Ultima Online Remove Trap - what it disarms, what failure costs, and the page with no numbers on it

The page with no numbers on it

This has to come first, because it changes how you read everything else about this skill.

• [!] There is no published skill threshold of any kind. Nothing of the form “at X skill you can disarm level Y chests” appears on uo.com. Lockpicking does have such a table — 56, 72, 84, 95+ — and it is tempting to assume Remove Trap mirrors it, chest level for chest level. No such table is published, and none is built here by analogy. Those four numbers belong to Lockpicking and to nothing else.
• [!] The treasure map level to Remove Trap skill mapping is not published. Map levels 1 to 7 exist; what skill each one’s trap requires is not published.
• [!] The success chance is not published, and neither is uo.com’s “high probability” of triggering the trap on a failure, as a percentage or otherwise.
• [!] The disarm time is not published at any skill value, even though uo.com states plainly that higher skill reduces it. The direction of the scaling is official; the seconds are not.
• [!] The glove penalty has no figure. Gloves hinder the skill, but by how much is not published.
• [!] Trap damage is not published for this skill. Unpublished damage figures for container and floor traps exist, but they are tied to nothing on the Remove Trap side, so they are not carried across here.

Everything below this point is published unless marked [!].

What it actually does

The targets are floor traps and trapped containers — boxes, crates and chests. To use it, click the blue gem next to the skill on your skill list, then target the item you want to disarm.

Failure sets the trap off. uo.com tells you to prepare healing supplies for exactly that reason: a failed disarm carries a chance of setting the trap off. The published advice is to plan on taking the hit rather than on avoiding it, which is why Healing and Anatomy sit so often on the same template.

Disarm first, then pick. Once the trap is disarmed, you can then try to pick the lock. Doing it the other way round on a town or dungeon container means opening a box that carries up to 3 traps.

Gloves hinder it [!]. Some traps have delicate inner workings that need a fine touch, and gloves get in the way.

It does not reveal you. uo.com: “Using this skill will not cause a hidden character to be revealed”. A character in Hiding or moving on Stealth can disarm without coming off the ground.

Higher skill is faster. uo.com states that more Remove Trap reduces disarming time. It is the only skill in the thieving group with a published speed component at all — which makes the missing seconds figure frustrating rather than academic, since the whole point of the statement is that it matters while something is spawning behind you.

The entry barrier is gone. uo.com: “Until publish 105 there were ‘qualifying’ requirements which must be met before the skill could be trained, these have been removed.” Initial training is now purchasable from an NPC like any other skill.

[!] uo.com does not say what those old requirements were. An unpublished account gives them as at least 50 [!] points each in Lockpicking and Detecting Hidden — a description of the system that was removed, not of the one in force, and not presented here as a live requirement.

Treasure chests, where a failure costs twice

uo.com: treasure chests “give the best gains, but require a treasure map to be dug up.” While you work, “Ancient Chest Guardians, chosen from the monsters that can spawn during the initial dig, will spawn to defend the chest” and must be defeated.

What a failure costs [!]: the chest spawns one dark-blue, loot-less guardian of a type matched to the chest’s level, and it must be defeated before you can try again. At the same moment you take damage scaled to the chest’s level, so every failed attempt is doubly dangerous.

Read that as a rule: a missed disarm costs you health and a fight that drops nothing, before you are permitted to try again. That is the reason a treasure hunter brings a combat character or a pet rather than going alone with Cartography and lockpicks, and the reason the no-penalty training route below exists at all.

Three trap types, and how to know which one you are facing

uo.com: town and dungeon chests feature “three types, dart, explosion or poison and of varying difficulty.” uo.com’s Lockpicking page supplies the count — up to 3 traps per container — and the warning that goes with it: do not open them unless you can deal with what is inside.

You can identify the trap before touching it. Detecting Hidden produces a [trapped] label, and in the Classic Client only, a colour:

Colour	Trap type
Purple	Explosion
Blue	Dart variants
Green	Poison variants

Enhanced Client users do not get the colour cue, which is a client-dependent feature rather than a skill one.

