least). Did you end up figuring out how all of my electronics worked? That last pit trap seemed to stump people .

Last edited by joshwithguitar (2013-09-15 21:11:07)

joshwithguitar · 2013-09-15 21:42:10

Also an earlier criticism of dual account vandalism by you -

largestherb wrote:

are people really printing their own money just to vandalise people? that seems.. hmm. i can understand doing it to test the limits of home defence, but to go out and vandalise people for no gain (since you can print any money they might have, and already have in order to be able to afford the attack) is a bit much, no?

http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … 2954#p2954

largestherb · 2013-09-16 08:58:57

i purchased more than one account because the 'risk vs reward' for venturing into a house just didn't thrill me at all. and at the same time i didn't want to have to sit doing nothing or not have a house and just try to rob people.
and that hasn't changed.. in fact i think it has gotten worse. it is so easy to get trapped in a house now, you're looking at a gun + ladder + brick/water to get back past even one of those dog/grid/pit thingies.

i quite liked the permadeath server, because having more than one account didn't help you at all.. it gave you another life in case you messed up, but that was about it. ..is the permadeath server still around?

there were quite a few top-dog houses and i am pretty sure i didn't break all of them. i definitely broke another one that had come in and robbed me.

haha, my comment before was back when you could make $100,000 out of nowhere in about ten minutes with very little risk. i definitely think tools not going in the vault after you run out of a house would have prevented me from acquiring such a huge mess of tools..

i mean, i live in a neighbourhood in the suburbs of london that is relatively calm, the shootings and stabbings and car fires are all a few minutes walk away. we had a gnome in our garden. one day it wasn't there any more.
we put out a hallow e'en pumpkin one year. one night the pumpkin was no longer there. and the table it had been sitting on. but apparently my parent put the table out hoping it wouldn't be there any more. so basically people will steal anything, even if it is a good 12ft inside your property boundary.

now running out of the house, dropping your tools as you flee? in THIS neighbourhood?! those tools are not going to be there when you get home. - maybe you have convinced your partner to scan the garden every 30 minutes to check for free tools.. but some people's partners have been horribly murdered in a club related accident.

so, what are the current rules for robber tools going to the vault?

death within the house - this makes sense, pile of tools on a corpse just laying there. or hanging. or in a pit. or melted onto a metal grid :s
reaching the vault - this makes sense too, dumping your bag of its tools to refill it with dollars and paintings and.. uh, some tools in the vault that must be worth more than your cheap-ass tools you brought.
running out of the door screaming like a baby and dropping your bag in the doorway in what is possibly the worst neighbourhood in the world - i think maybe if your partner is alive, a 50% chance they get them before someone else does. but if they are dead, i'd say a 100% chance of someone else coming along and taking them to the pawn shop.

i'll promise to stop abusing the current tool-drop system for now and stick to robbing with just the starter cash and whatever i can build up through subsequent robberies. i'll also go see if the permadeath server is alive and has any residents!

Last edited by largestherb (2013-09-16 09:00:35)

jere · 2013-09-16 17:36:06

i decided guessing which way a cat is going to walk was almost as boring as a combo lock!

top houses are now either combo locks or combo mazes, all using the exact same components (pitbull,power,switch,floor,trapdoor).

I can't remember the last time I successfully robbed a house.

dalleck · 2013-09-17 07:31:45

All my enjoyment has gone from this game

I think it has journeyed down a dead-end trap if its own making and is cautiously hovering over that 'suicide' button...

Last edited by dalleck (2013-09-17 07:32:52)

largestherb · 2013-09-17 19:04:19

tis a bit stale.

..i think ukuko was talking about setting up a blueprint server. idk!

Ludicrosity · 2013-09-19 19:49:48

dalleck wrote:

All my enjoyment has gone from this game
I think it has journeyed down a dead-end trap if its own making and is cautiously hovering over that 'suicide' button...

