#i repeat my previous sentiment: fuck you *reverse engineers your traps*

[warriorend]

this is probably going to get Long as Hell so i'm gonna put it under a cut (also i'm probably starting this a couple days before it actually gets posted because I'll need time)

do be aware that I'm going over both games, so there's Going to be spoilers

OK it's done, heads up for long-ass post under the cut & also this is a post about deathtraps so. bear that in mind.

IEYTD 1:

Friendly Skies: -Retina scanner/laser: It's. A retina scanner hooked up to some sort of laser. The weaknesses are in that you can either dodge the scanner (I've done this by just slumping down in my seat) or shoot it, for the actual scanner, and then for the laser you can do much the same.

-Timed Bomb: This is again exactly what it says on the tin. It's a timed bomb. It can be disarmed by cutting the wires in reverse order of what you'd do to prime it.

-The Poison: There's no way to actually circumvent this minus just keeping the windows closed. Oh, and it starts going out the cargo door when you blast it open, which ig is a way to "circumvent" it. However it seems to mostly just suffocate you instead of Full-On Poisoning. It's worth mentioning that these games seem to have their own elements/periodic table (judging by Squeaky Clean) so. For poisons that I Personally would know about (<- not a chemist) we've got like. cyanide. strychnine (assuming they have the trees). pretty much anything that you could find via Natural Sources. ANYWAY whatever it is doesn't seem to actually stay in your system, it just makes you cough and so you can't breathe, but unless the player just has Very Advanced flushing systems, it's just something that Isn't Oxygen. It has no lasting effects once you close the windows.

-The scorpions: To be honest this one isn't. Dangerous. As has been noted, the types of scorpions Zor seems to keep around are both nonlethal. This doesn't mean you want to get stung because it would probably still be unpleasant but there's. There's Worse Scorpions. Anyway they mostly just seem to be in containment under the chairs, just don't hit the scorpion button or tuck your feet up & they'll leave you be. (This is also assuming that the scorpions aren't Modified in some way to have more potent venom)

-Just for fun I'll mention the cannon because it seems like it could concuss you if you. Put your head right where it pops out. Which is really just to say: don't put your head there. (Also because it's one of Solaris' contraptions & I feel obligated)

Squeaky Clean: -The first obvious one is the security system, which seems to just be toggled by breaking in (& also maybe from improper ID). But then, that's easy enough to disable - you can either give proper ID (not always possible - it's lucky someone left theirs in the locker) or just cut the wires under the ID scanner, which probably fucks with the computer & shuts it off. If you trip a laser, it releases neurotoxin, but even then it takes a second. There's also plenty of ways to see the lasers - you can use the spray bottle, or the cold chamber. Etc. So it's not that bad.

-Aside from that the lab doesn't actually have many deathtraps. Probably because it's already a chemistry lab & doesn't need them (the chemicals do seem to blow up if you just toss random ones into the mixer).

(As an aside, I don't know if anyone else did this, but I was extremely cautious about the chemical mixer on my first playthrough. I'd read the instructions on the paper & then put the chemicals in the same order based on what the order would be from the front of the mixer. I was very careful.)

-I won't count the Zoraxis agent that sees you as a deathtrap bc they're. that's a person. also they're sorta easy to deal with.

-HOWEVER I will count the early launch as a trap. It was probably primed to go off as soon as the neutralizer was scanned, so I'm calling it a trap. To be honest this is one of the beefier ones, and I don't know how you'd deal with it if you were Just Some Person without telekinesis. With telekinesis, it's not bad. I guess there is an argument to be made for just shooting the cover away, since that's generally what I do until it gets to where I can grab the covers, but you better hope they actually come off. & then you have to get to the rocket, &:

-Have acid on hand to melt the chain keeping the tank closed (at least it apparently only interacts with copper, so at least you wouldn't have to worry about getting it on you. Probably.) -Get the cover off -Drop in the neutralizer -(If you want a chance at survival) get back off of the rocket somehow

All in all it's a nasty little trap & it would have been much more difficult to disarm without telekinesis. I'm not going to say impossible, but difficult.

