Fan Mission: Penny Dreadful by Melan (2013/07/28)

[Melan]

Note: This mission has been released in an updated version. This update contains minor bugfixes, and cuts down on file size by removing duplicate assets which have been incorporated into the TDM core since the mission's release (24 instead of 72 MB!). Thanks are due to my testers, Bikerdude, lowenz, nbohr1more and Oldjim.

[161803398874989]

I'm sorry to say I couldn't finish this properly (without cheats). Story as to why in spoiler because spoilers.

 

 

I got down fine, but then after getting the grail of regrets I had to reload because I died (good job, me). After sneaking all the way back, I realized I had forgotten the rope arrows, and because I only use quicksave, I had to sneak all the way back. Instead, I just turned on notarget and made a quick run to grab the rope arrows. I figured they were necessary to get back to the beginning. I managed to get up the mineshaft, back into the flooded work area, but then I got completely stuck as there was nowhere to use the rope arrows that seemed productive. Since I was already in a cheaty mood, I just went clipping around for the solution, which turned out to be quite expansive, and I'm quite disappointed I wasn't able to solve it. It seems that I should have found some kind of switch to open a secret door that would lead back to the flooded area along a closed-off passage, and then do a little keyhunt before exiting via the spider's nest. The thing is, I looked around (just for a bit) and I still have absolutely no idea how to open that initial door.

Looking through the thread it seems more people had issues with that. Some hinting would've been nice, I think.

 

 

[Melan]

Well, there are at least four ways out of there. In order of obscurity:

 

1) The dead body in the tombs has a key to several doors inside the power station.

 

 

2) You can lower the platform with the Grail, then climb up the chains.

 

 

3) You can flip the secret switch in the back of the throne room column to open a secret door.

 

 

4) If you get upstairs with the rope arrows, you can actually stack a few crates to get out through the way you came, bypassing much of the mission. It is pretty much only for completionists, but it is there

 

[Deadlove]

 

4) If you get upstairs with the rope arrows, you can actually stack a few crates to get out through the way you came, bypassing much of the mission. It is pretty much only for completionists, but it is there

 

 

I did this the first time I played this mission, lost a lot of playtime.

[Philflound]

I haven't finished the mission but I can at any time. I've found many ways to get through everything short of 2 areas:

 

 

Is there a way to open the room with the helmet and sword? Actually, another question is right next to that area there is a pit covered by a grate, is the grate abled to be opened?

 

What someone asked I think on page 2 of this thread that no one answered was there is a room gate down with a switch on the left side when you look up those stairs. Is there a way in that? I've tried tunnels and secret passages, but can't seem to find a way in that. It's right next to the room with a ladder to climb on top of a tomb.

 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2015 by Philflound

[Melan]

Philflound:

 

None of those areas can be opened or visited.

 

Foxley is a more limited thief than Garrett or TDM's nameless thief - he can't pick locks and doesn't sneak so well, but he is slightly more open to brute force approaches. Therefore, some areas may remain off limits to him.

 

[Philflound]

Ah, you tease. BTW, I have both versions the first and the update. Do I need to play the first release? I did play the first version here. I don't want to lose something good by only playing the update. I wound up knocking all the people out and killing all the undead. Gave me free reign to look about without worry. Fits with your brute force.

 

I see you say you fixed some bugs. I ran into only one true bug. It was in the room going down that had 3 sort of circles above the door. There are coffins leaning on angles and at the end the coffin is open and standing up. I mantled on top of that one and temporarily went through the ceiling and saw many other rooms for 1 second. I didn't get stuck and it put me below the ceiling, but I just wanted to point that out.

 

Phil

Edited October 21, 2015 by Philflound

[Melan]

The update is just a bugfix release, which also cuts down on file size by excluding a bunch of resources which weren't in TDM in 2013, but they are in there now. Everything else is identical, so you aren't losing anything.

 

We didn't catch that bug; I have noted it, and if there is another release, it will be fixed.

[whoop]

Very cool mission...

 

 

 

I especially liked that I thought I was at the end for at least three times...

 

 

[Fidcal]

Good looking mission (as expected!) and some good non-obvious-but-reason-out-able climbs - though I wasn't surprised to read in this thread that not everyone found them. But I suspect I didn't find everything. In particular was a...

 

 

 

gate, no way through but I could see a lever and complex tracks or I'd have assumed it was just decoration. Only after finding the way out did I go back and noclip in there but seems to be just decoration after all? That reminds me, I forgot another smaller area beyond a gate down in the crypt I never got in. And that metal trapdoor in the floor in one room I spent a lot of time trying to find a lever or something.

 

 

Very enjoyable and I'll start No.2 soon as I can.

[Melan]

Thanks, Fidcal! The mission...

 

...has a few intentionally misleading clues, and a few elements which are part of a larger world, but not the mission proper. (This is not so much the case in Mission 2, which is difficult in rather different ways.)

