chakkman

I just (re?)played this, dunno if I ever finished it. Very nice mission, no wonder that it's such a classic. There are two things which were very unclear to me though: Unfortunately, it's the same in quite a few other TDM missions as well. The riddles and secrets are simply too hard. Never had such issues in the original Thiefs. Overall, very enjoyable mission, but, due to these issues, a bit frustrating as well.

I'm just playing this, and have the same issue. Does anyone remember where the map is hidden? The note saying that it somewhere it can't be found isn't exactly helpful. Edit: Even with tdm_show_loot, I wasn't able to find it. Anyway. Edit 2: And then I find the hint in this thread. ARGH.

I recently played through all 3 of the Penny Dreadful series missions. They're absolutely fantastic, and stand the test of times. Still great. I first had my issues with the absence of the lockpickign tools, and that you get thrown into the 2nd mission with no tools or weapons at all, but, the missions more than make up for it. Especially the third is still an absolute monster.

For the record: The laughing smiley is for your solution to the objective, not you not being able to quickload.

I'm also not a fan of the limited inventory, especially because the first place to store some items in a chest is at the current end of the playable area, which, in my case, is 8 to 10 hours into the game, so, pretty late... I also don't like fixed save points/rooms, which require a lot of backtracking if you don't want to lose your progress, when you do a mistake like falling from a ceiling, or alerting 5 or 6 guards at the same time, which can easily happen. It seems like a silly restriction, which adds nothing to the gameplay. Other than that, as I said, I'm really impressed, and, I also like that the game doesn't explain you the whole game in the first 30 minutes. I think that's an unfortunate development in modern games, and it's refreshing to see games like the System Shock remake and this one getting rid of that hand holding. Because, sorry, that's basically what it is. Unless something is super unclear, it's really not impossible to figure those games out yourself. That's a big part of the fun and appeal of them for me.

Anyone (re-)played the game with Market update? I already was impressed before (played the game shortly after the Tavern update), but, I'm even more impressed now. The changes that have been done to gameplay and balancing in the meantime have lead to a very "round" feeling game (it's well balanced on Full Moon difficulty now, while it was a bit too difficult for my liking before), and, the new town area is very, very nice, and feels very "Thief-y" and "Dishonored-y". Nice locations and shops (even with a shopkeeper ), and some verticality as well. Can't wait for the other areas (there's still a lot to come), and, the story shapes up to be really good as well.

If it's available as an option in the TDM settings ingame, or as a cvar, I guess it doesn't do much harm. But, I don't really care if items are being displayed with a name or not. I think there's a much higher priority of having quality in other regards in missions than displaying the item's names on screen. Just my opinion, you asked for opinions.

You definitely have too much spare time.

The size is quite on the limit IMO, it definitely is hard to navigate the city section. But, possible, if you frequently check your map. And, yes, absolutely superb mission.

And finished. And rated. Great mission. The only "bug" apart from 2 or 3 places I got stuck was some shine through material, at player position 4977.99 -1834.08 -285.75 1.8 133.0 0.0 (dunno if you need all those). Some really minor issue, not sure if it's even worth fixing.

Thanks, I'll see if I can figure it out. Awesome mission, by the way. Loving every (of the many) minutes of it.

I'm trying to finish this mission, but have no idea how.

In the original Thief's, you could still choose the difficulty for every mission. It stuck to the difficulty you chose for the previous mission though. Well, you probably know that anyway, just thought I'd mention it. I like the difficulty choice. IMO, it gives the player a challenge and goal to aim for, especially when objectives are added on the higher difficulties. The only absolute no-go for me are no K.O. objectives. Those don't make the slightest sense.

Out of interest: What did mission makers change about the weapons? As I can see, there are a lot of weapon.def's in the mission folder. I mean, I'm aware that there are custom weapons in some missions, but, I wasn't aware that existing weapons also are altered. And, TBH, personally, I find that a bit problematic, as the player cannot know that a weapon behaves differently in a mission.

I was wondering as well. It doesn't look like it, but, it's hard to tell, because I used the lean forward feature shortly before I hit with the blackjack. I could have sworn that it sometimes didn't indicate it when I played the mission. But, I'm not 100% sure now. Again, thanks for taking your time. I just thought I'd mention it, because, over the whole mission, it seemed to me that the beasts are harder to knock out than human A.I.'s.

