The Best Dark Mod Missions

[Gerberox]

There are currently nearly 200 missions to the game. That's a lot. So I made a list of the ones you shouldn't miss. If you're a beginner, do not start with the best missions. Play a few others first to learn how the game and controls work, and how you can use some items to interact with objects on the map. You will appreciate them more that way.

Tastes vary. My subjective assessment is based on how enthusiastic and interested I was during the mission. Generally, I appreciate the unusual circumstances. If I felt lost too many times or needed hints to solve the plot, those were clear disadvantages. I don't like the needle in the haystack type elements. (Secrets are fine.)

The list isn't a quality line. I don't want to add precise ratings, that's not the point.

I have a message for those whose missions didn't end up here: Don't worry. Others may judge differently. In any case, some missions may be added here with some editing. A few didn't make it here only because of the obscure wording in the descriptions of objectives.

Give me tips if you think something is missing from the list. 200 missions are a lot, I might have skipped some gems.

BEST MISSIONS
-A House of Locked Secrets: Very funny, diverse and memorable, sometimes nonsensical. The best mission. 4 hrs
-Seeking Lady Leicester: It's probably the second best mission, but I won't argue with anyone who ranks it first. Knowing how to rotate items is essential to play this mission (middle mouse button). 6 hrs
-Volta 2, Cauldron of the Gods  2.5 hrs
-Volta 3: Gemcutter  3 hrs
-Penny Dreadful 1: The grail of regrets  1.5-2 hrs
-Penny Dreadful 2: All the way up  3 hrs
-The Painter's Wife: A monumental mission. The size doesn't mean this is the best one.
-Hazard Pay  2 hrs
-Now and Then  5.5 hrs
-Black Mage 3 hrs
-Requiem: The mission is excellent and imaginative. But it's painfully difficult to move without being noticed at certain points. 4 hrs
-Crucible of Omens: Behind closed doors: Excellent mission, the only problem is that it's difficult to navigate between the different parts, and it's hard to find your way back to places. Having a route back to the first part, which could be opened from the later part of the map, would have helped the flow.  5 hrs

RECOMMENDED MISSIONS
-Iris  I hesitated a lot whether to put this in the list of best missions. But the first part of the mission offers so many options, it's rather a caricature of the genre. And the environment isn't very good either. Less would have been more. The second part of the mission is much better. I appreciate the innovative element. 7 hrs
-Chronicles of Skulduggery 0: To Catch a Thief
-Chronicles of Skulduggery 2: A Precarious Position  2.5 hrs
-Chronicles of Skulduggery 3: Sacricide: Good, traditional mission but the story is too black and white.
-No Honor Among Thieves: The end isn't satisfying, but otherwise this is a good mission chain. 5.5 hrs
-Shadows of Northdale act 2. 3 hrs
-The Last Night on Crookshank Lane  4 hrs
-Penny Dreadful 3
-Mother Rose  Funny. It's not for beginners! 40 min
-A Score to Settle
-Sir Talbot's Collateral
-Talbot 2: Return to the City 1.5 hrs
-Talbot 3: Fiasco at Fauchard street 1.5 hrs
-Thomas Porter 1, Knighton Manor:  Good jokes.
-Thomas Porter 2, The Beleaguered Fence
-Thomas Porter 3, Glenham Tower
-King of Diamonds
-Accountant 2: The code is good.
-Golden Skull: 30 min
-Vengeance for a Thief 1-3
-The Factory Heist
-A Good Neighbor
-Snowed Inn
-Langhorne Lodge
-Heart of Saint Mattis  3-4 hrs
-Perilous Refuge 2.5 hrs
-The Hare in the Snare: Part 1
-Rightful Property
-Alberic's Curse 1.5 hrs
-A Night in Altham: A strange mission. 9 hrs
-By the Cookbook 1 hour
-Wizard's Treasure  1 hour
-A Night to Remember 1.5 hrs
-Lord Edgars Bathhouse 1.5 hrs
-Last Offering: How much you enjoy it depends largely on what equipment you choose at the beginning. 1 hour
-The Rift: Quite cool, but the music isn't on the ambient channel so it's not possible to make it quiet. 1 hour
-Briarwood Cathedral  1.5 hrs
-The Threepenny Revue: 45 min
-Mission of Mercy  1 hour

[chakkman]

Definitely subjective, but, I think you got most of those right. I would rate Penny Dreadful 3 much higher than Penny Dreadful 1 though. Actually, I would say Penny Dreadful 1 is rather a 6/10, while Penny Dreadful 3 is one of the best, if not THE best city mission there is in The Dark Mod. 

