Bug: "Find Traps, Doors & Stairs" doesn't work on chests

[Raggy]

Standing next to a ~Small iron chest, and casting "Find Traps, Doors & Stairs":

(grrr how do I copy text from Message recall window?)


You sense the presence of traps!
You sense the presence of doors and stairs!

Looking at the chest revealed no traps, so I had to hit "s" to search:

You have discovered a trap on the chest!

Maybe it's intentional, but my gut feeling says its a bug

Any hope to see NPP chests to Vanilla? I seldom bother to open chests anymore , as they never contain good items.

[buzzkill]

You can pick up a chest and Identify it to discover traps on it. Goofy? Yes.

[Derakon]

You don't even need to pick it up; you can use identify on items on the floor by hitting '-' at the item prompt.

I can see arguments either way for whether or not trap detection should show traps on chests.

[bulian]

Personally I would either just remove traps from chests or make them all trapped and automatically known. It seems as though >95% of chests are trapped anyway.

A slight aside: some time recently chest drops got better to the point that occasionally even an artifact would spawn.

Are items inside chests now created when the chest is created, just like monster inventories? If so, with an artifact inside, can the chest be destroyed?

[Magnate]

Personally I would either just remove traps from chests or make them all trapped and automatically known. It seems as though >95% of chests are trapped anyway.

A slight aside: some time recently chest drops got better to the point that occasionally even an artifact would spawn.

Are items inside chests now created when the chest is created, just like monster inventories? If so, with an artifact inside, can the chest be destroyed?

Items in chests are not created until the chest is opened.

@OP: this behaviour is WAD, I understand. It seems rationalisable to me - the spell is detecting big mechanical or magical traps, sufficient to maim or move man-sized or larger creatures. Chest traps are tiny little needles, runes etc.

That said, I don't mind at all if someone wants to overhaul traps altogether - that's been outstanding for a long time (ticket #426).

[Jazerus]

Items in chests are not created until the chest is opened.

@OP: this behaviour is WAD, I understand. It seems rationalisable to me - the spell is detecting big mechanical or magical traps, sufficient to maim or move man-sized or larger creatures. Chest traps are tiny little needles, runes etc.

That said, I don't mind at all if someone wants to overhaul traps altogether - that's been outstanding for a long time (ticket #426).

Chest traps are a little bit too "gotcha!" right now. Finding a chest should be a generally positive thing, rather than a point where you think about whether you want to risk STR/CON drain for possible good stuff. The needle traps might be worth ditching in favor of some of the other existing traps, like teleport, along with other interesting effects.

[Zikke]

Items in chests are not created until the chest is opened.

@OP: this behaviour is WAD, I understand. It seems rationalisable to me - the spell is detecting big mechanical or magical traps, sufficient to maim or move man-sized or larger creatures. Chest traps are tiny little needles, runes etc.

The spell detects dungeon traps, not traps in objects. I think that is consistent with the other aspects of that spell.

[nobody]

i thought all chests were trapped

[Derakon]

Nope; every once in awhile you'll spend 50 turns searching and find nothing, and rather than burn an Identify charge, risk opening it anyway...at which point you have about 75% odds that the chest is in fact not trapped, and 25% odds that the trap was just really well hidden.

All chests are locked though.

[buzzkill]

What if chests, instead of being trapped (and locked), were *locked*. Better chests, better *locks*. It would take some turns, maybe a lot of turns (100's), to unlock a chest based on the difficulty of the chest and 'whatever else (skill/stat/class/level) is deemed appropriate'. Inspecting the chest will tell you approx. how long it will take. Some *chests* might well be impossible to open when found.

In a hurry? In a still occupied vault? Don't feel like lugging a 50# chest around at speed (-4)? There could be ways to speed up the process, like having a key, or hitting it with something heavy. Of course this makes a lot of noise and might damage the contents.

Just a random thought. Probably not a V idea.

[jens]

Nope; every once in awhile you'll spend 50 turns searching and find nothing, and rather than burn an Identify charge, risk opening it anyway...at which point you have about 75% odds that the chest is in fact not trapped, and 25% odds that the trap was just really well hidden.

This is something that bugs me. How about we change it so there are a few more chests that are not trapped. Then you would give up even earlier to try and open the supposedly trap free chest, and get burnt :-) But more importantly, it would make sense to stop searching earlier, because it actually might be trap free.

[d_m]

I would actually prefer using chests that contain monsters, and chest mimics, in place of the current "basically all chests are trapped" situation. I'm not sure it's good for V, and certainly not for 3.3 at this point, but it' s something that doesn't add a lot to V's gameplay and does sometimes require you to hammer the (s) button a lot.

[CunningGabe]

I would actually prefer using chests that contain monsters, and chest mimics, in place of the current "basically all chests are trapped" situation. I'm not sure it's good for V, and certainly not for 3.3 at this point, but it' s something that doesn't add a lot to V's gameplay and does sometimes require you to hammer the (s) button a lot.

I love this idea. Particularly the idea of adding more chest mimics -- the ones that exist (in staging) should already be fairly convincing, and with a little more work, they could be made even more so.

A chest full of creeping coins would also be a lot of fun

[dos350]

A chest full of creeping coins would also be a lot of fun

that is brutal yo

[Magnate]

I love this idea. Particularly the idea of adding more chest mimics -- the ones that exist (in staging) should already be fairly convincing, and with a little more work, they could be made even more so.

I didn't know we had chest mimics - that's ace. The unique mimic should be a large steel chest.