Click on all the blocky statues... look like demented Easter Island heads. Some are movable. You can push or pull them in any direction. There are a multitude of uses for these. Most of the time you'll be pushing them onto grey floor tiles that have something like a compass rose on them. These are switches. You can also push a statue over a floor trap to disable it. (Sadly, they won't go through doors so you can't just bull through the tomb behind a statue.) Sometimes they'll be there with no discernible purpose - move them and look behind them. Sometimes there's inspectable holes behind or under them.
Big piles of rubble are meant to be smashed. Do it often enough and you get a 30% speed increase. A lot of times there's a chest, hole, or key under the rocks.
Keys - For a search and find assignment, your employer will usually give you the key. But you'll also find a lot of them in the tombs. These go in the wall sockets by locked doors. Most keys are specific to one door. You may have to go all the way to the bottom of a tomb to get the key for the door right at the entrance. Annoying, but there it is.
Wells. Jump in them. There's usually a goody down there. Occasionally there will be a tunnel to swim through that gives you access to another part of the maze. Sims won't drown in them, but they will leave puddles whenever they stand still for a couple hours.
Secret doors - Some are activated by switches found in holes. But most have to be found. Click along the wall looking for an 'Inspect' option. They're two tiles wide so it doesn't have to be every section of wall. Often there's a semi-circle rug in front of them or an arrow made with tiles. For some the wall looks different from the rest of the room. Zooming out and looking down at the maze from above is also a good way to find them. Any blank area insde the maze with room for a room is a good place to check for secret doors. For that matter, occasionally looking down and using Page Up/Down to look at all the levels of the maze helps. I do that to get my bearings and figure out where secret stairs and doors may be.
Wall plaques, read them. They'll usually tell you how to beat the room. E.g. Landgraab, France: "Music tames the savage beast." Turning on the stereo disables the traps. (Then supercomputer turns it off, which is worrisome.)
Use display stands to place items on. Do this with items you do not especially want to keep. When full, an Activate option appears on the display, use it to transform what you placed into something else.
Have your sim change clothes when they are finished with a dive well, they will lose the soaked moodlet.
Also, some of the pieces for a dive well will be found in rubble and treasure chests, or even excavation sites. The excavation sites can be anywhere in a town and they contain goodies. I haven't gotten enough pieces to build my own dive well yet and I have no idea why a sim would need a single divewell. Maybe more goodies?
with testingcheats enabled, control/shift click on items such as the dive well when in buy mode, brings up a pie allowing you to configure them
If you come across a headstone in a tomb, Mourn at it, and you may reveal a hidden door or a hole with goodies
Take both types of tent. Sometimes there isn't room for the big one.
Take food, either the dried stuff or fruit. Most gardening sims have tons
laying around anyway.
If your assignment is to go talk to someone then report back - go to the
town view, find your destination, then use 'Go with...' to take the person
you're
supposed to report back to with you. If you're playing with more than one
sim, having your second sim 'Tutor in skill' is a great way to keep the sim
you're
reporting to there while the sim with the assignment completes it. Particularly
in China and Egypt this will save boodles of time running back and forth.
If you're playing with more than one sim, lead with the sim who has the
assignment. Some of the assignments are 'discovery' types. You can clear
a whole maze, but
if the wrong sim 'discovers' what you're looking for the assignment can't
be completed. (Secret Garden, France. Had to reload and replay it.)
Some of the assignments involve giving fruit or food to someone. I've taken
some of each exotic fruit home to grow in my own garden, to take back with
me.
It beats waiting a day or two for enough local fruit to be harvestable.
Bring a book. If you're playing with more than one sim, sometimes they'll
get out of sync. It'll keep your sim occupied while the other sleeps off yesterday
When making Nectar always include one life fruit in your recipe for a +50 8 hour moodlet when consuming said Nectar.
To save time on some of the adventure requests, when your sim isn't doing an adventure and has free time, send him/her collecting minerals, excavating, treasure hunting in buildings and fishing. Also, let them read bait books and recipe books. This will give your sim a head start on some of the requests you will get for adventures. My sim had collected a lot of the things beforehand and for the missions where he was supposed to supply certain items, he already had them in his inventory and didn't have to run around looking for them. Made reaching Visa Level 2 real fast
transport here is your friend when exploring tombs. Use when you have to doubleback on a floor or to avoid traps
1. The Fortune Cookie Maker can be upgraded such that it only delivers "Good"
fortunes.
