Trap Characteristics

Traps in Mousehunt have many different characteristics. These are:
-Power
-Power Bonus
-Attraction Bonus
-Luck
-Power Type
-Cheese Effect
-Bait

While all seven of these aspects combine to form how well a trap fares in the location that you're hunting (as well as, to a lesser extent, hunter rank, but that will not be discussed here), they are not all created equal.

-Power serves as the total strength of your weapon, the determining factor (largely) for if you catch a mouse or not.
-Power Bonus is a percentage added to total power, and is therefore tied directly to power.
-Attraction Bonus is a percentage (although not what is listed as the bonus, I will explain this later) that increases the chance of attracting an encountered mouse.
-Luck is a unique statistic that gives a second roll (after the initial power-based roll) to catch a mouse and increases chances and quantities of loot drops.
-Power Type is the characteristic power of your trap and decides if you gain an advantage or disadvantage against an attracted mouse. If you are using a tactical trap and encounter a tactical mouse, your power is increased substantially, while a tactical trap against a shadow mouse would not work well.
-Cheese effect is the chance of cheese going stale that your trap has. Because cheese will only go stale if a mouse is not attracted, it is closely tied to attraction.
-Bait is the cheese that you have armed in your trap. Because cheese can be used in order to attract mice at a high rate, it is also closely tied to attraction.

In my experiences as a hunter, I have seen that attraction bonus significantly drops in value as you progress through the game and start using cheeses that attract mice at a high rate, such as radioactive blue, gnarled, and gouda. Early on, when traps are weak and few mice are encountered in general, attraction bonus is more important.

Later on, cheeses like gouda (in tribal isles), radioactive blue (in mousoleum and catacombs), ancient (in forgotten grove), and the crafted cheeses of furoma and the tribal isles have attraction rates (with no additional attraction bonus) between about 80% and 99.9%. This high rate of attraction means that a further increase in attraction is a misappropriation of resources. Having an increase in power to give you a better chance at catching attracted mice is a substantially better plan. As power is largely what decides if you catch a mouse (along with trap type), the more power you can gain while using cheese in later areas, the better. Furthermore, the mice at these later stages in the game are EXTREMELY powerful- any additional power that you can get will mean more mice caught that you encounter, and less mice that cripple or pillage you. With cheese costing as much as 2,000g at times, avoiding getting robbed is very important.

To evidence this theory, I have been using the Gingerbread Base along with the ACRONYM in the catacombs and have been attracting at about 85%. The increase in power lets me catch mice at a rate that makes only about 5 mice per 36 hour update steal from me, and gains me around 300,000 gold in a 36 hour update. I have seen no major change other than a decrease in gold gained per 36 hours by using the Dehydration Base.

In conclusion, if you are a hunter who is using specialized cheese for a location, your best bet is to stack power as highly as possible, at the expense of attraction bonus and even cheese effect. You already encounter mice at a huge rate, and the bonus in power and increase in the mice that are encountered being caught substantially outweighs the mice that are additionally attracted to your already attractive trap setup, when the mice that escape your lower power trap are figured in. Stack power and sound the horn as much as you can!