GORT on 6/10/2004 at 22:33

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All right, all right. Don't worry. There will be changes when the three mission set comes out.

maloo on 7/10/2004 at 16:42

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If you look into the room she is going counter clockwise right? So if you are in the left room its on the statue across the room to the left. It really is there.

M

Kurgan on 22/10/2004 at 10:01

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Ok, I just laid waste--, er, I mean, I just finished this FM, and figgered I'd toss in a little commentary for feedback.

But first, my stats! (Some people do baseball cards, I do FM stats... go figure.)

Anywho...

Difficulty: Expert (Always. Lesser diff levels, to me, seem like reading an abridged book. You're depriving yourself of parts of the mission.)
Time: 3:39:54.
Found: 5331 out of 8386.
Pockets: 9 of 19
Locks: 3 (God, did I ever try to find more, but I've never seen so many doors that couldn't be picked! Isn't the idea of picking a lock to circumvent the need of a key? Oye!)
Backstabs: 3. Knockouts: 47
Damage Dealt: 689. Taken: 4. Healing: 1*
Innocents Killed: None. Others Killed: 13**
Iron Beasts Destroyed: 16. Disabled: None.
Bodies Discovered: 9
Secrets: 9 of 3 (Ahem).

*: Flushed the toilet.
**: This boggles me. Who died? WHAT died? Does it count mantis men and ghosts?

Disposable items used to complete mission:

2 Fire Arrows
4-5 Water Arrows (I think. I forgot how many I started with.)
1 Invisibility Potion

Non-disposable Items/Weapons used:

Blackjack (guards)
Sword (ghosts)
Rope Arrow (Like I'd ever let that go once I finally found it!)
Uber-Babe III's Photon-Slinging Pigsticker


Items carried or obtained, but not needed:

Second Invisibility Potion
Speed Potion
Healing Potion
Slow Fall Potion
Sawblade Thrower

Ok, here's how I went at it:

[spoiler]
Started the game, couldn't find a shadow to save my life (literally). *Didn't* figure out the tree bit. Died a horrible death. Wash, rinse, repeat. Eventually realized I had the Invis potion. Drank it, ran like hell. Picked the lock as fast as I could (friggin' HARD lock!), scooted into the basement. Here's where I used three water arrows right off the bat to slip by the Iron Beasts, hugging the wall. Blackjacked & pickpocketed the guard, though! Looked at the glass wall, couldn't find a method of entry, so moved on. KO'd all the guards down in the basement, pulled the lever. Died. Reloaded game, pulled the other lever. Couldn't resist pulling the other lever again. Died again. Finally found two functional dendrites in my noggin, pulled the good lever, ran away in tears from the nasty one. Headed for the stairs.

Went up a few stairs, jumped up and down like an idiot, went back down and waited. Eventually blackjacked everyone in earshot as they came to investigate, but were stupid enough to turn around and head back up the stairs with me standing there grinning in the darkness behind them.

Headed down the wing towards the library. Died a horrible death a couple of times. Don't really wanna think about it. Reloaded and headed the other way. Spotted the watcher and decided to come back. Headed upstairs and clubbed the guard near the glass balcony doors into a small, fine paste, beat and molested the woman listening to the ginormous "radio," went to the other end and clobbered some poor schlub and took all his stuff. It was only *after* all this I figured out I could've picked the windows and avoided the guard.

That'll learn me.

Anywho, at this point I was fairly stuck. The mission objectives said we had to find a code to turn off the cameras, but I'd searched every nook and cranny, and it wasn't anywhere. UNLESS it was, for some inexplicable reason, beyond the entrances WITH cameras. Y'know, those places we're all avoiding until after we've disabled security?

*Cough*

SOOO, I finally said to myself, "to hell with this" and decided to play the mission on my own terms, which, as it turned out, was pretty funny, because I never did enter the damned code. I peaked around the corner to the other wing, the area with a camera that I hadn't been down yet, timed the guard patrols, ran down directly under the camera, then raced off down the hall into a shadowy area. A lot of it gets a little mixed up here, so suffice to say I basically did the "systematic stalk, KO, filch" routine as far as I could take it.
I timed camera movements and ran like hell at opportune moments, scooped up everything in sight, bonked everyone I could find on the noggin, and had a merry old time. Hell, I even suckered the guards in the sparring room into chasing me, lost 'em, then turned around and beat them all like redheaded step children. Got the casino key free and clear. :)

Thanks to a tip from this thread, I knew to use a fire arrow to open the passage to the ghost library and catacombs. I went down there and killed every ghost in sight (being thorough, y'know, --cough), never did find any damned holy water, but decided that the uber-babe could just eat steel, and she did quite nicely. *Missed* the bit about the button on the statue *since we couldn't see it and had no clue it was even there* but took a cue from someone else that whipped out dromed and blabbed, and later on went back and got the sword and button. A note about that button. It switches places with one of the gears if you're carrying it. Damned confusing when you try to open a gearbox with the correct gear, and it now wants the button instead (and you've also used the button on the other place where *it* was supposed to go...), but I digress. Anyway, the sword was fun, and I didn't overuse it. Blew up a few cameras, and after all was said and done I went and decimated the mech beasts, but that was just for fun. Oh yeah, I did use it to kill the mantis men.

