The Castle Doctrine Forums

Well, how could you die in my house and come back again with the chills? My house was less than 3 hours old... (I've never been in your house)
If you want to let go some money, you can buy paintings, or buy/sell/buy/sell, etc. your tools. You'll save some time

Was it for revenge? Which one was your house?

I've often been thinking about chain robberies, but I always thought it would not work very well because there were at most just a few houses above 20k$. With the big pool of players we have now, there are lots of 50k to 70k houses, so I had a try this afternoon. Man, once you rob a 50k house, it is just a rollercoaster. Re-invest in tools and brute-force the next neighbour. I think I completely destroyed around 15 houses above 60k in 3 hours (I didn't kill any kid ). My trip ended in Willson's house, at that moment I already had more than 400k$. Somehow I got bored by the repetitive sequence of throwing a brick/putting a ladder/etc. and felt into a pit. It had been mindless robbing and wrecking havoc for the last 3 hours so I was not even sad or irritated by the loss, I just had a big laugh. But I could have continued endlessly if I hadn't tripped.
Well, thematically it can fit: the richer you are, the easier it is to rob others. But, gameplay-wise, this might be an issue. Any thoughts about this? Maybe increase the price of tools when you get richer/have a long life/murdered people? Rich people pay more taxes after all.

[Edit] Maybe, this situation will be resolved after more players do these chains, or after the new wave of players get some experience. The value of the houses may come down to normal in the end. I saw many 50/60k houses that were overestimated (meaning, quite easy to solve with a few tools). IMO a very well designed, top house should be worth about 40k$.

Oh yes, I died a few times during the self-test because I got bored and hit the keys too fast.
Also, after you reached my vault, I didn't understand why you didn't try to get to my wife too; actually you had enough remaining guns to get her.

There may be a problem with the rounding algorithm, because sometimes I see 3 significant figures, the 3rd one always being 1. For example, I see a house with a value of 27100$ right now...

I really like 24h, and I even think it is a minimum (especially with the contest running, it limits double account/friend suicide scouting). There are about one hundred houses around, so way enough houses to visit in a 24h window. If you play 24h a day, that makes a house to rob every 15 minutes!

Short chills penalizes houses with smart/uncommon traps. If you die in a smart trap, you are most probably going to understand it, and then you can come back just 1h or 4h later to break through it? It is not fair. Also, many traps rely on timing. Once you die, you can come back and walk the exact same path (minus your last lethal move), and even if you don't understand how the trap works, you'll know that after walking 8 steps to the right and 3 steps down, you just have to cut that electric floor to continue scouting (because you died on the 4th step down in the previous life). And you can be sure that this will work, because you can check in the house list window if the owner came to modify his design (just check that the counters of robbers hasn't been reset).

So, this brings something important to me. Ideally, if you die in a house, you should not have any knowledge about what's inside in your next life. Therefore, I think that after dying in a house, you should be able to re-enter in it ONLY IF the owner has made some change inside. You don't know what he changed, so you'll probably have to start from scratch if you want to break in.

What scares me the most, though, is the possible high bounties transfers between friends/double accounts one minute before the end of the contest.
It is crazy and fun to see so much activity in the neighbourhood right now!

Concerning the sirens, I like it being 10 minutes. Robbing top houses is quite stressing. When I watch the screenshots of my failed robbery attempts, I often find that I missed winning tactical options because I was not expecting this or that trap, so figuring it out for the first time would have taken to much time. If I had had more time, I would have found the correct way to break through. Therefore, I think that with a short limit on time, you reward both the experience of the robber, and the ability of the house designer to build traps that create a surprise or force the robber to have a deep think.
The phase when you come home after scouting and you try to build a map of the target house is still here and is as important as before. The difference now is that houses that contain good or uncommon puzzles force you to spend more because you have to scout several times.

Exciting! I don't know if I should tell this to my girlfriend, she says I'm playing this game too much already...

What if a top player, right now, stops playing, stays home and presses a key every 5 minutes until the deadline of the contest? Wouldn't he be assured to keep his money and win a prize?

Josh, I never disconnected from your house. 1 hour before reaching your vault, I came in and break through walls to your last pitbull to inspect the dance. It was funny because I could see the vault 2 tiles further but I was short one saw, and had to suicide. I had no connexion problem, so I don't know why the tape didn't make it to the server.
I'm sorry I have wasted all your money

I have been playing for some weeks now, and I can say that there is plenty of money to make right away when you start a new life. In my opinion 2000$ is large enough to start with decently. Once you get some experience about how the game and traps work, you can quickly get a feeling whether a house will be easy to rob, there are already many clues just looking around the welcome mat. I can guarantee that most middle-class houses can be robbed with just a few bottles of water, drugged meats or bricks, and good scouting. Every time I start afresh, I can earn about 10k$ in less than 30 minutes just by robbing not so well defended houses (especially with the recent wave of new players).
Don't be afraid to rob and die a lot, you'll get some experience and quickly make progress.
Also, don't forget that there is a lot of psychology in there: you don't need to spend your entire 2000$ if you want to scare away people. My starter house costs less than 500$, and nobody never robbed it! In the meantime, I have cash to invest in tools, and bring in more cash...

I was blocked out of my house with the red message "your house is currently being robbed" for about 3/4 minutes (I tried to get in 5 or 6 times). Probably it was a case of a robber standing on the welcoming mat. Sometimes I even see strange tapes with a robber going back and forth 50 times between the mat and the first tile. I guess it is because my insane house drive them mad instantly.