2. The Nectar maker can be upgraded with either Improved Pressing (more bottles
per batch) or Enhanced Flavor(higher quality).
Buy two Nectar maker's giving a different upgrade to each. This lets you mix and match how you make the Nectar. Using the Improved Pressing unit and the Mass Produce Nectar making option yields six bottles for a starting out winesmith. Or, that unit will give 4 bottles if you choose to make a quality blend in it, instead of three. Use the Enhanced Flavor unit to get the highest quality blends, or more bottles of a good blend using mass produce on it.
The assignment that gets Pangu's boulder smashing axe is called Confounded Boulder. It starts out as a messenger service, running messages back and forth between two sims who (thankfully) live two houses from each other. It's the fifth or sixth assignment that's actually getting the axe
If you give your sim one of the French, Asian, or Egyptian Cultures as a trait (they are hidden traits), then your sim will already know the songs from that culture and the greeting. My CAS created sim with the French Culture trait would sometimes greet other sims with the double kiss on the cheeks and he would sing the French songs
Also found a hidden stair by the Sphinx's butt, near the scaffolding. Not the most obvious place to look
if you done mind using the testing cheats (testingcheatsenabled true) then here is a tip... When you get home from travelling and would like to travel without having to wait the days then cltr-click on the travel moodlet to make is disapprear and you can travel again. That works with any moodlet you want get rid of.
To get all the new grapes, fruits, and fish super fast, all you need is a cheat to unlock the debugging options in the game and shift ctrl click on the fridge, choose stock. It will stock the fridge will all the new fruits and fish in the game and you can do it as many times as you like. Then you can take out the grapes and other fruits and plant them on your lot. This works with Awesome, but it will work with any debugging cheat. Other debugging cheats you may just need to shift click on the fridge or just ctrl click on it.
If you want to get more ancient coins, with cheats turned on, shift ctrl click on a coin pile and there's an option to set how much coins it will give off. You can set it for as much as you like. This works with Awesome, I don't know if the debug is there without it, but you can try it with just testingche?ats. I was able to get alot of ancient coins that way fast.
Two Lifetime Rewards you probably do not want are the Sparkly Eye Candy
and Prepared Traveler. Eye Candy makes your sim sparkle permanently and Prepared
Traveler messes with Visa time hacks. So if you want a hack to stay longer,
it will screw it up. If you have made the mistake of getting these Lifetime
Rewards and you want to remove them, Twallan's Super Computer hack will
do it.
Install it, click on your sim, click Master Controller, choose Advanced,
Traits, you should see an option to Drop Rewards. It's in there, you can
remove any
Rewards you want.
Also, if you have a debugging cheat on, you can buy most of the new items in buy mode's debug area. I got my sim the fortune cookie maker for her house and the nectar making machine. You can also buy storage chests like the ones you find in the tombs and store items in them at home.
This is probably specific to having Awesome. Put any key on the ground and shift ctrl click on it, find the option for changing the key's shape or type. It will let you set this key to any kind of door key you need. Also, you can then clone this key and have as many as you need. Like if you want alot of star, heart or crescent shaped keys. You can also set the key to open any of the special tomb doors as you need it. Alternately, you can shift ctrl click the lock and change the lock's shape to match whatever key you have. Also, If you shift ctrl click a door with a chain on it, there's an option to unlock the door.
This is a workaround for resetting the tombs in WA. Before you do anything,
BACKUP your saved game and put it some place safe. You will lose any vacation
home you have by using this workaround? , but if you backup your game,
you should
be able to restore it later if you like.
To reset the tombs completely? , you need to go into the saved game folder
for the saved game you want to play. So you would go into this area:
C:\Users\C?arrigon\Do?cuments\El?ectronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves
Find the name of the saved game you are going to play and open that saved folder,
like this one:
C:\Users\C?arrigon\Do?cuments\El?ectronic Arts\The Sims 3\Saves\Ti?naNov28th.?sims3
Remove ONLY the following files:
China_0x08?59db4c.nhd?
China_0x08?59db4cExpo?rtDB.packa?ge
Egypt_0x08?59db48.nhd?
Egypt_0x08?59db48Expo?rtDB.packa?ge
If you went to France, you'll have two more for France. Remove those, too. So you are only removing the .nhd and the packages. Leave everything else in the saved game folder. Leave your neighborho?od package in. Like SunsetVall?ey, don't touch it. You cannot just remove one country. If you do, it usually corrupts the game, you must remove all three.
