Trap door
A trap door is a type of trap that appears in NetHack. It is somewhat identical to a hole: it drops any monster that steps on it to a deeper dungeon level, though it starts out hidden.
Contents
Generation
Trap doors can be randomly generated at any dungeon level, but cannot be generated randomly beneath boulders or on levels with non-diggable floors such as the vibrating square level; the Castle has five statically placed trap doors. If a trap door would be randomly generated on a level with a non-diggable floor, it is replaced with a falling rock trap.
Trap doors are sometimes found in closets, with "Vlad was here" engraved in front of the door.
Description
You or another monster that steps on a trap door will fall at least one dungeon level.[1][2] As with holes, there is no upper limit, and you cannot fall beyond the Castle. It is common to fall 2 or 3 floors if you trigger a trap door, while monsters never fall more than one floor.[3][4]
Monsters that levitate, fly or are at least huge size cannot fall through trap doors, including you if you are levitating or in an applicable monster form.
Strategy
Trap doors can be removed by pushing a boulder into it.
History
Trap doors first appear in Hack 1.0.
Messages
- A trap door opens up under you!
- You activated a trap door.
Encyclopedia entry
I knew my Erik too well to feel at all comfortable on jumping into his house. I knew what he had made of a certain palace at Mazenderan. From being the most honest building conceivable, he soon turned it into a house of the very devil, where you could not utter a word but it was overheard or repeated by an echo. With his trap-doors the monster was responsible for endless tragedies of all kinds.
