Talk:Trap

Blah. Adding the symbols to the section header looks ok, _except_ i guess now it needs to be referenced like "Trap#Trapname (^)" which sort of sucks. --Paxed 14:01, 16 August 2006 (UTC)paxed

Missing rust trap! --Paxed 23:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Is it true that it is easier to escape a bear trap if you move diagonally?

Yes, I have escaped bear traps in 5-6 when attempting to move diagonally when trying to move normally it takes a 10-15 or so turns. - - DemonSlayerThe3 :: The Neutral Gnomish Wizard, with my kitten Ellinis! 19:14, May 7, 2010 (UTC)

re: bear traps

I couldn't find anything in the source code about an alignment penalty for using a bear trap (unless you displace or kill your pet with one), and in my testing I never saw any message of guilt for my lawful samurai using one (although I did not test with a knight). I removed that and added some info about audio messages. MysterX 07:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Other trap messages

Such as "The <monster> seems disoriented" belong where?

That may belong in the magic trap as it states there that effects vary thus the messages should as well. I'd have to check it out though. - - DemonSlayerThe3 :: The Neutral Gnomish Wizard, with my kitten Ellinis! 19:14, May 7, 2010 (UTC)

Isn't that what you get when a monster hits a teleportation trap and reappears in your sight? I'm not sure whether the trap has to be within your sight too. --Slandor 21:50, June 18, 2010 (UTC)

Trap Doors and Multiple Downstairs

Can anyone confirm the behavior of trap doors on levels with multiple downstairs? Or for that matter, quaffing a cursed potion of gain level on levels with multiple upstairs.

Yidda 03:02, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Quaffing a cursed potion of gain level moves you up only 1 level. But I believe it is random as to which upstairs level it takes you to for multiple upstairs. Same for the trap door on multiple downstairs but sometimes it won't drop you only 1 level down. - - DemonSlayerThe3 :: The Neutral Gnomish Wizard, with my kitten Ellinis! 19:14, May 7, 2010 (UTC)

I'm much more inclined to think that you would stay within your current dungeon branch in either case, i.e. you would always go from Dungeon:7 to Dungeon:8 or Dungeon:6, never from Dungeon:7 to Sokoban:1 or Dungeon:3 to Mines:1. Perhaps somebody could check this in the source code, but I can't ever recall falling into a different dungeon branch. The one exception to this is of course going from the Castle to Gehennom, but those traps always take you to the Valley of the Dead, never anywhere else. -Ion frigate 01:48, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

On the gnomish mines level, I have never fallen into the mines (but often toward Sokoban). Therefore, I guess you always stay in the same dungeon branch. --Tjr 20:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Fire traps

In SLASH'EM you can untrap fire traps with a potion of water. It leaves 1-4 potions of oil behind and gives the message "You manage to extinguish the pilot light!" Not sure if this holds in vanilla. Ih fek 04:40, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow, cool find. This seems like it would be rather easy to exploit, given the copious amount of fire traps in the game, even with SLASH'EM's shortened Gehennom. You could get a large supply of holy water or polyfodder to alchmeize, and make an oil lamp pretty much last forever. -Ion frigate 01:45, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

Random Generation Above Lvl. 5

The magic trap says it does not randomly generate above level 5, I disagree because I have seen them generate in the Gnomish mines, and in the main dungeon in maybe lvl. 4 or 3. Unless I am mistaken, I'll try to get a screenshot. - - DemonSlayerThe3 :: The Neutral Gnomish Wizard, with my kitten Ellinis! 19:14, May 7, 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that in the article, and I have definitely seen magic traps quite early on, as early as level 1. It is worth noting that bones files can violate the "not generated above level X" rules, particularly in the case of the Mines or the Oracle, as well as SLASH'EM's various special levels. This happens when it was originally generated at or below the required level, but the bones file ends up being placed above it. -Ion frigate 01:42, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

Using traps against monsters

Got that peaceful unicorn, and i NEED a horn. if i activate the rolling boulder trap that allows me to hit her, will it count as if i killed her?Newtkiller 14:02, June 18, 2010 (UTC)

Yes if the trap is displayed by the game. Tjr 14:44, June 18, 2010 (UTC)

