Has the "sleep" trap in Kresselack's tomb been altered?? *Spoilers*

SharGuidesMyHand

I'm playing through IWD:EE for the first time using the most recent patch.

In the 1st level of Kresselack's tomb, there's a coffin that's undetectably trapped with a sleep spell, which will knock your party members unconscious and allow a swarm of skeletons to have free shots at them. During my first two playthrough attempts at IWD:EE (before the most recent patch), whenever I triggered that trap, my party members would wake up after being struck for the first time, consistent with the description of the sleep spell. However, during my current playthough, my party members just remain unconscious while the skeletons batter them to death (see screenshots in spoiler tags).

Has the trap been altered by the most recent patch, or should I report this as a bug? (I don't have any mods installed BTW).

Mathsorcerer

It appears that the sarcophagus lid, ar3501Door7Trap, still has problems. Unlike the regular Color Spray spell, the trap triggers spwi032, which you cannot avoid if you are already blind for some reason or if you pass an evasion check. Also, if you are lower than 6th level you don't get a saving throw against it.

Using our meta knowledge we could prep characters with Minor Spell Deflection or Exaltation to avoid its effects but some players who are more strict with their rule adherance would call that "cheating" or "exploiting".

Anyway, I think part of the problem might be that the door/trap is marked as "cannot close" or maybe because the trap detection is set to 100, as is the trap removal amount--most thieves aren't going to have a 100 in that skill by the time you get here, even in HoF mode.

I'll play around with that door/trap tomorrow and see what I can figure out.

SharGuidesMyHand

Mathsorcerer said:

Anyway, I think part of the problem might be that the door/trap is marked as "cannot close" or maybe because the trap detection is set to 100, as is the trap removal amount--most thieves aren't going to have a 100 in that skill by the time you get here, even in HoF mode.

I don't mind the trap being nearly undetectable, as long as I still have a fighting chance against whatever comes my way. Prior to the most recent patch, the battle was troublesome but still very much winnable. Now, it's nearly impossible.

Kilivitz

I agree - as of now, this trap is (at a best-case scenario) a guaranteed trip back to the temple in Kuldahar.

And that's using prior knowledge - I only send in one character as a sacrificial lamb and leave the others well behind so they can deal with the skeletons.

SharGuidesMyHand

Kilivitz said:

I agree - as of now, this trap is (at a best-case scenario) a guaranteed trip back to the temple in Kuldahar.

By any chance, do you happen to know if this was intended by the new patch, or a bug that it created?

Mathsorcerer

Depending upon how you look at it there is definitely a problem. Even with a skill of 100 in find traps you cannot detect any trap on the sarcophagus lid even though it says "trap sprung" when you open it. The container underneath the lid is not trapped so we have two clear options: 1) make the trap on the door detectable and removable or 2) get rid of that "door" altogether and make the container trapped. If we still want the skeleton swarm to happen then update the script on the container to include a trigger of IF > Clicked([ANYONE]) or IF > Opened ([ANYONE]) condition.

The container underneath defaults to being disabled and only its script, trdoor7, enables it; however, that script requires the OpenState of the sarcophagus lid to be "true"so to remove the door and activate the container means enabling the container itself or setting its script to auto-enable the container. If we are editing the area to remove the door we may as well activate the container and assign a trap to it, though. I suppose the more straightforward method would be to make the trap on the lid detectable...but that might take some of the fun out of it.

Okay, I just tried it and removing the lid and making the container itself trapped and locked works perfectly *except* that the area thinks the lid has been moved and all those skeletons come out immediately. I'll have to fix that.

The second option is clearly better--setting the lid to be a detectable trap that is also locked. This gives you the opportunity to remove the trap and open the lid, like every well-seasoned adventurer knows to do, and then *surprise* skeletons attack. I set the trap detection, trap removal, and lock removal difficulties all to 50; that seems reasonable for most parties at this level. I did this by updating the flags on door6 (ar3501door7trap) to include "door locked" and "detectable trap", set the "is trapped?" flag to "yes", then set the difficulties to 50.

Now...on the other hand...this situation could be completely by design. The devs know that most players will be sending a thief ahead to scout via hiding in shadows or potions of invisibility and that the thief will be checking for traps. Thief sees what looks like a chest, doesn't find any traps, and the player sends someone in to open it--*bam* gotcha! Adventuring is dangerous and traps should reflect that.

Kilivitz

But if the sleep trap doesn't even allow a save (it's very unlikely that any party will have reached 6th level at that point), isn't it more of a death sentence and less of a challenge?

I agree with your POV @Mathsorcerer, but I still think the whole setup is a bit unbalanced - specially if that was not the default behavior on the original IWD.

@SharGuidesMyHand I don't know, but I certainly don't remember it being this deadly on the original version. It's been a while since I played it, though.

Mathsorcerer

Yes, a sleep spell with no saving throw--even elves aren't immune to it--in the presence of hostile skeletons is pretty much a death sentence. Chances are they can kill the vulnerable character in only one hit but even if they don't there are a handful of skeletons who close into combat on the party member. Changing the door so that is is trapped and locked won't stop the skeletons but at least the sleep spell can be avoided by removing the trap.

