Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Unkillable Cat]

One of the objectives in Mission X (can't remember if it was Impossible-exclusive or not) was not just to steal a purse, but then to replace it afterwards.

The area in question is both heavily guarded, marbled up and low on shadows, so this is no easy feat to accomplish. Also, the mark is moving.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Yeah, Mission X screwed with the AI. I've had 3 guards after my hide fail to find me while standing on top of a table in a darkened room. I've also had guards come running to get me from the FLOOR BELOW because I stood in bright light after opening a door. Forgot to mention that. NewDark may have screwed this up even further.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Either you're still at the start of the mission, or your install is fucked up. I'm going to assume that it's the former.

You start out as a civilian with NO GEAR whatsoever, not even the Light Gem. You're supposed to enter the building, keep a low profile and proceed to the Men's Room to grab your gear. The intro/briefing mentions that the building belongs to some guy (dressed in red) and that he knows you on sight, so being spotted by him (or interrupting his events) is a Bad Idea. When that scene comes up, stay out of sight and listen if you want, but then proceed to the Men's Room. In one of the booths you'll find your gear.

While in there, you'll have to answer some Yes/No questions by selecting the appropriate equipment "item". After that you should be in full-on Thief mode.

 

[SCO]

You better be using the newdark patch

//also, adding a link to a early beta of a fixup package for T2x (v.1c), it currently lacks an installer, and there is quite a bit of redundancy, but it should be usable enough - if you want 32bit relit missions, hipoly objects, newskies and T2 water, you might want to give it a try. the recommended way of installing and running T2x:

-install T2
-patch up with TafferPatcher, let it create the T2 FM shortcut
-install T2x
-run the T2 FM shortcut, and let it create it the FMs folder, exit
-move the T2x folder to the FMs folder
-extract T2xfix to the T2x folder, overwrite
-run the T2 FM shortcut, double click T2x

You can zip up the t2x folder again to run it as a normal fan mission afterwards (in newdark of course).

T2x AI is a bit absurdly sensitive once you get to the hotel mission, and the missions can feel a bit overlong (the hotel and the 'undead' missions are huge), but their secrets and level design are quite good.

 

[skacky]

Sensut has released a teaser for his next mission, Being Thief 2. Just look at the size of this monster, this is insane.

 

[JarlFrank]

Sensut has released a teaser for his next mission, Being Thief 2. Just look at the size of this monster, this is insane.

Ooooooooooh!

Looking forward to this, recently played the Bathory campaign and it was one of the best Thief FM series I've ever played, now I'm on Dracula. Sensut is awesome!

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I haven't tried Sensut's Bathory missions, but his Dracula missions didn't impress me. Quite the contrary. Fortunately his subsequent work is much better.

A new T2 FM has dropped in that interested me. Beltzer has churned out "The Favour", a 275 MB monster that looks promising.

Until I actually fired it up and played it.

Here's a list of how it rubbed me the wrong way in the span of only 30 minutes:

# The "quote" from the video is from the opening scene from Macbeth. Verbatim. Not even altered for spelling. Everyone knows the lines in question, this feels cheap and tacky being used in Thief.
# The briefing video is a lengthy recounting of all the objectives that you have to achieve under a thin veil of story and plot. Find four items and destroy them, kill the bodyguard in one specific manner and frame the antagonist, find a Keeper (who doesn't look anythng like one) and rescue her, find a vast treasure and a container to move it in. Plus the video actually tells me to read the letter that I start with, except the letter REPEATS EVERYTHING SAID IN THE VIDEO.
# Speaking of the letter, that's one long-ass convoluted revenge scheme Gwendolyn has got going there. How long did that take to get together, 2 years? And how does she KNOW all this stuff? A private detective? Snooping on a witch? Is this plot from the author of Axe Cop?
# The mansion is... huge. In fact it's a huge rectangle on about three floors from the look of things. We're talking "Art of Thievery" big here. Even the windows are oversized.
# I start in the outer yard, which looks copypasted all the way and big enough to house several Thief FMs on its own. Thieves act as guards, for no discernible reason other than "because".
# The only things of note in the yard are oversized pinkish pineapples, which actually hurt me upon touch, and a gypsy wagon that I can't climb on for some reason.
# I spend 10 minutes circling the building, disabling the guards and looking for entryways. 4 possibilities, the double doors at the front are both locked and heavily guarded. The backdoor is locked, and on Expert I have no lockpicks. It seems I can rope arrow on the roof above the backdoor, but my only option from there is to drop down into an inner garden from an unsafe height, and it's full of ThiefGuards. The only way to proceed is via the aforementioned gypsy wagon. I did not realize this until a visit to the TLLG forums told me that it is, and after some experimentation I discover that to get up the wagon you must first MANTLE ON TO THIN AIR RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT.
# After a moment of :facepalm: I get up on the roof and actually inside the building. Actually I only get access to a wing of the building with a handful of rooms. In one of them is a strongbox that contains lockpicks. To open the lockbox I need the key. The key happens to be located in a secret cubby in the floor, underneath the rug. At least, it's supposed to. When I entered the room the rug has already been moved to expose the key, and frobbing the rug actually hides the key.
# The first readable found is written like an audio log. RAGE.
# My lockpicks don't open any other locked doors, so I head back outside, onto the roof, onto the wagon, back down to ground level and try the backdoor. Lockpicks open it, success! Now I'm FINALLY inside the mansion and can start taffing around.
# Go through a couple of rooms, loot easily spotted. No guards around, not a one. Odd. Lightswitches in almost every room, make my job easier. Find the bathrooms, nice attention to detail, but serve no purpose. Find a room with a large mirror on the opposite wall that's frobbable. I guess that it's a secret door, so I frob it. Cue small in-game cutscene where Garrett stares into the mirror while a guard is SPAWNED DIRECTLY BEHIND HIM ON FULL ALERT.
# I go "Are you fucking kidding me?", give up and uninstall.

One screwup or another in a FM is one thing, and usually insuffiicient to make me stop and walk away. But when it's a cascading failtrain like the above, and it's mostly INTENTIONAL, then nothing is going to save you. Beltzer, if you can read this, stop. Just stahp. You are not getting better at making Thief Missions. You churn out missions at a pace that clearly suggests that you do not sit down and THINK about what you're doing. You get good ideas, but never take the time to think them through. There is no atmosphere, nothing to compel a player to keep going.

 

[JarlFrank]

I haven't tried Sensut's Bathory missions, but his Dracula missions didn't impress me. Quite the contrary. Fortunately his subsequent work is much better.

Playing Dracula now, at the first mission, it's good but Bathory seemed better to me. He also made Bathory after Dracula, so he apparently improved himself.

Bathory has some very good missions, but there are undoubtedly some design problems, yes, like some objectives being hidden with only little hints (if any) as to how to find them (the gold chests in Pagan Fear come to mind), and some places within the missions feel a bit linear, but overall they're very impressive architecturally and also pretty large and varied. My favourite missions of the campaign were the first three, with the second (Blood and Ice) being my absolute favourite. The campaign is worth playing just for that one.

EDIT:
Also, what were your issues with Dracula?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I went and dug it up.

I had a go at the Dracula campaign once and deleted it once I realised that the creator deliberately made it almost impossible to get out of a hole because he wanted to offer new challenges to veteran players.

I'll admit that there were other problems with the campaign (like a door in the floor that was deliberately made very hard to spot) but that one was the clincher for me.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, making things deliberately hard to spot is a stupid design decision. In Bathory, he does that too occasionally, but it's not too bad and there's a full walkthrough out there that I consulted whenever I got stuck.

You should try Bathory though. Particularly the second mission is awesome.

 

[skacky]

Bathory is way better than Dracula overall, yeah.

 

[SCO]

I see that someone went nuts with newdark.

Sigh, these huge missions... really a pain to ghost.

