that's odd. I did it without the extra comparison and it still doesn't work. it never returns false. and yeah, the trigger is registered. must be some small typo I'm missing somewhere else. sigh
oh shi-
did you say I had to register the trigger for items as well?

somehow that didn't occur to me. thanks!
EDIT: only I don't know how to do that

there's no function to register a trigger with an item, only TriggerRegisterForItems(trigger), which still doesn't do what I need

EDIT2: OK, restarting the editor fixed it, it was definitely the fact that I wasn't registering the trigger for that item. phew
