FMs - Ghost/Perfect Thief
Results (Part 5)
1. 14th Mar 2003, 23:42 #26
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Taffer's Shooting Gallery
FM: Taffer's Shooting Gallery
Ghost - Failed
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 00:02:13
Loot - 1375/1475
Pockets Picked - 0/1
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 22 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 1
Secrets Found - 0/0
Cause of Failure:
-Damage must be dealt to the AI on the conveyor belt.
Comments - This was a silly C4 mission. After reading its title, I knew I couldn't take it seriously. I just positioned myself by the fence and shot at everything until enough loot piled up. At certain times, a blazing gear (like from a mechanist priest) would shoot out at me, but they were easy to dodge.
At least this mission provides good target practice and archery training. ^_^
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2. 15th Mar 2003, 02:29 #27
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Father Hirvakia's Portal
FM: Intro to Father Hirvakia's Portal
Ghost - N/A
Perfect Thief - N/A
Time - 00:02:19
Loot - 0/0
Pockets Picked - 0/1
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Comments - Just a camvator intro to the Father Hirvakia mission pack. The text went by rather fast; didn't get a chance to read all of it.
FM: Father Hirvakia's Portal Part 2
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 00:07:34
Loot - 100/100
Pockets Picked - 0/1
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - This was where the action began. Although the mission was small, it took me a while to sneak around the priests. At times it looked like they were on 2nd alert, but it was really just an added animation, ie. keepers in "Equilibrium." The key to the high priest room was in the kitchen on the counter, and the torch on the chandelier opened the stained glass window in the priest room. When I stepped on a platform with an ensconced pentagram, a distinctive looking priest, who I later assumed was Hirvakia, spawned and started an interesting scripted movie. I don't believe this is a ghost bust, even with the new rules. Stepping on the platform is the objective, and even if Hirvakia was alerted, I believe this doesn't qualify as a ghost bust.
FM: Father Hirvakia's Portal Part 3
Ghost - Success?
Perfect Thief - N/A
Time - 00:08:01
Loot - 0/0
Pockets Picked - 0/1
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - I'm not positively sure if I can say I ghosted this one or not. Firstly, I triggered a scripted battle with Nikole and an apebeast. But Nikole was stricken by a dart coming from another apebeast in a cave. None of the AI said anything or even went alert during this. To get by the apebeast in the cave, I had to apply a little trick. I had to make a successful dash into the small patch of shadow infront of the glowing mushroom without alerting the apebeast. I had to use a strafe-left technique and rely on speed to avoid putting the apebeast on 2nd alert. I then had to lean forward and inch up until I could pick up the glowing mushroom. Then I had to run back outside and around the edge of the cave so I could get Nikole's corpse. The area was still bright outside so I couldn't carry Nikole into the cave because of speed. So I dropped her corpse in the entry way of the cave. This didn't alert the apebeast. I then had to make another successful dash into the patch of shadow, and then lean and grab Nikole's corpse. This was the only technique I could have tried and I don't know why the apebeast didn't go on 2nd alert after seeing Nikole's corpse.
The last part of the mission concerns me. I dropped Nikole's corpse on the pedestal by the ramp and waited for Hirvakia to show up and start his scripted speech. I watched the portal and observed the blue beams meeting and heard an army of apebeasts approach. When the red beam showed up, and the silent explosion erupted, I grabbed Nikole's corpse and just made a run for the portal. I hugged the wall to avoid having a bright yellow visibility gem, but once I got to the spires of the portal, I was in full brightness for about a second or two. I didn't hear any of the apebeasts say anything, and Hirvakia was still engaged in his speech. So I walked into the portal and the mission ended.
Whether playing with the old ghost rules, or the new one, this seems like a problem to me. I'm sure the apebeasts didn't see me, but I don't know if Hirvakia was alerted by my presence even if he was having a scripted conversation. It's like the archers in T2's "Life of the Party." They will continue to have their conversation, but you can't pick their arrows because they are on 2nd alert; they just don't show it. I guess I have a little dilemma with this mission. Unless someone argues about scripting, I don't think this is a ghost bust.
FM: Outro to Father Hirvakia's Portal
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 00:06:23
Loot - 0/200
Pockets Picked - 0/1
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - An interesting way to end the mission pack. The effects in this mission were similar to the "Deceptive Perception" FM. I was afraid those statues of the guards would come alive. After I read Nikole's note and snatched the sword, I used the creep key the entire time until I reached the front door and watched the camvator movie.
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3. 15th Mar 2003, 03:29 #28
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A Mother's Love
FM: A Mother's Love
Ghost - Failed
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 00:14:45
Loot - 18800/18815
Pockets Picked - 0/7 (where?)
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 7/0 (?)
Cause of Failure:
-Pressing buttons spawns different AI that start a melee in the arena. Alerts, deaths, and ghost busts, oh my.
Comments - When I read the briefing in darkloader, I had no idea what the mission was really going to be like. And I didn't know it would turn out to be a gladiator-style melee extravaganza.
I was able to sneak by the spiders in the beginning and was hoping for a good mission to ghost, but then I found the arena and the control buttons. It was required to press them and start a melee in the arena. I just kept pressing random buttons. I heard haunts, male nobles, spider bots, treebeasts, and hammerites going at it. I wasn't aware of just exactly how I would get loot until I saw a massive stack of gold nuggets and emeralds towering to the sky. To end the fight, I pressed the frogbeast button a hundred times and listened to the explosions and deaths. Then I snuck down and snatched all of the loot.
I don't know how to explain the missing pockets or the 7 secrets out of 0. Unless Hester had something on her that could be picked, and maybe the special items found on the vines and plants upstairs also counted as pockets. I don't remember discovering 7 secrets though.
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4. 22nd Mar 2003, 02:55 #29
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A Keeper's Betrayal
A Keeper's Betrayal
Ghost - Failed
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 02:08:17
Loot - 2091/2231
Pockets Picked - 2/3
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 1
Damage dealt - 75 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 2
Secrets Found - 2/3
Causes of Failure:
-Cannot sneak by spider in the labyrinth
-Method of killing Keeper Bouran is questionable
Comments - I have to pat myself on the back for this one. I overcame alot of obstacles that I was going to consider ghost busts. But the last two, mainly the first one, still aggrivates me.
Before I explain the main busts, there were some other areas to be noted:
-To get into the torture room and trigger the new objectives, I had to nudge the guard next to the table in the police station.
-I used a rope arrow on the canvas above the metal door near the inn so I could get inside of the building.