Level teleporters and MR

Pets with MR are not protected against levelporting. Neither trap.c, line 1991 (trap handling code for monsters) or teleport.c, line 1092 (function for actually changing the level) make any reference to magic resistance, and testing in wizard mode with a gray dragon confirmed that magic resistance does not protect monsters. I'm going to make edits where I know they're needed, but I've seen this incorrect statement made in plenty of places on this wiki so I might miss some. -- Qazmlpok 02:04, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Just now level teleporter failed to teleport me and vanished. I guess, thats because of my MR, I wear elven cloak: "You step onto a level teleport trap! You are momentarily blinded by a flash of light. You shudder for a moment. You see no objects here." So I changed the entry. Level teleporters vanish even if failed to teleport player. --95.220.148.133 19:12, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

MC is not the same as MR. MC provides no protection against levelporters. There's simply a random chance that you will be teleported to the level you're already on. teleport.c, line 682 shows this, including the 'shudder' message: If you randomly pick the current level, print "You shudder for a moment". This still deactivates the trap, because it did teleport you; you just didn't move. -- Qazmlpok 20:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

fire traps outside gehennom

Somebody wrote fire traps can be generated in "the random maze areas outside the Castle,". I believe this is wrong because of:

• playing experience,
• a few wizmode runs,
• source diving.

Traps are only ever generated by writing to "ttyp" or by calling maketrap, in turn called by mktrap or load_maze. Note mktrap only makes fire traps in Gehennom (mklev.c, line 1234) or when explicitly told so.

Edit: load_maze can indeed make a fire trap via rndtrap. A third code path is load_special => load_rooms => build_room => create_trap => mktrap, which seems to be used only for special levels with predefined semi-random traps. --Tjr 22:18, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Teleportation traps and level teleporters

Quantum Immortal, if you have magic resistance and are standing on a teleportation trap, you may press ctrl + t to activate the trap. The same is not true of level teleporters, which is probably an oversight. It's hard to wiz-test because wizards have intrinsic teleportation powers, but my experience confirms.__Train (talk) 18:25, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

You should have clarified this kind of obscure behavior in the article.--Quantum Immortal (talk) 05:27, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

It already was, though. The section on teleportation traps clearly stated, and continues to state, that "[i]f you want to use the teleporter (e. g. a vault teleporter) and you cannot teleport intrinsically, you may use ctrl + t to take the teleporter despite magic resistance". I presumed that was also true of level teleporters, but found that it wasn't, so I pointed that out. Precisely what "obscure behavior" did you want further clarified?__Train (talk) 09:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

That you can use the teleporter with the command, even if you have MR. I don't find it obvious, that the command can override MR and use the magic of the teleporter. It is very nice that it sais that, but a lot of people (me included) didn't read that part. And why should they read it, if they think they alredy know how teleporters work?--Quantum Immortal (talk) 19:40, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I may be a little slow this evening, but your comment doesn't seem to make sense. It is certainly true that some would neglect to read Trap#.5E_Teleportation_trap, but the same logic applies to Trap#.5E_Level_teleporter. As editor, all I can do is write articles, and if someone outright refuses to read them, then there's nothing you or I can do about it. Each trap has a designated section in which its behavior and mechanisms are described, and describing one's latter on another's former, as you have done, seems like pointless info duplication to me; in the logical extreme, this would mean creating articles for each trap and documenting every trap on each article. If someone are reading about one trap and wish to know about another, they can scroll up to the TOC and choose it from there.__Train (talk) 16:28, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Pffff. That's an over extrapolation. You are very detail oriented person, most people aren't. This can provoke confusion about what is implied but not explicitly written. Most people aren't like that, they make generalizations and guesses. The edit is helpful for most readers, not just the detailed oriented. Are you really making all this fuss over one phrase?--Quantum Immortal (talk) 21:31, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I take offense at your characterisation, which I find to be bordering the accusative -- on what basis do you make this claim, and, for that matter, the claim that "a lot of people (...) didn't read [the section on teleportation traps]"? no, wait, don't answer that, I don't care -- but not enough to pursue the matter. Further, I have not made any "fuss"; in case I wasn't clear, I don't care one whit about your edit; I just don't find it necessary, nor do I agree that it was my "duty" or whatever to write it myself.__Train (talk) 15:59, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Fire Traps and Golems

I diligently studied the code and I think I got the golem effect for fire traps correct, but I'm not 100%. --Phollenback (talk) 05:34, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Can we split this into articles for each trap?

Some of the traps already have articles. The traps have nothing to do with each other. Each trap has a lot of unique text.

I propose that we switch to having just 2 sections: Generation and List of Traps. The List of Traps would just have links to an article for each trap, similar to the list of Banes.

