FMs - Ghost/Perfect Thief
Results (Part 4)
This is the fourth thread in the series of Ghost/Perfect Thief results for FM's. The prior threads have been archived at:
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This thread will be used to post the results of players' attempts at ghosting fan missions (FMs) whether wholly successful or not. Rules regarding Ghost and Perfect Thief play modes can be found in the Thief archive.
Recorded in each message is the FM name, the user's play mode (Ghost or Perfect Thief), the end-mission statistics, and any comments regarding the ghosting of the fan mission.
WARNING: Discussions regarding how some or all of the mission was ghosted means there may be spoilers contained herein.
If you want to simply know if a mission was ghosted successfully or not, just read the statistics portion of a message.
To prevent this thread from becoming excessively long and forcing readers to span many pages to read the results, this thread should be closed when its length reaches 5 pages whereupon a new "Part n+1" thread is started. The moderator(s) will then be requested to move the old thread into the Thief archive to close it so it is retained as a lookup reference.
Replying to a reported result herein is appropriate but hurrah messages should be eliminated or kept to a minimum. Discussing how to ghost something in a mission not yet reported here should be opened in a separate thread. The idea is to report successful ghost attempts and perhaps discuss failures and possible solutions but not to incur a lot of fluff within this thread.
Please note that nobody requires a mission to be ghostable, and comments herein about whether or not a mission is ghostable do not reflect negatively on the mission. No mission is required to be ghostable. Ghosting is just a means of raising the level of difficulty in playing the mission.
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1. 27th Sep 2002, 23:18 #2
Danventry
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FM Title: Squeeky's Secret
Game: Thief 2 - TMA
Ghost: Success!
Perfect: Success!
Time: 13 minutes 14 seconds
Loot: 787/787
Pick-Pockets: 4/5 (PP bug - complete)
Secrets: 0/0
Comments:
- I kind of disliked this mission some because it was too dark, had bad texturing, and was hard to find loot.
- I don't dislike this game because it was RicknMel's first FM, so I don't mean to sound picky, it was well done.
- After I remembered where all the loot was from my earlier plays, I forget where 20 loot was. I kept missing the second pair of coins in the crate room.
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2. 28th Sep 2002, 00:18 #3
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Jail Break
FM: Jail Break 3.0
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 01:59:19
Loot - 545/545
Pockets Picked - 7/8
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 7/7
Comments - This is actually a small mission, but it took me so long to find all of the secrets, some hard to find loot, and a key I needed to open Truarts office. I could have gone on a blackjack run to find everything, but I thought that would be lame so I basically scrounged around in every cell block, every jail cell, and every hall to find pockets, loot, secrets etc because I wanted this perfect. The key to truarts office was behind a mechanist banner by the counter on the top floor which was nothing but marble floors and I was real sloppy about moss and water arrows. The entire hall was almost all mossed and almost all torches were doused. I found this acceptable because there were 3 patrolling AI (mechanist guard, combat bot and a cop) constantly intersecting with eachother and 2 idle AI that were facing the hall. I said above that I *almost* mossed everywhere because I rarely use moss unless its urgent so I left some areas unmossed for a challenge. And while searching around, I had no idea where the key was so I was just lucky to happen to right click next to the banner and pick up the key. So I crept around through one of the secret tunnels from the cell block to hit the end of the marbled hall and then into Truarts office. I found the sword and a key behind a banner and then I found a blue key in Truarts safe. I had no idea what to do with this key and the key didn't have a name so I was real close to wanting to blackjack everyone and search around; but I didn't. From this point, I retraced my steps and searched everywhere to find something that required this key. I had gotten all the way down to the beginning of the game and found this locked jail cell that couldn't be opened with the Master Cell key so I tried using the blue key and it opened. I saw a lever on the wall and when switched, the bed on the ground would slide away and down below was some kind of shrine with the silver gear I needed. So I had all my objectives complete except I was missing some loot. After a long search I finally found a few loose coins on the wooden platform in the secret passage way with the flickering light. I had all the loot now and it was time to go all the way back up to the top floor and then exit the prison. There were some idle guards outside of the prison that would spot me if I tried to leave. Luckily I had a gas arrow and 1 water arrow left and I doused the 2 torches near the exit and made my escape.
The design of the prison was well done, but going back and forth multiple times not knowing what im looking for was actually annoying so I won't say I enjoyed ghosting this.
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3. 1st Oct 2002, 00:09 #4
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Lucrative Opportunity
FM: Lucrative Opportunity
File: lucrativop.zip
Play mode: Ghost (failed)
Time: 1 hr 8 min
Loot: 2431 of 2831 (2750 required)
Pockets picked: 4 of 6
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0 (or 1 per objective)
Damage dealt: 0 (or 1 per objective) Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0
Cause(s) of failure:
- An objective says to break into 8 houses. I broke into 10 but it is a 8 specific yet indentified list of houses that you need to break into (so the objective is worded wrong). The last house (by the winged statue across from the chapel's cemetery) cannot be entered without causing damage (breaking a window) and this alerts an AI inside. This AI will run off to the police station to alert an officer, so I had to blackjack him to prevent more AIs getting alerted. So the choices are: (1) Do not break into this last house and ignore the incorrect house break count; or, (2) Break into this specific house and blackjack the AI before it can alert others (and it will). If you opt for #1, you will also NOT make the loot objective (see comments below).
- Cannot sneak by zombies in mining tunnels between police station and chapel crypt room.
Comments:
- The house mentioned above cannot be entered without causing damage (by breaking the window). Neither the door or window can be opened, picked, or have a key (until you get inside). The objective says to break into 8 houses. I had already broken into 10 "houses": gardener's tower (at the square where you start), the house at the opposite corner of this square, house across from the chapel's main entrance (near the pub), weaponsmith's, another house along the same river near the weaponsmith's, alchemist's house, police station, house across from the police station's front doors, the chapel, and the art gallery. Doesn't matter, though, since the author has some specific list of 8 houses that are unidentified, and this one by the winged statue is one of them. Since it is an objective to break into "at least" 8 houses and this one is mandatory to be included in whatever are those 8 houses, it can be argued that the breakage is allowed. It could also be argued that the AI alert is mandatory (the AI actually goes onto 1st alert and then proceeds onto 2nd alert although you are nowhere to be seen and there is no further cause for the 2nd alert, so it's probably scripted). Instead I choose to ignore the author's requirement to include this house and skipped the 200 loot in there for the poker. This more closely obeys the ghost rules that bar damage and AI alerts.
- Because I chose to ignore this obvious "setup" for breakage and alert, I lost the 200 in loot for the poker in that house. The maximum loot in the entire mission is 2841. That means the max I could get would be 2841 - 200 = 2641, which is under the 2750 loot objective. Tough, I'm ghosting and I'm not smashing the glass window AND forcing an AI onto alert. Screw it, so 2641 is the max possible when ghosting.
- However, there is 150 loot in a gold bag in a spider pit in a lava area at the bottom of the elevator in the chapel. There are 3 spiders in this pit room with unreachable and unpickable glowing mushrooms. Someone may actually figure out how to ghost all 3 spiders but I didn't want to waste hours upon hours in trying. There is an inviso potion in this mission - but ONLY 1 inviso potion. You will need it to get into the police station (where you must get the ring of keys to break into the other houses). So with this 150 loot impossible to get without sacrificing other objectives, the total ghostable loot is more like 2841 max - 200 in "breakage" house - 150 for spider pit gold bag = 2491. Of this, I found 2431 (i.e., I was 60 short of the max ghostable loot).