-To get into the mechanist building, I had to use a rope arrow on the ceiling of the balcony on the right side. I failed to see the double doors or the wall to mantle near the sewers, and I couldn't sneak passed the previous guards. I shot a rope arrow into the ceiling of the balcony and jumped onto the frame of the double doors. After a few reloads, I realized that jumping on the edge of the metal beam of the roof is the best method. Mantling onto the roof would always yield a loud jumping sound, and I couldn't stack anything or sneak around the two mechanist guards. A few meticulous leaps fixed this problem, and the mechanist building was straightforward.
-To get the loot on the little ledge in the dining room, I simply jumped onto the glass tables and made my way to the end of the wall.
-There is a switch on the frame of the painting in Salfatora's bed room that opens up the bookcase with the skull and some loot. One of the masks was worth 200 and went into a separate loot count.
-The squared wooden panel in Keeper Bouran's bed room is a pressure plate and opens the stained glass window near the double doors.
Getting Keeper Bouran's Key
Normally, one would be required to slash the banner in the secret study in order to get the blue key. Since this is a no-no, I had to try alot of things. I tried banner transmigration, but failed miserably. I tried to do some leans and jumps, and see if I could get into the banner, but this was getting me no where. I had saved before, and then slashed the banner to see what was behind it to know that the key was on a balcony. I was thinking about using a stacking technique, but I wasn't pleased with the idea until I ruled everything out. So I went down to the Keeper courtyard and found the huge room. There was a spiral of water that extended upwards towards the ceiling. I immediately thought this could be another route. But after a dozen attempts, I couldn't jump out of the pole shaped water and land onto the balcony with the key. I tried cucumber stacking, I brought in a few crates, but stacking crates was a daunting task, so I tried going through my inventory to see if I could stack cucumbers again, but accidentally pressed "r" when the keeper's notes were selected. To my surprise, the keeper's notes (which was really a book) floated in the air. I was able to jump onto it and it had a carpet sounding surface. Right now, I had alot of light bulbs turning on in my head, and I found out that I had two keeper books that could be manipulated and dropped this way. So I rose to the top of the water pole, and I dropped the books near the balcony so I could create something to stand on and help me get across. It took alot of reloads because it was easy to fall out of the water and either become damaged, make too much noise, or even die. Once I created a good looking platform using the two books, I tried going to the top of the water pole and dropping down onto them. It worked on the first try, and I was able to get the blue key, grab the books, and jump down into the water pole again.
The Spider and Keeper Bouran
Immediately following my success with Keeper Bouran's key, I descended into the creature area and found a secret passage in the storage room with the crates. The passage lead to a labyrinth looking area and a few spiders in the narrow corridors. One spider in particular was the only true ghost bust in this mission. The first spider you come across in the labyrinth is on the right path and faces the way you need to go. Since sneaking by him is impossible, I went back to the storage room and brought some crates down. I tried a Lytha-Spider-Crate-Nudging technique, but for some reason, the spider would always become alert when the crate hit the ground after it was nudged. The next technique involved those keeper books again. I tried creating stairs above the spider so I could come up above it, and drop down. But the corridor wasn't tall enough and the spider even became alert when I was above it. I had to take it out with a broadhead and move on. This was very disappointing. Maybe with more patience and luck, someone else will be able to do this.
Keeper Bouran had a haunt voice and was standing on a platform in an oval shaped room. He didn't seem to be keen in sight, so I was able to sneak along the walls and get close to him. I couldn't jump or mantle onto the platform. It seemed like the texture wasn't even a wall with a surface. I had to resort to using the keeper books as stairs and a cucumber stacking trick to get onto the platform. To my astonishment, a backstab doesn't take out the keeper. An assassinating arrow doesn't either. Not even a fire arrow took him out. I had to use my blackjack and knock him out, then beat him to death until he died. I counted 50 hits, so he must have 50 hp. With the new ghost rules, and even the old ones, I don't know if this was acceptable. His death was required, but the method of killing him might not be allowed. Either way, I was still busted on that spider.
I didn't find all of the secrets or the loot, but there were some interesting places with loot: purse and coin stack behind banner in blacksmith shop, ring behind mechanist desk on the 2nd floor of mech building, nugget in the spider jail cell, gold candlesticks on the tables above the keeper library, and gold coin stack on the shelf in the creature study area.
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5. 22nd Mar 2003, 03:19 #30
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A Keeper's Betrayal
FM: A Keeper's Betrayal
File: betrayal.zip
Play mode: Ghost (failed)
Time: 1 hr 45 min
Loot: 1351 of 2231 (1800 required)
Pockets picked: 1 of 3 (actually 2)
Damage dealt: 75 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 2 (only 1 was killed)
Secrets: 2 of 3
Cause(s) of failure:
- A banner must be slashed to get a key.
- Couldn't find enough loot (without property damage or full alerts).
Comments:
- Supposedly there were 2 pickpocket opportunities. I apparently only found 1.
- The non-zero damage dealt included the required kill per objective, and perhaps the accidental death of sewer spiders (mentioned later).
- Never found the last secret. Maybe it has the loot needed to make the loot objective.
- There are many barrels which appear to exist but do not. I would try to jump atop a barrel to get out of the patrol path of a guard only to fall through and slap my feet on the ground which alerted the guard.
- At the dock warehouse, the side door cannot be opened if the patrolling guard is nearby even if he cannot see the door open but just hears it. If he goes on alert, so do the other 2 guards. Open the side door when the patrolling guard is on the dockside of the building.
- Had to nudge the guard at the side door so I could get between him and the building.
- The nearby sewer manhole (and the farther away sewerworks door) require a key to open. You'll find one submerged at the dock. The ladder into the water let me get in without a big splash noise.
- There is a secret way into the sewers by roping up and over the weaponsmith's shop. However, this has you fall into the sewers and the splash noise will alert the spiders there.
- Taking the sewer manhole or street door and ladder let you get into the sewers and bypass the spiders. However, an objective forces you to get into the water in the spider infested room; you need to read Keeper Troy's journal and get a key through a submerged tunnel. The splash noise puts the spiders on full alert. I bypassed this area and came back later. When I came back, one spider had walked off the walkway and drowned in the water. As I entered the room with the spider at the far corner, it also fell off the walkway and drowned without ever spotting me. So now I didn't have to worry about alerts from splashing into the water. I also later used the secret route to get the water and moss arrows in the center raised pool since the spiders were now dead.