Thanks for taking your time. I just tried it (to be sure, I don't have to delete the cauldron_v2_2.pk4 after unpacking, right?), and, it doesn't seem to make a difference. Did a little video to illustrate my problems: https://drive.google.com/file/d/109NEYxgZTlrqD2rt65PY4jQ0KUhpC-PT/view?usp=sharing On the first attempt, I might have been too far away. On the second attempt, the beast might have been in a state of awareness due to me running towards it (even though that worked in the past with guards in other missions). The third attempt felt perfect, no idea why I didn't succeed there. Same on the fourth attempt. The fifth attempt was successful, and I have no idea why, as the former two attempts seem to have been almost exactly the same. I have the A.I. hearing to "forgiving", by the way, as that works better for me, as the A.I. can't hear your footsteps from a mile away. It's still much more sensitive than in the original Thief's (talking about sensitivity...), but, it works alright for me. That video is pretty much exactly what I experienced throughout the whole mission with the beasts. Every time I tried a K.O., i had to try several times to succeed. As I mentioned above, blackjacking is a general issue in the mod, but, it seems to be even more of an issue with this type of enemy. Oh, and the guy wearing the mask (the king? ) was the hardest to knockout. I needed at least 10 or 12 attempts to knock him out. Edit: Sorry, just fixed the permission for the video.

It's not just an issue when they're crouched.

Do you realize how little helpful you are? Especially when I quote someone who had the same issues in this mission with a specific type of enemy. But, suuuure, it's just a skill issue. That's why this topic came up so often over the years. Let's just end this now though. You will never be able to accept that there is an issue with the blackjack system. It's fine, and it doesn't matter. What matters if that people do have issues with the blackjacking. And, if you allow me one last personal thing: It was absolutely fkn annoying to have to quicksave and quickload every time I missed a blackjack again in this mission. The mission is one of my absolute favorites, but, the blackjacking really sucked the life out of me in this one. It's absolutely frustrating to again and again have to re-load, and it's the one thing which seriously frustrates me about this mod in general. Everything else is on par, or even an improvement over the original games, except the blackjacking. It's beyond horrible. Even with the blackjack indicator, which doesn't work reliable either, by the way. The indicator didn't indicate that I was in a position for a successful K.O. even if the K.O. was successful. I don't know WTH is wrong with the system. Much too sensitive, much too dependant on the range and point of impact. It doesn't make sense in a game where you can't judge the distance as if you would in virtual reality, or in real life. It should be much more forgiving, and less sensitive.

I didn't know that you made a research study on the subject. But, jokes aside, I think we're running in circles, aren't we? I could as well argue that, just because you have no problem with it, or act like there isn't a problem, doesn't mean that the majority of peple don't have a problem with it. Blackjacking in TDM always worked very different to blackjacking in the original Thief's. I never had an issue with blackjacking in the original Thief's, but, since I play TDM (which is probably 13 to 14 years now), I had a lot of issues blackjacking in it. That's all I can say. Maybe my blackjacking skills magically vanish whenever I boot TDM. IDK. Or maybe blackjacking just plain sucks in TDM.

Re-playing this, I had a lot of issues with blackjacking them. Not just when they're squatting down, also when they're standing or walking. 9 out of 10 blackjack attempts failed. But then, blackjacking is the #1 issue of The Dark Mod in general anyway. It just doesn't work well. Seemed to be even (quite a bit) worse with the apebeasts though.

I'm re-playing this mission, and have trouble finding the

I didn't say that they don't have to overlap at all. I said that 3 guards at the same time in the same place, potentially even blocking the doorway is a bad thing, and has happened to me in TDM in the past. I don't remember such occasions being that much of an issue in the original Thief's. In general, obviously, TDM was created to be much harder. The A.I.'s senses are more sensitive, in most missions there is more A.I., in most missions there is at least 1 or 2 elite guards (which really should only be the highest ranked watch officers, guarding things like safes, or the primary loot object in missions), blackjacking is harder, and pretty random (I noticed that again yesterday, when some guards simply couldn't be knocked out in the first 4 or 5 tries, and then somehow got knocked out easily where I didn't even think I could knock them out. The blackjack indicator also only helps a bit, there can be times where it indicates that you can knock a guard out, and then when you press the key, the knockout is already off again. It's really weird, and I don't think I will find out how blackjacking works in TDM in this life.). Especially for people who blackjack every living thing, predictability is a critical thing, also in regards of hiding bodies. Again, I don't expect everything to me completely predictable, and, of course a guard can sometimes stop by the fire, or chat with another stationary guard. But, 3 or 4 variations of a route are bad.

Nothing wrong with that. What's bad is if A.I. changes their patrol route, and something like I've encountered in a few missions happens: 3 A.I.'s in the same room at the same time, even though they all have their general patrol route. That makes no sense at all.

Finally, someone who says it. Especially in stealth games, the A.I. has to be predictable to a certain degree, otherwise you really can scratch your planning and approach. Plus, it's more realistic for guards to have fixed paths anyway. No point in letting them guard places where 3 or 4 of them stack up, and leave the other areas unguarded. That said, the A.I. in most missions works predictably (fortunately).