Florian on 30/1/2014 at 04:23

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Thank you again - I was indeed missing the rat - now I have won the mission. I even found 99% loot (only 50 gold are missing wherever those are) :)

Renault on 17/11/2015 at 18:22

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Here's a mirror for Abandoned Kingdom (English):

(http://www.southquarter.com/downloads/2012/Abandoned_v1.0-En_De.7z)

gnartsch on 18/11/2015 at 17:49

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AWESOME ! :thumb:
This mission really deserved finally being made available to everyone.
I spent weeks virtually riddeling myself through the polish version.

<Username> on 19/2/2023 at 21:38

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When I started playing Abandoned Kingdom, there were less than 20 posts about it on TTLG and only a single vote on Thief Guild. Few people seemed to have played it.

The mission is surprisingly ambitious and memorable. You get to explore five beautifully constructed areas: a town district, a more upper-class one, an area at the coast that was mostly destroyed by a landslide, a sprawling underground maze of sewers and catacombs, and finally, a surreal otherworld. All of these five areas have vertical climbing and hidden areas to discover. The mission objectives are puzzled-based, challenging, and rewarding. There is also forced ghosting, but the availability of alternate routes in the exteriors and interiors usually makes it easy to bypass guards.

Abandoned Kingdom has tremendous potential. At the same time, it lacks some refinement. Briefings, objectives, and journals often were not clear to me. For long stretches of my playtime, I was not sure what I was supposed to do. I tried to complete the mission without hints, but in the end, I had to consult fortuni's excellent walkthrough several times. Only people with extraordinary patience in searching for tiny objects and deciphering obtuse objective will ever be able to complete the mission on their own.

I felt the loot goal of 90% on Expert was tough. Some of the loot is difficult to find. In some cases, it is barely visible even when you are looking directly at it. 60% on Hard should be doable for most players.

Stats:
* Expert difficulty
* 302 minutes
* 92% loot
* 25 locks picked
* 7 hints needed
Hints needed:
* Could not find the rat. It is on the floor of a random location, practically invisible against the brown floor texture, and only gives off loot glint every couple of seconds. I walked by it several times but could not see it.
* Could not find the piece of paper. I did not happen to explore this particular chimney.
* Could not find the seeds/bush/plant. I walked by it several times in the Canals. It looked just any other decorative object.
* I did not enjoy manually deciphering the books in the library and instead looked up the solution in the walkthrough.
* Could not find the quest note about the rat again when I needed it. Got tired of searching and looked up its location in the walkthrough.
* Could not find the quest note about the key again when I needed it. Got tired of searching and looked up its location in the walkthrough.
* Found only 83% loot and 2 out of 3 special loot items without hints. I used fortuni's walkthrough to find five additional pieces of loot, including the silver bowl (special loot item).
Elements I liked:
* All five areas felt intricately designed and were fun to explore. I was especially fond of the area destroyed by the landslide and the otherworldly realm at the end.
* I did enjoy the focus on puzzles and quest items in this mission, despite my gripes about the clarity of the mission objectives.
* If I remember correctly, this is the first T3 fan mission in which you start with climbing gloves as part of your gear. It took my about 30 minutes until I realized I had them. Being able to vertically climb nearly eerywhere and finding these little nooks and crannies was awesome!
* The bareness and low texture quality of some areas gave them a low-fi charm. Somehow it worked in favor of the mission. It felt like I was playing a T1 mission from the early 2000s, and I mean that in a good way.
* The mission makes effective use of ambient music and sounds.
* After you read about hidden objects and secrets, your ingame notes get amended with a shortened version of what you just read. Too few fan missions make use of this T3 feature.
Elements that could be improved:
* The mission objectives were not clear to me for long stretches of my playtime. I felt confused and unsure what to do. For example, I was initially stumped at "I will try to track down the spells set free from the book".
* Some of the loot and quest items you have to find are hard to see. For example, I had the rat dead center on my screen, and it was still practically invisible. It is only visible every couple of seconds when the loot glint appears. If you don't look at it in the right moment, you will not be able to see it.
* Deciphering all the books in the Keeper library was not fun to me.
* The textures and the skybox look blurry and pixelated.
* The mission is not properly lit. It looks off.
* The frame rate in The Realm is so low it was hard to move around. After a few minutes, I started to feel a bit sick. I did not have problems with nausea in Thief before.
* Savegames are labeled with the word "Abandoned" and a number from 1 to 5, depending on which of the five ares you are in. It would have been better if the label corresponded to the name of the area, like "The Stables, "The Arcades", and so on.
* In The Stables, I found plates that do not make any sound when dropped.
* In Keeper library in the Landslide Area, one can easily get stuck in the space between the elevator and the floor..
* It is possible to pick up loot through the walls of chests. This is a common issue in T3 fan missions.