- Getting inside the Mechanist seminary is tough. The ledges looked possible until you get on them. They have no friction (i.e., they look like ledges of stone or brick but actually behave like ice). You cannot jump when on such a texture, so you cannot get past the door sills or window ledges to get inside. I did manage once to use a rope arrow to go up, open the double doors, and jump into the doors just at the point where you won't make lots of noise on hitting the floor. However, it was easier to mantle over the fence and nudge forward a front door guard to get past him or her (there are 2 guards here) and get inside using the front door.
- There is a darkened room with a sleeping mage. When you open the door to the connecting office, he awakes onto 1st alert. I could not crouch and creep into the office (which has a safe) without getting spotted, but I could crouch and dash around the doorway with only a 1st alert.
- Getting the loot in the dining room proved difficult. There was a servant inside and it was full lit with no way to turn off the lights. I managed to sneak behind the mech servant by jumping on the tables and hugging the wall. However, it took several retries to get clumsy Garrett to jump just right so he would land on the edge of the table and not make noise.
- Had to nudge a guard in the prison to get past him in the small guardroom and to the cell with the corpse of Keeper Troy (an objective).
- The medallion is easy to find in Salfatora's room. However, finding the switch to open the secret wall panel was very hard. You have to get on the bed with the sleeping Salfatora. He didn't wake when I jumped on the bed.
- I had to go back down in the sewers to get the inn room key and read the Keeper's journal (an objective). However, diving into the water (Garrett doesn't know how to slide down slowly and quietly into water) causes a splash noise that alerts the spiders. However, on my return to this sewer room, one spider had wandered off the walkway and drowned. When I entered the room, the remaining spider was at the far corner and couldn't see me, fell off the walkway, and it also drowned. So much for worrying about the AIs alerting to the splash noise. I then read the journal and then got the key. Later I used the secret route into the sewers to get the water and moss arrows in the center pool in the sewer room.
- Because of the guard constantly watching across the street at the inn, I couldn't go from Salfatora's house to the inn without getting spotted when I had to pass a lighted area on the street. There is a window you can open while atop a large crate and I could get on the ledge for the window but I could not get past the window and into the inn (to get into the room for which I had a key that would lead to the Keepers' sanctuary). I had to go all the way around, past the Mechanist seminary (and nudge the other guard away from the front doors to get past him), over the wall, and the other way around to dash past the smaller lit spot on the street to the inn with only a 1st alert.
- To get at Bouran's key in the Keepers' sanctuary, you must slash a banner above the fireplace in the secret room. I tried toting lots of crates to the pool with suspended layers in the room with the beam jutting out that has the key on it thinking I could get to the top pedestal of the pool, swim up, and then swim out of the column of water to land on the beam. However, you cannot get enough speed when swimming out of the column of water to land of the beam, and instead you just fall to your death. Reload. There is nowhere to use a rope arrow to get up to the key. So you must slash the banner. Ghost busted.
- In the maze after the Keepers' prison, there is a big green spider blocking the way. There is no route around the spider. You don't have ANY moss arrows, so you cannot try to douse torches and moss the floor to jump over this spider. Had to kill it (or, I suppose, I could've left it alive and just run fast past it to keep away when it alerted). Ghost busted.
- After getting the Earth Bane book, which was pretty easy, you have to continue a bit farther to find the bad Keeper that you are required to kill. A gate drops behind you to trap you in that last room. When you kill the bad Keeper (it takes 12 broadheads), the gate opens. That doesn't make sense. If you leave but come back into this room, the gate drops again but now you are trapped permanently here because the Keeper is already dead.
- There is a metal door that lights up behind the Keeper (now a corpse) on an elevated ledge. The author seems to have deliberately made it impossible to mantle up onto the ledge. Even if you get atop the edge of the pit (you'll die if you try falling into the black pit) and although you can jump higher than the top of the ledge, you only hear Garrett make a mantling grunt but he cannot manage to snatch the ledge to get up to the frobbable door, so you cannot get close enough to pick it open (if it is pickable). I found no key to open this door, but then I cannot get up to the ledge since it is not mantleable. Maybe this was the last secret and maybe it has the remaining loot needed for me to make the loot objective, but I cannot get to the door to check it out.
- There is a 100 gold nugget in the central and open area pool in the middle of the Keepers' sanctuary. But the splash noise on entering will alert the semi-invisible Keepers, so I had to skip it.
- There is no way to enter the house across the street from the inn. Both outside doors are unpickable and there is no key to open them. The only key is inside and on a table across the room from the open window and too far away. The only other way in requires you to bash down planks across a window. This is property damage and thus a ghost bust. The noise of bashing the boards creates a massive AI alert so it is another ghost bust. So I had to skip this building and the 430 loot inside.
- According to the endgame stats, there should be 2231 in loot in this mission. However, there is a second loot inventory for masks in which I had 200, so it is not included in the loot inventory on which the loot objective will trigger. I had to skip the 100 gold nugget in the Keepers' pool and the 430 in the house across from the inn. Perhaps the gold nugget in the Keepers' pool could be ghosted but I couldn't do it. But the 430 in the house definitely would cause a ghost bust due to property damage and AI alerts, so you could possibly get only 2231 - 430, or 1801, which is just a hair past the 1800 loot objective. However, there was loot that I could not find. I only found 1351 in loot which means I was short by 450. I went into blackjack mode, took out all AIs, but could not find more loot. Gave up, hit Shift-Ctrl-Alt-End, and ended the already busted ghost attempt.
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6. 22nd Mar 2003, 04:23 #31
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Vanguard - Looks like we were writing a report for "A Keeper's Betrayal" at the same time.
I had no trouble with getting through the docks. I went through the real and fake barrels by either crouching and moving through, or jumping on top of the real ones. Then I just went around under the lamp post and into the building with only a first alert from the guard. I did have to wait for the patrolling guard to be far away though. I also happened to deal with one of the spiders in the sewer drowning in the pool. I actually watched it happen too. I was behind the rat just before the area with the spiders, and I saved the game and tried seeing if I could hide in one of the patches of shadow in the corner, but failed. When I reloaded, one of the spiders fell into the water and died. I reloaded several times and the spider always fell and died. In addition, I couldn't figure out how to get the gold nugget from the pool in the keeper courtyard as well. But you are missing alot of loot. Did you get the loot from behind the wall panel in the attic that leads to the smashable boards? A torch above the bed makes it open. The pocket you missed might have been an arrow from the archer on the balcony of Salfatora's house.
And it looks like you missed the canvas umbrella type thing under the metal door in the building across from the inn. You can shoot a rope arrow into it and climb up and get the key to the building without alerting the noble.