Yeah, same here. I pretty much lost all interest and desire to play with the release of version 16. It just feels like everything that made the game fun and interesting was systematically removed.

joshwithguitar · 2013-09-20 07:54:37

Revenge is sweet

Ludicrosity · 2013-09-20 18:37:27

There goes Mr. Temple.

jasonrohrer · 2013-10-08 11:54:23

With the latest rules (where you leave a chill in the house whenever you carry tools in there, even if you don't die), can you clarify whether "tool pumping" is still a major issue?

I feel like I'm missing something here. Even with two accounts, how can you pull it off? Waiting an hour each time for the chill to go away?

largestherb, you seem to be implying that dropping tools as you run out the door is somehow responsible for the exploit, but I'm not getting how.

ukuko · 2013-10-09 00:07:42

I think he was giving a selection of tools bought with his top of the leaderboard house to his other account and then robbing with that one. Thus the impression that someone was magicking money out of nowhere.

joshwithguitar · 2013-10-09 03:20:28

With dual accounts and a 'safe house' tool dumping can still be a bit of issue - largestherb said that some of the tools for the robbery he acquired through using his second account to safely rob other houses and buy tools to dump into his safe house. A large part of the tools were probably bought using his safe house income but then he used his dual account for both of the large scale robberies (the first of which died in my house) by dumping the tools from his safe house into that account. He could thus rob me without putting his safe house at risk, using the safe houses money.

I used a form of single account "tool pumping" to get my revenge. Building up wealth from scratch is awfully slow at the moment, so instead I would start a new life, buy tools and then drop them in the one of the houses and then commit suicide. As it was a quiet time (there were only 2 other houses up) I was able to come back every hour to do this without my stash being robbed by anyone else. Eventually someone did log on to steal the stash, but luckily for me they left it in their undefended house for me to grab and these were all the tools I needed. As I knew Mr Temples layout pretty well from previous robberies I didn't need that much to successfully rob him - a few ladders, a crowbar and a bunch of dogfood. I then used the money and tools from his vault (some of which I intentionally dumped) to return and get his wife and trash the place.

This strategy wouldn't work if the game was busier though, so I don't think single account dumping is much of an issue. Dual accounts will create problems though as it doesn't take much effort to every now and then use your second account to give $2 of tools to your safe house and the ability to play 'risk free' with a second account removes a big part of what the game is about.

jasonrohrer · 2013-10-09 09:04:49

Okay, so I see that I'm not missing something.

It's more about slow, hourly exploitation (obviously still there) or using a second account to play it safe.

But the "playing it safe with a dummy account while passing earnings to a main account" really DOES depend on the "drop tools when you run out the door" technique. If you die in the main house to drop the tools, that creates a chill that slows you down. If you reach the vault to drop the tools, all the money in the vault is annoyingly put into the dummy account. It's only the running out the door drop that makes it frictionless.

So... maybe it should go back to tools vanishing when you run out the door? Given that the latest CHILLS implementation seemed to block most exploits, I changed it so that all tools went to the vault. But it's not thematically jarring for the backpack dropped at the front door to not go in the vault.

dalleck · 2013-10-10 01:26:50

jasonrohrer wrote:

But it's not thematically jarring for the backpack dropped at the front door to not go in the vault.

I agree. It needs to go, it does more harm than good.

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2013-09-15 17:38:13

Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#2 2013-09-15 19:22:13

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#3 2013-09-15 21:05:58

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#4 2013-09-15 21:42:10

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#5 2013-09-16 08:58:57

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#6 2013-09-16 17:36:06

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#7 2013-09-17 07:31:45

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#8 2013-09-17 19:04:19

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#9 2013-09-19 19:49:48

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#10 2013-09-20 07:54:37

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#11 2013-09-20 18:37:27

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#12 2013-10-08 11:54:23

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#13 2013-10-09 00:07:42

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#14 2013-10-09 03:20:28

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#15 2013-10-09 09:04:49

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

#16 2013-10-10 01:26:50

Re: Pretty sure I was just exploit robbed/destroyed

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