Cage

**Cages** are special objects found in the dungeon.

They appear in regular enemy rooms and Champion rooms. These rooms will have a cage icon in the minimap (even they spawn in a champion room, in which case the exclamation mark icon is overridden). Cages do not spawn in boss rooms, Digital Space, or at any time in The Origin.

Maximally one cage will spawn in each room and each floor, if a cage appears at all. They act like static, indestructible map scenery, such that they can be used as cover when clearing the waves. However, their hitbox is rather small compared to how large they seem to be.

After clearing all enemies in the room, players can interact with the cage to destroy it, such that the NPC inside will be freed. Upon interacting a prompt saying "destroy cage?" appears, after the second interaction the cage will explode.

## Possible Contents

* A mercenary who can be hired for free. They will be unarmed in the current floor until given a weapon. If not, they will gain the default weapon after going through the next portal.
	+ It is possible to hire more than one mercenary if a mercenary is both rescued from a cage and hired in a bonus room.
	+ The Mad Scientist will be hostile if he has a Crowbar.
* A Scammer who provides an amnesia potion for free after being interacted with.
	+ The potion will be dropped on the ground after the player interacts with the Scammer.
* A random monster mount for free. Armor mounts do not appear.
	+ The Boar and Dire Boar will growl, whereas all other mounts will say "Olala!".
* A Mysterious Trader. He will offer a random buff or item at the cost of maximum health.
	+ It is impossible to know what exactly the Mysterious Trader is selling, thus making the buy a gamble.
	+ In 2-5 or before, the price is at 1 HP; in 3-x it increases to 2 HP.
		- Can stack with the Sale Buff, thus reducing it to zero before 3-x, without any challenge conditions.
	+ With the Sale Buff active, he will give free items/buffs before 2-5.
* A Weaponsmith who would give a free attachment for the player's current weapon.
	+ In this case he will not have any animations.
	+ This Weaponsmith has an increased chance of giving rare attachments, including the Portable Oven, Upgrade Kit and Lava Stone, but not the Fully Automatic Device.
* A Water Dispenser which can be used once to restore health.
* A Drillmaster (only if the player has a mercenary). If he appears at least once by these means all training for the rest of this run will have 50% discount. This effect does not stack with other rescued Drillmasters, but does stack with the Sale Buff.

Each NPC reacts with a unique quote after being rescued, but interaction quotes are the same. One cannot interact with an NPC while the rescuing quote is being played.

## Special Cages

* After beating the boss room in 1-5 of Glacier, there is chance that a cage will spawn right beside the standard portal. This special cage contains a Miner who will open the path to the Cave, a hidden biome which is not available otherwise.
* In The Origin, some NPCs are rescued from cages in biome rooms.

## Trivia

* The cage was added in Update 2.6.0.
	+ It gained an exploding effect when destroyed in Update 2.6.5. In the same update, the chance of one spawning was reduced.
* There was a glitch fixed in 2.6.5, where if a hostile Mad Scientist had been released, the cage could be destroyed one more time, and another random NPC would appear.
* There is a fixed placeholder character in locked cages regardless of what the contents of said cage are. This character appears to be a replica of the first clone summoned by Assassin's Crimson skin by the Doppelgänger Skill, although it does not have any color. This character can be seen faintly under normal conditions, but it is better seen if the cage is shot by fire pools from the Dragon Bros' Sniper Rifle, as these hide the cage but layer under the man inside.
* The explosion of breaking a cage can actually deal 8 damage to enemies and cause icicles in the cave to fall. However, the damage can only be seen if the remaining enemies are a result of Staff of Anubis and walk close to the cage.