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7. 30th Mar 2003, 05:52 #32
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Two Fathers
FM: Two Fathers
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 02:33:02
Loot - 6183/6383
Pockets Picked - 18/21
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 2/2
Comments - This FM took surprisingly long, but it was mostly due to the time I spent looking for loot. Some of the loot were actually "junk" items that I wouldn't even think once about picking them up. Items like regular porcelain plates and green wine bottles were counted as loot. And to make things more complicated, some of those types of junk items were loot, and some weren't.
The first difficulty I had was getting to the toolbox in the building next to the two idle thieves. The only feasible path I had was going across gravel by the hammerite gate. But the gravel made too much noise, so I had to moss the graveled area and run and jump to lessen the time I was exposed to the light. When I got to the toolbox, I realized my efforts were only for a silver coin stack, but I was hoping for a perfect thief anyway.
Getting through the caves takes some careful steps. First, getting by the batches of spiders in the first portion required using the large boulders on the sides. It took careful creeping because it was easy to drop down and make a loud noise, or get stuck in between the boulder and the cave wall. There were also alot of pillars, ledges, cliffs and such that had bad edges where you could easily get caught on, or would need to jump across. This wasn't easy since I was trying to avoid alerting any spiders.
Sneaking through the town section and into the three main buildings wasn't hard; it just took watching some of the patrols and making precise plans. I hit the last building first and watched the maid walk back and forth and then dashed inside when the guard was looking away. There were plenty of light switches, so I snuck through the building in complete darkness. It did take some quick creeping through the dining room and the kitchen so I could avoid the patrolling maid. At first glance, it looks like the idle archer next to the table is too close and you can't sneak by him. But if you CCC very slowly, he only gives a first alert. After finishing up in this building, I went to the second building and was able to sneak around the guard's flanks to get inside. There seemed to be nothing of real importance in this building. Alot of the rooms were empty and dull, but I just happened to find a switch on the nightstand next to the elegant bed which lead to a very huge part of the mission.
This huge part of the mission was more straightforward than the other areas, and took most of the time spent looking for loot. I managed to find the fountain key from one of the kitchen cabinets but didn't know what it was for at first. I also noticed a locked vault door on the fireplace and couldn't pick it. I looked around the kitchen for a key and luckily had the notion it was either in one of the cabinets or somewhere else in the kitchen. Having this mindset was a good thing, because I realized the key was in this little niche on the side of the fireplace. After this, I left and finished traversing and looting each side of the building, and then I discovered what I overlooked; a double-door leading to a courtyard with a fountain. I needed to douse 2 torches in the arch so I could sneak up to the noble and get his key. The guard next to him had a purse as well. The key on the noble was used to open the metal door in the rich and distinguishable bed room with red marble floors. Most of the loot was found in this "collection room". There was an interesting book there as well and it was worth reading. After completing my searching in this building, I realized I still didn't have this potion, or even close to all of the loot. When I began my loot search, I went back to the beginning of the mission and found 100 loot that I could not get. It was a gold nugget in one of the submerged chasms. I could not get it without losing air and taking damage. It looked like there was a small layer of air at the top of the water tunnel, but in fact there wasn't. I reloaded and tried multiple runs but just could not get through this tunnel, grab the gold nugget, and get out fast enough. And I tried going both ways: back to the spider portion of the cave, and towards the pillar portion of the cave.
Through accidental searching, I happened to loot one of the green bottles in the lockers and was shocked. I was dreading having to go back to all other areas and see if other junk items counted as loot. But not all of the green bottles in the storage locker were counted as loot. I was a little confused, but to save time, I saved the game, and then went on a blackjack run. After a few hours of searching around, I had located the places where junk items were actually loot and reloaded. I left this area and entered the first building from the town section and added more loot to my count, but I was still missing some. For the longest time, however, I had the most trouble finding the required potion. Through desperate searching, I found a hard-to-see switch located in an indentation in the wall of the closet in the first building. At this point, I grabbed the potion and kept searching for loot. I discovered a little area behind the last building with a guard and two nobles. Both nobles had purses, but I could only get the one closest to the guard. There was a frobbable mushroom against the wall and I couldn't get close enough without alerting the nobles. Although I could have shot it with a broadhead, I considered that kind of action to be on the brink of property damage. So unfortunately, I have to accept 200 uncollectable loot: the purse on the noble, and the gold nugget in the underwater tunnel.
Hard to find loot:
-Gem ring under slide in the playground.
-Gem ring between wall and ledge of the bathtub in the first building.
-Porcelain plates on the dining room table in the third building.
-Green bottles in the storage lockers by the spiraling staircase to the main mansion area.
-Loose coin on the desk in the Captains room.
-Gem ring on the water-covered ledge of the pool with the skylight.
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8. 3rd Apr 2003, 04:34 #33
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The Abominable Dr. Dragon
FM: The Abominable Dr. Dragon
Ghost - Success (Chemical)
Perfect Thief - Failed
Time - 01:51:55
Loot - 1790/1855
Pockets Picked - 5/11
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - Although there were some scripted melee's between hammerites, thieves, and guards, I still consider this a ghost success.
The mission seemed non-linear, but it actually didn't offer too many paths for infiltration into the fortified castle. Navigating through the treebeast caves was a challenge. There were plenty of branches and bushes obstructing my view, and I actually ran into the treebeasts a few times. I just had to crouch and stay on the slanted wall.
The hammerite graveyard was certaintly unique and surprising. I thought it was empty and started exploring around, when all of a sudden a wave of skulls shot out from the mausoleum's and killed me. I reloaded and then tried to sneak in again, and this time I saw a floating statue... I saw it turn and realized it was an AI. It seemed to have the same properties of a rat or something, because of the way it turned and rotated. Through some experimentation, I also realized that there are a number of floating statues or "ghosts" inside of the mausoleums. To avoid alerting these ghosts, I had to douse the torch on the double-doored mausoleum to make the place dark. The double-doored mausoleum had 3 frobbable skulls, and by chance I just happened to click the middle skull and the sarcophagus slid away to reveal a secret passage downward. There was some loot, and a locked ornate wall panel, so I continued through the graveyard, down another secret passage and into a flooded tunnel with a patrolling zombie. To sneak by the zombie, I had to be right on his back and hug the left wall as he approached the door frame to the large room. I don't know what was inside of that gas filled chamber. Every time I tried to get inside I would immediately die and I couldn't tell if there was anything inside of the squared object with holes in it.