 

[Cambridge Spy]

Here's a playthrough of this FM:

 

[video=youtube]

[V-Man339]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CDgzy9zvdA

It's taking a while to get to this level, so I figured you'd want to know that you reminded me of a song.

Once I return from the trip I'm on, I'll be recording the route I've made

[lightningline]

I am embarresed to say since I have been a taffer for almosy 17 years but I cant even get out of the area in the start with the one guard roaming around, scratch that. Dead now so i can focus, and still no light bulb. No hints please. Just spoil it. I have wasted an hour of my life already roaming the same small area. Thankyou in advance. -light-

[Bikerdude]

Look for something to climb up, think organic....

[lightningline]

Please. I said spoil it....I still am stuck. Edit: I guess I am not a complete moron. I got it. Thanks.

Edited July 22, 2016 by lightningline

[demagogue]

Biker's saying

 

Climb the ivy.

That's the solution to the opening to PD3.

I don't offhand remember how PD1 even opens.

 

 

Edit. Well looks like you got it so game on.

[V-Man339]

Melan, I think it's time to bite the bullet and make a mission titled "Acrobat in the Dark".

You clearly want to.

Edited September 15, 2016 by V-Man339

[Cynical]

Gave this a shot last night.

 

Looked great, and had amazing performance for the downright nuts level of detail, but I ran into a lot of snags on playability. The first one, and the one that really set up the frustration for the others, is that both the zombies and the skeletons stayed in perma-alert once they had seen me once (I thought this was intentional at the time and was just annoyed by what I thought was an inexplicable design decision, but judging from an earlier post where someone reported it happening with the skeletons as a bug, maybe it's not intentional?) Given the high enemy density and no holy water (as a side note, I'm never a fan of stealth game design with minimal elasticity, and with no holy water, this seems like a prime example of that, since you can't kill the relevant patrols in the mission), it meant that I had to keep moving constantly or risk getting cornered, which in turn made exploration really onerous.

 

And, I'm sure you can tell "made exploration really onerous" is going...

 

(the rest of this is spoiler-riffic)

 

I was stuck for hours at two bits in particular -- leaving the tomb, and finishing the map once I had the gatehouse key. Both of those, I eventually had to look up an answer to, and in both cases, the dark lighting ended up being part of my problems. In the case of the gatehouse key, I just couldn't see the door texture through the dark lighting. The chain hanging off of that one roof acted as a nasty red herring; since you can almost reach it from the wine-bottle ledge, I spent forever trying to jump to it, figuring the solution was to jump to that and then either climb or swing to the rooftops. In the case of exiting the tomb, I had tried climbing the chain early, but didn't see anything up there through the darkness. After that, it was an hour of looking for places to use the Power Station Key (which is WAAAAY too easy to miss for something so important, IMO) before looking it up in this thread and seeing "oh, it was up the chain". Judging from the thread, I'm seeing mentions of a place to escape the tomb with the Power Station Key, but I couldn't find any doors in the tomb that it opened -- probably not helped by the fact that I couldn't really explore because, you know, six perma-aggro skeletons were chasing me constantly, so I had to stay on the move to evade them without ever getting to stop search in detail.

 

 

I also had the same issues that Sotha did with a spider-corpse blocking the door. Not really your fault, but still annoying.

[Melan]

Thanks for your comments and criticism, Cynical!

[dmw88]

What does the

button do, near the re-entrance to the crypt that you can access with the powerstation key? I activate it and hear chains, but don't notice anything different.

 

Edited January 20, 2019 by dmw88

[Gerberox]

It's a really hard mission, I like it.

Unlike in many other missions, the dark parts are really dark, and that's cool.

Thanks.

[chakkman]

I just finished this mission, and, I must admit that I had my issues with it...

Spoiler

All those issues bow down to a single problem: There simply were too many enemies. It's one thing to include enemies which basically can't be killed, another to not give the player ANY means to fight them, but, if there are 3 skeletons standing in each others way going down some stairs, then you know that it's pretty excessive.

It not only makes - the mission very hard or force the player to ghost the mission, but, there also was abyolutely no way to even use the lantern in the crypts, which obviously make you miss a lot of things, like the ladder in one place, which lead to the loot on the woodwork which held the chandelier, or the exit above the grail. 

That's also the issue the people had with this mission, it's not that it's too dark, it's simply that you couldn't light it up sometimes. I had to look up several things in this thread, because I neither got out of the crypts (obviously a pretty common problem), and missed the key below the body in the crypt as well.

So, the gameplay was basically a mixture of constant stress trying to avoid the undead, and less fun in exploration, due to the inability to even light up the area sometimes. 

Due to this issue, I have to say that what could have been a great mission is just a good mission. The visuals were good, the layout was good, but, it was overshadowed by the amount of enemies.

I will play the other two Penny Dreadful's now, and hope that they are more playable.

P.S.: Especially for new players, this mission will be a frustrating experience, and I would only recommend it to seasoned veteran players, who really know their way around this game.

Edited July 10, 2022 by chakkman