Komag on 26/4/2022 at 04:27

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I'm bumping this very old thread to see if ANYONE can supply me a download (privately) for this Knight's Dream mission so I can host it at Shadowdark for everyone and posterity!

<Username> on 20/7/2023 at 07:47

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The Knight's Dream felt just as punishing and inaccessible as IronEagle aka HawkflyAway's two previous larger missions The Garden of the Wizard and Kings & Queens. During the first two or three hours, I was surprised I was actually making good progress, but then the moments where I got stuck kept piling on. Like in the two previous missions, there are quest objects which are either exceedingly hard to spot or downright impossible to see. The only improvement is this time, you actually get a few hints in journals on where to look, but not always. In at least one instance, the hint is misleading. Overall, the size of the mission and the variety of its environments are impressive, but at the same time, it feels untested, contains numerous glaring issues that could have been fixed, and relies too much on finding hidden levers. All missions by IronEagle aka HawkflyAway suffer from the same problems.

I did not experience the critical bug that causes savegames to get corrupted. Before starting the mission, I read up on the areas where this bug is more likely to occur and afterwards avoided saving in these areas. fortuni's walkthrough might have saved me from the bug.

Stats:
* Expert difficulty
* 20375 loot
* 7 hints needed
For the first time in T3:
* The Black Hammerites at the starting location are kicking the Pagan on the ground. I don't think I have seen an NPC kicking in T3 before.
Elements I liked:
* The mission is ambitious. It features a large map and several impressive structures.
* There is a neat effect through which images are projected onto surfaces. The author used this effect in his previous missions as well.
* The Italian briefing is fully translated to English.
* Jeff Crowbar is an awesome name for a thug.
* Custom backgrounds on the title and loading screens.
* Custom music on the map.
* Two types of "Black Hammerite" custom skins.
* Objects don't have that atomic blue glow of T3 when they are centered on the screen. Instead, they light up like in T1 and T2.
* For the first two to three hours, I was making good progress and was having fun. Not my usual experience with missions by this author.
* There are readables with hints on where to find keys or levers. This is an improvement from previous missions by this author.
* If you look out of some windows, you can see mountains with bridges and a body of water with several ships on it. This is a nice vista.
* I enjoyed the small puzzle in the Pagan Area where you end up at a locked gate, have to climb up a pole nearby, traverse from there on iron chains to a lever that opens the gate, then have to push a barrel to get you high enough to mantle up to the opened gate.
* You get to peek into places like the St. Edgar's or the Temple of the Lady of the Water some time before you find a way to open their entrances.
* There is a plentitude of interesting City plazas, old towers and gloomy churches for the player to explore.
* Little weird elements like children running around a dummy next to a seemingly abandoned house, glowing light in a hidden room in the Pagan Area, or floating rectangles below the Fortress of the Black Hammerites.
* The Temple of the Lady of the Water was an interesting area.
* The objectives are dynamic and change over the course of the playthrough.
* The final area in front of the Fortress of the Black Hammerites looks fantastic. The are several ships in the water and the lighting is interesting.
Could be improved:

General:
* The mission does not feel playtested and refined. Many glaring errors that could have been fixed. There are misplaced objects, gaps in the terrain which you can fall through, and incomprehensible English in journals.
* The map contains many areas where the player may miss a hidden lever or an important quest item. It is easy to get lost without a clue what to do next or where to go.
* Sometimes levers open doors far away from their position.
* When you switch to the map, it shows the layout of the Blue Heron Inn. The same issue was present in the author's previous four missions.
* I found four locked, empty chests in the mission. Why are they all empty?
* The architecture in some areas feels less sophisticated the in previous missions by the same author: rectangular rooms shaped like boxes, sometimes even large, unused spaces.
* As usual for mission by IronEagle aka HawkflyAway, there are gaps in the map architecture through which you can see outside the level boundary.
* The modified skin for Garrett looks different than in previous missions by the same author: Something appears to be wrong with the textures of his pants, his upper body, and his quiver.
* When you pick up the first equipment item of each type, a hint is displayed on how to use it. This is not necessary in fan mission because players will already be familiar with them.
* There are a few plaques on walls with text so long it is not displayed in full. The only way to read those texts, which in at least two cases contain hints for mission objectives, is to exit the game, go into the mission's folder, and find the corresponding text file.
* There were several areas where my two years old laptop struggled to render the game.
Story and objectives:
* I understood the gist of the background story in the briefing, even though the broken English made it hard to read.
* The list of mission objectives is empty before you start the mission. It blows my mind IronEagle aka HawkflyAway did not bother to fix this bug which was present in his four previous missions as well.
Citadel:
* The trapdoor down to the maintenance tunnels opens on the wrong side and blocks the ladder. Thankfully, the player can jump down and mantle back up instead.
Garden of the Hammerites:
* The door to the small corridor with the healing fountain in the east of the first garden does not emit any sound when the player interacts with it.
* The damage radius for fires in this area tends to be too high. Several times I lost health when I was sneaking by lit goblets of fire.
* If you walk into the water under the waterwheel, Garrett does not drown. The water seems to disappear, and you can walk around normally. From this small area you can only mantle up to the canal with the shallower water. There, you drown instantly.
The City:
* The sitting female servant by the pond has an idle line about her feet hurting and longing for being able to sit down. This was amusing to me.
* In the tiny shop with the bald shopkeeper, you can mantle onto the high shelf, and then Garretts head sticks through the ceiling.
* Southwest of the gate to Precursor's Street, there was a fountain with four waterspouts. Their textures did not load. This caused them to look like grey blobs.
* There is a scroll on a bed in which IronEagle praises himself for his own mission. That was off-putting, especially because this was in an area where the player can get corrupted savegames due to unsolved bugs.
Forbidden Zone/Abandoned Area:
* The floating mask enemies were a bit annoying: I was never sure if they were looking in my direction.
* In the area with Pagans around a campfire, there is a glitchy texture in the northwest.
* The behavior of the Pagans is not consistent. The three males at the north end as well as the two males one on the north end ignore Garrett. The one female at the north end reacts to sound but apparently cannot see Garret. The one female at the south end can both hear and see Garrett. She will attack Garrett and aggro the other Pagans around her.
* An invisible wall to the west of the area with the Pagans is blocking movement.
* I fell off the iron chain suspended in the air from the Pagan area four times. It looks like you can jump off the east side of the wall from the chain, but an invisible wall blocked me each time. I found another way instead.
* Near the Pagan area, a couple of bushes float in midair.
* Next to the electrical tower after the Paga area, a skull and a human ribcage float in midair.
Caravan Children:
* There is a locked door on the underside of the caravan, but you can just ignore it because you can mantle up through the opening next to it. This made me wonder why the door was even there.
The Old Tower:
* In the area with two giant Haunts, one stationary and one patrolling, if you follow the path around the water to the northwest, the ground at the end of the path kills you instantly. I heard a splashing sound and Garrett fell on the ground. I think this floor counts as water.
* More of an engine glitch than an issue with the map itself but in the tower where the two giant Haunts patrol, in the second room, the gargoyle on the north walls throws four shadows, one on each surface of the cabinet he is sitting on.
* In the room in which a person has apparently been electrocuted to death and reduced to a skeleton, a shaft of green light is just hanging in the air, with no window nearby. Additionally, two candles are floating in midair.
* On the north side outside of the tower where the two giant Haunts patrol, you can simply walk out of bounds because the wall is not solid.
Church of St. Edgar:
* In the tunnel underground through which you get into Church of St. Edgar, there is a misplaced block of wall that is not solid.
* In the side room in the west of St. Edgar's, you can mantle onto the high shelf, and then Garretts head sticks through the ceiling.
Fortress of the Black Hammerite:
* In the large open area in front of the Fortress of the Black Hammerites, you can eek around the ledge of the metal fence in the west. Behind it is an area with a door and a set of shackles floating in the air. The wooden planks surrounding the harbor there are not solid and you will fall into the water should you step on them.
* When I knocked out one of the Black Hammerites standing in a circle in the northwest of the large open area, I got the message "Faction status changed". Factions are disabled in the menu. The same happened when I knocked out the Black Hammerite Priest in the middle of the banquet table inside the fortress.
* Three Pagans are floating in the air next to the Black Hammerites standing in a circle in the northwest of the large open area outside.
* The wooden planks above the water in the northwest of the large open area are not solid. You will fall into the water should you step on them.
* The main entrance of the fortress is not solid. You can walk through the wooden double doors.
* An entire wall south of the fortress' main entrance does not exist. You will fall out of the map if you are not careful around there.
* For unknown reasons, the Black Hammerite guard on the north side of the banquet table fell down dead while I was sneaking around the room. I wonder what killed him.

Bugs:
* Savegame files can become corrupted.
* The mission cannot be completed because the trigger for the final objective is not set up properly.
* In the Old Tower, there is a note pinned on a wall with a knife. If you frob it, it reads "Book not found."

Hints needed:[spoiler]
* Missed the safe key hidden up on a wooden beam near the pond in the City area where two people sit on benches.
* Missed the tiny lever next to the picture of a knight in the area with the fast-moving floating masks. I had also missed the scroll next to the dead body nearby. I did not investigate it because I was avoiding the floating enemy guarding it.
* Missed the tiny lever up on the west wall inside the Church of Infante. I was looking for levers, but it is so small and placed so randomly I did not find it.
* Missed the tiny lever hidden in a patch of grass south of the bridge near the Pagan Area. It is invisible and I had to blind-frob the spot.
* Missed the lever on the wall in the room west of St. Edgar's where you find the gilded helmet. The English in the journal nearby was too garbled to convey the intended clue that this lever opens that one grate far, far away near the beginning of the mission that leads to Fortress of the Black Hammerites.
* Missed the scroll on the middle wheel of the large caravan where the children are running around.
* The note pinned to the middle wheel of the large caravan is misleading: You don't have to follow any of the three children. You must pull a lever hidden on the wall of the house next to them. I did not recognize it as a lever whenever I walked by that house.[/spoiler]

Questions:
* In the small bedroom on the top floor of the Fortress of the Black Hammerites, there is a locked chest with a gas arrow inside. Where is the key for this chest?