Thief Gold: How to not suck. - by Faffel
Faffel on 24/7/2007 at 01:00
I love the concept of Thief. I love Garrett, the style, and everything. But I'm just terrible at Thief. I can never seem to tell when an enemy is patrolling near, I can never seem to be decisive enough to blackjack enemies, and it just seems that exploring and finding cool stuff gets me killed or in combat. I'm not really bad at stealth games, and I know how to play Thief, but I can't quite seem to figure out how to take control of the situation to be good at the game and be able to explore without giving up at Cragscleft in frustration.
Any suggestions/hints? I'm not even a bad gamer, just a bad Thief.
crunchy on 24/7/2007 at 02:59
Basically it comes down to patience and practice.
Practice: The more you play Thief the more experience you gain and the better you get. With better experience you will recognise locations that offer a better shadow than others. Recognise the different floor types. When to make a move across an open room and when to sit tight.
Patience: Not many people are capable of sitting in the one location for 5 or 10 minutes and just obseving. But it is vital for learning the patrol patterns of guards. Watching and listening you can learn a lot about the Thief world.
theBlackman on 24/7/2007 at 03:02
Crank up the volume. Listen intently. To move use a crouch, and just tap the "walk" key. tap tap tap tap. You can move over nearly any surface silently if you use that technique.
You can watch the way a guard turns at the end of his patrol. If he always turns the same direction, sneak up or past on the other side. He turns right, follow him silently down the street, hall, on his left side, and as he turns slide by on the left.
Use your ITEMS to time a patrol. Each item appears for 30 seconds. If you bring a item up, then when it fades bring it up again, you can time the patrol. 3 scrolls (the same one) = 90 seconds, and so on.
When you get to a door, crouch and LEAN to look out. Do a quick lean, recover. If you stand at the right side of a door, about 4 or 5 feet back and look through at an angle, you can see a goodly part of a room or area. Repeat from the left side. By doing this you can see nearly all the room except the near corners to the right and left of a door.
Never move until you are sure the coast is clear. If you need to BJ a guard, then if he is stationary. Crouch and creep up behind him, then stand and clock him, or just swing the BJ. In TMA, or Gold, either will work.
If he is in motion, you should ignore him and just sneak past. Use moss if you must.
If a stationary guard is blocking you from sneaking behind him, then get right on his butt. Stand up. As he shuffles his feet Walk into him. Repeat until he has moved away enough for you to sneak through behind him.
In the Life of the Party mission, in TMA, you can do this to the guard in the room below the Astronomers attic. He will stand by the door at the foot of the stairs sometimes. You can sneak behind him and "ease" him away. If he turns (he turns to the right), as he turns, crouch and use the sidestep to the left toward the door and stairs and ease backward up the stairs as he moves out to the hallway where you came in the window.
Mostly, move slowly, look before you move into or through an area. Listen carefully for footsteps, conversations etc. Don't be impatient. If you need to sit/stand/crouch in a shadow for 10 minutes real time until you know the patrol time or route, do so.
As for Cragscleft. Use the shadows in the mineshafts. Listen for the groans and moans of the zombies, and use the tap, tap, tap to move over the gravel.
In the upper level with the sandy floor, hide and wait for the zombies to pass. Do it two or three passes so you get the timing.
In Cragscleft itself, use the shadows on the foundry floor area, and LISTEN. Note where the shadows are so you can retreat if you hear a guard coming.
In the prison, use the shadows at the corners, and crouch and inch past all the open guard windows. Watch the blinking lights in the corridors. Move when the lights are out, and pay attention to the shadowed areas when the lights are on. The lights that blink on and off are irregular in timing, but observation will get you through.
That little horn over the corridor is an alarm. So be sure to cross the corridor area under and behind those horns in the entrance to the cellblock area.
Rekrul on 24/7/2007 at 03:49
Quote Posted by Faffel
I love the concept of Thief. I love Garrett, the style, and everything. But I'm just terrible at Thief. I can never seem to tell when an enemy is patrolling near, I can never seem to be decisive enough to blackjack enemies, and it just seems that exploring and finding cool stuff gets me killed or in combat. I'm not really bad at stealth games, and I know how to play Thief, but I can't quite seem to figure out how to take control of the situation to be good at the game and be able to explore without giving up at Cragscleft in frustration.
