A New House Design Thread

joshwithguitar · 2014-01-27 21:09:21

Stewart died when I accidentally double-tapped an arrow key yesterday in the middle of a robbing spree. Hudson, my new life, died earlier today in Thomas' house when I stepped on his dog while bashing through a wall. I sat there for ages with "carp" in the filter box hoping you would come back.

I'd go rob it now if I didn't have the chills .

Last edited by joshwithguitar (2014-01-27 21:09:59)

iceman · 2014-01-27 21:47:26

Ok, I've updated my post with the details of my house design. It has the actual copy of my house now (sans safe, since nobody's reached it yet), so robbing me is perfectly safe!*

Here's the post if you don't want to have to find it:
http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … 6253#p6253

*Safety not guaranteed in case of stupidity or bad luck

DethBringa · 2014-01-27 22:01:59

Wow binger, you are basicly describing my first 2 house builds.

Binger32 · 2014-01-28 09:14:54

DethBringa: I got the idea from a house I attempted to rob, so it may have been your house First time I saw it, I got killed rushing for the door by the door pitbull. Second time I committed to the gate, and got pretty deep but was obviously in the wrong part of the house to get to the vault and died in a corner by another pitbull lol.

jere · 2014-01-28 13:36:36

Heh. My map has been posted since the contest ended and I've since racked up 15 more bounties and have not been robbed. How strange.

RockyBst · 2014-01-28 14:50:35

I'll post my current never been close to robbed (but someone shot my wife then got pitbulled) map when it finally gets broken.

It's the one currently worth 43,500 and which has 8 paintings, if anyone wants to have a go.

iceman · 2014-01-28 16:12:42

RockyBst wrote:

I'll post my current never been close to robbed (but someone shot my wife then got pitbulled) map when it finally gets broken.
It's the one currently worth 43,500 and which has 8 paintings, if anyone wants to have a go.

The one with a single electric floor in front of the entrance? I didn't want to take a step in to see you have paintings, but if you want to know your name is Cardoso

RockyBst · 2014-01-28 16:33:04

Well <expletive>. I was just out doing a robbery on an 8k house, for the hell of it. I even had about 10ks worth of tools on me. Killed the wife, was on track for the safe when I stepped on a pitbull I'd drugged earlier. Looking at the list he's now $40,000 richer, and I've lost my best ever house, $40k and 8 paintings.

I did say in the lucky escapes thread that I should stop playing. I'm just annoyed that due to chills I can't go rob my bounty back off him

Still, a promise is a promise. My houses tend to be rather organic, as in not pre-planned. While I have some pre-fab traps I put together, generally they are slung in at random and possibly refactored later.

Note in particular the pitbull circled in red. Probably 50% of my kills came from him, either via doggy death door or him standing on the button which powers on the electric floor / door blocking entry to the rest of the maze.

Also the traditional pit tribute to the battered wife, which has itself claimed many an unwary life.

Circled in blue is the magic button which turns on power to the trap door later in the maze (yellow), as per my post in the traps thread. Also incidentally cuts off the escape route door.

Lots of fake outs in this one, but honestly not one single person every got past the junction circled in green, regardless of how many tools they bought in. The entire bottom section never got a single visit

EDIT:

Because I'm so annoyed that nobody ever got close to working this one out, I've even gone and highlighted the correct route for you.

Last edited by RockyBst (2014-01-28 16:47:32)

jere · 2014-01-29 06:56:29

CARPENTER RECLAIMS PRIZE MONEY, NO TAKERS: Mr. Carpenter has announced today that, while several visitors to his residence have come offering gifts in appreciation of his first-come, first-served contest, none have yet come to claim the $120,000 prize. Carpenter, having become rather attached to his means, has withdrawn the prize after a 24 hour contest window. - 1/29/91

Last edited by jere (2014-01-29 06:57:13)

ventuswings · 2014-02-02 18:47:30

Posting house I tried today for fun. It went up to $30000 before dying to self-test as usual.
The theme I based the entire house around was 'Door Maze'.

Note that the giant white box on bottom left is the trap I deleted, since I plan to re-use it in my future houses; it has absolutely nothing to do with the way to solve the house.

So it's pretty self-explanatory, you need to navigate the wooden maze, press the switch, come back and use the dog present at the entrance. At beginning it was just attracting one of the dogs that were defending my wife and daughter, but since some monster killed them, I created a tomb and 1/3 guess door with a freed up space as tribute. The entire former portion is deliberately kept wooden and free of threats to entice the cautious robbers - except a random pitfall I hoped might catch someone off-guard (you can see another one of these 'oops' pits at end of the latter portion hallway).

After you cross the inevitable commit gate, you reach latter portion of my house which is entirely devoted to the Dog U-turn puzzle.

More specifically, you would have to make a U-turn at bottom right corner, with pits placed on such a way that dog would fall into the pit and die without following specific pathway. Then you would need to pick which hallway is the right choice - astute robber would know by now that correct path is the one where dog was initially at, but to obfuscate them I utilized the 'similar looking hallways' trick. This trick was what killed me at the self-test

Should robber happen to pass straight forward choice corridor for 1/8 odds, he reaches the final room - and I really like this room because I placed cats and pits in such a way that if robber do not move 3E 3N 1W upon entering, cat falls into the pit in such a timing that it would block the pitbull from following you to the switch. To be honest, nobody survived to reach the later portion so I haven't seen it in action, but it should work in principle.

