-Terra- on 13/1/2019 at 12:51
Thanks for the review and playing. :) It was not a joke, because my goal for this FM and for the 20 Year Event was to put all thief 1 OMs in one FM... i have remove many Areas like Constatine Castle or Lost City and the Underground Thief Clan, but my time was not enough to make this possible. There was also some Problems in Real Life with my Wife and other stuff, it is not a excuse but i have give my best, in the end it is a simple Thief 1 FM and i am happy that i have finish this one, its not a masterpiece or something but it was fun to make it, thanks for all guys who playing this FM. :thumb:
Now i can back to work on my Thief 2 stuff. :joke:
Galaer on 21/1/2019 at 18:04
This is my favorite mission in the contest. I really like that mission is divided between few areas, so it's hard to get lost. Map is also great. There is many tools: 11 Flashbombs, 26 Water Arrows, 23 Moss Arrows. That's a lot. For Ultimate Burglary this mission is quite easy. Unless you ghost it. Then it becomes really challenging. It took me 2 hours 38 min and I got 8601 loot. Few times I skipped the guard during his turn around. Twice I nudged 2 NPC (but this is avoidable). Also at the end of the mission I had only 5 Water Arrows. And the most important thing - I registered 1 hard bust.
First street area is quite easy. Central street area has door on the roof where I need to be fast and time myself with archer patrolling on the wall. So I mantled onto statue, then on the platform, turn around and jump onto roof and quickly hide in shadow.
Bafford Manor is first test. Every corridor is patrolled by a guard, there is very little shadow or none. Few times I was forced to hide behind obstacles, because I was in full light. Another safe spots are rooms where NPC living there face wall opposite to door. I needed to douse a torch in Fire Elemental room and 2 torches in the throne room.
Street leading to Catacombs has a guard standing in front of door, so I was forced to skip this house and the house next to it. Catacombs are pretty easy to ghost, but before that you need to deal with burrick. The intended solution is to KO or backstab him. But when ghosting you can't do that. This is the first instance of nudging. But nudging is really long process, so after 5 min I abandoned it and decided to search for another way in. And I found it. In area with opera singer I mantled onto a statue, then jumped and mantle onto red roof, then mantle on higher red roof, mantle onto chimney and after that jumped onto steep roof. I climbed past it and turn left onto another part of the same steep roof. I went along the roof to the Catacombs walls. This was my entery and exit from Catacombs.
Hammerite Cathedral is like Bafford Manor, but guards here patrol corridors a little randomly. There is second instance of nudging - in the library to get candlestick. Completely avoidable if you douse the torches. And there is a bust. 1 Hammerite standing in front of room with a key. I doused torches and tried to nudge him, but whenever I get close to him, he gets immediatelly alerted. So I was forced to KO him. Also I doused a lot of torches in the cathedral and opened all necessary door (by the way all silver double door started to vanish when fully opened, so I needed to be extra careful to not vanish them). I could do all the switches if it was 5 min deadline. But I believe it's half of this time. In the end I succeded, get an Eye, reswitched all switches and closed all door.
Street leading to Ramirez Mansion is a case of quietly jumping out ladder fences, quietly descending into water on the ladder and skipping 1 servant during his turning around.
Originally I made getting Eye the last. But for ghosting I has decided to go with Ramirez Mansion for sole reason - the entrance. There is no shadow and there is 1 archer on second floor looking at the entrance, never changing direction of viewing. You try to cross the area and he will spot you. But that's not all, there is a guard patrolling a corridor under an archer that we need to take and there is no shadow at all. And that's still not enough, there is one more guard patrolling nearby corridor. So you need to somehow not second alert an archer and somehow time both guards. That's really tough, but doable. And because it's so hard to past these 3 guards, I didn't want to try to pass all of them in another direction. So what I did was: wait for patrolling guard to turn around, wait few second, then run and jump and after that immediatelly crouch and go forward. You should get only first alert from archer. Hide behind left bookcase and wait for guard to pass you. Then you just need to get past only 1 guard and hide in the shadow in the corner.
Damn, that was really tough mission to ghost.
MaryO on 6/2/2019 at 13:27
Though I agree that the interiors were a bit repetitive, the exteriors were finely designed, and I really enjoyed the mission. It reminded me why I fell in love with Thief. Great job! :thumb:
smithpd on 11/2/2019 at 01:29
So far I am ghosting it and finding it a challenge in places. The timing is designed to be tricky in a lot of places. I had to BJ a burrick near the entrance to the Quintus building, busting the ghost, but I am continuing on. Had to nudge a couple of guards to get them away from doorways. That is a bit fround on as an exploit, but OK if necessary. There is no question that BJ mode would be easy.
I don't know how much time I will have for the eye switches or whether that can be ghosted within the time frame. We will see.
klatremus on 11/2/2019 at 05:26
Very interesting comments there Peter! I played this one but haven't ghosted it yet. However, I imagine there must be some difficult areas with tight patrols. I thought that burrick would be tough too. Can you nudge it? Or can you get over the walls some other way?
smithpd on 23/2/2019 at 19:26
To answer your question, katremus, much belatedly I am afraid, I did not take the time to go back and find another method with the burrick. Also, I ended up KO'ing the priest in the church who overlooked one of the switches. There I got frustrated with difficult lighting and was afraid I would waste all of my water arrows. I imagine you will find a way around both of these. I might have, too, if I had wanted to replay it. I had too much competition with RL.
DirkBogan on 2/3/2019 at 08:56
I am surprised this submission received such a relatively low score. So far as I can tell, many of the issues with this FM are actually an attempted emulation of the original game -- symmetrical and rectangular interiors (nothing here is more basic than Ramirez's Mansion), lack of verticality, simple guard patrols etc. (remember the Hammerites in Cragscleft who would turn to face the wall at their guardposts?). I had ninety minutes of back-to-basics Thief fun in this mission. Definitely worth the time!
Cheela on 2/8/2019 at 18:12
Hi, could somebody tell me, how could i gain a rope arrow in this mission?
I found a big barrel which is frobbable so i can use it at many places, but not enough to reach some higher places.
Thanks in advance.
I loved this mission :thumb: a little Bafford, a little Ramirez, a little hammerite feeling , and a little world of deads, combined into one. Nice :)
Galaer on 2/8/2019 at 18:53
Quote Posted by Cheela
Hi, could somebody tell me, how could i gain a rope arrow in this mission?
You can't. There is no rope arrow in this mission.
zajazd on 20/8/2023 at 10:30
I did everything but the Eye - I hate that kind of puzzle, and with 5 switches? that is nuts :p