I do not recall how IWD/HoW handled that sarcophagus; it has been too long since I played the non-EE version of that game.

SharGuidesMyHand

Perhaps someone from among the devs could shed some more light on this subject? *cough* @elminster *cough*

elminster

I know nothing of this.

Feytor

Can that trap be triggered by a summon?
Just to avoid the 'death sentence'

Kilivitz

Nope. Summons cannot trigger traps (or open doors/containers, for that matter).

chacu669

I went through there last night. Here's how I did it (after dying several times lol):

I sent my thief in alone with an invisibility potion in a quick Slot (kept everyone else far behind). As soon as he set off the trap Skeletons appeared. I have auto-pause for enemies, which gave me time to take the potion. My thief then went to sleep invisible and the Skeletons just roamed around. This gave the rest of the Group enough time to come down and clean up.

Quartz

@chacu669 Effective AND comical. I love it.

Pingwin

A good way to deal with this is to send in a cleric who casts sanctuary just before opening the sarcophagus. Even though you can't detect any traps, the area *looks* extremely suspect and so taking precautions such as sanctuary isn't too metagamey.

Reliant

I prep the area with web and entangle spells. My best tank drinks a potion of freedom and walks to the sarcophagus and sets off the trap. I then have my other tanks protect my mage and archer as they pick off the skeletons with ranged and magical attacks.

Pteran

I can confirm that this still happens, and it's quite deadly. I am on my very first IWD playthrough, so I had no prior knowledge of this trap. My thief detected no traps, so I moved in closer to open the container. Suddenly my entire party was unconscious and swarmed by skeletons! I thought, "No biggie, they should wake up in a few seconds." And then they didn't lol. I lost 4 of 6 members before they finally recovered. My Jester and Pally saved the day!

BillyYank

I sent in my thief and berserker and had the zerk rage when the spell appeared. He guarded the thief and accounted for most of the skels (he had two pips in quarterstaves). The rest of the party dealt with the skels in the corridor in some mad melee action.

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chuukogu

SharGuidesMyHand wrote: »

(see screenshots in spoiler tags).

I think you have the bytes of the screenshot in the wrong order, the image loaded from bottom to top.

Trap that can't be untrapped is wrong. It's a violation of thief's rights

Franpa

But this topic was never meant to be about whether or not the trap can be detected/dispelled/disarmed. The purpose of this topic was that the spell triggered by the trap is far more deadly than it is in previous versions of the game! For all we know it is intentional for the trap to not be disarmable/detectable! The room layout makes it obvious enough that something is amiss and that you should prepare yourself for a surprise.

I bested this trap by leaving everyone but my tankiest character, way outside the area and then moved them in after the trap was sprung.

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semiticgoddess

The Helm of the Trusted Defender is just barely affordable at this point in the game and will grant immunity to sleep. It's a spectacular investment even long after the trap due to the +3 AC and additional immunity to fatigue, but is only usable by gnomes and halflings (not dwarves).

You may also try summoning monsters (not possible for most parties at that point) to distract the skeletons, or setting traps to slay the skeletons when they appear.

SharGuidesMyHand

subtledoctor said:

Hasn't it been established that the trap was exactly the same in previous versions of the game?

No, no one's been able to give a definitive answer on it.

Fardragon

It seems most likely was an inadvertent consequence of changes to the "sleep" effect used, rather than a deliberate change to the trap.

Incantus89

Easiest way to handle it for now, is to use sanctuary on a cleric. If you for some insane version didnt make a single cleric (How hardcore are you!?) then I have no real solution, but sending in a cleric under sanctuary first, trigger spell and then go and mop up the skellies usally leaves no casualties.

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Mathsorcerer

Normally, I would never recommend applying thread necromancy in this manner, but this particular issue is so old and has been plaguing people for so long that I didn't want to start a new thread about just to highlight how persistent the problem has been.

I just downloaded the latest update version for IWDEE after uninstalling the earlier version (to get a clean slate), and that ridiculous undetectable/unavoidable sleep trap with the spell that has no saving throw is *still* broken just like it always has been. Nobody ever implemented the fix I suggested for it?

JuliusBorisov

This issue is known - https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34069 - and planned for the final 2.5 patch release.

Mathsorcerer

That sounds awesome--I look forward to 2.5.

Mathsorcerer

I decided to apply a much more elegant solution to the AR3501 script:

IF
OnCreation()
THEN
RESPONSE #100
ActionOverride("AR3501Door7Trap",OpenDoor(Myself))
ActionOverride("Trap Sarcophagus",ContainerEnable(Myself,TRUE))
Continue()
END

This will open the door (which releases the skeletons) and I changed the flag on "trap sarcophagus" so that the container is trapped with a difficulty of 50. All I need to do now is select an appropriate trap script for the container and everything should be sorted out...until the patch fixes it for real.