Remove Trap combat tactics....Yes, you read that correctly.
So, I was messing around yesterday and discovered something interesting. I've been testing it a bunch more today and while this is not all rock solid, here's what I've got.
Basically, if you have a circuit/cylinder trap open, you can purposefully detonate it to damage things around you. I don't think this is the intention of the Remove Trap puzzles, but it opens up some highly situational, different, gameplay.
The trap detonations are like SuperNova potions, they do a lot of damage and extend out a long way. Farthest I've seen so far is 9 tiles from me, which was 10 tiles from the chest. I'm not sure if the damage they do is Fire (suspected) or Physical. I can test that later.
With 0 Fire resist I took 240 damage from a trap. With 70 Fire resist I hit myself with 25 circuit and 25 cylinder detonations. The damage is significant, but not overwhelming.
Circuit = high 72, low 37, mean 55
Cylinder = high 70, low 36, mean 52
So, here are some possible uses of this little mechanic, there are probably others.
1. Killing yourself. You can remove trap before you lockpick, so if you had stealth, you could sneak through the guardians to the chest, RT it, and detonate the trap to damage the guardians. At Hoard, this will damage everything around you for 10 tiles. It's nowhere near enough to kill the guardians, but it sure makes them angry. Turns out, 3 or 4 Rune Beetles can kill you pretty quickly.
2. Clearing surface spawn. I was using this last night and today to clear surface spawn trash that was bothering me. Mostly when evil mages came around. It takes out all the low level spawn and you get 9 or 10 tiles of peace and quiet to do your work. It only takes a moment to do the puzzles now, so not much gets time to bother me, but once in awhile something wanders in and I just don't feel like moving.
However, I also got a couple maps on the edge of the Sleeping Dragon spawn. You can lure an entire mass of Deathwatch beetles and Lizardmen down to your kill zone.....err chest. The resulting beetlejuice explosion of sticky mess is something you should really put on your UO bucket list. It's awesome. Baaaadaaaa-BOOM!
3. Luring people in Felucca. Remember when people would leave tinker trap boxes around and wait for foolish passersby to open them up to see what was inside? Someone would have to be dumb enough to approach the chest, you'd need a map where someone might actually be in Felucca, and you'd have to wait forever, but I put nothing past the griefers in Fel.
Now for something perhaps more useful. Felucca T-hunting.
It's not just that you can detonate the trap, it's that if you time things correctly, you can detonate it twice in ~1 sec. That's ~100 damage delivered to everything within 10 tiles in ~1 sec.
4. Defending yourself from raiders. Watch the timing when you first RT the chest. After the skill cooldown you'll have the trap open and RT available again immediately. Set up a macro to use RT, and target your chest. If you're lucky enough to have a Circuit/Cylinder, and you happen to get raided while working the puzzle (raiders won't know what puzzle you've got), you have a chance to defend yourself. Remember, I said highly situational. Detonate the trap and hit your macro, the RT gump will reopen preset to the wrong answer, detonate again. I messed with this a bit today and can do it without the macro in about a sec. You might also add in a heal potion to the macro, or wear damage/fire eater gear to give yourself some help, but I haven't tested either of those. This might be worthless as your damaging yourself as well, but only you know your template. Maybe your running 180 hp and can take 3 of those blasts in the face. Something is better than nothing.
If you happen to have some friends to back you up on Felucca hunts, they could stay out of the blast radius hidden. Potential raiders take that much damage, your hidden friends have an advantage.
Not sure how many raiders a t-hunter will ever face in Felucca (from experience, I'm guessing none), or if puzzles ever make it to Live, but if they do this might be something to keep in your back pocket.
Honestly, the trapped chest now reminds a lot of the Troika turret from Gears of War. You get a ton of damage, but your giving up mobility. The chest is almost like an old double barrel shotgun turret weapon.
Anyway, I had never thought of RT as a combat skill, and I bet Kyronix didn't plan on implementing mini-nuke turrets, but here we are.
For those worried about losing loot in the chest, I blew up 25 circuit and 25 cylinder traps, didn't loose one item from either chest. The RT item loss for failure is extremely low.
Keep in mind Treasure Hunters, no matter where you are, if you've got a circuit/cylinder trap open, you've also got a Thermal Detonator.
Comments
I just wanted to highlight this.
In non-Fel facets you could actually kill someone and camp their corpse until everything decayed. While this would probably be bad for Trammel, the right chest could really spice up EM events.
However, I fully support this for Felucca. Oh yeah! Pk raiders get exactly what they deserve! Having them stand at the edge of the blast zone and watch their stuff decay is just deserts! Or, they could just buy Undertaker Staves.
Actually Kyronix, at the Monday morning meeting you should just totally straight face it and be like, "Well no Bonnie, I planned that completely. I was intending to increase the amount of Undertaker Staves sold in the store. This was by design. To further incentivize purchasing, I intend to add graphically alternate Red Raider staves."
You could pull it off.
EDIT: Tanager you can also set off the circuit trap by choosing the wrong path.