thebigh

This thread has inspired me to find out if the forum has an ignore list feature. It does.

Neat little mission, nice and atmospheric. I suppose I got lucky in and I completed with 4/4 loot and a stealth score of 3. Possibly the lowest loot score of any level I've seen

Ah, I only saw it out on steam, saw the price and immediately noped. I'd have to burgle a lot of mansions to afford that. I'll check out the demo when I have some time.

Is the System Shock remake any good? It's still a bit pricy for me so I'll wait to get cheaper, but if it's horrible I might not bother at all. I loved System Shock 2, but could never get into the original because the controls were so confusing and many. It was like living in an aeroplane cockpit.

And TDM does have a discord: DISCOOOORD!!!!

I'm nowhere near professional but I'm a native speaker (Australian accent) and I'd be happy to help out with speaking roles. Until the middle of Jul I'm travelling and I don't have my good microphone with me but if it's, say, something broadcast over a PA and won't matter if I record potato quality on a mobile phone I can easily get started before then.

Absolutely, and for this mission it's a moot point since I cannot drop keys anyway. My question was more general and not just specific to this one mission. If a scripted event creates a new key or other object how should it be handled under Supreme Ghost rules? Do I go the purist route of leaving it exactly where I found it, same as any other key or droppable item acquired during the mission? Or the slightly more narrative-driven reasoning that it's evidence I was there and shouldn't be left behind? I would generally agree with the latter, and it looks like most of you agree with me, so it's all good.

Fair point, but I can't leave it at the front door of the house either because the occupants will know it shouldn't be there. Maybe for things like this a good compromise would be to leave it somewhere nobody can ever find it again, for instance dropping it into an inaccessible storm drain or into lava.

Nice idea. If you need a VA for the crazy prisoner, let me know!

I am happy to report a Supreme Ghost success on Thief's Den, one of the first ever Dark Mod levels. Finished with all the loot and completed all the objectives on the hardest difficulty Doused no lights and didn't move any objects except loot and objective items, including something I had to plant there I used a rope arrow once but retrieved it immediately Re-locked all the locked doors and chests Stealth score zero with zero level-one murmurs Keys can't be dropped in this mission so I had to keep them; this is explicitly excused The last bullet point does raise a philosophical question about Supreme Ghost mode. One of the keys, a newly-manufactured copy of the front door key, was slid under the door for me by an associate after all my other objectives were done. If keys had been droppable in this mission, would I have had to return that key? A purist would insist, yes, put it back where you found it. But I argue that, since this is a key made for me by my buddy, it has no business existing and is evidence that I was there, and so I should take it with me. What do you think? Yes, it's on the statistics summary at the end of the mission.

In my experience TDM is more difficult to ghost than Thief II. The guards, depending on sensitivity settings, can be quite perceptive. It is, for instance, far harder to blackjack or pickpocket a walking guard without him hearing you than it was in the original duology. This goes double if he is carrying a lantern. And with many years' experience of playing and designing levels, quite a few TDM missions are purposefully quite tricky. My own level is designed specifically to be ghosted: the guards have lanterns, but don't carry any pickpocket items and their patrol routes are predictable, so you should avoid them rather than trying to sneak up on them. But this seemed to frustrate people a bit. I don't know if the community ever formulated any rules for strict ghosting. I think the ones you've got up on the TTLG thread are pretty reasonable. Though I suspect the part about "exploiting quirks of the engine" is less applicable for TDM than the original games because the game and level editor are continually being improved, so what might be an exploitable thing today could well no longer work next year.

Some shortish, not-too-difficult missions I recommend are: 1. The Parcel, by Xonze. Standard mansion heist with a few cleverly hidden secrets. The guard patrols are fair, but not trivial to solve. 2. In Danger of Judgment, by krrg. Possibly the easiest Dark Mod mission I've ever played in terms of guards (there are very few) but this intricate little mansion has a lot of devious hiding spots and concealed loot. 3. The Outpost, by angua and greebo. A little bit harder but still fair. 4. Closemouthed Shadows, by LordSavage and Bikerdude. One of the very first Dark Mod missions ever made, it is very short but still enjoyable.

It is a William Steele mission. My missions list has it as "WS1: In the North". If that isn't working for you for some reason, the wiki links to several alternative download possibilities.