By deleting these few vacation files, it will reset all of your tombs and should reset all of your adventures?. Just click on the bulletin board on vacation again to get your travel book back. You'll see that your sim's book was not reset at all, you will still have whatever they already did listed. Your sim's inventory will also still be intact. So all you have really done is reset the vacation areas. You won't have a vacation home anymore, so this workaround is really if you don't care about that. You will need to do this workaround every time you want to reset all the tombs. But by doing this, you can then take other sims to the tombs so they can experience them fresh.
NRAAS Debug Enabler is a pain when tomb-raiding, because it makes a cog mouse-pointer everywhere. If you want to find traps or secret doors, disable it or its menu.
You CAN redo adventures without starting a whole new family in a whole new town. I have the testing cheats enabled with AwesomeMod, in which case SHIFT-CTRL-CLICK the sim and erase their opportunity history, but you can do the same from NRAAS Debug Enabler's menu. (Caveat: it will also erase all their past skill opportunities, job opportunities, etc.) Unlike using some tools to operate on your saved game, this is super-safe and doesn't break anything, far as I can tell. Other than, you know, the caveat already mentioned.
It is safe to delete any files that start with China_, Egypt_ or France_ and don't end in ExportDB from your saved game directory, so the worlds reset too. This also allows you for example to send the son or daughter on adventures too, even though mum cleaned all the tombs. (Caveat: every change to those worlds will be gone. That includes vacation homes, so take your trophies and sell the house first.)
University arcades and stuff seem to work quite well in vacation worlds. I built a hangout in France and nobody was coming there. So I added some bowling lanes and stuff, and called it an Arcade, and lo and behold, the game generated about half a dozen people (not including the bartenders) who play there when it's open. Fun stuff.
The store MultiTab 6000 is your friend. You can refill both social and fun very fast by playing the online social game. Or raise whatever skill you wish by listening to a tabcast while exploring a tomb, including the photography and nectar making skills that are important in WA. (Caveat: your sim might decide they want to sit down to use it, and walk half the great pyramid to find a chair, possibly running into traps and whatnot.)
Use EVERYTHING that can be used. Literally anything can be a trigger. Chests, chairs, tombstones (ESPECIALLY tombstones), you name it. If you can mourn those dudes, one of them might open a way for you. If you can push a statue for no particular reason, because there's no floor switch that needs it, yeah, it might still do something. I even had a floor hole appear when I took a dump on a toilet in a tomb. I'm not kidding.
If you have an Alchemist, stock up on Invigorating Elixirs and Vials of Bliss (or even better, Vials of Potent Bliss and Potent Invigorating Elixirs or whatever they're called). This will save you the hassle of having to stop for hours for your Sim to sleep.
Haven't tried it yet, but you could add a few LLAMAs around Al Simhara, especially around the Ruins of Karnak and Abu Simbel, it takes ages to get there on foot.
So you got a bunch of ancient coins and bought the Sultan's Tabernacle. Congrats. Keep the old tent in your inventory too, because the tabernacle is too tall to be placed in most tombs. Really, most of the time you can only place it outside.
You can duplicate the Sultan's Tabernacle in build mode, with the eyedropper tool. So you can buy one and just make more for the whole family, without needing ancient coins. Or (with "Buy On This Lot") replace all the tents in the Egypt base camp with tabernacles, and still have yours at the end.
If you want to encourage Sims moving around town, switch the residential lots from "Ownable Lot" to "Non-Player Sims Only". Otherwise, locals won't be able to move into "Ownable Lots" because they're designated as buyable only for the active family.
When you move a family in a new town, at least via the bin anyway, their HOUSEHOLD completed opportunity history is erased. (Checked with the Neighbourhood Workshop in read-only mode.) The individual sims may still be unable to take some adventures because they personally completed them. At least unless you use Shimrod's unlimited adventures mod, anyway. I don't, hence discovering that I can use the method at point 3 to reset the sim's adventures too.
NonaMena's adventure boards work on residential lots too. So you can take adventures right from your vacation home. Or get UL type social-group dares in your home town, and right on your own lot at that. ("Dare to woohoo someone at the party." Sure. Hubby, come over here.)