Having played all of the "Lord Ashton" mission series, I didn't think I was going to have to worry about sneaking by fish. But this mission surprised me in that regard. I did notice that there was a single fish by a staircase underground, and it had menacing teeth and red eyes, but I didn't know it was going to shoot a dozen dart sounding things at me and then swim up and gnaw me to death. I had to be very careful and swim slowly in this part so I could get onto the staircase without alerting the fish.
The surprises and strange occurences didn't stop once I was inside the castle. I found a room with another fish in a fishtank, but it didn't appear to see or hear me when I was in the bright room. I found a humorous little note about "Clayman" as "The Father of all Ghosts" and a strange meteorite stone that damaged me when I looted it. Continuing upstairs, there were some strange white-marble-looking guards who didn't move until triggered by certain things. Taking the statue on the railing gave life to the white guards and they had the same characteristics as other guards. I reloaded and decided not to take the statue just yet, but later I found out that I couldn't get it without alerting any of them.
In one of the towers I triggered a scripted door to blow open and a zombie who looked like Frankenstein to just stand in the door frame and not move. I couldn't sneak by him in any way to get the 50 loot in the room, and I couldn't sneak by him to go up the ladder or open the door without dousing the torch on the column. I had a low amount of water arrows to start out with so I didn't douse the torch. Instead, I went back towards the staircase with the white-marble guard and went to a different area. Once I was on the upper floor, I noticed a switch behind a statue and the switch opened the stained glass window revealing a spectacular looking room. The walls were covered with some great looking fantasy paintings and this was where the famous dead "wife" I've been hearing about in all of these scrolls was found. Another meteorite was next to her, but taking it resulted in damage just like the one in the basement.
I spent a majority of my time using the interior ledges and balconies of the castle to get around. Patrolling these ledges were some strange red colored floating skulls that had the same arsenal as the floating statues in the graveyard. They were easy to sneak by, however, and scrounging for loot within each towers didn't take too long.
-In the room with the assassinated noble, there was a removable wall in the fireplace which contianed a rosary key and some interesting reading material.
-I had to drop down onto the sloped roof of the cafeteria to get into the courtyard. From here, I needed to get a key in the workshop/forge area. The keeper/thief looking AI wasn't very keen on sight. It seems that his face plate gave him a limited view so I was able to sneak right up to him by only dousing the torch and not the fireplace.
Reading the captain's book on his desk triggered a new objective and this particular objective almost subdued me into accepting a failed ghost for this mission. I had obtained the portal key and found a locked gate on the right side of the castle entrance. Once inside of this grassy corridor, I had encountered a serious challenge. There was a female noble, and a distinctive AI who looked like a priest of some sort standing on this bridge above a pond. It turns out that if they are put on first alert, they run off in 3rd alert towards a red portal further away, and alert this dark figure with a zombie voice. I tried so many different approaches. I tried dropping into the pond, which I did without making any sound, but the female noble just happened to see me in the pond and then fled. After spending some time here, I began to think that this was a scripted event because the AI would run off, vanish into the portal, alert the dark figure for a moment, and then the dark figure would return to alert 0. I didn't like this though. The female noble and the priest ran off because they were triggered by a first alert. So I decided to moss the entire catwalk, then drink my only invis potion, and run towards the crate with the horn of quintus. I tried running for the horn, and running back, but I didn't have enough time and almost gave up when I could only make it to the horn. At this point, I was checking out the portal and seeing if I could step through it, and when I did, the female noble and the priest disappeared... I was beyond shocked, and regained my focus. I doused the campfire, and was able to sneak passed the dark figure and then back towards the bridge area. This worked out in many ways too, I could now get the gold nugget in the pond without worrying about any alerts. I don't know how to explain what happened there. I reloaded and they just disappeared when I stepped through the portal, but I consider this area ghosted.
I had a good idea of where the berserker mask was located after reading several scrolls and obtaining this rosary key. I also was missing about 300 loot so I decided to go back into the castle and continue searching. The missing loot I found was 3 wine bottles in a secret area from the wine cellar. Frobbing one of the handles on the kegs opened a section of the wall. I also found a purse on a guard at one of the towers. I returned to the white-marble guard staircase, but I couldn't get the statue without alerting the guard on the staircase. Dousing the torches helped, but the white-marble guard at the door frame was also turned alive and I couldn't sneak by him. So I left the statue alone. This statue plus the gold coin stacks in the barracks (blocked off by "Big Frank") was the only loot I couldn't collect. All that I needed to do was get back to the hammerite graveyard, get the mask, and leave. This was not as easy as I thought. I was able to get the mask without alerting the haunt who wore it, but my escape out from the treebeast cave was foiled. After taking the mask, two treebeasts spawned at the graveyard entrance and the area was too well lit to even attempt sneaking by them. I had to go all the way around, but I heard some hammerites and thieves fighting somewhere. I got out by using the submerged tunnel by the basement staircase, and got to the side of the castle from a plank sticking out above the moat. There were several hammerites attacking thieves and guards at the drawbridge, so I had to go around by using the treebeast/thief passages.
Hard to find loot: a few silver nuggets in the treebeast cave, statue on side of the ruined building near treebeast cave, gold nugget underwater beside staircase, purse on guard at top of one of the towers, and a gold ring in a niche of the fireplace in the bedroom upstairs.
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9. 3rd Apr 2003, 06:15 #34
Peter_Smith
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Good job, Deadfall. You took all the right routes and used all the right moves.
I hadn't reckoned on having Dragon and his wife disappear like that. I never tried invisibility potion, so I never encountered that situation. It seems like getting past them as you did broke the script somehow. They also disappear in a puff of smoke if you hit them with a broadhead. Not that I would argue you killed them - let's not get into that. You did it, period. No questions asked.
Without invisio, they always alert, as you pointed out. At least I could not avoid it in an hour of fiddling. So, my simple solution to ghosting the mission without chemicals is to avoid reading the book that triggers the Horn objective. Then, there is no need to go there, although I got the key and checked it out anyway, one last gasp to ghost that area without success.
OK, not getting the horn is kind of like cheating, but so is breaking Dragon's exit script. All is fair until Clayman shows up.
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10. 4th Apr 2003, 20:47 #35
Deadfall
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The Library Basement
The Library Basement
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 01:00:37
Loot - 4335/4335
Pockets Picked - 2/9
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 0 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 0
Secrets Found - 0/0
Comments - This mission was very easy to ghost. I barely slowed down to sneak by anything because it was dark enough. I did encounter a few notable areas, but only in regards to obtaining a perfect thief.