In PvP

Said plainly: Remove Trap has no published function against another player. uo.com describes no Remove Trap mechanic that operates on a person. What it contributes to a Felucca character is indirect, and comes down to two points.

• It does not break cover. Because using it never reveals a hidden character, a stealthed treasure hunter can disarm a chest in contested Felucca space without giving away a position. The reveal risk on that character comes from Stealing, which always reveals, and never from disarming.
• [!] No Virtue vs Vice or faction trap interaction is published for this skill. Detecting Hidden has one — 80.0 skill for passive detection of VvV traps — but uo.com does not state that Remove Trap is what disarms a VvV or faction trap once found. The absence is recorded here rather than filled in.

In PvM

• It is the third leg of the treasure-hunting template, after Cartography digs the chest up and before Lockpicking opens it. Treasure chests also give the best training gains, so the skill trains on the content it exists for.
• Floor traps have to be found first. uo.com: “you will still need detect hidden to find floor traps such as those in Underworld”. Remove Trap disarms; it does not search.
• Failure on a treasure chest is doubly punishing — scaled damage plus a loot-less guardian that must die before you may retry.
• Speed is the skill’s own reward. Higher skill disarms faster, and that is worth real survival when Ancient Chest Guardians are arriving during the attempt.
• Town and dungeon containers carry up to three traps each, of the three published types, and are where semi-rares and refinements come from.

Caps, stats and training

Primary stat Dex, secondary Int. Remove Trap has no Power Scroll, and this is the clearest published exclusion of any skill in the thieving group: uo.com’s Scrolls of Transcendence page names it as the example, “All skills (including non-Powerscroll skills such as begging and remove trap) are available.” It is likewise absent from the Power Scroll list. It stops at 100, against the 720 total skill cap. Scrolls of Transcendence do apply to it. There is no Remove Trap mastery.

uo.com publishes four training methods:

Method	What uo.com says
Puzzle Boxes	From the Oddities Trader at the Lycaeum in Moonglow — “circuit trap, the cylinder trap and the slider trap; they will not penalise a failed attempt.” The only published no-penalty route, and therefore the safe default.
Treasure Chests	“These give the best gains, but require a treasure map to be dug up.” Ancient Chest Guardians spawn to defend the chest and must be defeated.
Town and Dungeon Chests	Dart, explosion or poison, of varying difficulty. uo.com recommends a Crystal Ball of Knowledge from Ortlem The Mystic in Ter Mur to judge difficulty, and names the Britain Warrior’s Guild hidden room as excellent, with “a wide range of difficulty levels” — the shared training spot for this skill, Detecting Hidden and Lockpicking.
Tinker Trapped Chests	Carpenter-crafted crates or boxes trapped by a tinker, but “slightly problematically as the tinker placing the traps must be quite close in skill level” to the person removing them.

Two unpublished variations: dart-trapped boxes made by tinkers at skill levels 50 [!], 80 [!] and 100 [!], and the same puzzle kits — slider, cylinder or circuit — from the Lycaeum vendor, who is also known as The Collector of Oddities.

[!] uo.com states no tinker skill tiers for Remove Trap training, so the 50 / 80 / 100 set above is unpublished. It is not the same thing as a skill threshold for the player, and is not presented as one.

Underneath any route, the Guaranteed Gain System awards a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window, and a Scroll of Alacrity raises each check to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes.

What is not published

• [!] Any skill-value threshold at all. There is no published mapping of skill to chest level, trap type or map level.
• [!] The success chance formula, and the “high probability” of triggering a trap on failure as a number.
• [!] The disarm time in seconds at any skill value, despite uo.com stating higher skill reduces it.
• [!] The damage a triggered trap deals at any level.
• [!] The numeric penalty for wearing gloves.
• [!] The exact pre-Publish-105 qualifying requirements as uo.com would state them. Only an unpublished account of the removed system exists.
• [!] Any interaction with Virtue vs Vice or faction traps.

Where these come from

uo.com Remove Trap · uo.com Lockpicking · uo.com Detect Hidden · uo.com Hiding · uo.com Stealing · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Scrolls of Transcendence · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.