jtr7 on 21/7/2007 at 08:58

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The Servants:
In Eavesdropping, there's a place where Servants are being made, guarded by a Servant (maybe not in Normal?). Depending on random factors, you may only see masks and corpses, or you may see a Masked Servant in a tank, or something in between. And then there is the sound they make that no other AI's make.

In Angelwatch, we see more of them, and hear them whimpering and speaking with a shiver. They speak with two voices at once, and they show no aggression.



This comes up from time to time and I thought I'd address it. There's no reason to believe the cultivator or rust-gas container sits behind the mask. These are freshly undead people, modified by a maniac who hates organic material, especially if it's living tissue. There's no room for a rust-gas container behind the mask, let alone a cultivator, nor both together. The Servants talk, whimper, and cry. I think it's more likely that the rust-gas container and cultivator are fitted into the chest or torso, replacing the heart and/or stomach. Plenty of room in there without interfering with the lungs. Personally, I'd like to know the dev's thinking behind the cultivator as it seems the least necessary.

Dewdrop:
If I recall, you have to have the patched version, play on Expert, there has to be two Mechanists in your proximity at once, and I think you have to have Dewdrop selected in your inventory. As far as I know, those're the requirements.

Cargo Storage 5 Key:
That's happened enough times that it's mentioned in walkthroughs. I was fortunate enough to find it through exploration of the Sub-Aquatic outposts.

Cavador:
His unique appearance didn't tip you off? Or the first conversation?

Casing the Joint & Masks:
Indeed, the levels that suffered the most for lack of time to do them justice and from being back to back.

Overall, your general impressions are echoed by many. It was my first foray into the Thief Universe, so I'm less biased against it.

poison_the_well on 21/7/2007 at 17:24

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from what i heard about dewdrop you have to be close to death and have dewdrop at the ready for that level only?

ofcourse it never worked for me,also i do not like the thief 2 patch,gives me nothing but problems=keeps asking for disk for game once installed

Rekrul on 22/7/2007 at 03:03

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When I played it, you see corpses, masks (which look like the same faces that the robots have) and a servant in each tank. However, you only see them from the shoulders up, and at the time I thought humans were being turned into the robots, so I figured it was all part of the process to transform them. I noticed the voices, but it still didn't dawn on me.



I saw two of them in Angelwatch, an adult and a slightly smaller one, however I thought that they were just wearing some kind of strange uniform. After all, Karras wears pretty much the same thing except for his face.



I have the patched version, I'm playing on expert, but I only had one Mechanist attacking me and Dewdrop wasn't selected.



I guess I should pay more attention to the conversations, but by the time I actually saw him, I'd pretty much forgotten the first one. I thought he looked strange, but then so did the servant following him. Here again is another inconsistancy; I couldn't black-jack that servant, it just made a clang, but I can black-jack every other one. Likewise, I figured that the Mechanists who had been turned into slaves/servants would be immune also, but they all went down with a thump.



To be honest, I hadn't noticed the numbers on the map. Would have saved me a lot of time. In Thief, I pretty much ignored the maps since they were mostly useless anyway. I usually prefer to more or less memorize my way through a level. Most of the time this works fairly well, although I got lost several times in the Bank, Shoalsgate and Kidnap. By then, I was using the maps, although I often had trouble with them, since it just lights up the general area not your exact position.



I know what you mean. They could have solved that by adding an extra layer of security. For example, they could have had bars in front of each box, which can only be opened by entering the correct code into the machine in another room. You would then need to know the box number, and then look up the code so that you could open the bars and use the key. You could still use trial and error, but it would have been a lot more time consuming.



I suppose now that I've finished the game, the evidence is pretty clear, but it wasn't while playing it. I heard the strange voices, but it didn't register that they were coming from the servant.



The most confusing map in T1 for me was Escape. When I replayed that level recently, I wandered around for hours looking for the third treehouse. Actually, I found the first two, read one of the books and wondered why the mission didn't end. It had been so so long since I first played it, that I didn't remember that there were three. Thieves Guild was large and sprawling, but I could usually find my way around without too much trouble. The Sword, The Haunted Cathedral, etc, were somewhat confusing, but I'd usually stumble across where I wanted to go after a little bit of wandering.



If I'm not mistaken, once you use the cuckoo to open the secret passage, there are only two guards on the top floor. One is in a guard post right near the top end of the passage (it's right above the one near the library) and the other is patroling the main room, where the poison gas controls are in Masks.

