Draft:Trifid

Omega 0.90.4

A trifid is a hostile living hedge that traps a character in an escalating-damage encounter. It occupies a terrain tile rather than moving and fighting as an ordinary monster. The best-known specimens grow in Rampart's hedge maze, where a bucket of salt water turns a dangerous grab into a substantial experience reward.

Generation

Each hedge tile inside Rampart's maze has a 10% chance to be a trifid when the layout is generated. This is the tile's identity for that maze, not a new roll on every crossing. Ordinary hedges and trifids look alike. The decorative hedges outside the maze do not use these contact hazards.

Trifids also occur in village layouts and among generated dungeon terrain. A successful Ritual of Magic in a ransacked treasure chamber can create eight trifid hedges around the caster. The ritual's location and repeat-use restrictions still apply; casting it in Rampart itself produces the city's different ritual result.

Being grabbed

Entering an active trifid starts an encounter that continues until you escape or die. Levitation does not prevent it, and Druid worship does not automatically protect you. Shadowform bypasses the terrain interaction.

At the start of each attempt, the damage amount increases by 1 + half the dungeon depth, rounded down. Without salt water, you take that unavoidable damage before choosing what to do. In Rampart, where depth is 0, successive attempts cause 1, 2, 3 and so on damage; deeper trifids escalate faster.

Only two ordinary menu choices can free you:

Choice	Required condition	Chance per attempt
Break free	None beyond surviving the damage	Strength out of 200, capped at certainty
Pray	Druid follower	Priesthood rank out of 5, reaching certainty at rank 5

Other patrons do not help through the prayer option.

Hanging limp, bargaining, clicking your heels and other responses fail. There is no normal command menu between attempts, so you cannot start looking through your spell list after discovering that the escape rolls are poor. Breaking free or receiving divine aid leaves the trifid alive on its tile; returning to it repeats the hazard.

Killing or clearing a trifid

Carry a bucket of salt water before contact. The character automatically consumes one bucket before the first damage, destroys the plant, turns the tile into floor and gains 1,000 experience. The bucket is a randomly generated tool whose visible name identifies its purpose; activating it separately is not the trigger. The backpack is searched too, and only one bucket is consumed from a stack. Salt water does not provide the same protection against ordinary thorny hedges.

Disintegration can instead destroy a trifid from outside its grab encounter, clearing the tile and awarding 50 experience. This is a useful alternative when survival or access matters more than the larger salt-water reward. Ordinary fire and lightning effects that clear normal hedges do not clear a trifid: it absorbs that attack's energy.

Strategy

Use the maze corridors when unprepared. Low Strength makes repeated break-free attempts dangerous because each failure exposes you to a larger hit before the next choice. Being a Druid improves one escape option but does not remove the first damage without salt water.

One bucket covers one trifid. Additional buckets support additional safe kills, but collecting them and finding actual trifid tiles are separate requirements. You cannot substitute the word "hedge" for a guaranteed trifid reward, and a route through ordinary hedges still has its own injuries and equipment risks.

Disintegration offers a smaller reward in exchange for avoiding contact. Choose the preparation you actually have before stepping onto the plant, because neither an emergency potion nor a newly selected spell is available within its repeated-choice encounter.

The name and salt-water solution have a literary and film connection discussed in the maze's background section. Omega uses the spelling trifid.