Sometimes the combat bot in the corridor near the lift would go on full alert if doors were opened or if torches were doused. It seems that alot of the AI were a little more sensitive than usual. Even walking on wood and stone surfaces would trigger a first alert. But the mission was dark and had very big hallways, so I was always hearing first alerts.
Getting the candlestick in the storage room with all of the crates took some thinking. It was almost impossible to try and get onto the crates because if they made one little sound, the spiders would go on alert. There is a switch in between the huge crate and the wall which opens up a distinctive looking panel indented into the wall. There was an interesting looking chest with loot, but in order to get both this loot and the candlestick, I had to mantle onto the large crate and drop down on the smaller crates. Then I had to lean to the right until I could loot the chest from the secret compartment.
I had to nudge the female guard in the gigantic library on the upper floor. I was able to sneak inside, but when I finished in this area and tried to get back out, she would always spot me. She pivoted alot, but this actually made nudging go faster because she was constantly moving. I nudged her a little towards the wall and the corner of the ledge so I could sneak out.
I couldn't use the secret passages at the area where the rust gas is because of the spiders. However, it is possible to sneak by them. The tunnels are so dark that if you CCC very very slowly, you can move right by them. I needed to do this if I was going to get the necklace by the skeletal remains, and the loose coin inside the tunnel. I went to the ventilation panel by the mechanist guard with a face plate. Then I went into the tunnel and started CCCing right into the spider's face. I went very slow. I tapped my creep key every half of a second and I was able to get around the corner so I could get the necklace in the tunneling below. And I was also able to CCC passed the spider to get the loose coin on the tunnel floor.
Everything else went smoothly. I don't recall having any problems and I believe I only reloaded about three times. The key for a mission like this was just to check every detail of each room.
Hard to find loot: vases on top of the shelves in the small library, gold ring on the wheelbarrel, loose coin on the tunnel floor right by the spider near the mechanist guard, gold nugget in between the large crates in the computer room, loose coin on one of the desks in the computer room, and amulet behind the dragon banner by the elevator.
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11. 27th Apr 2003, 06:03 #36
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Left for Dead
FM: Left for Dead
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 04:37:56
Loot - 3229/3229
Pockets Picked - 10/11
Backstabs - 0 Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 45 Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0 Kills - 2
Secrets Found - 5/5
Comments - This is the first FM I've come across that has taken me more than a week to finish or ultimately ghost. "A Smuggler's Request" and "Calendra's Legacy" fall into the category, but this one has taken me almost three weeks of on and off playing. The hardest part being the loot and obtaining the dragonfly. The mission itself seems overwhelming because of its huge swampy areas and series of caverns, so getting all of the loot, achieving all of the objectives, even the optional ones, and finally ghosting it all took nights and nights of playing. During the course of the mission, I realized that some of the AI that were supposed to say things, didn't. The hermit, the pagan, keeper thomas, and even Garrett didn't say things that were in the snd folder of the mission. I don't know if this is due to something bad on my part. I might have needed darkloader 4.1 or gaylesaver scripts, but the text in the mission briefing didn't mention this.
There was so much in this mission, it's a little hard to explain everything I did and found. Since the mission was non-linear, I spent alot of time exploring the early swamp portion of the mission. Crouching and creeping slowly along the walls was the best method I found, and it was sometimes hard to distinguish real treebeasts from fake ones. Sometimes I ended up sneaking by just a plain tree making creaking noises. Things got a little strange after I snuck by a Trickster-looking AI and then later saw another one patrolling a dock. This Trickster/Satyr AI would start running whenever I went too close or triggered an obvious first alert. So I tried sneaking around in the water, and shockingly I found a secret submerged area with a skeleton and a treasure chest under the isle with the tree and the apebeast. When I left the submerged grotto, I could hear the patrolling trickster, so I swam under the dock to the end of the tree staircase. I managed to sneak by him by waiting for him to turn and then mantle up and run into the tree staircase. But even in doing this, the Trickster, with his back turned, would get startled and run towards the staircase and disappear, leaving a fiery orb behind. At first, I thought this was a plain alert and therefore unacceptable, but after a while I just realized it must be part of a script of some kind. I actually kept trying to sneak by him using the same technique of mantling onto the dock from the water. I was able to sneak by him eventually by getting on the other side of the dock and mantling up and then running into the staircase. After one attempt, the Trickster didn't come running toward the staircase; just kept on his patrol. However, after going back down the stairs, I later found the Trickster gone. In terms of reason, I don't think this is a ghost bust because there were no real alerts made.
To sneak by the first pivoting apebeast in the tree village area, I simply jumped to the ledge with the torch, and I found this area easily traversed. I wouldn't realize until later that I would need to come back and apply some serious tarzan vine arrow skills. But the tree village did have another oddity and notable problem area. After climbing the 3 ladders in one of the trees to reach the upper tree village, I spotted another patrolling Trickster. What made him a problem was that he became alerted by proximity. I noticed that when I stayed in shadow and he walked by, he would back up like a startled servant and then run away. With a simple hint from Peter Smith, I was able to keep my distance and successfully sneak by him. What I found beyond this Trickster, was a ruby identified as, "Trickster's Ruby". When I tried picking it up, I was teleported to another place which was actually the dock where the previous Trickster used to patrol. A "New Objective" came up on the screen as well, and it talked about finding three trickster gems and using them. I was a little confused and went back into the tree village to finish exploring. At this time, the only thing I found was a jeweled dagger at the top of a fallen tree. Once on the fallen tree, I shot a vine arrow into the side of a tree village ledge, and then lowered myself to the swamp area.
I continued through a maze of a forest and fell into a ditch in the ground. I found a spice bag and some moss on the ceiling, and was startled when a pagan ghost appeared out of no where. He started making gestures as if he was speaking, but for some reason I couldn't hear anything. I saw a "New Objective" pop up on the screen, though, and read that I had to find a doll for a girl. I left this area and reached a lagoon with a dock and a patrolling thief. After swimming through the lagoon, I found a few frogbeasts patrolling and a slanted cave. Inside was a hermit who didn't become alert or even say anything. I found some notes about a dragonfly, and a humorous little "404 error" note with a gold coin stack beside it on top of the cave. Back at the dock area I found a series of caverns with patrolling thieves or "Keepers" as they were later referred to. To get into the Keeper Compound, I shot a vine arrow into a wooden ledge where a keeper/archer was standing, and entered through the secret bookcase passage. When I reached the bar/pub area, I was surprised that the drunk AI didn't become alert, and the female kept repeatedly falling down. The mission became more straightforward than previously, and when I found Vinny's room and the secret passage to the Keeper Library, things got a little more unpredictable. I found two patrolling keepers here, but the only way I knew which one to kill was after picking the male's key which was labeled "Keeper Thomas' Key." Killing him in the open was not going to work because of keeper andrew and elizabeth in the vicinity, so I followed him to his room and studied his patrol. After a while I positioned myself in the corner between the bookshelf, waited for him to walk in the room and stop by the desk, then I assassinated him with an arrow and threw him on his bed. Continuing through the library, I found a secret area behind a bookshelf. Flipping the lever by the candle slid the bookshelf back to its original place, revealing an unlit study. In this study was a book relating to "8 Golden Keeper Rules" or something, and reading this book counted as a secret. Before I was about to leave the library, I noticed a balcony adjacent to a room with rats scurrying about. Out of curiosity, I dropped down and found a few gates leading into a sewer-like area. I was pleased to find the "Trickster's Emerald" here and tried using it. I was warped to a small crawlspace area that dropped down into the Keeper caverns.
