Spheniscine's MouseHunt Walkthrough

Custom Search

Appendix: Trap Mechanics

This appendix aims to give a little more detail to the trap mechanics, beyond what you can find in the "Help" section at your local trapsmith.
A trap consists of a weapon and a base.
Optionally, a charm may be equipped. Charms are consumable items that boost the stats of the trap.
The statistics of the three components combine to determine the statistics of your trap as a whole.
Your trap statistics can be viewed anytime from Inventory → Traps. Here I shall explain each statistic.
Total Power

Total Power = (Weapon Power + Base Power + Charm Power) × (100% + Total Power Bonus)
Is the most basic statistic used in determining your success in catching mice.

The Power Type is solely determined by your weapon, with the exception of the Nanny Charm, which changes your power type to Parental regardless of your weapon's Power Type.
Some weapon power types are more effective against certain mice. Others may be less effective.
Mouse vulnerabilities are usually the same throughout a mouse group, but there exist several exceptions.
The Total Power of the trap is multiplied by a percentage, depending on this vulnerability, before being compared against the mouse. Total Luck is also affected by Power Type.

Power Bonus = Weapon Power Bonus + Base Power Bonus + Charm Power Bonus
Only used as part of the calculation for the Total Power discussed above, increasing it.

Attraction Bonus = Weapon Attraction Bonus + Base Attraction Bonus + Charm Attraction Bonus
Along with your cheese type and location, this affects how often mice are attracted to your trap.
Is the main advantage of the Wooden Base with Target that gives it isolated uses even in the late game.

Total Luck = Weapon Luck + Base Luck + Charm Luck + (7 if the Lucky Golden Shield is active)
Not to be confused with the normal English use of "luck", used to describe the favorability of random events, or superstitious methods used in an attempt to affect it.
Luck increases your chance to catch a mouse, when Power isn't sufficient.
It also slightly increases the chance of loot drops.
Luck does not affect the difficulty shown on the mice page, only Power and Power Type does; as such that difficulty may be deceptive about your actual chance of catching a mouse.
The Lucky Golden Shield, which can be temporarily activated by donating to the developers of MouseHunt (with the Donate button), boosts the Total Luck by 7 points.
The developers have said that Luck is nonlinear, in that 10 Luck is more than twice as effective as 5 Luck.
What this means in practice is that weapons with high Luck are usually best combined with bases with high Luck.
Limited-edition weapons from Ronza often have very high Luck, allowing them to equal or even outperform regular weapons with more Power, especially against weaker mice.

Most cheese is expendable; the gold the cheese costs are less than the gold you may potentially receive from an increase in power, luck, or attraction.

However, you may wish to avoid using rare or crafted cheeses on a setup that is "Extremely Stale" or worse.

When cheese goes stale, it produces Stale Cheese, which is actually a useful crafting item in the late game.

Ironically, this means that the Insanely Stale effect of the ACRONYM is actually useful at that stage of the game, if combined with the Explosive Base and a cheap cheese like Cheddar or White Cheddar.

There is also a slight bonus to your chances of catching a mouse, based on your Hunter's Title.
Putting it all together

The functions of each trap statistic are described below, describing the logic of a hunt as we know it.
The cheese type, location, and Attraction Bonus are used to determine the chance and type of mouse that is attracted to your trap.
If a mouse is attracted:

The cheese is eaten.
The Total Power is modified by the Power Type, depending on the mouse's Power Type, as described above.
This modified Power is then compared with the mouse's Power (a hidden value). A random check is used to determine if a catch is successful. Total Luck provides a bonus to this check; indeed, if the Luck is high enough and the mouse is weak enough you may almost never miss the mouse!
If the check succeeds, the mouse is caught. If the check fails, the mouse gets away, and may steal points, gold, or extra pieces of cheese depending on your location.
If a mouse is caught, the mouse type, location, and Total Luck is used to determine the chance and type of a loot drop.

Otherwise, if a mouse is not attracted, the Cheese Effect is used to determine the chance that the cheese goes stale.

Whew, that's a lot to digest. However, there is a really neat tool for estimating the combined effects of all these factors, developed by Rohan Mehta. It can be accessed here.

Custom Search