If I recall correctly, I put out the torch by the guard post, snuck through a semi-secret passage right in front of him, then into the main hall. There are a lot of shadows and the room is pretty big, so you can easily hide on one side while he's on the other. I went up the steps to the little greenhouse, then out to a wooden balcony (there's a camera and turret out there), then I snuck over to the other side of the room and went in the two offices. Then I noticed the beams in the ceiling. I used a vine arrow from the shadows and you can go all the way down each of the halls, and into all three exhibition rooms on each side. I don't think there was anything worth picking up, although the masks show up, usually impaled on the center display post. They don't register as loot, or as a mission objective. Actually, it's a lot easier than in Masks, where there are guards and combat bots patroling each hallway.

Something strange I noticed; In the large, main hall, or any of the exhibition rooms, Garrett will happily mantle up onto the beams if you climb a vine arrow into them. Out in the hallways, it doesn't matter where you shoot it, Garrett just jumps off when you press the mantle button. Maybe there's not enough room, but once you're on the beam, you can practically stand up. I had the same trouble in the astronomer's house in Party. Finally I realized that I could just shoot it into the ceiling and jump onto the beam.



Me too. I had the sound turned up and the voices got so loud they were deafening, so I kept spinning around expecting to be attacked.



Except for the extra combat bots that come out if you let the cameras see you, I destroyed every robot in the level. I destroyed a few of the combat bots with the black-jack. Sometimes I'd be able to hit it from behind quickly enough that it never had time to recover. Other times, I'd hit it a couple of times and then be staring it in the face. Even so, on a few occasions, I was able to keep hitting it fast enough to keep it from firing. It didn't seem to work reliably though. I was once able to do that to a spider bot also, but it didn't work the next time I tried it. The spiders were easy though; just get them to follow you back to an elevator, ride it up, get off, then send it back down. 90% of the time they'd be under it and get squished. Then you have to break them apart so that you can move the boiler and get ready for the next one.

In bay D with the two different machines and the storage room, I picked the lock to the storage room, then alerted as many combat bots as possible. I got killed a couple times before I did it perfectly, but about four of them got jammed up in the doorway and blew themselves up. They see you and don't realize that their cannon arm is in front of the door casing, so the shot damages them when they fire and when it explodes, if it's near enough. I also manufactured some mines and used them to destroy the combat bots. My only regret is that if you use a water arrow to disable one and then later smash it, it doesn't count as being destroyed. It will still be listed as disabled on the stats.

BTW, I guess we can add magnetic levitation to the list of things Karras invented. In the room with the two large tanks, one of which is open at the top and full of water, there's an elevator that's not attached to anything. You press the switch and the platform just rises up through thin air to a hole in the middle of a platform. The elevator to the control platform in bay D is like that also, but you don't notice so much since it's much shorter and most people will only lower it once due to there not being any controls at the bottom (you need to use an arrow to hit the button, or get to the platform via the back way.



I didn't use them against humans, since it felt like cheating to kill people this way, but I had fun using them against the combat bots. One direct hit will destroy a bot, however if they detect the frogs before they explode, they will back away and try to shoot them. They're pretty good shots, but not very bright. They'll happily fire in small, enclosed spaces, or even in the middle of a group of bots, blowing themselves and their friends up in the process. :)

I even tried making sunburst explosives according to the walkthroughs and using them on the bots in the computer room, but even tossing 3-4 of them on the floor and setting them off usually didn't destroy all of them. Plus, they usually saw me when I went to use a fire arrow or flare, and started shooting at me. Frogbeast eggs can be thrown from the shadows and work almost as well. One frogbeat egg will destroy one of the cameras in Casing/Masks. The guards don't even notice it either, as long as they're not close enough to hear the explosion.




In Framed, if you throw a scouting orb over the wall to your left at your starting position, you will see a male and female zombie. Some sources say that they're dancing, but for me, they were just standing there. At least until I climbed over the wall and whacked them with my sword. :)

In Life of the Party, you come to a round tower with an elevator in the middle. If you go up to the top level, or enter the tower there through the window, there's a book on the table against the wall. Read it and when you turn around, a male and female zombie will have appeared. They seem to just stand there unless you get too close, then they start behaving like normal zombies.

In Trace the Courier, there are zombies in some (most?) of the crypts of the cemetary. I'm pretty sure that there's a female zombie in one of them. I think it's the crypt in the blocked off portion, which you can only reach by running into a nearby building before the door closes, or by using crates/objects to climb over the wall. I didn't know about the door, so I used crates. It's a pain though, the wall is too narrow to mantle, so you have to jump over it. There are also two golden goblets, so it's worth it to go there just to get the loot, if not to visit the zombie. As I recall, she's sleeping anyway and you can get the goblets without waking her up.