From here, I went back into the Keeper Compound and found a note that triggered another optional objective to mess up the trade ring. At this time, I had no idea how to do this, so I kept exploring. After executing the proper procedure, I managed to shut off the lights in the compound and the cavern area, and I found a "stolen golden hammer" by a pivoting thief/keeper and tried dropping it in several places. Eventually the objective checked off after I dropped it on the barrel with the mechanist maces by the gate. I kept exploring until I found a huge cavernous area with a few spiders. The area was also littered with rotating eye plants like in T2's "Trail of Blood." It was impossible to sneak by these eye plants, but I believe this was not considered a ghost bust. Creeping slowly, I was able to avoid the splash area of water and found Baddcogs skull and a serpentile torc.
After a few days of playing and searching for loot as I went along, I found a subterranean cave with some patrolling zombies. It was here where I found the purpose for Baddcog's skull. Placing the skull on a highlightable propped skeleton would open a secret passage to a treasure room. Despite all of the chests, fake artifacts, and the texture of piles of coins on the ground, I only found a few loose coins, a gold coin stack, and a statue. I also happened to find a seemingly unreachable place between the dock and the keeper caverns. It was a stone ledge and I had to shoot a few vine arrows into a nearby tree so I could reach it. Once up there, I found some loot which counted as a secret.
When I triggered a new objective to find a "darkskinned pagan" I thought I was finished with the keeper compound/cavern area, so I used the Tricksters Ruby and went back to the swamp area. Backstepping all the way back to the beginning of the mission, I found a house with a pagan patrolling outside. I thought this was where I would find the "darkskinned pagan" and tried taking out the pagan here. This wasn't what I wanted to do, however, because when I picked up the corpse, it was named "Lightskinned pagan." I reloaded and shot a vine arrow into the roof of the house. Once up here, I saw a dark figure, who I assumed was the darkskinned pagan, by a grave in the back. Without further action I shot him with a broadhead, dropped down, and put him in the grave. In the house I found some loot and dewdrop behind some crates. I assumed this was the doll needed for the pagan, so I used the trickster emerald and went back to the underground area. Dropping dewdrop would spawn a little pagan girl who also made gestures as if she was talking, but I couldn't hear anything.
Since the beginning of playing this mission, I was determined to find all of the loot and complete all of the optional objectives. So at this point I was missing quite a considerable sum, I only had two trickster gems, and I needed a dragonfly. Upon using the trickster ruby to begin a new round of searching, I was stunned when I looked up by chance to see a tree village ledge that I didn't remember seeing before. It was so high up and detached from the tree staircase that it didn't seem to be apart of it. I had collected a good number of vine arrows through the mission so I experimented with trying to set up a way I could climb to this ledge. I set up about four vine arrows. One dangling from the edge of the wooden ledge, and three all shot close enough together that they formed a straight line from the ground to the top of the tree. This was so I could I just jump and catch onto the vine arrow without aiming. And sure enough, when I reached the top, I had discovered that this was a totally new area. I found some loot here and once finished, teleported back down using the trickster ruby. I later found some more high areas in the tree village section. Using tarzan vine arrow techniques, I managed to find 4 more seemingly unreachable tree village areas. One of the areas had another secret, a medallion of some sort. At this point, I realized using vine arrows was a must, and tried lowering myself to the bottom ground with the treebeasts. I found a few nuggets here and my loot total was rapidly coming to completion. As I was in this area, I also managed to find the last of the trickster gems, a "Trickster's Sapphire." It was in this small ledge under a wooden catwalk which was accessible by using a vine arrow. Retrieving all of my vine arrows from these high places took some time. Sometimes I was able to retrieve them and climb back down simultaneously. Other times I had to resort to using the trickster ruby. By doing this, I could pick up a vine arrow from a high place, and as I fell, I could use the ruby and warp back to the dock and campfire area. I had to do this several times to make sure I plucked every vine arrow from the trees.
The next problem I was faced with was finding all of the loot. I have a powerful habit of wanting to collect every piece of loot and achieve a perfect thief, and that didn't come easy in this mission. I admit that I went on a complete blackjack and killing spree to clear the area for a thorough loot search. I knocked out all thieves, apebeasts, and other AI, killed every treebeast and zombie, and began a search that took almost two weeks of on and off playing. At one point I was missing only 140 loot and gave up on searching any longer. I had to ask for help in a thread and luckily, Nightwalker helped me in that regard and sent me a very detailed loot list. When I looked at the list, I saw a few possible loot candidates. One was a gold ring in the tree village area that I don't remember finding. And another was two loose coins in Vinny's room. It's rather embarrassing, but sure enough, I found the gold ring worth 100 by a skeleton hand in the upper tree village, and two loose coins in Vinny's room which were just laughing at me. They were in such a plain view, I kicked myself for not finding them.
