The Castle Doctrine Forums

2,3,5 is always my third guess when trying to guess a lock, after 1,3,5 and 2,4,6 but before 1,4,5.

Because I didn't have the tools to do so, now that it was broken.

Also, Iceman, you would make a great reporter.

And now for the part you've all been waiting for: Scott and Brit get robbed! Harris also goes a little bit insane, as you'll probably be able to tell. But his new house is nice! I'll do a full house write up soon.

Part 4: the Gamble

4/2/14 - I have nothing left to live for. I bought another painting, called "Dermatillomanian Cultivation". It looks nice with my first painting. I guess that these were the paintings stolen from the Getty. If I was a hero, I'd get them all and return them. But I just clubbed a man's children to death - I'm no hero. So I guess I'll keep my paintings to myself...
Anyways, it doesn't really matter. A good chunk of the paintings are all held by David Michael Scott, and he's too rich for me to rob him. I guess I could, though. I wonder is his house changed much from when I saw it in the paper. I bet it has, but there's no harm in trying. I could die, but at this point I'd embrace death; it would finally get me out of this place.

Police Report: 4-3-14, Report of Major Robbery
The house of David Michael Scott was robbed of $120,000 and 51 paintings by Christopher Alvin Harris. Harris came equipped with 15 wire cutters, 20 saws, 5 explosives, 10 crowbars, 10 pieces of drugged meat, 10 bottles of water, 10 bricks, and one handgun. In the course of the robbery, Harris used 6 crowbars, 4 explosives, 13 wire cutters, 2 saws, and 3 bricks. As Mr. Scott had no surviving family members, nobody was killed.
Unfortunately, the police were unable to arrive in time, as the 20 minute first responder delay had not yet expired. Why do we have that policy anyways? It seems rather dumb...
Security cameras captured this image as Harris approached Scott's vault:

4/3/14 - I'm rich! I have art! It was worth it! Nobody will stand in my way! I guess it may have been a bad idea to spend all my new money on paintings, though. I have to stop those idiot robbers, coming to take my art. You'll never have it, you little fuckers! You won't take what's mine!
I'll just grab somebody else's money to make some upgrades. I guess I'll just try Brit's place.

Excerpt from a notebook titled "fuckers out to GET ME", written by Christopher Alvin Harris on 4/3/14:
Brit's Place: I think he's got a clock. Clocks are dumb, why would he have a clock? Turn off the clock, Brit! You don't deserve your clock! You don't deserve your money! GIVE IT TO ME!!!
*Illegible Scribbles follow for a page and a half.*

Testimony: David Charles Brit
"He kept coming in, bypassing my entrance trap, and just running back and forth. I was worried he might know the solution. When the door opened, he left. Then he came back with more tools, but not enough. He left again... when he returned, he cut upwards. He took my money! *sobbing* It was all I had, and he took it!"
-Note: David Charles Brit later hung himself in his own trap. He will be missed. His house blueprint was later released in the local newspaper, showing his 512 step clock: http://castledraft.com/editor/hHRuAT

4/4/14 - I have a new place, and it'll stop you. It'll stop ALL OF YOU! You'll all think you're SO GREAT, but then you'll be DEAD. And I'll have your tools. And then, and then... I'll BUY MORE ART! I always hated the Getty. I hate you all. Nobody can keep me from my art. NOBODY, DO YOU HEAR? NOBODY!

I'm honestly not that shocked that TCD is hackable by a DLL injection. I think that having protected processes only works on Windows 7 or higher anyways (and TCD isn't a Windows 7+ exclusive), and messing with ld or dyld should work for Linux or Mac, respectively.

The point is that, regardless of how you're doing it, you shouldn't be hacking. I do think it's good that you're bringing this up, but it might be smarter to just email Jason (and maybe iceman, as it's his mod), rather than posing it on the forums.

That's my plan, at least.

It looks like me being an idiot and not seeing what was right in front of my face payed off for once.

Thanks so much! Just so everybody knows, cullman did follow through with payment, and I've made a nice $200.
Now that nobody can use this to ninja me, here's my proof screenshot:

Got it! Will post proof soon, I have to go eat dinner right now.

I'll give it a shot this evening, probably.

I think that would work. Another idea that I considered is having the bounty of a player who dies based on their wealth at the time they die. i.e. the bounty on a player would be [wealth-2000]/factor. This would also fix the "bounty for family" thing - as killing and robbing wouldn't affect bounty.

Anyways, I think we can all see that the bounty system is a mess, but it seems very hard to fix without possibly messing with the cash balance in the game, which is already pretty delicate.

What I've been attempting this weekend is a tactic I call "double chaining". I'll have two robbing chains going simultaneously, so that the shorter, less valuable chain can essentially do funded suicide scouting for the longer chain. It's very effective at rapidly dismantling wealthy houses - essentially, I can do suicide scouting with lots of tools. The cost is massive collateral damage to the neighborhood, notably in the many houses I've used to build up my chains.

I was absolutely shocked. My only plan was to see whether the wife was located in the bottom or top corner; it's surprising how one can tell the approximate vault location from the wife path location and the initial curvature of the entrance path. I had assumed that the wife would be at the bottom, and the trap would go up, then down, then back up along the far wall to the vault. I just wanted a quick scout to check, so I tossed a very short chain at it. I was ready to either find a solid wall or a pit-bull waiting ahead of me.

As I just said, it's easy to guess vault location from wife location and path curvature. I was guessing at a bottom right vault from the beginning.

Here's the logic behind that robbery:
1. I knew already what the entrance, up to the annoying powered doors, looked like. So I knew that I didn't need to cut those opening electric floors, and that some torches could keep me safe. The crowbars I brought were as a backup for this section; I didn't realize they would come in handy later.
2. I figured I'd try to sweep across the top, and then down, and that's what I did at first. Then, those pits at the top got in my way; I wanted to save my ladders. Thus, I followed what seemed to be the intentional path, although cutting my way through it.
3. Still hoping for a bottom right vault, I chose the bottom path for the set of commit gates. A dead end presented me with a way to hop to the next part of the trap for two ladders. I decided to take you up on that offer. As I could clearly see that the next wall was only one tile thick, I figured why not keep cutting. I found myself on a downwards path - exactly where I wanted to be.
4. I'm still not sure of the solution to that last section. I'm just glad that I had those crowbars I didn't use from earlier.

I guess my strategy was sort of a crush-though-the-first-wall approach, but with some intelligence. I tried to cut through weak spots, and use open paths when they were provided. Overall, that place was very pricey to crack - but I came off with a profit which I quickly wasted.

If you're Mr. Case, I think it's time we do see it. That was a stressful robbery. I'm glad I brought a crowbar.