Deep Dive:

This entire level is a deathtrap. That's the point. However, I will go through the various Components

-The initial state of the pod: The pod is in Shitty Condition, & is severely damaged. It needs fuel, it needs to be de-flooded, the grenade needs to be removed from the engine gears, etc etc etc. All of this is fairly easy to do, though. There's a screwdriver on board, there's backup fuel, all that. Yay. Easy enough to fix. There's also a...very out of date sandwich, which doesn't actually do anything to you, but it's worth mentioning I guess.

-The Grenade: This one is easy to circumvent IF you're careful. You can either use the fire extinguisher pin or a screw. However, once you pick it up, you don't want to put it down.

(kudos to Zor for getting it there without blowing it up)

And now you can get the pod going.

-Control Panel explosion: This was almost definitely deliberate, and probably just a case of the pod's AI being made to overheat something. Either way, there's a fire extinguisher, just put out the fire.

-Engine Overheat: Easy enough to deal with, although I don't know how you'd force an engine to overheat. I'm not a mechanic. To deal with it, you just turn on the waterflow.

-Oxygen Vent: This just empties out all of the oxygen from the pod. What this also means is that you have to get oxygen back. Thankfully there's another supply, but the valve has been removed. Thank fuck for bottle openers. That's really the only way I can think of to circumvent this particular trap, is to use the bottle opener as a replacement valve.

-Structural Failure: I don't know that this was intentional, but it very well could have been. Causing it would probably have just been a case of creating very small weaknesses that would get worse under pressure. Fixing it is just a matter of using the sealant gun, which is very helpfully provided for you. How sweet.

-Self-Destruct: Solaris Contraption #2 (maybe #3 if she had a hand in the Squeaky Clean rocket). It seems to mostly just be a timed bomb hooked into the input panel that pops up. If you fail to put in the correct combination in time, or you use the wrong input, it blows up. However, the disarm combination is in the pod with you, & it seems to have been left there deliberately. After all, if Zor set the grenade in there, they could have taken out the disarm code. They did not do this. So you can disarm the self-destruct module.

Winter Break:

Lodge Time Lodge Time Lodge Time

-To start this off, there's actually...not much. When you first get in, you're probably in the most comfortable position you'll be in all game. Except for Seat of Power, maybe.

-I'll count the deer gas as being the first threat. It's just a gas dispenser hooked into the door behind the painting. The way to circumvent it is to just...light the deer head on fire. The gas is flammable.

-Bear Archer is up next. It's just an arrow launching mechanism disguised as a bear statue. This is easy enough to deal with, since it launches explosive arrows, so you can just...give the arrows back. It is worth noting that it has a fairly clear weakness besides that, which is that its aim seems a bit loose. Sensing equipment is probably in its early phases though, so I won't hold it against it. (There's implications that Solaris worked on these in the second game, but you don't know that in the first one).

-Gravity Machine: (Known) Solaris Contraption #3 This isn't a trap in and of itself, but it does have the laser defense. The laser defense seems to run on the same mechanics as every other laser in this game though, which is that something triggers it, and it shoots out a laser. Easy enough. Although I'm impressed with how many they have considering that they'd have to be pretty strong. Anyways, it's easy enough to avoid, even though you can't immediately disarm it. Just duck. (Although do duck fairly low, because those lasers are lower than they seem).

Vacation: First Class:

-The first problem is actually the buttons on the wall. They explode if you push all of them in. Easy solution to that, though, is to just not press all of them down.

-The thing is, there's not a lot of deathtraps in the train car itself, they all come from outside. So we can skip almost the entire beginning phase of the level (minus the buttons).

-I won't count the fact that the Zoraxis operatives will kill you if you send something to the wrong compartment. There's no way to circumvent the grenade they send you.

-The Storage Device: It's probably just a small bomb that's set to go off if you get the wrong combination enough times. Either through a fuse setup (wrong combination = lit fuse) or though electrical impulse. It's not a huge bomb, either.

I'm not counting the Zoraxis operatives.

Seat Of Power:

Whooo there really should be more deathtraps here than there are.

-The combination lock security: We actually get a look at how this one works! It's a piece of TNT with a fuse at each end - turn the combination dial too far in one direction, and it blows up. The way to circumvent/avoid this is to just change directions often.

