How do I deal with traps in Pillars of Eternity?

In the first dungeon, I've come across an area full of traps that will kill me if I step on them, and it's problematic in many different ways.

  • My characters detect the traps, but if I click beyond the area, they'll happily walk directly over the trapped floor, which really should be considered a bug in the pathfinding code. (If you can see the trap, obviously you're not going to step on it!)
  • One of my party members is a rogue with the Mechanics skill, which should be usable to perform a Disarm Trap action. When I point the cursor over a trap, it changes to a trap icon, but clicking just causes him to go step on the trap instead of trying to disarm it. If there's a way to disarm the trap, it's not obvious in the UI.
  • Trying to click precisely to walk through the trapped area without actually stepping on the traps doesn't work; they walk off to the side and get killed.
  • Even when my character doesn't get killed by veering off a precise course, the rest of the party will happily follow behind and trigger the traps like bumbling idiots. There really should be a "solo mode" command somewhere, but for the life of me I can't find how to activate it.

This is right there in the first dungeon, so I can only assume it's supposed to be simple, but I just can't figure out what it is I'm supposed to do to get through this trapped section. What am I missing?


Solution 1:

There is a trick to disabling some of the traps in that area, you probably already found it. This disables enough of the traps that you can cross the area, but not all of them:

Light all the braziers in the adjacent room to disable some of the traps

You should be able to disarm the traps if you select only a single party member and click on them when the mechanics icons appears. I've no idea why this doesn't work in your case. Though I'm not sure if you can disable these specific traps at that point, my character wasn't able to actually disable them.

You can get your party across through the traps by moving each one individually. Just click on the portrait of one of your characters, you'll only move this one then. It's a bit annoying, but possible. There is also another way around the whole thing, so if you don't want to bother, just look for another way out of the cave.