I wouldn't want a whole game full of zombies, but I liked their inclusion in Thief. My first game was Thief Gold, where it's possible to reliably put the zombies to sleep with a couple overhead sword chops. In The Dark Project, you couldn't reliably knock out a zombie, they usually just got back up about 99% of the time. Occasionally they'd stay down, but it was usually more trouble than it was worth. For the record, the zombies in T2 act like the ones in TG; two overhead chops will put them to sleep and they'll stay down unless you disturb them.



I haven't played T3. My video card won't support it and I haven't yet felt the need to upgrade.

Anyway, the female zombies in T2 sound more like they should be in a bathroom stall, rather than chasing you around.

Rekrul on 22/7/2007 at 18:32

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I read that too, but I still never put it together. As soon as I saw a servant, I usually black-jacked them to keep them from alerting anyone and in the few seconds before they went down, it sounded to me like they were laughing.



I'll have to take a closer look at them.



In Soulforge, all of the mechanists I saw had the same heads as the servants. They're carrying maces, but they have the same voices as the servants and they make the same sounds when you knock them out.



When I first started playing Thief, I skipped over Normal completely because I didn't like the fact that the mission just ends when you pick up whatever you need to. So I started with Hard, but after playing Bonehoard for the first time, I looked at a walkthrough to see what I'd missed and it mentioned that there was a whole section that was inaccessable unless you're playing on Expert. At that point I restarted the game and played every level on Expert. In T2, I started with Expert right away.



I was the opposite. The first time I played it (TG) I didn't have much trouble with it, except for missing some real obvious loot. When I played TDP for the first time, I found myself going in circles. Some parts were much easier though, like the room to extend the bridge. In TDP, it's an empty room. In TG there are mages guarding the machine.



I always turn on the lights and kill/destroy everything in the level. A single arrow to an unaware crayman will kill them, the same for the spiders. For the burricks and the spider near the Keeper's Grotto, I just lure them to the zombies and let them do the dirty work, then I get all the zombies to follow me and flashbomb them for a nice group explosion. :) If I have to kill the burricks myself, I try to sneak up on them so that a single backstab will finish them off. Otherwise, I just get up close and keep slashing them from the side or back until they die. This works fine with just one, not so good with two or more.



Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't recall any guards in the hallways in Casing, just at the guard post and the main room. In fact I was surprised that there weren't more guards there. Of course once you get onto the overhead beams, you can explore almost everywhere without being seen.



Yup. The first time I did it was in the room with the single bot guarding the brick, house-like structure. There's a ladder in the end of the corridor that leads to the upper level catwalk. From there you can jump on the roof of the structure and there's a square opening where you can drop down inside. This usually alerts the bot, but since the door is locked, it can't do anything. One time I managed to get inside without making any noise, then picked the lock, opened the door and was staring at the bot's back. I quicksaved (which I do often), pulled out the black-jack and started whacking it. After a bunch of hits, it slumped forward.

Most of the time though, I'd hit one of them 2-3 times and it would suddenly turn around. At this point, I'd keep hitting it, but it was a toss-up whether I'd manage to kill it, or it would get a shot off. If it managed to fire, I'd be dead as a single close shot will kill you instantly. Sometimes they would even back away as I was hitting them.



I used them in that room where there are the saw blades going up and down and the big crusher. I tried to lure the bots under the crusher with a noisemaker, but they wouldn't step up under it. I did manage to lure some of them under one of the elevators, but that ended up backfiring on me. It crushed them, but then the elevator went down through the bot and got stuck in the down position, leaving me stranded on the upper platform with no way to get down.



It's hard to use them on the bots out in the open since they back away and shoot the frogs. Small areas are much better. When you get 4-5 of the bots jammed in between the computer consoles in the computer room, there's not much room for them to do anything. :)



One of the zombies in the necromancer's spire is female. Just go there, read the book, then blow up the male zombie with a fire arrow and you can have your way with the female one. ;)



If there aren't a lot of them, I usually like to destroy them just so that they don't end up getting me cornered. When I played Return to the Cathedral in TDP, it was much harder to find all the items Murus wanted because I couldn't put the zombies to sleep and I didn't have enough supplies to destroy them all.



I still have Windows 98SE. There's a small hack that lets Thief 3 run under 98.



I'll play it eventually, but I know that things like the load zones are going to drive me nuts. I've played the demo at a friend's house and I got annoyed at the stupid footprints on the ground in the tutorial showing you where to go.

Maybe eating raw flesh gives them digestion problems? :p