If you're a celebrity, NRaas Register is your friend, citizen. Disabling paparazzi can be a life saver. (Though people will still interrupt half of what you can do to ask for an autograph.) Alternately, just make all 3 of them 5 star celebrities and let them chase each other around, like the 3 stooges
If you gift a Kenspa (or even motorcycle or car or whatever) to locals, they'll actually use those. Since all your martial arts spar competition competitors will be the same couple of sims, over and over again, this saved me a lot of waiting for them to pedal their rear over for a ranked spar. Granted, it costs money, but my sim was rich as it is, and literally won 3 million at the lottery after getting the numbers from the future. So now she gifts motorbikes and hoverboards all around the world. Plus, hey, relationship boost.
The locals may decide to abort and go to the toilet every time you have to hand in a quest or report for one. Worse yet, at times (typically at night), they decide to come out and immediately abort and go back in. Just keep clicking that button all the time, and they won't abort.
Even though Shang Simla Sims with their hidden Asian (Chinese) trait eat using chopsticks for every meal, actually there is one meal that forces them to eat with spoon: Mac n Cheese.Do not ever change the traits of foreign Sims via Master Controller's CAS, even it is just to make change for one trait, the change resulting the foreign Sims losing their hidden trait.
If you buy a chest from the General Goods store, you can place it at home, and
then shift-click it to have it contain a treasure.
Make it a good treasure, though, because after that the only way to put things
in or take them out is to have a sim actually open it, which removes half the
usefulness of buying the chest.
Add wine... err... Nectar racks at home, make them tasteable, set the treasure component to something like ancient nectar or the most expensive one. (Be sure to scroll down in the list. DON'T set one of the §§§§§ options.) You can then drink wine for free for all eternity.
Better yet, if you play a vampire, and if you added enough wine racks, there's a decent chance to get some blood wine (err... "plasma fruit nectar") in one or another of them. Free meal and a moodlet before going to work FTW.
For bonus points, if you have a butler, that guy is an alcoholic. Can't leave a full glass lying around if his stomach contents depended on it. Watch him do the "100 yard dash to the bathroom" by Willy Makeit some 3 times if you left 3 glasses of blood wine lying around.
Even better, if you have Bonehilda, she'll drink the blood wine, and it'll pass right through her into a puddle on the floor. Then she'll run to the bathroom to puke too
Getting the Collection Helper LTW is almost a must if you plan on doing adventures. The early ones involve lots of collecting, and while you do get map tags where the items are, it's highly recommended you build a reasonable supply of them before you get the actual adventures requesting them. For example, I've found that opal is super rare in France and may take literally days to spawn once depleted. If you have an opal on hand already, you won't need to wait while the adventure slot is taken up and you can't accept another one.
Base camps are community lots, not homes. You don't get Stir Crazy. Good for writing those novels and stuff, is all I'm saying.
Registers or pro bars placed on community lots spawn employees. Base camps are community lots. So you can make a pretty deluxe hotel with bar and restaurant as a base camp.
"Enablelotlocking true" lets you edit base camps in edit town. (Click that little lock symbol. And it needs testing cheats on.) Now you may say, "big deal, I can always just use Buy On This lot." Yeah, but this one also allows you to do stuff like reassign the old base camp as a big park or something, or just bulldoze it if you're sure you'll never want it again, and place your own custom base camp, before traveling there.
Caveat: go into edit mode AGAIN and make sure it's not set as a "Base Camp (EP11)". You can't live on an ITF base camp on world adventures, and it gets no adventure board. And trust me, it may have gotten screwed up the first time around.
It should be pretty well known by now, but just in case: if you have a motorcycle, broom or car in your inventory when you go abroad, you get to use it there instead of a slow bike.
When the time for going back home draws near, make sure you're not traveling within the vacation location. Your vehicles may stay behind when you leave!
Bring a jetpack from the future, if you have ITF. You can wear it, then click anywhere and choose "Fly Here". Especially in China or Egypt, it's MUCH faster than running along those twisty paths. It's essentially a teleport, really, except it only works outside.
Plantsims can't get soaked. They just absorb the water and get hydrated. On one hand, no negative moodlet in tombs, but also no fire protection.
Mummies have advantages too. They CAN get soaked but unlike at home where they are vulnerable to fire, on holiday they are not.