- I needed the inviso potion to get into the police station. The guard behind the counter always faces the front doors, the electric lights cannot be turned off, there are no windows or other routes inside, and the back office window only lets you get into that office to turn off the alarm but you can't get out of the office into the police station because you get spotted entering the lobby from the office and you cannot get behind the guard behind the counter to nudge him out of the way. You only have the 1 inviso potion to get into the police station. When I tried to go through the door from the back office into the lobby, I usually got spotted. If I managed to get out behind the counter, there was no way to nudge the guard out of the way so you could get to the stairs unseen. You leave by the sewers.
- The guard roving up and down the stairs moves too fast to get to the top floor to snatch the booty and pick open the chest. There is no place to hide once you start up the stairs, and piling up crates in the top floor doesn't help since AIs see right through crates (that haven't had a texture added [inside] that is opaque, but that would probably make the crate immobile). I took several crates into the basement and piled them up 2 crates high so the guard would bump into them and continually keep walking into them. I could then scoot upstairs to snatch the loot and have time to pick open the chest. Then I'd go back into the basement and remove one of the top row crates so the guard could pass through the lower one and continue on her path. I didn't want her around when I fell into the sewers since she might hear the splash when I hit the water.
- Leaving by the sewers means you will alert or destroy zombies. They stand in the tracks for the ore cart. I tried to walk along the tunnel to pass the zombies but they are too alert and see me when I get close (since I was still dark, they must've actually "felt" my presence). So I sent the ore cart down the tracks by itself to smash the zombies (in case the zombie explosions might cause me damage) and then took it for a ride.
- The "sky" is pretty low in many locations. When roping up or climbing up to a ledge, like at the house by the winged statue, I'd hit my head on the sky when trying to leap onto the ledge.
- Many textures were screwed up. They looked like they had leprosy with their skins peeling. No such problems have ever occurred with other FMs that have been played before and after this FM, it's just this FM that exhibits the leprosy of textures. Reading any scroll or paper that displays just its text on the screen and then returning to the game restores these textures back to normal. You have an undroppable scroll in your inventory so I used that to restore textures. However, if you pop out to look at your objectives, or reload a saved game, or start a new game, the textures are screwed up again so you'll need to read the scroll again to restore the textures the way they should look.
- In the chapel's mid-level basement is the entrance to an area with an elevator that goes down to a lava pit (and the spider pit with gold bag) where a Hammerite ghost wanders. It is totally ineffective; it doesn't see you, it doesn't react, it doesn't do anything. Apparently it is the ghost of the Hammerite that drowned in a flooded storage room. When I picked up his body and carried it through the walking ghost, the ghost disappeared. There's some loot by his drowned corpse.
- There is a mech bot in the chapel. While getting hit by its hurled bombs incurs damage, the bombs themselves are duds. They don't explode. When not ghosting, I like to get mech bots to destroy themselves using their own bombs by getting them to launch them at me while I'm leaning around a corner or pillar. The bombs explode on their side and do them damage until they are destroyed. Couldn't do that here, though.
- When not ghosting, I had fun luring the zombies into the basement chapel. They cannot endure in a holy place. I would alert the haunt and have it chasing me on my heels to lure it to other AIs to start off a melee - provided I could find a place to escape the haunt. The river by the weaponsmith's worked well. I'd lure some guards to the haunt, then all of them were chasing me, I'd run and fall into the river and go under the bridge to get out of their sight, and eventually they'd lose interest in me and battle each other. That's one way to get those helmeted guards out of the way.
The max ghostable loot is either 2641 or 2491. You can't get the max of 2841 because that requires: breaking a window (which alerts an AI) to get the 200 loot for the silver poker, and the 3 spider pit to get the 150 loot for the gold bag. Maybe someone can manage to ghost the 3 spiders to get that 150 in loot AND still also get into the police station with only 1 inviso potion in the entire mission, but you'll still only have a max of 2641 in loot which is under the 2750 loot objective. I say screw the loot objective and get what you can in ghost-only mode; I hate scrounger missions. Otherwise, this mission will always be impossible to ghost because of the requirement to smash that window.
It is possible that there is a key somewhere in the mission to open the doors into this house, but after many hours of scrounging around, I gave up. Even if there is a key, 2841 - 150 for the 3-spider pit gold bag = 2691 is still under the 2750 loot objective, and I see no way to ghost the gold bag in the spider pit without using an inviso potion (which is needed to get into the police station). If there is a key to this "breakage" house AND if there is a way into the police station *without* using the inviso potion (so it can be used in the spider pit) then you can scrounge enough loot in this mission to make the loot objective.
There is one other problem area regarding loot. Is the drunkard in the pub going on alert considered an alert? Probably yes. I could find no way to get behind the bar (to get at the locked cabinet for the loot goblets) without getting spotted by the drunkard who would then start prancing around like he was going to kung-fu you but never hits you (like most bar boneheads, all talk, no action). But it certainly appears that his state has changed and that he alerted. It may be possible to nudge him into the corner behind the bar so he doesn't spot you behind the bar, but I didn't bother.
This is a big and fun mission. Lots of tricks and ways to practice your ghost techniques, or just have fun "playing" with the AIs. You might want to up your game gamma; for example, I couldn't figure how to get into the gardener's tower until I upped the gamma to see the route to go up to the window.
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4. 1st Oct 2002, 00:28 #5
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A Smuggler's Request
FM: A Smuggler's Request
File: smugg.zip
Play mode: Ghost (failed)
Time: 4 hr 29 min
Loot: 3617 of 3977 (3100 required)
Pockets picked: 18 of 23
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 2 (required)
Damage dealt: 12 (required) Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 1 (big spider)
Secrets: 5 of 11
Cause(s) of failure:
- Cannot get key from pedestal in sewers without an alert because the big green spider almost occupies the entire top of the pedestal (and you're lit up so the lil green spiders will spot you, too).
Comments:
- The blackjacks were required. One was to knockout the smuggler captain so you can tote his butt back to the smuggler's house. The other was for Captain Ash so you can drop in in the spider section of the sewers.
- Bodies aren't identified when you pick them up. The smuggler captain is obvious since books tell you he has been taken to be tortured (and he's the only one down there; all other racks and cells are empty). You have to guess that the guy in the bedroom is Captain Ash since he is apparently the top guy at the place and he's the only one with a luxury bedroom.
- I don't see any way to get atop the pedestal in the sewer infested section of the sewers without getting spotted. There is a big green spider atop the pedestal that almost occupies the entire top of the pedestal. You are also lit up so the lil green spiders along the side walkway will spot you. That was the only bust.
- It took help from other taffers for me to solve a couple problems. I couldn't find the key to get into the smuggler captain's quarters aboard ship until I was told it was on the map table. I had looked 4 times already, squatting and waddling while clicking on the table while tossing away the junk that was obvious. It's a brown-red key on a brown table and unless it lights up you probably won't see it even when right in front of your nose. The other help I needed was in finding the key to get into the torture chamber. It's the same key you find inside the safe room; it's how you can get out of the safe room (if you don't rope back out atop the beams) and it also works on the torture chamber door right across from the safe room door. I hadn't tried this key because it was marked "safe room".
- I had already figured out the ship's "combination" and retrieved the horn but I still had to go back to snatch the captain's log.
- Finding the "exit" where the mission ended was especially difficult because I didn't find any clue as to its whereabouts. I actually discovered it by jumping on a wall to evade a guard to prevent him from spotting me as the other guards with lanterns went walking by. Since I was up there, I wanted to see if I could do some roof jumping. Not much, but then I noticed the open window.