-I'll mention the chairs, even though you're in no danger from them. The chair you're sitting in has switches, you can use those to drop the other chairs at the table into a pit of fire. I'm assuming it's fire, but you're underground, so it could also be lava. Anyways, aside from jumping out of the chair (or just never sitting in one to begin with), there's no good way to avoid this, since you probably wouldn't be able to climb out.

-The neurotoxin: It sure is a neurotoxin. It gets activated by hitting a button. The main way to avoid it is to just never hit the button to activate it - you can block the bees with a cigar/cork. There's a mask, however, that you can use to keep from breathing it in.

That's it for Seat of Power, I think, unless the rocket chair (Solaris again) has some trap thing I didn't know about.

Death Engine:

Most of the hazards on the Death Engine are a result of how it operates, not necessarily death traps. Until Solaris makes them death traps, anyway.

So instead. i will simply continue forward. (with the acknowledgement that i seriously considered trying to pick apart how it actually works.)

IEYTD 2:

Okay second game time! yaaaaaay

Stage Fright: There's not a huge abundance of death traps in this level, but the fact that the mask exists makes up for it, I think.

-The Mask: Again, I don't know what sort of poison it's using, but it's pretty strong (& also very vibrantly colored, which. Really just feels like a warning sign). The way it works is that the mask is built around a fog machine - normally, for the fog, you'd just use something safe for that. To break the trap, you just have to swap out the coolant for the canister of butane. The fog machine blows up, the mask breaks, and it stops dispensing the gas.

In regards to the gas, I'm wondering if it kills you due to your proximity to it. If it actually killed everyone in the theater, that would probably be extremely suspicious.

Jet Set: (AKA "this plane wants to kill you So Fucking Bad")

-The lasers: To progress the level, you can't really avoid setting these off (I think you can, if you glitch the fuse out of the cart, but). They're, again, just the standard Zoraxis lasers. I wonder if they have a proprietary thing going on with a laser manufacturer. That or Solaris is making their lasers (since. the Death Engine just seems to be a big laser). Either way, these are really just the standard lasers - avoid em, break em. The chair one is especially easy to deal with, in that you just tilt the chair back.

-The food: The food is a very low-tech deathtrap, but a deathtrap all the same. The blowfish (pufferfish) is extremely toxic (tetrodotoxin, to be specific), I believe the cake is poisoned (<- has never gotten the cake), there's a grenade in the fruit bowl, & there's a scorpion in the sandwich. This can all be avoided quite easily by not ordering anything, although the non-explosive fruits are safe to eat. In terms of actually handling what happens, just don't eat anything (minus the non-explosive fruits), & if you get the fruit just toss away the grenade.

-The cigars: They blow up when you smoke them. Solution: don't smoke them.

-The security system on the flight controls: Well. They're flamethrowers. I don't think there's any way to escape the fire, so you mostly just have to not set them off. This is doable by making sure the fuses are correct (or that none of the lines connected to it line up to a bulb on a fuse).

-The Missile: This is part of This Entire Fucking Plane Wants You Dead, I'm counting it. Juniper had it set up as a last resort, & stopping it doesn't involve shooting/maiming someone.

The way it works is pretty simple, because. It's a missile. Probably heat-seeking or something similar.

The way you stop it is by getting the plane's defense system back online, & shooting the defensive flares at it (much to the chagrin of the plane's AI, who would really prefer you shoot the flares while on the ground). However, if you feel like it, you can also nail it with a laser. This is both harder than you'd expect and easier than you'd expect.

Although, at the end of the day, the way to avoid all of those measures was to just...sit quietly in the plane. Sure, the food is lethal, but if you just didn't order anything, the alcohol is fine. I'm not advocating for getting captured by Zoraxis, because that's not good, but yknow.

Eaves Drop:

-The laser defense system: Right off the bat! There's a laser defense system you have to disarm. Although unlike most of Zoraxis' lasers, these ones just seem to be sensing equipment. The actual dangerous part is the fact that gas (same red gas) is shot out if you trip one of them.