I think so too, but I may have misunderstood what MirceaKitsune was asking.

I just tested this. I made two rooms and a visportal separating them, then I made a 2nd visportal dividing one of the rooms in half and meeting the 1st visportal at right angles, thus: I didn't get any leaks or dropped portals, but it's not obvious to me what doing this sort of thing would accomplish. What are you trying to do?

Oh I agree. That one yellow straw rug sees a lot of use XD.

I'd like to be able to erase my memories of Mass Effect so that I could experience it for the first time again.

Another enjoyable small mission. This one has our thiefy friend out to infiltrate a breakaway faction of thieves and assassinate their leader. You approach the compound via the City streets, dodging the City Watch along the way. This is not so easy because the Watch guys have torches and cover is not plentiful, though there are a few interesting houses and side alleys here and there. I thought the architecture was a bit on the boxy side, even for 2009. But the gameplay is where this mission shines. Often I found myself thinking, "That bit of shadow looks like it'll get illuminated if Torchy McGee walks past, but that bit looks deep enough." That is just the kind of puzzle I enjoy, and one of the reasons I play Dark Mod; this mission gets it right. There's a few rough spots, like a window you can mantle into but is too small to fit through, and an easily accessible roof that's covered in playerclip for no good reason, but those are minor concerns. I played on the hardest difficulty and finished with a stealth score of 1, one kill, one KO, and all but 110 loot. 7/10 for me.

I've finally begun on the Thomas Porter series, beginning with the zeroth episode, Mandrasola. Our thief, Thomas Porter, wants to corner the market on a rare and expensive narcotic but to do that he needs to discover the identity of the City's only remaining supplier so he can steal their stash. Tailing an aristocratic junkie to her dealer seems the best way. This is a nice little mission, beginning with a tailing scene reminiscent of Assassins in the original Thief game- but trickier because the wintery streets of Bridgeport are well lit and the Watch are uncharacteristically alert. Why they attack Thomas for wearing a hood and cloak on a cold winter night while ignoring the mace-wielding ruffian nearby is a good question- perhaps some bribe money has changed hands. What I liked about this mission, despite its small size, is that it felt bigger. Most of the houses have multiple entry points and cleverly hidden loot. The guard patrol routes are intricate and tight, definitely "Sotha-style", so you'll be waiting and studying for a bit (especially on harder difficulties or if you want to ghost) and that always adds meat to even geographically small areas. The finale was cool and unexpected. Finding all 15 Mandrasola baggies was fiendishly hard. One secret stash in particular was difficult to uncover and another of the pickpocket baggies somehow got embedded almost invisibly in its owner's butt so was very hard to spot. Somehow I got all the loot and a stealth score of 9 on the hardest difficulty, with just two KOs.

@greebo will probably want to know about this.

As far as I know But you'd have to try it yourself to confirm.

Okay, this is another old classic mission that I have been meaning to play and finally got around to. I had a lot of fun, but also a lot of frustration, with it. First I'll say that the mission is cleverly planned, well laid out, and logical. The guard patrol routes are tight and their sight lines are quite long in places, which I normally like. It makes you think about, and remember, your surroundings. And the architecture is quite beautiful, especially the Blue Lantern inn, which I suppose must have once been a Builder church at one time. I also enjoyed the detective work, first to find the identity of your would-be assassin and then figuring out how to get the nasty piece of work to go to sleep. What annoyed me is that sometimes the patrol routes bordered on unfair. At times you could get stuck in a long corridor with no cover or shade, and the ambient is so bright it contributes to the lightgem, which makes hiding even in complete darkness iffy. I'm also not a fan of guards noticing loot missing and turning the lights back on. In my opinion (and this is just my own personal taste) it should be at most one of these things. If you have a conspicuous loot piece, put some unrelightable light sources nearby so you can cover up your theft with darkness. All in all, this is a solid 7/10 for me.

That actually seems like it's asking for trouble. Super handy if you're Monsterclipping an object you just placed.

I always liked reading your reviews. And I never really got the feeling that you were being too savage on things you didn't like.

Yeah, I got stuck in an unwinnable state as well because of the guard upstairs doing pirouettes by the window and never stopping. Of course if I try to sneak back to the stairs he catches sight of me instantly and charges with his sword drawn.