- This is a fun mission when not ghosting, too. I found out the guard that accompanies the trollop to the elevator can run just as fast as Garret, so the only way to get him off your heels when he is chasing you is to get somewhere he can't go, like jumping onto something higher or lower, or using a flashbomb.
- On my way to the ship through the 2nd part of town after the lift-delivery elevator, I hit a drawgate where 2 guards on each side of the gate have a conversation. The guard on my side just stays at the gate. I could use the beams to sneak past him to jump off and quickly dash out of sight with just a 1st alert. I tried hitting the gate lever with a moss arrow to raise the gate and maybe see if the guard would start following the other guard but the lever wouldn't move. However, because I had to go back to get the captain's log, I could not move quickly enough to rope back onto the beams even with a speed potion without a 2nd alert from this same guard. On other reloads and restarts, I found the gate was open and this guard was following the other guard.
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5. 1st Oct 2002, 00:54 #6
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The Inverted Manse
FM: The Inverted Manse
File: invman.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 1 hr 43 min
Loot: 1754 of 1904 (1200 required)
Pockets picked: 2 of 3
Backstabs: 5 (?)
Damage dealt: 135 (required) Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 3 (actually 3)
Zombies killed: 6 (?)
Secrets found: 0 of 1
Comments:
- This was a creepy FM. Even when not in a tense situation, occasionally my shoulders would shiver when I'd get a cold chill down my spine. Good eery setting and sound effects.
- Killing the 3 guardians was an objective (although optional, I think). I don't know why the zombie kill count is at 6; even with accounting for the 3 guardians, there are 3 more zombies not accounted for. It wasn't me!
- One guardian is invincible (and doesn't even recognize you while attacking it if it doesn't see you) until you take out his steed (a burrick). You have no gas arrows to knockout the burrick. I tried using the blackjack but kept hitting the guardian riding atop instead of hitting the burrick. So I had to side slash with the war gauntlet to take out the burrick and to get the guardian active and vulnerable. You get just enough time on the first blow only to do an overhead swing with the war gauntlet. Then you have to continuously use side blows to keep him backing off and prevent him from swinging his mace.
- The invisible guardian is also impervious to damage and won't even recognize he is being attacked if he doesn't spot you. I certainly didn't want to have him spot me and then try to take him out with the war gauntlet. That weapon severely slows you down as bad or maybe worse than trying to weild the sword. So I hid in the dark in the foyer around a wall, leaned out, and took him out with an explosive arrow. These act like napalm and keep him continuously on fire so eventually he collapses and you can collect his head.
- For the last guardian, you are catapult up in a shaft and land in his protected area but you'll make noise on the landing unless you muddy up the area. You also should aim at a column so you land behind it and give yourself some cover since it is lit up in his area.
- Using holied water arrows to douse torches almost always alerts an AI. You have to use wind arrows.
- I found the acid bombs in the arch near the vault door with the double combination panels. Alas, I found no clues on how to open the vault. There is one scroll where the writer indicates that they will be next working on the combination and that they don't like using i, o, or you (u), but this doesn't help at figuring out the combinations. At this same area is another building with a pillared entrance and with an unpickable door. I didn't find a key. Maybe it's in the vault that I don't know how to open. I went back in non-ghost mode, read everything, but still didn't see a *good* clue on how to open the vault. Obviously whatever is in there isn't critical to the mission so I skipped it.
- At the beginning are a couple spiders. I could get to the Hammerite with just 1st alerts but I couldn't continue down the tunnel without getting spotted. I had to use a wind arrow to douse the torch down the tunnel so I would be hidden. I also had to use a mud arrow to silence my jump up the 4-inch level change from the spider floor to the tunnel floor. Man, it will sure be nice in T3 if they manage to figure out how to give Garret some knees so he can bend his legs to step up and down.
- Just after the tunnels at the start, you see what looks to be a town and mansion through a gate fence. I did manage to get down there (but not back up) by finding a rock outcrop on which I could mantle, jumped to the rocks past the fence, and the backpeddled as I slide down a steeply sloped rock face. It's just for show; nothing down there for loot or of interest other than a few AIs. Well, at least I'd been there. I had wasted some time hunting around for a route that would bring me to this area from the rest of the mission's layout but never found it. It's probably just for show, just like you can't get to that far off castle by mantling onto the rocks.
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6. 1st Oct 2002, 02:11 #7
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Insurrection
FM: Insurrection
File: insur_v1b.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 36 minutes
Loot: 215 of 1015 (none required)
Pockets picked: 7 of 18
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 13 Healing: 15
Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0
Comments:
- You will probably get a non-zero value for the "Bodies discovered by enemies" statistic since there is a battle at the beginning and the Mechanists that wander into and through the cathedral do battle with any Hammerties they encounter.
- You are poisoned and taking slow damage all throughout the mission. The only damage I encountered was from the poison, not from any battles, leaps, or other injury.
- I was a beta tester so I've had plenty of practice going through this cathedral. My best run was 29 minutes but now there is a 2nd gated opening at the 2nd highest central spire climb; there was no gate in the beta versions and I could drop down into the attic section with the ramps for quicker access to the elevators that went to the labs. However, the next quickest route involves using a rope arrow where you wouldn't expect to use a rope arrow. Hint: If you see the rubberized covering that is typical in Mechanists structures that deadens your footsteps on metal floors, the rope arrow will stick into it. There is a speed route from the crypt basement to the attic that bypasses all the ramps and elevators.
- I did encounter a problem with the "switches" used to turn on power to the portal. One of the blocks landed end-side first (i.e., the block was vertical instead of horizontal) so it went through the surface instead of pushing down on it. Dropping the block a 2nd time had it land horizontally and that worked.
- I think there is an easter egg somewhere but I haven't found it yet. I'm working on it. This time through, I was working on a fast run through for minimal elapsed time.
- Although there is a drain pipe route to the portal, I've never liked it. Instead I take the icy top ledge, moss it all up even past the archer, and then down the inviso potion to run to and into the portal. The timing is critical as the inviso potion lasts only long enough for me to just get into the portal. There is a 1st alert from some AIs as I just get into the portal, but everything goes dark, I can't hear any of them go onto 2nd alert, so I can't be sure if me seeing all black means that I'm really out of sight of them. I had to do this run several times since the inviso potion is barely enough with one dose to make it to the portal. Maybe the drain pipe would be better since it is closer. I'll try that next time. This is a fun FM to replay and try different tactics and routes. I love luring the Mechanists and Hammerites together because they "play" so energetically.
If you're not ghosting, I'm sure a speed run through this mission could be around 20 minutes even with my beta version short route blocked in the released version.
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7. 3rd Oct 2002, 03:37 #8
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Something Up There...
FM: Something Up There...