[I.C.H.I.]

Yeah, obviously this list is very subjective. I can easily call Iris a masterpiece of level design for its complexity and depth, but calling it a caricature of the genre is absolutely bizarre to me.

Also you don't have Written In Stone in your list, which is another one of the most remarkable FMs and I don't know if you played it or not, but if yes and decided that's it's not that great then it gives me an idea about your criteria.

In general I don't see the point in making such lists for two reasons:

1. User score can be meaningless, because some players are unable to see further than their own nose, so they may lower the score if gameplay or navigation were just too hard for them. But this is not the level/game-design's issue, it's the player's inability to see the full picture and embrace the challenge that was delivered by the given complexity, while the complexity itself and the attention to details can be remarkable.

2. Such lists are pretty egocentric by nature and thus they have no value. Except if someone judges something by the overall quality and doesn't measure it by their own preferences. For example this:

17 hours ago, Gerberox said:

A few didn't make it here only because of the obscure wording in the descriptions of objectives.

...is not a valid criteria.

[chakkman]

Yes, Written in Stone is very good as well. 9/10 from me. I think that's the score I gave it on ThiefGuild.com.  (Or, it rather was a 8/10)

 

Edited September 11 by chakkman

[Gerberox]

Written in Stone: It's a very atmospheric quest, but I didn't find the coal and got so bored I didn't even care to search for a hint.

[chakkman]

You should give it a second try. It gets really good in the later part of the mission.

By the way, coal? I don't remember that at all.

Edited September 11 by chakkman

[werner]

6 hours ago, I.C.H.I. said:

Yeah, obviously this list is very subjective

Why are you so upset? 
It's like Gerberox said: It's subjective and tastes vary. To call personal opinions 'pretty egocentric'... hello, couldn't this be called the same?

I discovered TDM only 2.5 years ago (although I am using Linux now for long years and looked for a nice game) and was pretty puzzled by the number of downloadable missions, and after wasting my time with several bad ones (too old, too mini, too weird or really bad; and of course too difficult for a beginner) I looked also for recommendations what missions would be 'best' to try. And I made my own list of 'good' and 'bad', ones to keep and the others not to install again by mistake after deleting them.

What I learned so far is, that mission creation is really an art (which I am lacking), but nevertheless it should be allowed to have a opinion or critic about missions or to rate them.

About the more sophisticated missions... I think it's like parties, there are two kinds of it: That ones made for the guests' joy, the other ones for the renown of the one who throws it. And so there those missions made for the players' fun, and others made to get something extra fancy - which isn't allway fun to play. And a mission bores me, although how perfect it may in several aspects be, when it's layout is too labyrinthic or way to large and I have to run around like a mad weasel and don't get any damn clue about what to do and how to get on. And I think TDM generally to be a humorous game, so I don't like (lots of) spiders/undeads und other unfunny creepy crap too much. There was a nice website (I dont remember the adress) where missions could have been searched by different ciriteria, but sadly it' gone.

My personal favorite is Who Watches the Watcher? and also all five of Grayman's William Steele missions, Lieutenant 1,3,4 and a few other I would all rate as excellent, apart from the above mentioned.

[thebigh]

35 minutes ago, werner said:

There was a nice website (I dont remember the adress) where missions could have been searched by different ciriteria, but sadly it' gone.

 

You might be thinking of Thief Guild, which is definitely still active and going strong. In fact I'd encourage our community to go over there, rate and review.

[I.C.H.I.]

1 hour ago, werner said:

Why are you so upset?

Who is upset? I call things by their names, that's it.