What do you think? --Aximili (talk) 07:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Just commenting again to add: currently in the variants section the changes for each trap are organized by variant, but not also organized by trap. That's just plain confusing. --Aximili (talk) 08:03, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

That's something I was mulling over, yeah, but it's also a p. sizeable undertaking and I wasn't sure exactly how to approach it myself. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 18:17, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

To me, it seems straightforward (but perhaps time consuming). First we create all the new articles (possibly turning redirects into articles). Then change the sectioning for the new articles. Then remove the old blocks of text from the giant trap article. Then fix any links to the trap article that would be broken. It's laborious but also not tough to think through, and the first part can be done gradually. I have done similar splits for special rooms, Banes and object materials. Of course all of those were a lot more obscure topics, and some had TODOs asking for a reorganization. The most conceptually annoying parts will probably be references between different traps, and some of the variant info which applies to multiple types of trap. --Aximili (talk) 18:34, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Most of the traps aren't really complex enough to warrant their own articles - the dart trap and squeaky board articles would be only a couple paragraphs long, for example. Some of the longer ones, like the anti-magic field and fire trap, might be justified as separate pages, but I don't see the reasoning behind moving every trap to its own article, which would require another click and page load to view a small amount of information. --Darth l33t (talk) 18:51, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Regarding the complexity of traps, some simple monsters like the zruty and quivering blob have their own articles. I don't think short articles are really a problem. The point about the extra click is reasonable but presupposes a reader is scrolling through the trap page reading about every kind of trap. I do not think that is typical behaviour. It seems more likely to me that someone would search for "dart trap" and end up redirected to the page, in which case having a separate page for dart trap would avoid loading data about all the other traps. Finally, I probably said 1 page per trap somewhere but I'm willing to concede that certain really similar traps can be combined. We could have a single "dart and arrow trap" article much like how we deal with frost horn and fire horn. --Aximili (talk) 19:57, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Additionally as mentioned earlier, the trap article has a variants section... which people might not even notice if they arrive by a search or redirect. Fundamentally the proposed change is about sacrificing the experience for someone reading about all traps in a single sitting, to improve the experience for someone who just wants to read about one. --Aximili (talk) 20:11, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Zruties are their own monster class, so there's nowhere to really put them other than their own article. There's no article for ​b blobs, just a redirect, but if there were I'd say the quivering blob should go there. Most ​d dog or other canines and ​f cat or other felines are discussed in their monster class article because there's not a whole lot to say about them, and I think that's also true for most traps. Dart trap and the other individual traps link to the fragment in the trap page, so the browser will automatically scroll to the right section, and the other text in the article will load in negligible time, whereas clicking a link to a separate page is an extra step -- if you want to read up on all the traps, that's a lot of extra steps. --Darth l33t (talk) 21:30, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

That still doesn't address the issue of the variants section being all the way at the bottom of the page - which is not a big deal for dart trap but is significant for some of the others. For instance if you get redirected to the fire trap section you might not notice the SLASH'EM specific changes to fire traps. There is a similar problem for the traps that have encyclopedia entries. Also to be frank I don't think reading about the traps one by one on the present page is a pleasant experience at all. Each trap (that doesn't already have its own page) has its own messages, removal instructions and some other minor trivia like the exact number of arrows in an arrow trap. There are almost no subsections, probably because proper subsections would double the height of the massive table of contents. This article is a lot messier than the feline and canine articles, even the humble dart trap has more prose than wargs, wolves and dingos combined. And you can't even read about all the traps anyway because *some* of them do have their own articles. To be clear: I think the work each individual editor made in each individual section is great, it's only the whole that I find a nuisance. --Aximili (talk) 22:39, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

There's an argument to be made for splitting the article up on length alone: basically "when the list of sections box is taller than your browser's page-height, you have a problem." This article is the 49th longest on the wiki at Special:LongPages, and higher than that if you ignore articles describing entire versions or variants.

Counterpoint to Darth l33t's argument: for the majority of other categories like potions, wands, and insects, the wiki doesn't cater to those who wish to read about all potions, wands, or insects in a single page, so there isn't much precedent. Breaking up this page would fit in with that majority. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 11:42, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

A possible compromise is using a table instead of a bare list, similar to how we split special rooms. Columns would include ‘trap’, ‘effect summary’ and ‘removal’. This way a reader could get some basic information on each trap without trivia such as messages, variant info or the exact health lost by golems stepping on fire traps. —-Aximili (talk) 05:16, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

I think there's too much data per trap for a table to be viable. Ultimately I'm okay with splitting the traps into their own pages; I'm fine with the page the way it is, but I understand it could be awkward for e.g. mobile users to do all that scrolling. --Darth l33t (talk) 12:59, 15 August 2022 (UTC)