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 01:09:14
Loot - 2370/2370
Pockets Picked - 5/6
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 1
Damage dealt - 1 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 1
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - I found this mission at cheap thief mission downloads. I had alot of frame rate problems with this mission because there were huge buildings in such a huge area; it was too much for my video card to take, but this didn't prevent me from ghosting it. The first problem I came across was a patrolling guard in a small kitchen with high brightness. I found medium bright shadows against the wall and near some shelves on the end of the dinner table, but the guard had such a short patrol I could not figure out how to get into the room behind him. I had no moss at this time and there was nothing in the kitchen to douse or switch, so I was in a loud and bright room with a guard taking short patrolls. I spied a few things in the room that I could try using: the sink and the dinner table. I tried the sink first but there was a safe infront of the sink and I would need to mantle onto that and then run to the sink. I made a few attempts and it wasn't even close to working. I could mantle up the safe but I would make a huge metal clang sound when dropping down onto the sink, and by then, the guard had already spotted me. I tried running and jumping onto the sink but the tile was too loud and the guard patrol was so short. So I crept to the back of the room next to the dinner table and tried jumping onto the chair next to it. This worked and I remained in a medium bright shadow. I had hope here because I thought I could jump to the other side of the table, and hide in the corner of the room. I tried this a few times but it didn't work because the guard was too close to the wall and I wasn't in the darkest shadow. I tried another tactic of jumping to the other chair, opening the door and creeping into it, but I just didn't have enough time. After tons of reloads I decided to leave the entire building and look for a crate or something I could use to land on without making noise. I came all the way to a huge towering church with a small garden patch at the entrance. To my delight I saw about 7 moss arrows in the garden. From this point I knew I could ghost that kitchen so I ran all the way back, into the kitchen, got onto the chair and shot a moss arrow at the tile where the guard walks. I jumped over the table, landed on the chair, opened the door and slipped on through just before the guard turned. From here I grabbed a key and went back through the kitchen using the same tactic of leaping from chair to chair.
The next problem was in the dome church with 2 patrolling mechanists on a wooden catwalk and 2 patrolling cops on a tiled floor. I needed the "library key" on the table at the end of the catwalk but there was no way I could sneak by those mechanists and the FM author almost designed them to be killed. On the catwalk there was some weird contraption that shot out little blue beams (like the purple things in T1's "Down in the Bonehoard" and "The Sword"). If 3 levers were switched, the contraption would start shooting the beams in the direction of the patrolling mechanists. It alerts just about everyone in the area so forget that. I dropped off the catwalk and shot a rope arrow into the side of it where the key was located. I was able to climb up and snatch the key while in complete darkness. Now I could leave the church and see what was next.
I wanted to get some loot in this safe in one of the buildings but the safe was blocked off by a banner and required a code put into a keypad. I tried blindly to input the numbers into the keypad without knowing which number was highlighted; this failed. In one attempt I accidentally looted something in the safe behind the banner and realized I could just snatch everything in the safe without opening it. There was no other hard to find loot in this mission.
After going through the library with my new key and reading a note, my objectives changed and the last thing to do was climb up some tower and "kill the ancient warrior". I thought a ghost might be busted because I thought I would have to fight the warrior head on. I wanted to end the mission so I used rope arrows to climb up little beams on the side of the tower and after getting to the top I heard a "join us join us now". I went around the top of the tower and saw the "ancient warrior" with his back turned. He had the haunt voice but he had the skin of a male thief and he was holding some skull which lit up the area. He was on first alert for some reason. I think I had made a jumping sound that put him on first alert when I was mantling, but he calmed down and was back to 0. I approached and backstabbed him, but it wasn't enough to kill him and I busted the ghost. It turns out 3 strong overhead slashes couldn't even kill him. I thought I failed here; what else could I do? Then something simple just came into my mind. I took my blackjack and tried knocking him out. It worked and I picked him up and threw him off the side of the tower, thus killing him. My last objective was checked off at this point and my ghost was successful.
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8. 4th Oct 2002, 20:54 #9
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Something up there ...
FM: Something up there ...
File: something.zip
Play mode: Ghost (failed)
Time: 57 minutes
Loot: 2255 of 2370 (2000 required)
Pockets picked: 5 of 6
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 1 (for kill objective)
Killed: 1 (required)
Secrets: 0 of 0
Cause(s) of failure:
- A patrolling guard outside the church door ALWAYS went on alert when I opened the warehouse-like front door. I reloaded and tried opening the door at various positions of the guards but one of them always went onto full alert. Thinking that the guard might still be on a 1st level alert status, I went back to Erick's house to ghost the kitchen and even after all that time the guard at the church would still go onto full alert when I opened the front door.
- The panel to enter the safe combination is behind a banner. You can't see the buttons or the position of the panel, and I wasn't about to spend hours and hours trying to click on hidden buttons hoping to enter the combination. Deadfall noticed that you can frob through the safe door. Yes, you can but this sure feels like a cheat. It was a mistake by the author to make the item frobbable when the door was still closed, and this is his first FM. I had noticed that I could frob through the safe door to get a gas arrow and some loot but I never got the key. When frobbing through an opaque door, there's no way to guarantee you got everything, so I wouldn't know if there was a key or not in the safe using this technique. <small>While ghosters have had a lengthy discussion regarding allowable property damage, especially banner slashing and crate smashing (or even of dropping a crate since there is often some in-game damage), we've never discussed frobbing of items that were obviously behind a barrier that was meant to be opened or broken. It's like reusing water arrows that don't destroy on impact in that it feels like you're cheating on a ghost by acquiring water arrows that weren't meant to be reused and so you effectively up your inventory.</small> I tried banner transmigration since you can use a rope arrow in the wood ceiling but there's no room on the other side of the banner for Garrett.
Comments:
- This is a first FM for this author. There are a lot of bugs, but since ghost reports aren't considered the proper place to report them, I sent the author an e-mail. Hopefully his e-mail is valid.
- I couldn't ghost the kitchen in Erick's house until I found some moss arrows (by the church). The table was resized but not its solid boundaries so you fall through anywhere on the table outside of its original dimension. This made jumping on the table to follow the guard almost impossible. Instead I mossed the kitchen floor and ran behind the guard from the bedroom door onto the cabinet with the sink. You can crouch and hide there unseen by the guard although the light gem is in the yellow zone. Fact is, a LOT of the guards are very blind in this FM. I then mossed the floor by the living room door and opened that door. As the guard passed me heading towards the door, I would run (not jump) onto the chairs, run across the chair backs while trailing the guard, and then land on the floor as the guard turned to head the other way, and then scoot into the living room and close the door. To get out, I opened the door and positioned myself to see when the guard's sword would flick by the opening to tell when he had turned, then dash out, turn right, and hop onto the counter and crouch there again. Then when the guard was walking away and towards the door, I'd scoot across the kitchen to get out. Trying to find objects you can land on (and stay on) when resized and being within inches of a guard in the yellow zone for the light gem was the hard and scary part.
- In the balcony room, I passed through a cloud of red bubbles and Garrett said, "He won't need that anymore". What's "that"? I presume it was the sword but I hadn't frobbed it yet. I thought at first that the statement had to do with the red bubble cloud but couldn't figure out what.
- There is a way to shortcut most of this mission. Use the key on the bar in the tavern where you start (that's right in front of you). Get the balcony key, get into the balcony room, and use the crates there to stack and jump over the gate at the tower. You can then kill the haunt-thief, but the "find out what's happening" objective won't be checked off. But if you see something is blue, you don't have to read a scroll to determine what is its color.
- I couldn't ghost the balcony inside the church until I cheated by reading Deadfall's ghost report. So I, too, roped up to the table to frob the key. But this only works because you can frob *through* the wood table. All this frobbing THROUGH objects has to be a defect in design; it's not a technique that I've garnered in 2+ years of ghosting and only find by accident. The only way to know that there was a key there to frob was that you got there before, either when not ghosting or from a failed ghost attempt.
- Roping up the beams at the top of the tower can test your immunity to vertigo. Uffda! I ran around the lower ledge hoping to find a less stressful way to the top. Nope.