I often observe that majority of players don't look at games from the gamedesign perspective, instead they may have their whims and struggles with certain things. This forms their preferences and solidifies the foundation for their quality standards, which makes their personal preferences meaningless when it comes to giving a fair judgement.

[Gerberox]

2 hours ago, werner said:

There was a nice website (I dont remember the adress) where missions could have been searched by different ciriteria, but sadly it' gone.

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod

[werner]

No, it found the adress in my old bookmarks: https://tdmdb.com/missions

It's definitly down.

[demagogue]

I think recommendation styles often split between cinematic FMs with great atmosphere, story, and big set pieces at the arguably cost of open gameplay vs. gameplay FMs ones with really well thought out, challenging, and open level design at the arguable cost of tight impactful storytelling. In a way that's the old ludo vs. narrative debate. Of course there are some FMs that do both sides well, but even then there's usually some emphasis on one side of the coin over the other. 

Anyway, my FM love language is definitely on the gameplay side of the coin, and while I can appreciate the big set pieces and storytelling beats, they don't do as much for me as FMs with environments really well designed for challenging gameplay where I'm fighting for progress. 

To each their own though. I'm glad there's not one style of FM and we have a good amount of diversity. 

[datiswous]

7 hours ago, werner said:

No, it found the adress in my old bookmarks: https://tdmdb.com/missions

More info here:

Unfortunately the github source is also down.

[darksilence]

@datiswous @werner

I discontinued tdmdb.com because although the tool was useful, and many people liked the website, it appeared to me that most players don't need all that searching criteria, especially considering the variety of channels that exist nowadays to get information about missions.

In any case, I still have the code, so if I misjudged its utility and there's an interest to place it somewhere (or do something similar), I'll be glad to help.

By the way, thank you very much to everyone who used it! 

[datiswous]

2 hours ago, darksilence said:

In any case, I still have the code

Why would you remove it from Github though? I mean the hosting is free.

Edited September 21 by datiswous

[Fiver]

On 9/21/2025 at 8:45 AM, darksilence said:

if I misjudged its utility and there's an interest to place it somewhere (or do something similar), I'll be glad to help.

A set of some 200 missions is a lot to sift through to find what one likes.

I never used your site but if it provided functionality to search missions for parameters like approximate playtime, series v standalone, and tags like undead, spiders, mansion, city, etc, then it sounds plenty useful.

Can the functionality be incorporated into the main web page? Perhaps even integrated to fetch underlying data from the wiki (so that trusted editors can keep the parameters up to date)?

[STRUNK]

@darksilence
I used it quite a bit, mostly when I just found out about TDM and wanted to filter missions to my liking.
I think yours was the best tool for searching : )

[tes]

Hello, I am looking for a current list or enumeration of missions that do not feature undead creatures, monsters, zombies, animal creatures, or similar entities. Could someone please assist me with this? Otherwise, I have to start each mission and then uninstall it again. Thank you very much.

Edited November 5 by tes

[chakkman]

26 minutes ago, tes said:

Hello, I am looking for a current list or enumeration of missions that do not feature undead creatures, monsters, zombies, animal creatures, or similar entities.

Unfortunately, that will significantly limit the missions you can play.

[Frost_Salamander]

1 hour ago, tes said:

Hello, I am looking for a current list or enumeration of missions that do not feature undead creatures, monsters, zombies, animal creatures, or similar entities. Could someone please assist me with this? Otherwise, I have to start each mission and then uninstall it again. Thank you very much.

This wiki page lists all the missions. The last column in the table 'Spiders and Undead' will indicate if the mission includes those creatures: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Fan_Missions_for_The_Dark_Mod

[tib]

to find the "best" mission? look for the highest size of download & the highest pages in the forum

[SeriousToni]

You could have a look at thiefguild.com but I'm not sure if the filter there is sufficient to your needs. 

[tib]

just want to improve my previous formula, i think if one try to find "the best fan mission", he must look after the number that shows how much work is behind the game (ussualy the size of download file) + how that game was appreciated by the community, which play it. Maybe there could be also the count of score of some research by the community (the contest score).