Can anyone help me help six year old DS with Skylanders Trap Team?

[WhatWouldTheDoctorDo]

So DS got Trap Team foe Christmas and he loves it. It's his first experience of consoles etc. though so needs a bit of help, which is fine, but I know nothing about console games! There's a couple of things I'm not sure of and wondered if any knowledgable MNers could help me with the a.

I get that he'll need a trap of each element, is there any benefit in collecting more and/or trapping a villian with the exact trap for it?

While playing a game, can you take one Skylanders off the portal and swap it with another (e.g. If you need to use a trap master)?

If you need a trap master to unlock certain parts of the game, what's the point in using/playing with non trap master pieces (apart from just being fun playing with different characters)?

Do you need to do anything to save and then close the game? We have a wii u if that makes a difference.

DS's starter pack had a cardboard tray for storing traps, but none of the ones listed on it are the ones he got - are there loads of extra ones?

The Skylanders figures seem to come with cards and label stickers - are the stickers for anything in particular?

TIA

[WhatWouldTheDoctorDo]

Maybe only the under-10's know how Skylanders works...

[tribpot]

I will have to check with ds for some of the finer points but ..

• yes you can swap Skylanders mid-game
  
• hmm, not sure, probably there are puzzles you can only do if you have right powers?
  
• usually there's a save and exit function, otherwise it will revert to its own last save point. Not usually too far back in the game but could be annoying
  
• the extra traps are VITAL according to ds when he got the game, in other words I suspect are totally unnecessary but I got some for him anyway :)
  
• I don't think the stickers and cards do anything, except get lost.
  

If he gets stuck, you can always look on Game FAQs - it doesn't have a walkthrough yet, which is a surprise as it's been out for a while. There's also a tutorial on how to play the game which I'm guessing you've watched when you first started playing?

[CalamitouslyWrong]

I think the tray for storing traps lists the villains you can trap (then you can put the full trap in the right slot so you know which one is in which trap) rather than names of the traps themselves.

[CalamitouslyWrong]

The stickers have codes on them that you can use in the lost islands app (warning: constant invitations to purchase shit in app).

[WhatWouldTheDoctorDo]

Thank you! That makes sense re: the board to show which villain you've trapped.

Need to try and figure out the save and exit function.

[CalamitouslyWrong]

Does it save it when you travel back to the main area after completing each level? The 3DS game saves when you travel back to the archives. It tells you not to switch off when the wee diamond is displayed in the corner.