-That One Drawer: I think this is probably a pull string attached to an activating mechanism, probably one with a short fuse. Pulling on the drawer too much or too quickly will cause the bomb to go off. However, you don't have to cut the cable - pulling it out only a little, at a moderate pace, will allow you to get the scraper out of the drawer without actually setting off the explosion. Cutting the cable is just how you disarm it.

-The Bear Archer: Not a threat to you but it is there. It's a threat to the security guard.

-The gas bottle: This can actually kill you if you break it too close to yourself, but generally it's not a threat. You can whip open the cupboard door and be fine. It's just a bottle filled with poison gas, nothing too spectacular.

-The Mask's Tamper Protections: IDK does. that count. it's mostly just in case Juniper gets any "funny ideas" but it definitely will kill you too.

Party Crasher:

-I'll just skip straight to the axe & talk about the rest later. The axe is just...a heavy ass axe on a locked release system, fuck up the barrels and it falls. However, it is just an axe & has no course correction, so you can dodge it.

-Now the entire control panel.

-The Mines: These won't affect you in the level, but they're meant to. They're an outer defensive layer meant to be used in case of invaders. These are also some of the few things that have no nullification if you don't happen to be the person with the buttons, so...good thing you're the person with the buttons. They're probably just wireless explosives, nothin too special.

-The armor gas: This is another case where it would be bad if you weren't the one controlling it, because there's no good way to prevent them from spraying gas. I mean, you could try corking the nozzle, but that could lead to buildup. This stuff is green, however. It only gets turned against you once, but the way to keep that from happening is to just empty the tank preemptively.

-The rest of the death spots in the level are murder attempts.

Safe & Sound:

-The laser defense system: The lasers can kill you, they just generally won't in normal gameplay (AKA you're not standing up & trying to see the posters on the walls & running face first into a laser). These you can't stop from happening, but you can disarm them by overheating their generator.

-Camera Laser: This is Yet Another Laser. It's beefier than the others, though, and if I had to hazard a guess, it could be an actual Zoraxis Thing. In any case, it's a laser, it's on a camera. The camera is moving fairly slowly, so you can just dismantle the camera once you get the drill working.

-Rocket Launcher: That Sure Fucking Is One. It's motion-triggered, which leaves a fairly wide opening, since you have telekinesis. Really, all you have to do to disarm it is wiggle a plate in its general direction & get it to shoot itself. Then you can get the battery & escape.

Rising Phoenix:

-Elevator Security: I guess this counts? It's just an incendiary explosive that gets ejected if you use the wrong card. There's no way to stop it (on the bottom floor) once you've gotten it deployed, but you can just avoid deploying it by using the correct card.

-The Cable Saw: There's like 3 ways to disable this right? The battery, the cattle prod, the functioning battery, & maybe you might be able to spray it with flaming lubricant. In any case, you can't avoid it, but it's not hard to turn off. (this does not mean it doesn't fuck you over later, though)

-The Briefcase: This looks like a deathtrap on the surface. The components are all there. A briefcase controlling whether or not a missile launches, a countdown timer, tense music...and then it's not really? Sure, you can fail, but there's nothing that's going to hurt you if you fuck up one of the briefcase panels. There's no immediate consequence & it bugs the hell out of me. In any case, this is another one of those unavoidable ones, but disarming it is fairly simple. Make a Z in the top left, hit the buttons at (approximately) 12, 7, and 6, and then light up all the blue lights with the slider (iirc i prefer to go up, all the way right, down, left, right, down, ending in the bottom right corner).

-The Elevator Falling: This counts. It's unavoidable, & as of right now we don't know if/how Phoenix survives. I'm saying it counts bc it seems premeditated. Zor has chess themes, they would have thought far enough in advance to go "hey, this is the perfect storm to get a falling elevator, do these things". They also issue you a challenge to survive, so.

On a general analysis, most of the weaknesses seem to be "most people don't have telekinesis" based, which makes sense I suppose.

However, in the latter half of IEYTD 2, most of the traps seem weirdly easy to circumvent, which is. hm.

Anyways, I think this is probably about good for my needs, if i missed anything feel free to point it out bc I probably did