Playing the guitar around NPC mummies has a high chance of disrupting their normal behavior i.e. they're supposed to attack the Sim but instead sit and listen to the guitar or wander around aimlessly, and will never attack. You have to either reset the mummy (may not work), delete it, or reload the game, since this breaks any opportunity that has to do with your Sim fighting a mummy.
Don't know if anyone know this trick, I figured out how to create a zombie, although EA didn't provide playable Zombie from beginning in Supernatural EP's CAS feature. Be a mummy. How to be a mummy, make your Sim sleeps in sarcophagus (you can find on buydebug, it's the scary dark one), after gets out from sarcophagus, the Sim becomes mummy, change the Sim appearance using Master Controller's CAS, replace the mummy with custom zombie (human Sim) you made in library bin. After applying the change, the appearance of mummy becomes custom zombie (human Sim) but he or she still retains the mummy animation that walks like a zombie and has his or her bladder and energy bar mummified. To revert back being a normal human, make the Sim sleeps in sarcophagus (find on buydebug, it's the normal Egyptian looking one).
Vampires get a full thirst bar and never get the "Stuffed" moodlet or gain weight from living on blood wine. So yeah, whether you make your own or use free wine racks, it's worth it.
If you're a vampire and make your own bloodwine, try 6 Life Fruit, 3 Flame Fruit, 1 Plasma Fruit. Max moodlets you can get from a glass, and probably the highest priced combination in the game.
If you're a vampire, consider hauling a few bottles of the above with you on adventures. (Or for that matter, University, future world, whatever.) Does wonders for the mood when you're hungry, tired and soaked in some tomb.
CAVEAT: Just be warned that your sim will want to place the glasses on a table, and sit on a chair to drink. Possibly triggering some trap on the way. Try planning accordingly, and if in doubt, meh, go with a plasma fruit instead.
Songs learned on holidays by locals, are sung while showering and other
random moments of waiting, like in front of the stove, and, of course, they choose
to sing the first line over and over again, instead of finishing the whole
damn song.
God help you if they know all six (?) songs.
At one point, you could Meditate the "Cursed!" moodlet away. Not sure if it's still there or they took it out in a patch, but it was really useful if you didn't want to bother with the Sphinx or the godawful screech of the snake basket. Theoretically, it should also be removed by a (Potent?) Cure Elixir or a Sunlight Charm.
You only need one Sim with a certain visa level to have longer holidays. With a level 0 and a level 1 Sim, I could go on longer holidays anyway.
If you want to have a kid with a foreigner but can't be bothered to take care of it or move the foreigner in, just woohoo with the foreigner, make sure he/she is pregnant, and travel home (alone / with everyone you initially came with). Then, when the travel moodlet wears off, visit the location again. Your kid will be a Child, and you can move them in if you have a high enough relationship with anyone in the household the kid is living in (you might as well be a total stranger to the kid).
This is because Sims below Child stage don't exist in vacation worlds (of course, only France, Egypt, and China; if you use other worlds as vacation spots, they'll most likely have younger kids living there)
Editing any vacation destination from home will prompt a "Traveling to..." loading screen, and will take the same time as actually sending a Sim there. "AND BACK". You also get a loading screen when returning to the game afterwards, just as long as, well, loading the main town. So, yeah, good point. I always edit vacation worlds while I'm there.
You can't live on any other communal lots than Base Camp on vacation, so no point in placing apartments, dorms, sororities, etc. I tried.
The palace in Shang Simla appears as "The Forbidden City" in Sims' wishes, but as "Halls of the Lost Army" in Map View, and "Forbidden Palace" if going by street name. It confused the hell out of me when I first got the wish, because I had no clue where to go. I only found out after I sent my Sim basically everywhere, and the wish was fulfilled while he was on that lot, lol.
Behind the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, in Al Simhara, there's a road with at least one mine entrance or alcove. It doesn't have any spawners or other attractions, but it's nice landscaping
The lot with the boat wreck in Al Simhara has a skeleton submerged in the pond, under the boat.
The cafe in Champs Les Sims has a lot of space to expand - two empty stories, IIRC. You can create a cafe/bookstore combo, a cafe/arcade combo, or even a hotel. The Nectary is also quite spacious, with a few bedrooms - but since the lot is quite possibly the biggest tomb in France, it can take a while to render if you keep switching away from it.
In the Copper Quarry in Egypt, one of the last rooms features an area that can only be accessed by zeneporting over a fiery pit.