Any suggestions/hints? I'm not even a bad gamer, just a bad Thief.
In Thief, if the gem at the bottom center of the screen is dark, you're pretty much invisible to the NPCs, unless they practically rub up against you. This means that you can stand in a small patch of shadow on the side of a room and watch the guards walk by just a couple feet away. Also, your visibility won't be affected by leaning (left, right or forward), so you can stand in shadow and lean into a well-lit room without being seen.
Watch what kind of surface you're walking on because the NPCs will react to sound;
Grass, carpet and moss (created with a moss arrow) - You can pretty much run and jump to your heart's content and they won't hear a thing.
Stone - You can walk and (most of the time) run without NPCs hearing you. I've run up behind un-alerted guards and knocked them out.
Tile, metal, gravel - These are the noisiest serfaces. Running on these will be heard very easily, and even walking on them can alert nearby guards. It's best to wait until the area is clear, or crouch and move in
very short bursts of a second or less.
If an NPC hears a small noise it will usually respond with something like "Hello? Is someone there?" This is your warning that you've been heard. If you make another noise, the NPC will start to search for you. If you stay quiet, they'll say something like "Must'a been rats" This tells you that they've decided there's nothing there. Even if they start searching, they'll give up after a while if they can't find you.
If an NPC hears a large noise, like you jumping on metal, or throwing a crate, it will immediately start searching for you.
As for seeing, the NPCs are fairly nearsighted. I've been about ten feet in front of a guard and run across a small patch of lighted ground and all he did was ask "What'd I see there?" Of course if you run right in front of them, or stand in the light, they'll see you. Also, if they chase you, they'll be able to see you better than normal, even in dark areas. You need to get far enough ahead of them that they lose sight of you, then stand in the dark.
What I normally do is knock out all the NPCs with the black-jack. Wait in the shadows near where one of them patrols and when they pass, lean out and whack them. Then pick up the body and toss it into a dark room. I quicksave often, but only when I'm sure I'm safe and if I screw up, I quickload and try again.
Another tactic that often works is to hide in a dark room so that the gem is completely dark, then make a noise so that the NPCs start searching for you. They have to get pretty close to see you in the dark, so when they start to come close, lean forward and knock them out.
Use water arrows to put out torches to make the room darker, use moss arrows to cover the floor in moss so that you can move silently (note: even though the game only shows you a few clumps of moss, it considers the whole area covered) and use flashbombs to blind the guards. Once blinded, you have several seconds in which to knock them out.
In Cragscleft, I usually empty out the factory first. I stay on the upper walkways that overlook the areas with the molding machines. I shoot a moss arrow on the floor, go down the stairs, run out behind the Hammerite while he's at the controls and knock him out. Repeat two more times for the other molding machines and the way to the prison is clear. Of course I usually take out the ones who are patroling as well. When entering the prison, you overhear a conversation about Cutty. I usually wait in the shadows there, pickpocket the guard with the key when they're done and knock him out. Then I sneak down, pick the pocket of the guard in the booth and knock him out by leaning forward from the shadows.
When you enter the cellblock areas, you'll pass through an entrance area where there's a guard and what looks like a light turning in the center of the room. That's a camera and a single broadhead arrow to its face will disable it. Then pickpocket the guard in the booth, lean forward and knock him out. Repeat for the other cellblock entrance. In the cellblocks, I hide in the shadows for a while and knock out the patroling guards as they come by. Note that the locks for the doors are on the wall next to them, not on the door itself. For the guards in the booth that overlooks each cellblock, I go upstairs, then stand in the shadow by the fourth cell and jump up and down once or twice until the guard comes out to investigate. As long as you stay in the shadows and don't make any more noise, he never comes out that far and will turn around to go back to the booth after a few seconds. At this point I rush forward, pick his pocket and knock him out. Repeat three more times and the cellblocks are clear.
Some general advice;
Make sure that the gamma, or your monitor's brightness is turned up enough that you can actually see what you're doing.