- There might be something special about the glowing skull that you can frob from the haunt-thief, other than using it as a lantern, but I couldn't determine what it was. Tossing it at the haunt-thief had no effect (except to alert it when the skull hit the floor). When unalerted, it takes 3 overhead sword whacks to take out this AI. Or douse all the water arrows and zing it with 8 broadheads. I also used a land mine on it but it still took 8 broadheads to dispatch this AI so apparently the mine has no effect or very little effect. You can blackjack him but then he becomes impervious to the sword (the sword passes right through him) but can still be killed using broadheads.
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9. 4th Oct 2002, 23:01 #10
Danventry
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FM Title: Rescue!
Game: Thief 2 - TMA
Ghost: Success!
Perfect: Succes or N/A*
Time: 14 minutes 4 seconds
Pick-Pockets: 4/5 (PP bug - all)
Loot: 0/0*
KO: 1 (Required)
DD: 1 (^Look^)
Secrets: 0/0
Comments:
- * The "Perfect" is not applicable or successful, depending on how you view 0/0 loot. In my list of ghosted FMs, I consider it a Perfect because 1) I did recieve all available loot and 2) so when I write it down, I don't go back to perfect an unperfectable FM.
- The Pick-Pockets are forced since you must get all the keys to get through the gates.
- The KO is required as "Gumdrop" isn't smart enough to follow you back to freedom (but we know the real Gumdrop is much smarter).
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10. 5th Oct 2002, 00:49 #11
Vanguard
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Sakura's Dragoneye
FM: Sakura's Dragoneye
File: ladysakuradragoneye.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 23 minutes
Loot: 1070 of 1270 (1000 required)
Pockets picked: 2 of 3
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0
Comments:
- It was a bit tricky to maneuver around the central room trying to keep out of sight in a fully light room. The guards were spaced unevenly so they were closer together rather than at equal distances while patrolling the room. This allowed me to follow the tail guard and duck into a room before the front guard noticed me. There are shadows behind the statues, too, but I didn't use them.
- It took probably half the time noted looking for the last bit of loot. You can't get at the loot in the meeting room since you get fully lit and one of the AIs will notice you. I had been in the kitchen and snatched what I saw there but missed the loot plates down farther in the sink (it's a pretty deep sink). I had to snudge the male servant to the right and forward and the female servant so they wouldn't alert as I approached the sink. I couldn't get completely up to the sink counter without getting seen, but I could get close enough to lean forward to see down the sink and snatch all the loot plates.
- I got 1070 in loot. There's another 100 in the meeting room, for a total of 1170 of loot. The endgame stat max loot says there is 1270 but I never found the other 100 in loot.
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11. 5th Oct 2002, 06:56 #12
Deadfall
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Sakura's Dragoneye
FM: Sakura's Dragon Eye
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 00:31:06
Loot - 1170/1270
Pockets Picked - 2/3
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - I must have been playing this mission at the same time as Vanguard lol. I checked this page before playing Sakura's Dragon Eye and I didn't see Vanguards report here. I'll make it quick since obviously this mission can be ghosted. There were no problems with sneaking by AI. The only problem I found was trying to obtain a perfect thief. The missing loot was in the ball room and no technique or method could be used here. The ball room had no shadows and about 10 AI looking in different directions. Unfortunately, there were no switches to turn the lights off, so I could only get the purse on the ground by the drunken servant. There was a gold wine bottle just inches away from the purse and I tried all kinds of leaning and moving fast back and forth on moss to see if I could get it, but I was unsuccessful. I also had to nudge the male servant in the kitchen so I could get all of the plates and cups in the sink. The only hard to find loot I came across was a purse (100 gold) on a table in the study room.
The last 100 loot is the gold wine bottle (50 goods) and the gold dice (50 gold) on the table at the end of the ball room. The gold dice is impossible to get. Well... maybe I could use those 3 crates at the beginning of the mission and nudge every single AI in the ball room like Sneak did with the golden child in T2's LotP. Maybe when I have 20 hours to spare i'll try it ^_^
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12. 5th Oct 2002, 16:29 #13
Vanguard
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Embracing the Enemy
FM: Embracing the Enemy
File: embrace.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 1 hr 49 min
Loot: 2740 of 2995 (none required)
Pockets picked: 6 of 8
Backstabs: 1 (for kill objective) Knockouts: 1 (for kill objective)
Killed: 1 (required)
Secrets: 0 of 0
Comments:
- Rather than try to go through the music room which is highly lit by a chandelier with no off switch, a guard constantly at the base of the stairs, and an archer patrolling back and forth, I went outside to get in via the balcony. I used the crates from outside and inside the storehouse to make stairs to reach the end of the rope arrow stuck in a wood beam sticking out of the eaves by the balcony. There weren't enough crates to use the stack method, so I piled them atop each other so the overlaid each other about halfway; in Thief, you can build stairs with no support under a crate other than a slight overlay with the next crate below.
- This balcony room has the key to the wine room in the storehouse, so I went back down and retrieved the wine bottle objective. You have to wait until the guard is away from the metal door to the wine room when you open it to avoid the guard going on full alert.
- You normally get into Montague's room (to knockout Alex before he kills Montague) via the small attic but there is a banner that you cannot pass through, so you have to slash it. You cannot get to the balcony to this room from the ground; the ground that you see from the balcony is not reachable (in fact, you can't even fall off the balcony railing into this area). You cannot get down to this balcony from the large attic since you can only get into the large attic from the safety tower area; I went into the house and took the tunnel to the sewer cover inside the tower but you cannot open the cover from the tunnel side (to get outside this tower and to the large attic). So slashing the banner is *mostly* a MUST. Actually there is one highly unconventional way to get to the safety tower area so you get to the large attic and down to the Montague's balcony. Use the crates to make an unsupported staircase on the recess in the roof of the storehouse so you can jump onto the west outside wall, walk along this wall, up the ramped wall, over the peak, ready the slowfall potion, jump off to land at a spot well away from the front door guards, and down the slowfall potion before landing to prevent damage. Now you can go to the stairs and use a rope arrow to get into the large attic and come down Alex's rope arrow to the balcony.
- Although you silently blackjack Alex (to protect Montague, an objective), Montague is scripted to go on full alert when Alex goes unconscious and sets off the alarm which alerts all the guards. This is not a ghost bust since it is identical to the alarm going off in the Undercover OM when you frob the talisman. The point is that you have to ghost the rest of the mission after this hardwired event occurs. I lugged Alex into the attic to keep him safe until I polished off the new objectives.
- I found Montague in the safety tower, blackjacked him, and lugged him to an outside corner away from the roving guard a floor below so the guard wouldn't hear Montague's cries when I killed him (an objective).
- I would've simply lugged Alex over the wall at the top of the stairs by the skylights and used a slowfall potion to land outside except for a couple of points: (1) I had already used the only slowfall potion to ghost my way into the safety tower area using the outside wall to get to the large attic to get to Montague's room to blackjack Alex; (2) the slowfall potion doesn't last long enough for the duration of the entire fall from the outside wall to the ground, so you have to down it during your fall; and, (3) you cannot select and use the slowfall potion during your fall while carrying Alex. I couldn't take him out via the guard tower and over the outside wall because the sleeping archer at the window would awake and spot me when I shot a rope arrow into the beam sticking out the outside of that tower. So how to get Alex outside and to the vineyard? I lugged him up onto the shed using the same crates I used to get in before, around the ledges, up the vines, down through the inside of the tower, opened the sewer cover, through the tunnels, back into the house, and roped down from the balcony room to get outside. I then dumped him in the vineyard (which must be in the row and near the scarecrow).
