Hello everyone, in this guide I will tell you how to build traps I used in my walkthroughs.

So, what are the main purposes of building a trap?
1) The trap should provide some level of protection for your kingdom from goblins, mants and other possible enemies.
2) The trap should be self-powered, and it should not require an operator to work with it or to recharge it after it fired.
3) All goodies which fell into the trap should be obtainable. I am talking about goblin meat, worn armour and weapons.
4) (Optional) The trap should be cheap and as simple as possible.

I won't write how to build traps which use pumps and lava \ water, because such traps need a lava \ water source nearby, and they are quite slow (filling the room with fluids ain't a fast process and the victims need some time to drown). Such traps are very simple and you can easily build them yourself, either for fun or for some sadistic purposes (e.g. torture room).

There is a schematic of some very simple and cheap, yet effective trap. Frankly, I find that solution to be somewhat elegant.


A sad downside of that trap is that it kills the trader as well.

The #1 trap is a one-way trap. Everyone who will try to pass it from outside will be trapped. You can place a chamber with marksmen (or a very long shaft to kill everything by falling) under the hatch.

DISCLAIMER: This trap isn't the best one, but I decided to add it anyway, because I started my traps research from this. If you need a fully automated intelligent trap, move along to the next chapter!

Example Picture (I built this trap quite some time ago)



Despite the fact that it is a one-way trap you can push the lever to let your gnomes go outside, but if they turn back they will be trapped too. Use this to let Ambassadors and Merchants leave your village.

Here is the blueprint



As you can see size of this trap is 7x13.

"G" is Gearbox, "L" is Lever, "W" is Mechanical Wall, "P" is Pressure plate, "-" is Axle, "H" is Hatch and " * " is a power source.

First level (this is an underground variant of the trap from the previous picture)



Second level of underground variant (here marksmen kill caught victims)



You should build a second level no more than 2 levels below to catch your victims alive and healthy. The height is very important. If you want to kill every victim, then dig a longer shaft (5-7 blocks is more than enough to kill)

Also about marksmen... I think it's totally worthless to capture enemies alive and shoot them down for training purposes. Shooting 1000+ goblins consumes unacceptable amount of ammo and gives not-so-noticeable skill improvement, though you can find it funny.

I recommend to build deadly shafts, but beware accidentally caught gnomes ( they will die D: )

This two-way trap is a completely improved version of the first trap. It is based on "sensor" feature. The idea is: we can use friendly creatures to distinguish enemies from friends. When the creature detects scary objects - it's trying to flee away in opposite direction.

So lets say "sensor" is a creature with a pressure plate placed near it.

First iteration of sensor-based trap



The Alpaca sees Goblins and tries to flee away. It steps on Pressure Plate, and goblins fall down through the long vertical shaft screaming some bad words in the process.

NOTE : The more hatches you place - the more enemies you will catch. I recommend to place 35-50 hatches. Why so many? Let me explain.

Goblin raiders are the fastest units and they usually lead the whole goblin army (i.e. they die in trap first). They are also the only goblins who can steal resources from your stockpiles. The main purpose of goblin attacks is to steal resources, so when no goblin raiders left, the whole horde turns back.



For example : these ^ goblins don't have any raiders left and they are not interested anymore.
They are going back now :( This means we won't get their armour and weapons :C



These ^ greedy raiders found their death in my catacombs.

Well as you see we have only nude dead raiders (read: goblin sausages). We need armour and weapons - so we need more hatches to catch armoured goblins too.

Second iteration of sensor-based trap



Well... after some time I finally expanded my trap to 81 hatches. Now all my stockpiles are full of worn equipment and my food stockpiles are full of goblin meat, skulls, and such things.

By other words, this trap provides me almost unlimited source of worn items and food. All worn items can be traded to gold ore or something useful.

After you build a trap you should send an insult to closest goblin kingdom. I did some math a lot of time ago and got an approximation of how many goblins you will get with given insult value.



Here X is how many goblins you will get, and Y is an insult value.
I sent an insult 3 times, each time marked on the plot by a big red dot.

WARNING : High insult value will lead to a very big horde invading your kingdom, your FPS will be VERY BAD.

FPS drop depends on :
- how big your map is (I tested it on the biggest available map size)
- how many goblins arrived
- your PC specs

I have Intel i7-4770 @ 3.40 GHz with SSD on board and the biggest available map size. With 3960 dead goblins on site I got approximately 5 FPS. The FPS will improve after you have sold or stockpiled thousands of worn items lying on the floor.

The best way to deal with thousands of worn items is to :
- Melt warhammers, waraxes, two-handed swords, breastplates and shields into bars
- Sell all other stuff such as bracers, gauntlets etc.