Ok, so as it stands, I'd wiped out half the place, then got the sword so I could disable more cameras, did a little cleanup in that regard and moved to the other side. I suckered every guard around into following me into a trap, where I was waiting to blackjack them (that spot under the stairs is like gold, and the stack of bodies was ludicrously large), so that left the place virtually vacant. I'd just about beaten the mission, but still hadn't officially completed more than one objective (get in), so I went back and grabbed the parchment with the code (*ding*), then went back to the control room, which no longer had any guards in it and stepped inside (*ding*). It was very late in the game when I'd finally found the rope arrow, and I remembered a chest that I'd seen in the library, so I went back and climbed up the rope, grabbed the potion, climbed halfway down, pulled the arrow, fell a few feet to the top of a bookcase, then jumped to a table. No damage, and I got to keep the rope arrow (although I never used it more than this one time, which kills me, because I live for rope arrows). All I had to do now was get out, and as far as I can tell, I only missed one room, because I couldn't find a way to get the door open (the guard inside certainly wouldn't come out to play), so I just ran out the back door. I figured the path between the hedges was the intended way out, so I ran past the guards into there and, sure enough, (*ding*), it was over.

I didn't really make use of much equipment at all. Three water arrows and an invis potion right off the bat getting inside, but after that it was all blackjack action, with a little sword usage for the ghosts down below. Never drank a healing potion (or any other potion), only used a couple more water arrows to play it safe (and ironically it turned out I didn't need them at the places I used 'em), and the two fire arrows to open two secret passages.
[/spoiler]

Overall I had a blast (no sword-related pun intended), but DAMN, there were points where I first wanted to rip my hair out, then decided I'd rather grab a nice handful of Gort's, instead. Tough, difficult missions, intricate puzzles, lots of tile floor to tiptoe on, --all of that I can handle and love a good challenge from. I mean, in a world where you need guards to protect your estate from thieves, why install tons of carpet over nice, loud flooring, or otherwise make it easy on them? No prob, makes sense. It's all of the stuff that *didn't* make sense that gets me. A seemingly randomly-placed button on one side of the estate triggers something on the *other* end? Buttons that you have no way of knowing are there (which technically could be realistic, but isn't a lot of fun), Random traps that, in all likelihood, would kill guards and guests alike, not to mention the owner if he happens to be a little preoccupied at that moment and forgets he's about to walk over a pitfall planted right in the middle of an area of high traffic. And how about buttons that kill you if you press them? This in a large household, with lots of people? Coathangers that, if you hang your coat on the wrong one, not only cause your death, but release enemies into the estate? Uh... okey dokey!

I could just see the master of the house with a date. There he is, strolling along with her, a couple of glasses of wine in their hands as they engage in small talk during the tour of the estate he promised her, and she, star-filled eyes, falling suddenly through a hole in the floor and getting ripped to shreds by the hungry mouths of a dozen zombies as he looks on in abject horror at his lapse. Or perhaps they would be kissing on a couch, and she stops him briefly to ask where the moaning sounds are coming from, and he, of course, proudly proclaims that it's nothing to worry about, it's just his private stash of undead beneath the floor, then looking confused as she bolts screaming from the room. God forbid he show her the library. Either one. (Or let her hang her coat...)

Bottom line: Gort's usage of dromed, especially for a first offering, was superb. Top marks, and an aside that this is an FM author to keep an eye on for future offerings. The story, on the other hand, is the weak point. WAY too much here just plain doesn't make any sense, like an old D&D dungeon. Gort's initial plot was fine, but when it came to making it all come together, he really needed a good editor to streamline the logic of the story to match the quality of the physical artistry. Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind when I see this mission is that I'd pay cash to see Gort team up with Anthony Huso. Anthony's grasp of story with Gorts talent at dromed would be a serious one-two punch. (And just to avoid confusion, I'm referring to Gort's execution of the final story, not his plotted storyline, which was good.)

I don't believe, as someone else commented, that a mission absolutely must be playable by a newbie. If an FM author wants to focus on expert level missions, that's fine. There are plenty of other FMs for newbies to get broken-in on before attempting something like this. However, I also believe that any FM should have a fluency to it, regardless of difficulty level. Call it a form of compartmentalization, if you will. Instead of telling someone they need to get the security code, and then placing it somewhere within a monstrously large manse, much less behind the line where it would be needed, I would instead have a "sub-mission" up front, where the thief had to go to, say, a bank or security office, and break in there to get the code that would be needed at the estate. That way you can complete your objectives in a relatively fluid and logical order. A good thief wouldn't even try to take on something like this without some sort of foreknowledge that would work in his favor. As it stands here, it was virtually hearsay, and proved of little value until long after it was needed. This additional element of storytelling was desperately needed to elevate The Mystic Estate from good to *damned good!* :)


Kurgan

ZylonBane on 25/10/2004 at 20:04

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If you're referring to what I said above, what I actually said is that a mission must be completable by someone who's never played the mission before. In other words, no "trial and error by death". The various unmarked death traps in this mission are simply inexcusable design, that would take out even the most experienced taffers in the world.

By contrast, consider the few death traps in the OMs. The Lost City actually has several of them, but the critical differences are:
a) in every case they warn you about them
b) they're located in logical places

You really have to wonder what Gort was thinking, putting drop pits in the middle of the library and in front of a main door.

Aspirin on 8/3/2005 at 13:58

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Awesame mission. Maybe a little bit illogical, but no problem for experienced taffers. GREAT WORK !!!

I liked most the second (yet unfinished :( ) part. Dark silent forest with falling leafs and night sky is absolutly amazing !!! I walk around forest long time unable to absorb fantastic feel... :eek:

When will be second part finished ???