- On reloads, many of the guards that had gone off 2nd alert and settled back to 1st alert or agitated state had gone back on full alert.
- After completing all the other objectives, the remaining 2 were to "return to the vineyard" and "don't kill anyone". Okay, I was in the vineyard where dumping Alex checked off that objective but the mission wouldn't end. I wandered all over the vineyard. Still no game end. The mission doesn't end when you are anywhere in the vineyard although that's what the objective says. The objective is WRONG. I had to leave the vineyard and approach the vines on the east outside wall (across from the cart in the recess of the storehouse). That is NOT the vineyard.
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13. 5th Oct 2002, 18:48 #14
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The Gambling Man
FM: The Gambling Man
File: gamble.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 1 hr 15 min
Loot: 615 of 815 (250 required)
Pockets picked: 9 of 11
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 1 (required)
Damage dealt: 1 (required) Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 1 of 1
Comments:
- The only difficulty level is Normal.
- Garrett starts nude of his lockpicks. No reason given.
- It took a long time to find the intermediate level that had the switch to turn off the watcher (not really necessary but something more to ghost). Where you hear Garrett say that he can't get through here (a stub hallway with paintings), that's not true. Just time the watcher to be looking to the side and run to the lamp to turn it off. You can use water arrows to douse the torch inside the room with the horn and time when to dash across the lighted area. I didn't realize that the elevator behind the chapel had 3 floors instead of just 2.
- The "secret" is actually a requirement since you need to get there to retrieve the evidence (an objective).
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14. 5th Oct 2002, 22:04 #15
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The Eye of Ruthaford
FM: The Eye of Ruthaford
Ghost - Success (Chemical)
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 00:29:13
Loot - 880/1130
Pockets Picked - 0/1
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - This mission had some difficult areas that would make it seem unghostable if overlooked. 80% of the mission had marble floors and I only had 2 moss arrows. I also had 2 invis potions, thankfully, and I needed to use 1 potion to ghost the mission.
The first problem was trying to sneak by the unarmed male thief at the bar. I couldn't sneak slowly around the door frame without alerting the unarmed thief behind the bar. I could have used an invis potion but I decided to moss the floor at the entrance to the bar. With the floor mossed, I could run around the door frame and into the bar and only get a first alert. However, I could not get the gold wine bottles next to the guard and the unarmed thief without more moss and I needed my last moss arrow for the next situation.
The last problem was in the theatre which had nothing but marble floors. There was a noble lady blocking the aisle between rows of chairs, and a male servant on the podium facing the noble lady. This section had no shadows and the key I needed to retrieve the eye was at the front row under a chair. There was no way to sneak slowly because of the brightness in the area, so I had to moss the middle of the aisle. With the marble mossed, I then used an invis potion, jumped up on the chairs, moved along the aisle and snatched the key from under the front row chair. Then I moved quickly back to my original position, out of the nobles view without using my last invis potion.
I also had a few problems trying to get to the safe in the office with the nobleman looking straight at the safe. But I was finally able to CCC along the wall and the sofa towards the safe and get the loot with only a first alert from the nobleman.
The last thing to do was to open the secret door in the closet from the kitchen and get the eye. The key under the chair in the theatre opened the huge vault door with the eye enclosed in a display case. There was a trap if I approached the display case on one side, so obviously I just approached from a different side and I was able to get the eye.
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15. 5th Oct 2002, 22:30 #16
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Hedgerow & Hammerite's
FM: Hedgerow & Hammerite's
File: hedham.zip
Play mode: Ghost (failed - gave up scrounging for the loot)
Time: 1 hr 26 min
Loot: 3785 of 4185 (4000 required)
Pockets picked: 0 of 1
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Killed: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Secrets found: 0 of 1
Cause(s) of failure:
- You have to blast a hammer-shaped inset with a fire arrow. Because the door is open (and you can't close it) and because the noise passes through the big hammer, the outside Hammerites and haunts below hear the blast. Ghost busted.
- After spending over an hour scrounging around this FM trying to find enough loot to satisfy the 96% loot objective, I gave up. That was far more scrounging that I would normally bother with.
Comments:
- Could not find enough loot. Went into non-ghost mode and took out the Hammerites and haunts and still could not find enough loot. Moved all the panels in the waddle passage in the crypts and couldn't find more loot. Tried entering the dates noted on the base of a statue but nothing changed.
- I could not get into the office down in the vault room although the door is frobbable. Never found a key for the door, it is unpickable, and didn't find a switch for it. Maybe that's the secret that I didn't find.
- Because I didn't find the secret, presumably the remainder of the loot is in that secret (if so, it's not a secret but instead it is a *requirement* if every player has to get there).
It's a small mission but is okay for practicing ghost techniques or for normal play. Not finding enough loot is very frustrating, more so than playing the FM.
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16. 6th Oct 2002, 02:32 #17
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Last Stand
FM: Last Stand
File: laststand.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success - with forced mission end)
Time: 1 hr 5 min
Loot: 2485 of 2990 (2400 required)
Pockets picked: 2 of 3
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0 (actually 1)
Damage dealt: 1 (only for KO, kill not included) Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0 (actually 1)
Secrets: 0 of 0
Comments:
- Had to nudge the apebeast at the beginning to the side since it was blocking the only door to continue.
- A switch (on a torch) on land is the "key" to opening a lock panel on the ship? No wonder it took so long to find out how to get the horn.
- The stats are definitely wrong. I blackjacked the captain and tossed him overboard to drown. The knockout stat should've been 1, not 0, and the damage dealt should've been more than 1 (for the blackjack) to account for the required kill.
- I had to lug a crate from the house, up the rope, and into the entrance to the jail area. I didn't have any more moss arrows; used them all up on the all-metal ship. Garrett cannot step or walk up 2- to 3-inch ridges in the ramped ground with ridges, so I had to use the crate to jump on to quiet my landing noise since I had to jump onto the ridges.
- I got all the way to the starting point but the "find exit" objective did not check off. I even got up to the "entrance hole" with the star field but that didn't help. I went to several areas (in non-ghost mode just to try them out), like the unpickable, unmantlable gate in front of the house, and smashing the windows in the library house (because there is no key to the unpickable metal doors) to get outside the designed area for the player to traverse. So I reloaded back to where I got back to the starting point and hit Ctrl-Alt-Shift-End to force the mission to end.
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17. 6th Oct 2002, 03:34 #18
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FM: Lort Lomat's Flute
File: lordlomat.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 19 min
Loot: 617 of 992 (500 required)
Pockets picked: 6 of 8
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0
Comments:
- Some guards seem to almost be proximity triggered. That or they have super sensitive hearing (i.e., they hear what you can't). Or, in some case, they appear to have 360-degree vision; I'll be behind them by 60 feet or more and they'll 1st alert when I get lit.
- Upstairs where there is a stationary gal is a purse worth 100. You can't get it because that end of the room is fully lit and watched constantly by the gal.
- Finding the flute was tough only because I didn't think to look on top of the cabinet, and jumping is a no-no since the guards will hear. The end of the flute sticks over and out from the top so you can see it when it lights up to be frobbed, or jump up on the small table by the armoir.
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18. 6th Oct 2002, 04:49 #19
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FM: Curiosity
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 1:15
Loot: 2364 of 3034(??)