While the campgrounds in Egypt and China have different names, there are at least two campgrounds in France called "Rose Campground"
To maximize the use of buildings in Shang Simla without having to build on lots, just make use of the four towers in the corners of the city! You'll have to go into Edit Town and enter "enablelotlocking true" in the cheat console to be able to edit them, as they're zoned as Hidden Tombs so they don't appear in Map View. You can either turn them into other lots or decorate them, or (like I did) put rabbithole rugs at the entrance (or the full buildings, if you use basements). Now I have a City Hall/Military/Police tower, a Spa tower, a Theater tower, and a Business Office/Restaurant tower. The best part is that you won't have to spend ages trying to build something and fit it within the aesthetic of the town - you already have buildings you can use right there!
More of a tip, but the graveyard in Al Simhara has a little mausoleum-type building that is perfect for placing a vampire altar. The walls are lined with arches, which provide a nice view of the Sphinx for taking pics, but the arch spaces won't count as the vampire being outdoors or hit by sunlight. I think you can also place an altar in one of the small mausoleums in France if playing a vampire, I'm pretty sure there's at least one you can enter without a keystone.
Not sure if this applies to the entire fence, but Sims can pass through the fence separating the road from the river/moat in Shang Simla.
Setting certain community lots (like cafes) to "Small Market" or "Market" increases the number of Sims visiting. You can place special objects (registers, bars etc.) on the lots without having to worry about closing times, and they will work properly.
The only destination that has a Death Fish spawner is China. Egypt and France don't have any ponds in the graveyards.
In France, that little campground has two ladies restrooms and no men's. You have to swap out one of the doors yourself.
Don't fret if you're in France and get an opportunity to fetch pomegranates (which are in Egypt) or plums (which are in China)! IIRC there are two houses that have pomegranate and plum trees growing - if we consider the river as the southern point (horizontally), one of the houses is in the northwest corner of the town (large orchard IIRC), and the other is the castle on the far northwest (near the big pond). The castle isn't fenced in completely, so you can go ransack the garden anytime without having to be invited inside (especially since the lot may or may not be inhabited).
The farthest pond in Champs Les Sims (the large one near the cemetery) has a fish spawner that is too close to the shore, and buried in the ground. Sims can't use it.
Windsurfing in Champs Les Sims is highly recommended! Probably the best water routing out of the three vacation worlds.
Seasons breaks the little island/fairy garden (?) in France, because now you can simply swim from the shore to it instead of having to go through the dive wells. And since the entrance to the tomb on land is blocked by giant boulders, I think you don't even need to get Pangu's Axe.
The sink in the Shang Simla Academy faces the wrong way i.e. the toilet, so Sims can't access it. You'll have to rotate it yourself (and possibly extend the tiny bathroom too).
Also in Shang Simla, the tiny lot on the mountain, the one with the cherry tree, has a bird spawner. It will regularly spawn flocks of birds in the shape of a fan during the day, and fireflies during the night (you can't catch them, though), and has a great view of the sky and Shang Simla, so it's a great place for taking pictures.
In the great pyramid you will find a bathroom at some place: Yeah, that's the one where you get a floor hole if you use the toilet.
Some tombs lie under residential lots. You have to visit its household and at least introduce yourself, for you can go into the hidden tombs. You won't be blocked, won't get a warning and aren't forced to left when you enter the tomb. And when you make a mess in it, the resident will follow you to clean it up:68. I think Evil Sims can only build cursed sarcophagi, and Good Sims can only build blessed ones. Regular Sims can build any type. Kinda sucks if you have an Evil Sim, they get turned into a mummy, and you want to switch them back to normal.
Some meals abroad are available only at certain times of day e.g. shawarma (which you need for some missions) is not available for breakfast.
Most of the ghosts abroad (at least the ones in France) don't have any traits assigned them, and the Wiki says it's risky to resurrect them for this reason.
On that note, one of the tombs in the French graveyard is for "Tim Doorson" - a reference to Jim Morrison, vocalist of The Doors
When you manage to cross a trap, the trap will become no threat anymore. That's similar to disarming it. Only without extra handiness skill.
When you have enough pieces from the different tombs, you can resurrect tomb items like a sarcophagus, a well, or even a Mummy. This can be done back at home after the holiday. So I have three sarcophaguses, two specially decorated like the screen and one simple grey one. You only have to click on the item in your inventory (construct or whatever it's called).