If you have a three button mouse, make the middle button the "Use" button. This way you can press the left button to raise the black-jack, run up behind an NPC, press the middle button to pick their pocket and then release the left button to swing the black-jack and knock them out. Or if you don't care about getting credit for picking their pocket, just knock them out and grab whatever they're carrying later.
In your Thief directory will be a file called User.bnd. This file stores the key bindings, even some that can't be changed in the game itself. Open this file with Notepad or a similar editor and swap the definitions for F9 and F11. By default F11 is Quicksave and F12 is Quickload. That's a recipe for disaster. You have a guard bashing your head in, you reach for the Quickload key and you press Quicksave by accident. Now you have to start the level over. In fact, I'd even recommend changing Quicksave to F1. I
think that if you don't bind anything to F11, it will still keep the default function, so make sure to change it to something, then verify in the game that it no longer quicksaves. I always change Dark.bnd as well, just to be on the safe side. Also, make sure you bind the lean forward function to a key that's easy to use.
Finally, I'd recommend that you play the game on Expert. I know you're still getting used to playing, but if you're doing it on Normal or Hard, you'll be missing out on some parts of the levels that are closed off unless you're using Expert. It's true that you get less health and the NPC attacks probably do more damage, but if you play the game the way it was intended, that's not an issue. It also doesn't let you kill anyone, but most of the time that's not a problem. Killing the NPCs is usually noisier than knocking them out and it leaves blood that you have to waste a water arrow to clean up.
Jah on 24/7/2007 at 12:04
Quote Posted by Rekrul
If you have a three button mouse, make the middle button the "Use" button. This way you can press the left button to raise the black-jack, run up behind an NPC, press the middle button to pick their pocket and then release the left button to swing the black-jack and knock them out. Or if you don't care about getting credit for picking their pocket, just knock them out and grab whatever they're carrying later.
It's also possible to blackjack an NPC first, then pick their pocket just as their body slumps to the ground. As long as you grab it before they're down on the floor, you still get credit for picking their pocket, even though they were technically unconscious at the time.
To the OP, blackjacking is really not that difficult if you're able to move behind the guard. When you're behind their back, you can approach them pretty safely without being heard as long as you're not walking on metal, tile or gravel. On these surfaces, you will need moss arrows, or if the enemy is stationary and doesn't turn around, you can use the slow tap-tap-tap technique theBlackman described. Blackjacking enemies will give you more room to breathe - if you know you've taken out every enemy in an area, you don't have to watch your every step all the time. Just make sure not to leave the unconscious bodies in the middle of hallways or other places where somebody might see them; try to find some dark corner, or some room that is not patrolled, and stash them there.
Also keep in mind that having a weapon (other than the blackjack) equipped will increase your visibility and make it easier for the enemies to spot you; fire arrows, in particular, will brighten the light gem quite a lot, so don't walk around with a sword or bow in hand unless you're really going to use them.
Quote Posted by Rekrul
In your Thief directory will be a file called User.bnd. This file stores the key bindings, even some that can't be changed in the game itself. Open this file with Notepad or a similar editor and swap the definitions for F9 and F11. By default F11 is Quicksave and F12 is Quickload. That's a recipe for disaster. You have a guard bashing your head in, you reach for the Quickload key and you press Quicksave by accident. Now you have to start the level over.
Yes, this has happened to me quite a few times. The worst thing is, last time I played, I started with T2, then moved on to T3 and finally T1, and in T2 and T3, I had the keys bound the other way round (F11 was quickload and F12 was quicksave). When I started T1, I realized I couldn't change the quicksave and quickload bindings within the game, and it was only 10-15 minutes into the first mission that I pressed the wrong button and had to start over again.
Peanuckle on 10/8/2007 at 20:46
Despite the focus on stealth, it is very easy to beat even the best guards in one-on-one combat. Just circle strafe on the side that doesn't have a sword on it and hack away. The guards will be too busy dancing in circles to ever actually hit you. I do not recommend trying this with haunts, though.
For fighting archers (in Thief 1 only) you can circle strafe behind them and they'll actually shoot themselves. You can also get them to shoot their allies by getting them in-between you two.
Finally, you can get up onto a ledge where the enemy can't reach you, then perform a overhead swing with your sword and hit the crouch button at the same time. You will be able to hit them if you do it right.