Pockets picked: 5 of 7
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0
Vanguard posted a report about this mission here . I won't repeat the details he described, because his report is a good summary. I got exactly the same loot / pocket stats as Vanguard. The only difference is that in my case I avoided any 2nd level alerts, so I am declaring it a ghost success. I am pretty sure that we both found all loot that was possible to find (2364). I went back after the ghost, BJ'ed most of the AI, and looked quite carefully, including underwater, but I could find no more. There was a lot of normally frobbable stuff (like gold bottles and vases) that was not frobbable. That is probably the problem. The objective of 2800 seems to be bogus. And, as Vanguard said, it was satisfied by the first 100, which I am guessing was a quick fix by the author to a loot problem he did not want to deal with.
I agree with Vanguard that there was some interesting eye candy, but the mission seemed unfinished. Game play was a little too routine. You walk around and take some stuff. Some of the gadgets and scenes, however, were a lot of fun, and the author showed good inventiveness on that score.
I encountered only two ghosting problems. One was at the museum. At first the guard heard me approach the building on the grass outside, and he was alerted and yelling inside the building, with doors and windows shut. Quite unrealistic. To avoid this, I timed his patrol so I approached while he was at the other end of the building. After I got in, a little moss solved the problem. There is no proximity switch. I tailed him all the way to the telescope but found nothing up there.
The second problem was at the dock with the swordfish boat and a guy with a green tunic standing in a pirogue. I got past the green guy, in bright light, to grab the purse on the guard, but coming back I found it difficult to avoid being seen by the green guy. After about 20 tries I finally I did it with some moss and a nimble jump.
On the ship the guard by the fantail was a little goosy but no problem if you crawled along the rail and slid down.
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19. 6th Oct 2002, 09:16 #20
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Gheldorf's Towne House
FM: Gheldorf's Towne House
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 01:16:17
Loot - 2223/2223
Pockets Picked - 9/11
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 3/3
Comments - Just a nice straightforward ghosting mission. There were some areas that required some major CCCing and alot of quick creeping along marble, however.
I made the mistake of thinking there was only one way into the office; and that was from the library. There is a stationary guard standing infront of the office door in the library. I was trying to figure out how to get behind him since the library is well lit and I could not run around behind him. The library was full of thick bookcases and I noticed that I could probably climb on top of them. So I shot a rope arrow into the wall and then jumped onto one of the bookcases along the wall. From here I was in shadow and I could creep along top of the bookcases and drop down behind the stationary guard and then open the door to the office. When I got to the office, I discovered a red button at the bottom of one of the shelves which opened a secret door. Behind the secret door was a safe with a scroll I needed for my objective and some loot. But in this same room with the safe, I noticed a ladder leading up and it lead to Gheldorf's bedroom, which is far from the library. So really, I didn't need to use up all of that time trying to figure out how to get behind the stationary guard since there was an easier way around. This was the only unique incident I came across in this mission.
The only other problem I faced was trying to find loot, and my objectives required 2100 loot to be collected. Some hard to find loot included: a small ring on a windowsill in the main hall, a gold cup on a windowsill by the dining room, a statue on top of a bookcase, one loose coin by the mechanist statue, and a purse behind a shelf in the kitchen. This purse took the longest to find and I believe it is required because the purse is 250 loot. You have to flip a hard-to-see lever behind the fireplace in the kitchen to force a shelf to slide out, revealing the purse.
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20. 6th Oct 2002, 23:26 #21
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Collector's Greed
FM: Collector's Greed
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 01:08:34
Loot - 1410/1410
Pockets Picked - 2/4
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 4/4
Comments - Another straightforward ghosting mission. The only problems I came across was trying to get into the locked warehouse and also trying to achieve a perfect thief.
I never figured out how to get into the warehouse with the broken door except by stacking crates from the exterior and then dropping down inside. Maybe this was the way it had to be done, but it seemed a little difficult to figure out unless crate stacking is familiar to you. Crates were ubiquitous, so it didn't take much time to create a crate stack and then drop down inside and snatch the #3451 crate.
Trying to achieve a perfect thief was a little hard and it took some time to find all of the loot. I was fortunate enough to buy a vine arrow at the loadout screen; and that is exactly what I needed to get a purse from a window. Unless I stacked crates, I don't think I would have been able to get it, and there weren't any other rope/vine arrows found in the mission.
There are 3 gold plates and 2 gold cups in a sink in one of the kitchens, but a female servant stands pretty close and a few times I would alert her if I tried to lean and get the plates. So I just crept close enough and right clicked around the sink eventually picking up all plates and cups.
The last loot I needed to get was a crystal in this spider cave, accessed from the river. The cave had a few frobbable mushrooms and I couldn't get close enough to frob them. But I thought I could creep along the left wall and perhaps lean forward and grab the crystal without alerting one of the spiders that was close to the wall. To do this, I had to moss the floor so I could jump over the broken chair and table and then hug the wall. After very delicate slow creeping, I was able to lean forward and grab the crystal while being inches away from the spider. I now had all of the loot and the last thing I wanted to do was get all secrets and pockets.
The secrets were very hard for me to find. It took a blackjack run to find everything. The secrets: a switch behind some bushes on the exterior of the warehouse, a switch inside of a chimney in one of the houses, a switch at the bottom of the door frame in Berlad's bed room, and the last secret, shooting the last basketball on the shelf into the hoop. The last secret took me so long to find. I could tell that there was a secret door in the gym when I observed the cropped line on the wall. I ran all around the gym, clicking every where but I didn't find a switch or lever. I then thought of the numerous missions where you have to shoot a broadhead into a target and reveal a secret. With this in mind, I tried taking the basketballs and shooting them one by one into the hoop. The last basketball on the shelf opened up the secret panel on the wall, revealing water arrows and a flashbomb.
I did get all of the pockets even though the stat says I'm missing one. The missing pocket was the parchment scroll on the dead thief in the secret cave by the warehouse.
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21. 7th Oct 2002, 10:19 #22
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Gervasius' Archery Tournament
FM: Gervasius' Archery Tournament
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success (Chemical)
Time - 01:45:41
Loot - 3027/3027
Pockets Picked - 12/13
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 1/1
Comments - Wow...this mission took me a long time to complete because I was trying to find all of the loot and pockets. I admit I had to go on a blackjack run to find the rest of the loot. If I hadn't, I would probably still be playing right now.
I had to use an invis potion, but only to get 2 silver nuggets in this spider cave. The cave was too well lit and the spiders had a short patrol, so the only way to get the nuggets was to use an invis potion.
The only secret in the mission is a frobbable torch at the armor booth which opened up a secret panel in the ceiling. Inside of the ceiling was a long attic with about 7 patrolling spiders. The only reason to come up into the attic was to get the loot. But at times I thought I would bust a perfect thief. I was basically dancing like a madman around these spiders. Every spider had a different patrol route it seemed like. Some spiders patrolled in zig-zags and then stopped for a short while, and some spiders would stay idle for a long time. Along each wall of the attic was a line of footlockers. Some of the footlockers had loot, and some of them had junk, which really infuriated me because I had to wait for the spiders to patrol away and then drop the junk on the floor without alerting them. This area took me the longest because I had to get to the end of the attic and back and my only option was to jump from footlocker to footlocker and hopefully not make a loud jumping sound.
The next problem was trying to get some loot out of a chest in the big maze. There was a male servant standing right next to the chest and I needed to pick it. Whenever I tried picking it, the male servant would go on 2nd alert and flee. I was determined to achieve a perfect thief, so I decided to nudge the male servant away from the chest. This was harder than normal nudging because the servant pivoted in all directions... This area also took me a long time because I had to position myself on one side of him, and sometimes strafe around when he turns and then nudge him forward a bit. I saved almost after every successful nudge. Finally he was far enough away that I could pick the chest without alerting him.
