Catching a Mouse
The cheese has done its job and attracted a mouse to our trap, now it’s time for the trap itself to go work and catch that mouse for us.
This is probably the most complex stage of the hunting sequence, and takes into account a number of factors, including the power of the trap, the power type of the trap, the luck of the trap, the power of the mouse and the power type of the mouse.
If this stage is successful, we’ll receive our reward for catching the mouse in the results stage, if we fail, we’ll lose something, hopefully just a piece of cheese, but maybe more.
So let’s take a look at various aspects of this and see how they break down.
Trap Power
The first thing we’ll look at is the power of our trap, in all cases, we want as much power as possible, but we may have to make concessions to power in order to get more luck or higher attraction bonuses if required.
The Trap Power is given to us just underneath our menu bar, so we can know what it is at all times.
Power Types and Effectiveness
In MouseHunt you’ll want to use the right tools for the job, in this case, the right weapon power type for the right mouse.
Normally these make a lot of sense, you’ll want to use a Tactical Trap for catching Tactical mice, or a Shadow Trap for catching Shadow mice, however, there are a few exceptions.
Physical mice are mice with a base difficulty, there’s no extra benefit to using a Physical trap against them like there is with other types.
Forgotten and Arcane mice have gotten a little confused some how, Arcane traps are great against Forgotten mice, and the Forgotten Trap is used for one of the Arcane mice.
You’ll know if you’re using the right type of trap and receiving a bonus, because if you catch a mouse you’ll get a message that says “My trap was very effective against this mouse”.
Likewise you’ll know if you’re using the wrong type of trap and receiving a penalty, because if you miss the mouse you’ll get a message that says “My trap was less effective against this mouse”.
At first it sounds simple, but there’s actually quite a lot to this, picking the right trap for the mouse you’re after may involve you taking a penalty against other mice in that location, so it can be a balancing act, quite often Physical traps work out to be a good compromise, because although they receive no bonus, they often receive no penalty either.
If you’d like to know more about this, we have a page dedicated to this subject called Effectiveness of Power Types, it gives you effectiveness multipliers for the various combinations of trap types and mice types.
Luck
Luck is one of the most useful properties of your trap, it can help you catch some very difficult mice, and it is also useful for collecting loot which is discussed later on.
Luck is also affected by the power type and effectiveness of your trap, just as power is.
Luck is also not a linear property, twice the luck isn’t twice as good, it’s much better than that.
Having a little luck is always a good thing, having a lot of luck can make a really big difference, and having a lot of luck for a very effective combination is simply awesome.
Mouse Power
Each Mouse has its own power, you can see a scale of how powerful the mice you’ve caught are on your profile page, where they range from the strongest to the weakest. Sometimes this power doesn’t reflect the true difficulty of catching a mouse, the rarity of the mouse plays an important factor, as does the power type of the mouse.
We’re not told the power of the mice in the game, but there is a way to work it out.
Mouse Difficulties
On the mice page you can see descriptions of the mice, along with a difficulty of that mouse for you to catch with your trap, it’s important to note that this difficulty is just based on the power and effectiveness of the trap you’re using at the moment, it doesn’t include the luck.
These difficulties are quite useful in enabling us to work out what the power of the mouse is, and has led to us being able to create an equation that estimates the chances of you being able to catch a mouse with any trap combination.
There are eight different difficulties for mice, and they can give a percentage chance of you catching a mouse with the power of your trap:
Overawing means you have between a 0% and 1/3% chance of catching the mouse.
Near Impossible means you have between a 1/3% and 8% chance of catching the mouse.
Overpowering means you have between an 8% and 35% chance of catching the mouse.
Very Difficult means you have between a 35% and 50% chance of catching the mouse.
Challenging means you have between a 50% and 65% chance of catching the mouse.
Moderate means you have between a 65% and 90% chance of catching the mouse.
Easy means you have between a 90% and 95% chance of catching the mouse.
Effortless means you have between a 95% and almost 100% chance of catching the mouse.
So we use the point at which a mouse becomes challenging as the power of the mouse.
The Equation
To work out your chance of catching a mouse with all the various trap statistics combined we need an equation, and it’s taken us a lot of work to get this one which seems to be quite accurate:
Trap Power * Effectiveness Multiplier = Modified Trap Power
Luck * Effectiveness Multiplier = Modified Luck
(Modified Power + (Modified Luck)^2) / (Modified Power + Mouse Power) = your estimated catch rate against that mouse.
Sometimes this equation can result in values of greater than 100%, but no catch is guaranteed, so there’s probably a cap around the 99.99% mark.
As the modified luck is squared, it can become one of the most important factors in catching a mouse, and can practically guarantee catches against weaker mice.
The game will generate a random number to see if you are successful in catching the mouse, if it’s lower than the threshold for catching it, then you’ll catch the mouse, otherwise you’ll miss it.
Previous Stage: Attracting a Mouse
Next Stage: Results
