Oil Drum

Oil Drum
Type:	Map Element
Keyboard selection:	None
Standard effects:	Explodes into a mass of disappearing flames
Present in:	Worms 2, W:A, WWP

The Oil Drum (or barrel) is, along with the mine, one of the objects that can appear randomly on the landscape under certain scheme settings. It can appear only at the start of a game.

If hit by a worm's weapon, the drum explodes, scattering fire to the surrounding area, which extinguishes after a few seconds. If hit by a few chunks of fire, however, it doesn't necessarily explode, but instead can "heat up", which is indicated by the sprite's color. There are 3 stages of this heating, after the third one, the drum explodes.

As it can deal quite a lot of damage, players usually try to get their opponents close to it, and then attacking them, adding the drum's explosion's and the fire's effect to the weapon's. This can be done in several ways, mostly using rope and knocking the surrounding worms to the desired position, or by using the shotgun's or the longbow's first shot to hit the foes as close as possible, then the second to blow up the drum. Its fire can also be used to drown the enemy, or to knock it into a nearby mine.

When the drum is sitting on a bridge, if the worm shoots right under it with a shotgun, the drum won't explode, but it will fall down, where it can be blown up with the second shot. However, the drum can normally only move vertically downwards - despite that when landing, it bounces up a few times -, and it can't be moved by a worm, so one have to look out not to be stuck under it. Earthquake is the only thing that can move the oil drum in horizontal directions.

Depending on their positions, drums can detonate each other, resulting in a chain reaction of explosions and flames, usually killing several of the worms nearby, and greatly changing the surrounding terrain.