Getting the golden skull was very easy. I just had to turn off the watchers from the workshop, douse all torches at the fountain, rope arrow into the side of the wall and jump onto the platform with the skull.
Finding the hedge cutter took some time. I found a narrow path in the maze that lead to a small slit in the previous Gervasius building. The slit lead to a ladder, which lead to getting on top of the maze walls. From here I just explored around and finally found the hedge cutter.
Finding the 2nd prize took a while because obviously, I had no idea where it was. In a remarkable discovery, I found a key in one of the dead ends of the maze. This dead end, however, contained a few tree beasts and some frobbable mushrooms. I had to descend from the maze wall into the dead end by using a rope arrow. I didn't know what the key was for until I remembered a locked door in the Gervasius building, so I ran all the way back through the maze and into the buildling and luckily the key opened this locked door. The locked door lead to a street and there were 3 wheelbarrels that were important. One had tons of little gray statues, another had little mechanist statues, and the other had a chest which held the 2nd prize I needed for my objective.
Another objective was to find the "Archery Village Key". After careful scrounging, I located the key in the Gervasius building beside a mechanist statue.
The main problem for me was finding all of the loot though. The hard-to-find loot included: a small ring at the end of the spider attic, a hard-to-see moneybox with a silver coin stack at one of the booths, a small gem ring on the floor in the archery area, a purse by a chair in Gervasius's bedroom, one loose coin between 2 chairs in the maze, and a silver nugget at a dead end of the maze.
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22. 8th Oct 2002, 01:41 #23
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Sammy Pays His Dues
FM: Sammy Pays His Dues
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 02:00:43
Loot - 3370/3370
Pockets Picked - 12/13
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - I recommend this mission to any ghoster; it was a good one. The AI dialogue was funny and original, and some of the AI pathing and movements were very creative. In one room, a female noble would patrol and stand idle at 3 different areas. But what really made it realistic was that the noble would sit down on a couch for a while, then stand and walk to the other side of the room. I've never seen an AI walk towards a couch and sit down. It looked strange, but it was very realistic.
There were a few problem areas in the mission, but nothing too difficult.
The first objective I tried to accomplish was to find a whistle that would open the door Sammy went through. The whistle was all the way at the top of the building in a tower with an idle guard. Along the way, I had switched a lever to "off" and had no idea what I did until later I found out it shut down a watcher positioned above the pagan doll. Also along the way, I spied a small gem ring entitled "Mary's Ring" by one of the pews in the church. Later on after reading a journal, my objectives changed and I needed to drop the ring on Clioritis' desk. The desk was located on the bottom floor of the library.
The first real problem was trying to get to a double-door guarded by 2 swordsmen. There was no way to sneak by them since the hall was well lit. I did notice, however, that there were beams above the hall which I thought I could get on top of. I had 1 rope arrow, and I believe I bought it from the loadout screen. I was able to scoot along the beams but at one point I needed to moss one of the beams so I could jump and shorten the time I would be in brightness. This worked and I was able to drop down behind the guards and then open the double doors. From here, I found a pagan doll in a chest which I needed to deliver to Marianne's room as an objective.
I had most of my objectives completed by now; I went through the secret door by blowing the whistle, watched 2 thieves kill Sammy, dropped the ring on Clioritis' desk, dropped the pagan doll on Marianne's desk, and all that remained was finding loot.
Oddly, I found most of the hard-to-see loot and I was only off by about 300 loot. I later found that I had missed an amulet by the skeleton hand in the catacombs, and an entirely missed room or "barracks" with 2 chests full of loot. There was no difficult loot to find, but the only thing to keep in mind was that alot of guards had purses. Sometimes I would sneak by guards and not examine their belts, but I'm always trying to get all pockets when I ghost, so this wasn't a problem.
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23. 8th Oct 2002, 19:11 #24
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Melian's Method
FM: Melian's Method
File: melian.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 27 minutes
Loot: 887 of 1147 (750 required)
Pockets picked: 12 of 14
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0
Comments:
- Inside the front door is a frobbable window to the office. It comes off and you end up carrying it instead of just opening the window, so you have to drop it somewhere to free up your hands. However, I could not see nor frob the key off the table past the window. Instead I went outside through the front door when the patrolling guard was away and frobbed the key right through the unfrobbable outside window. This eliminated trying to get into the office. The hall light outside this door cannot be turned off and the light switch inside the office is too far away from the door opening to reach without leaning in too far and then getting spotted by the AI that always watches the door.
- Whichever door you start picking for the upstairs bedroom is the one the gal inside will jump up and start watching on a 1st alert. The key is across from the 2nd door, so start lockpicking the 1st door (after the stairs), don't complete the pick, go to the 2nd door and pick it open, the gal is facing away and looking at the 1st door, and get the office key behind her. However, because you can frob the blue key from the office through the outside window, there's no reason to bother going upstairs (I don't recall finding any loot up there and you don't need the office key).
- Getting into the safe room via the gambling room was difficult. The gate door opens into you and blocks your route into the safe room. If you get too close to the AIs, especially because you'll get lit, they spot you and the ghost is busted. So I crept along the wall to get to the gate door, positioned myself at the gate door, and jumped onto the gaming table so I would be at the side and slightly behind both AIs. Didn't even get a 1st alert. I frobbed the gate door to open it and ran off the gaming table and into the foyer with even a 1st alert. Had to crouch when in the office to prevent being seen since I was lit up there. Used the same trick to get back out (by jumping onto the gaming table).
- The spookiest part of this FM was walking (okay, so I was crouching and waddling) amongst all the black guard that were sleeping and snoring in the room across from the gambling room. They wake up pretty easily but you can also easily not make any noise and waddle the aisle between their bunks to get to the scroll and chest. When not ghosting, when you blackjack one guard, two others usually wake up but they won't spot you in the dark and head off to do their rounds. You can lift their purses and weapons without waking them.
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24. 9th Oct 2002, 08:11 #25
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Red Ridge
FM: Red Ridge
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 00:21:10
Loot - 986/986
Pockets Picked - 0/1
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - This was a small 64x64 mission. Nothing gave me too much trouble. I almost died at the beginning of the mission though. After dropping down on a few cliffs, there was a bridge that would collapse into lava if you walk on it. I didn't expect this at all, but I was able to run and jump into the mouth of the stone face before the bridge fell into the lava.
There was one hallway with a patrolling apebeast and I thought he would present a problem. He patrolled both ends of this hallway and I thought I wouldn't be able to get around him. But as he patrolled back and forth, I noticed the way he turned might give me a chance to perhaps slip around him after he hits his patrol point. I gave it a try and in one attempt I was successful and was able to slide around him as he turned.
I had to nudge 2 AI in this mission. I had to nudge an idle apebeast so I could get by him and grab a few gold coin stacks. I also had to nudge an idle pagan forward a bit so I could get a key under the table infront of him.
I was a little stumped on how to get the explorers journal at first. The journal was located in a niche in a wall, a few inches below the ceiling, and thus impossible to get without a rope arrow. I tried shooting a broadhead into the molten rock ceiling to test if it was okay, but the arrow vanished and made no sound when it hit the surface. I play with my gamma on low so I didn't see that there was a small wooden block embedded into the ceiling. Later on I noticed this, and was able to shoot a rope arrow into it and then get to the niche with the journal.
Everything else was straightforward, and finding loot took no effort at all.