 

[Echo Mirage]

I see many good recommendations here. Perhaps this is a better question for a new thread since it will be sure to spark a lot of debate. But I have to ask. What are the must play, Rpgcodex recommended, fan missions for Thief/Thief 2 and the dark mod ?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Reading the thread thoroughly should give you a good answer, but as for the Dark Mod there's a list about a page or two back.

 

[JarlFrank]

I see many good recommendations here. Perhaps this is a better question for a new thread since it will be sure to spark a lot of debate. But I have to ask. What are the must play, Rpgcodex recommended, fan missions for Thief/Thief 2 and the dark mod ?

Yeah, just read this thread from the beginning. The recommendations on the first few pages introduced me nicely to the world of Thief FMs. I started out with T2X and then played some of the recommended missions here, then just browsed TTLG for recommended/highly rated missions and played whatever looks interesting.

I can promise you that you will have a lot of fun in the world of Thief FMs!

 

[skacky]

There's a new oldschool TG mission set named The Widow's Ire that was released today. It has two levels and I'm currently still playing the first one (I'm about an hour in). So far it's pretty good, but it has rather crude designs and jerky architecture but nothing too bad, and the atmosphere is really good. The level is all stock textures and it's quite bizarre at times.

EDIT: I've beaten both levels.

The first mission is rather confusing because it is freaking HUGE. You'll be mostly playing around in mines, catacombs and very weird areas with some undead and even some Fire Shadows. You'll eventually find a key to the Keep, but there is nothing there except your eventual exit. The way forward is actually still inside the catacombs, but it's rather hidden and I spent at least 30 minutes looking for it until I found it by accident. It's a nice mission but the second one is much better. It does feature some cool technical stuff though, which is very interesting.

The second mission appears to be a mansion job at first (and despite its crude design overall it's quite neat) and again the level is huge. This mission is much more interesting and you'll soon see it will evolve into monolithic ruined structures and otherworldly stuff, with some of the craziest designs I've seen done in Thief. There is a fair amount of continuity between the two missions which I found particularly surprising, as you'll stumble into an iconic area of the first mission from another angle in the second. All in all I really recommend these two missions, but be warned that the first one might be annoying.

 

[JarlFrank]

Sounds like something I should check out. Too bad the author said in his TTLG post that this is his first and likely also his last FM.

 

[DeepOcean]

Dark mod don't require that piece of shit, also called Doom 3 to run anymore. Finaly , I can clean my HD of that thing.
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/the-dark-mod-doom-3-thief-mod-goes-standalone-version-2-0-released/

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

Good news from TDM. I am downloading the update this very moment and there's already beer in the fridge for a long night playing fan missions.
Just registered here. Old fan of the Thief games. Hello everyone.

 

[skacky]

Here's a preview of R Soul's newest mission.

 

[TripJack]

guy needs less gammas

 

[Melan]

That's looking mighty good.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/11/sharper-shadows-thief-gold-hd-mod-released/

Comes out of nowhere.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

*dusts away the cobwebs and sweeps the tumbleweeds*

First off, thanks to the mods that re-instated the stickyness of this thread.

Second, GORT (of Rebellion of the Builder fame) is close to releasing a NewDark version of his FM, "Unknown Treasure". It was a cityscape mission with none of his regular cheese, but it DID feature a graveyard full of zombies (20+) that had to be led to a Mechanist outpost for many lulz, among other things. It shouldn't be too far off (a couple of months I'd guess) so that's something to look forward to.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I finally started playing Thief FMs again after several months. Two FMs went through the wringer: "Lady Lomat's Flute" is a very short, very basic mansion raid-mission. To be honest it felt like something out of the first days of DromED, very blocky and large open spaces. Still, it's fun for a short romp and good for beginners.

Then there was "Resonance". This is of much higher quality, even though the area used is smaller than that in the previous mission. Basso has been kidnapped and you have to spring him. The catch? Ghosting is required on the toughest difficulty setting, AND you have to recover 10 badges from the guards present. There's a lot of frantic sneaking and hiding involved in this one, and the level design allows for some flexibility in how to solve the objectives. There's really nothing wrong with this one, highly recommended.

Now to look into this '10 rooms' competition thing...