Z on 8/8/2003 at 12:33
I did it. VERY hard, but possible. Swordsmanship, rather than stealth, is the key here. Some may argue that that goes against the core concept of Thief, but it doesn't really bother me as long as it's only a few isolated and comparatively obscure missions.
Z
jbd on 8/8/2003 at 21:26
You can use more sneakiness than you might expect (you don't have to do a flat out fight until the third round, for example) but I really should be getting to the walkthrough to explain it all.
nchw68 on 9/8/2003 at 00:30
No cheating here either. I just ran/jumped backwards in a circle while swinging the sword during the last big battle and when someone went down I jumped in the water and quicksaved. The mages were actually pretty easy. Just try to put the one you're attacking between yourself and the others.
I never got into the room with the female servant and burrick. Is it possible?
smithpd on 17/6/2006 at 18:31
From another thread:
Quote Posted by Math You
Without a doubt it [the hardest / most annoying mission] has to be the Killing Of Timer by JIS. Now theres NO WAY anyone can beat this. What was he thinking. I remember having to kill at least 30 people. He only gives you (I think) 2 healing potions.
I did beat it by modifying the stack count of healing potions to 100 and ended up using 61! Example, At one point I was fighting 4 ghost mages each shooting 3 skulls at me for a total of 12, and on top of that it takes 6! overhead strikes to kill just one ghost for a total of 24.
Just checked my quicksave
Damage Dealt 861 Taken 238 Healing Taken 244 Killed 34
Im pretty confident no one can beat this without cheating. Unless your a god.
Well, I guess I am elevated to god status, but I don't feel like it. I am the same person, but with a better watch.:) (Greg Raymer, winner of the 2004 World Series of Poker).
I saw a reference to this recently and realized I had not played it. As a JIS fan, that is inexcusable, so I gave it a go.
Interesting mission, but difficult and hard work. I was thinking that, like all JIS missions, there must be some small tricks that makes the impossible easy. I found quite a few such tricks, but in lots of cases it was just a lot of quick saving and reloads. I am not a very good sword fighter, but I guess this proves I am not the worst.;) Anyway, here is the way I did it.
I realized early on that it is bad strategy to take damage and hope for better luck later on. It just gets harder, so if you can't take it early on there is no way to compete it. The strategy I followed was to accumulate health potions (four total) and never use them until the end, if it became necessary. It did. Same applies to weapons and other power ups like flash bombs. I saved them until I was desperate and did not use them just because it was convenient.
Early in the game, there are three hammerites in an area with windows. The trick here is:[SPOILER]If you hop onto the window sill of the plain glass window (it is special), the AI stop moving and go into a standing threat mode. If you entice one to chase you close to that window, then you can just stand in the window sill and hack him down. Nice![/SPOILER]A little later you find yourself facing three mages in three corners of a room, with you in the fourth. I tried and failed many times to beat this one. I did not have enough flash bombs, and I could never get the first one without taking lots of damage from the other two.[SPOILER]So this room is the only place I used the trick of using a health potion to prop open a door. This allowed me to run past the mage by the entrance and get him from behind. I could handle the other two. This approach took no flash bombs, so I could save them until later to fight some haunts.[/SPOILER]The place with two thieves and a metal floor with indentations gave me a little trouble.[SPOILER]Here for the first time I learned how to circle going backwards. Simple enough -- just use the mouse to steer, but I had never had to do it before. The thieves seemed to slow down on the indentations. That, plus the circling and quick saves, did it.[/SPOILER]The area with three rat men was worked like this:[SPOILER]Sneak around and backstab the right one. The center one chases you. Run around to a shadow where the left one can't see you, and kill the center one mano a mano. Then sneak around and back stab the one on the left.[/SPOILER]The place with the four apparitions that Math You was complaining about (see quote above) was one of the easiest for me. The trick:[SPOILER]It is easy to sneak around the entire periphery of the room without being seen. Lure the apparitions one at a time to behind a pillar in a corner. There you can slash away and kill it without the others seeing you.[/SPOILER]The grand fight, in the place with the pool and several waves of AI, proved the most difficult to me. Someone desribed a way to circle backwards jumping. I could never get that going well enough to avoid being killed. My lame brained method:[SPOILER]Mantle out of the pool, run up the stairs and into the arena, circle around, and get them all to chase me. Jump in the pool. Now all AI are on one side of the pool. I go to the other side and mantle out. They chase me. I get one swipe at the lead man and quickly jump back in the pool. I also used 4 of the 6 fire arrows I got in the apparition's room. This took a
long time and lots of save / reloads but it got the job done.[/SPOILER]One interesting thing about this sequence is that when dancing around the pool the AI have a tendency to [SPOILER]fall in and drown. This works great, except that you cannot do it on the last one in a series, or the next series does not begin. So you need to really kill the last one standing. I got rid of 4-5 AI who drowned themselves, hence the lower than average kill count in my stats.[/SPOILER]My final stats:
Time: 1:43:52 (the pool area took a lot of time)
Loot: 100/100
Damage dealt: 743
Damage taken: 11 (at the pool)
Healing taken: 8 (2 of 4 potions)
Backstabs: 8
Others killed: 29
(4-5 drowned themselves)To those who beat it in 20 minutes, I say, bravo! You are better fighters than I am. :)
<Username> on 23/6/2019 at 15:51
Took me about 34 minutes to finish this one on the first attempt. Classic JIS. Doesn't care about gameplay conventions at all. Nice architecture. The scripting works well.
NewDark lowers the difficulty level significantly: You can mantle up some walls and objects you couldn't previously. In the room with the bugbeast and the crayman, I mantled up the wall. Same in the room with the apebeasts. In the room with the fire shadows, I stood on one of the thrones and slashed down. In the final area, I mantled up one of the bushes in the courtyard, surveyed the scene, jumped down to take one swing at the nearest enemy, ran away, mantled up a bush on the opposite side of the room, and then repeated the sequence. Over and over again until they were all dead.