Fairly confident the house was enough to repel $2000 starter kit robbers, but as I said, it's a design for fun and not defense because it lacks lethality and strength. Larger portion of former maze is deliberately kept harmless to encourage exploration, and because the entire puzzle is based around the dog following you throughout the maze, I couldn't utilize basic commit traps like electric floors which encourage invader to burn through their tool. The entire latter puzzle can be bypassed by $3000 (gun and the ladder) which is woefully insufficient against robbers who actually come prepared, I think.

Last edited by ventuswings (2014-02-02 18:56:19)

ladida · 2014-02-02 20:16:24

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

Last edited by ladida (2014-02-02 20:22:35)

Mirro · 2014-02-02 20:59:50

http://castledraft.com/editor/iY2lm9

I used this set up as a starter home for a while.
The way to pass this puzzle is going up. The robber is usually trapped in once they pass the grates because they can't see the windows.
The dog behind the door switches off the electric floors and now allows you to go into the door maze with the dog following you.
The idea is to backtrack with the room that goes in a circle to the safe.

I had people find the round room before, but then not backtrack. No one thinks of doing that.

Last edited by Mirro (2014-02-02 21:00:40)

RockyBst · 2014-02-04 11:36:13

Well, after a week and 500+ kills my house has finally fallen to a robber with 58 saws, 40 bricks, 4 guns, 16 wirecutters, 6 ladders, 10 explosives, 66 water and 54 meat. That's a cool $81,200 in tools to rob me of $73,721 and my 7 paintings. Honestly I was starting to get a bit weary of this house anyway, hence why I allowed it to float onto the first page, but it just means I now have to go find my precious pitbull painting again

Anyway, here's the house. Unfortunately my last map shot was four days out of date, so you're only getting the destroyed version:

Follow the red line, yellows are doubling back.

1.) Secret pitbull master, who controls both the electric floors in sector 3 and the final trap doors before the vault

2.) Clock / Cat Track combination. The clock driven grid and trap door system had an astonishingly large number of two step kills, and the cat trap caused no end of people to suicide. 80% of kills were made here, I'd say.

9.) The cat you have to chase. Muck about in the clock section for even a single tile, the powered trap door to the north goes unpowered. I forgot about this guy in the numbering scheme.

3.) The usual scrolling electric floors. These were controlled by both the dogs at the end, and also the pitbull master. Probably another 14% of my kills were here. The secret to these is that they actually light up at the very moment of screen transition, thanks to the pitbull master. As in, the same turn the pitbull first sees you.

4.) Need to go back to pick up the pitbull, and have the secret pitbull master turn on the powered trap door

5.) Need to aforementioned pitbull to get past this commit gate. Only three people ever did.

6.) Need to expose yourself to the pitbull here to open the powered door, disable the electric grid and close the second powered trap door to the south.

7.) Need to move to this electric floor in order to turn OFF power to the vault room. If you don't, when you enter the vault room the powered trap door beneath your feet will suddenly lose power.

8.) Enter this door and this door only to get a dog 2 steps behind you for the commit gate.

Now, time to take my clock based plans to fruition, rather than just retrofitting my old wife defence system after someone with 12 guns slaughtered her!

iceman · 2014-02-04 11:55:55

Awwww, I was looking foward to solving this house when chills were off. I had died in the cat room (after making them line dance - I hope you enjoyed that one =P). I was expecting the dog to the right of the entrance to die by a clock based trap by the door, letting you get in there safely. Guess not

ukuko · 2014-02-04 13:09:41

Aw I was looking forward to having another go at this one too. I got past the pitbull commit gate (5) but had no tools at that point and lost at door roulette.

largestherb · 2014-02-04 13:42:29

RockyBst wrote:

Well, after a week and 500+ kills my house has finally fallen to a robber with 58 saws, 40 bricks, 4 guns, 16 wirecutters, 6 ladders, 10 explosives, 66 water and 54 meat. That's a cool $81,200 in tools to rob me of $73,721 and my 7 paintings. Honestly I was starting to get a bit weary of this house anyway, hence why I allowed it to float onto the first page, but it just means I now have to go find my precious pitbull painting again

$81,200 in tools that cost me $2,000 to acquire.

your $73,721 built me a fine house though

RockyBst · 2014-02-04 15:21:15

So you're the one who pointlessly laddered everything and took out my walls

Still more annoyed about losing those paintings.

Ukuko I consider you the 'winner' of this house, you're the only person (who didn't have an absurd amount of tools) to get anywhere near that far in. Which is kinda annoying, as it means nobody ever fell for that powered-door pit trap in the bottom right, found the pitbull nestled in the concrete and steel vault-protecting-looking shell, ran through the hall of cats or had the 'oh hell, 11 pitbulls in a room' chase scene

But don't worry, I'll be returning soon with clock driven floor 2: Electric Boogaloo

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