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Thief 2 - Saving Caroline My
first mission in the Word Challenge Contest. Haven’t played event missions
since the 10th Anniversary Contest back in 2008. The first part in
the mansion looks nice, but you can tell the author got rushed towards the
end. The forest textures are a bit strange, but I guess it makes sense if
it’s a little girl’s creation. The mission seemed like a straight forward
ghost, until a major obstacle surprised me towards the end. I
was to locate the missing daughter of a friend of Basso’s. Apparently, the
curator of the National Hatterson Museum was involved, so I was to poke
around there. I needed to escape with the girl and steal 500 in gold along
the way. Nothing more to it. Couldn’t
take any of the loot in the museum foyer without dousing one of the lamps.
The guards gave first alerts also when putting it out. Neither is allowed for
Supreme, so this was all skipped for that mode. For regular Ghost I could
take it all without any further alerts (left image below). The tiara was the
most difficult one, due to the patrolling swordsman. If dousing the
northernmost lamp, the best spot from where to reach it was the northwest
corner of the statue. I had to lean and jump, then grab it midair. The rest
of the museum was a breeze. Had to be a little careful in the curator’s
office not to get caught by the archer through the glass door.
Nothing
much to report from the magical forest. The only place of difficulty was
passing the treebeast by the locked cabin (right image above). The light
intensity seemed to change in that area as well. I swear first time there it
was pitch black, then when I returned after stealing the red key, my light
gem was suddenly yellow. Perhaps the will-o’-the-wisps had something to do with
it, I’m not sure. Didn’t
have any trouble until I found the little girl. She was held in a cage with
some sort of magical seal around it. To break it, I had to frob a nearby
plant. This also killed the big spider guarding the cage, although it was
totally out of my control and didn’t count as damage in the stats. Killing
the spider before touching the plant did nothing to the cage, so I deduced
the spider’s death to be a side effect of breaking the seal. Nevertheless,
rule #2 of the regular Ghost rules is pretty clear: “no knockouts or kills of any kind are allowed, whether or not they
show up in the final stats”; the only exception being if the kill is
explicitly pointed to in the objectives, which of course was not the case here. So there I
was…busted.
As
always, I was still adamant not to incur further busts. My ultimate goal when
playing is to reduce the busts to an absolute minimum, not necessarily to
achieve a Ghost success. Sometimes the latter is out of my hands, as was the
case here. My
last challenge came by the mother’s cabin. Sneaking past the guards was easy
enough, but the spiders in the tunnel beyond were worse. Three critters were
positioned along the way towards the exit in the south. All of them were
facing the way of the exit, so they didn’t see me until I tried to pass. The
entire hall was lit, and there was no way to darken it. This would be another
Supreme bust for sure, but I wanted to avoid the regular Ghost bust if I
could. My thoughts went to crate nudging, a maneuver used with great success
in Thief Gold’s ‘The Lost City’. But I couldn’t remember seeing any frobbable
crates this side of the museum. Deciding to try something new, I brought
along the girl’s mother’s corpse, to see if it could serve a similar purpose.
Indeed it could!! Though a bit slower and somewhat more difficult to drop
accurately, it moved the first spider up the hall, half a foot or so at a
time (right image above). After about 10 minutes, it had passed the first
corner and approached the second spider (left image below). If pushed into
either wall, they would bounce to the opposite side of the hall. If pushed
into each other, one of them usually bounced back 3-4 feet, highly
undesirable. It was crucial to keep them separated at all times. A good
half-an-hour later, they met up with the last spider closer to the exit. This
final portion took about 20 more minutes, as maneuvering them next to each
other didn’t give me much room to work with. Eventually I got it and they all
entered the garden (right image below). It was a lot of work for very little,
but I was happy to avoid the additional bust. I did however get one more
first alert from each of them, probably from the corpse dropping. Put the body
back in the cabin and closed the tunnel exit on my way out.
The
rest was a breeze. Replaced the red key and relocked the cave entrance on my
way back to the museum. Statistics: Time: 1:41:38 Loot: 1557 out of 1557 (Supreme: 982) Pickpockets: 1 out of 9 Secrets: None Locks Picked: 3 Damage Dealt: 0 Damage Taken: 0 Consumables: 1 water arrow (Perfect Thief only) Ghost: Failed! Perfect Thief: Failed! Supreme Thief: Failed! Perfect Supreme Thief: Failed! Notes: -
Had to skip the four pieces of loot (575) in the museum
foyer for Supreme. At least one lamp had to be doused to get them for regular
Ghost. -
The spider by the little girl’s cage died as a result
of breaking the magical seal. Since it was my doing, and not explicitly
allowed by any of the objectives, I counted it as a Ghost bust. This ended up
being the only bust for the regular Ghost mode. -
Had to use the mother’s corpse to nudge the three
spiders out of the caves. A Supreme bust, but allowed as a last resort for
regular Ghost. Received one first alert from each of the spiders doing this. |
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