So with all of the loot found, most, if not all of the optional objectives checked, I had to finish the mission by obtaining a dragonfly. This was the hardest part of the mission for me. At first, I thought I could use a gas arrow on the dragonflies, or even shoot them with a broadhead, thinking they are like rats. Well this didn't work at all. Gassing a dragonfly would knock it down, but it was still alive and unpickable. Shooting broadheads into it didn't work, and at one point I even tried throwing a hammer at one to no avail. My last resort, and I assume the only way, was to use a fire arrow. The thought of this made me tremble a little, as that is not something I want to do when ghosting. But I had little choice and tried to go into the swamp area at the beginning. I found a few areas around the pagan house where I could fire at one. But before I even attempted to kill one, I knew that this wouldn't work. There was a patrolling treebeast very close to the area, and if the pagan by the house didn't hear, the treebeast certainly would. I shot a fire arrow at a dragonfly anyway just to see what would happen, and of course the treebeast was at my location in less than ten seconds. So I went to the tree village area and onto the dock. I doused the torches so I could stay here and try to observe the apebeasts to judge the best time to fire. I spent alot of time here, just randomly shooting and hoping an apebeast wouldn't hear, but this just did not work. The best effort I had was when I managed to only alert one apebeast, so I got some help from Peter Smith and I tried to mimic what he did. I didn't realize I could use my bow in the water under the tree village, but no matter where I located myself and tried to listen for apebeast footsteps, I was still alerting them when I shot a dragonfly. My ultimate method was positioning myself on the far left wall where I could see the bridge-like catwalk connected to the tree village. I saw a single apebeast patrol through here and saw the other go around one of the trees on the far right. Fortunately, a dragonfly patrolled close to this area in between the trees and I shot a fire arrow off. The first time, I knocked it down and listened for any second alerts. And yes... I heard "keep hiding, I'll still find you" in an apebeast voice. I reloaded and tried again, waiting for the apebeast on the left to go across the catwalk to the other side of the tree village, and the other apebeast to walk around the far tree house next to the fallen tree. At this time, a dragonfly was close enough to the wall and I shot it down. This time, however, the fire arrow made a different more muffled sound than usual, and didn't send the dragonfly searing and richocheting across the water. It killed it in its place and I turned up the volume so I could hear. This time, I didn't hear anything. To confirm whether or not I alerted anyone, I went back and tried triggering a first alert with both apebeasts and I only got a first alert. If they were on second or third alert, any first alerts would immediately make them charge me, so I was finally successful.
Without further delay, I used the trickster emerald, and raced out of the keeper caverns, through the lagoon, and into the hermit's house to finally finish the mission, and what a mission this was... I owe my success to Peter Smith and Nightwalker, however. Without their help, I don't think I would have been able to finish ghosting this mission and obtaining a perfect thief as well.
Loot was a major difficulty aspect to this mission, hard to find loot:
gold ring behind fireplace in pagan house, spice by crate inside pagan house, spice outside on the right side of the pagan house, silver nugget on bottom floor with treebeasts, architect scroll on top shelf of storage room in keeper compound, gold nugget in a niche behind a fallen pillar in the keeper cavern area, a silver nugget in a large gap in the wall near the mechanist barrel, and of course all of the loot found on the upper tree village areas. I'm just still unable to believe that after finding almost all of the hard-to-find loot, I miss a few loose coins right in my face beside Vinny's bed, and an obvious location for a gold ring at the upper tree village area.
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12. 3rd May 2003, 07:59 #37
Peter_Smith
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A Keeper's Betrayal
FM: A Keeper's Betrayal (version 2)
Or, "How I learned to stop worrying and dance with a spider."
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Success
Time - 02:51:53
Loot - 2181 / 2181
Pockets Picked - 14
Backstabs - 0
Knockouts - 0
Damage dealt - 50 (killing Keeper Bouron)
Damage taken - 0
Healing taken - 0
Kills - 1 (Keeper Bouron - explicit objective)
Secrets Found - 3 / 3
Comments
This was my second attempt to ghost this mission. In the first attempt, I failed in two places: (1) passing a spider that nearly fills a narrow corridor in the Keeper's Compound, and (2) getting Bouron's key which, with normal play, requires slashing a banner to gain access. Deadfall discovered a novel method, described in his ghost report above, involving the use of Keeper's notebooks as floating platforms to get the key. I copied that method here, with slight modification. I was the first to ghost the spider, so far as I know, so that is the main news. Still, there are many other challenging aspects to ghosting this mission, and I will report those that I found interesting as well as some "marginal situations," like nudging.
I played this round on Version 2 and the first round on Version 1 of the mission. I did not notice any differences in the ghosting aspects of the two versions. Most of what I describe below I did in both runs. Version 2 corrects a bug in the reported loot total and some other minor things.
A Keeper's Betrayal is an excellent mission all around. It has good architecture, some fun exploration, and the timing and situations of its AI are well designed to make ghosting possible but difficult in many places. The author did not account for the two places mentioned above, which make the mission "nearly impossible" to ghost without extraordinary measures, kind of on a par with some of Sneak's classics. Well, maybe not quite, but close. Kudos to the author, The Immortal Thief.
Preliminaries
I found it necessary to nudge a guard by the front door of the Dock House to get behind him without a hassle and into the door. Other moves by the docks were routine. There is an entrance to the sewer in that area that I ghosted with many retries in my previous attempt, but this time I bypassed it because there is another entrance.
Once in the sewer, you encounter white spiders who are easily alerted by your splash entering the water. You must do this to obtain a key and read a book. The solution to this problem is to wait until the spiders are on the opposite side of the room, behind the central column, and then to ease yourself gently into the water. Go up for air and check. With a few reloads it can be done with no alert.
I also nudged a guard at the entrance to the Mechanists' temple to get into the front door. This required taking trips from a hiding place to avoid a patrolling guard. Vanguard and Deadfall mentioned trouble getting into the entrance and climbing on ropes. I didn't attempt that. The nudge and the front door entrance were straightforward.
The dining room on the second floor of the Mechanist's temple offers a nice challenge. There is some loot on the far wall. The room is brightly lit and a Mechanist servant is looking at the only easy approach to the loot. The ghost approach is to hop on tables behind the servant. You hop on the first table, jump to the second table, get the loot at the end of the room, hop back over to the first table, and slide off. I think that if you use your only moss arrow here, then it may not be a problem to do those jumps. I saved my moss for later (never used it), and I had some difficulty because the tables made a clanking noise. So, I had to hop onto the silent chair backs and slide onto the table at each stage. It was difficult to land on the chair backs owing to a painting sticking out of the wall and the angle of the jump. It required time to set it up for each jump. The entire sequence forward and back needed to be done in around 35 seconds owing to a partrolling guard who popped into the door. Since there was a good chance of missing the chair backs in any given jump, I could complete the sequence only after many tries and quicksaves.
Also in the temple, there is a sleeper, a mechanist priest, who always stands up when you open the door between his bedroom and his office. There is another office door on a nearby corridor, but it does not open from the corridor side, so there is no choice but to wake the sleeper. Anyway, that sleeper never alerts, which has been ruled OK.
The mission has a clever design of one-way traffic. You can enter the inn from the starting point owing to shadow on that side, but you can't leave by the front door and head right to find the remainder of the mission because it is light on that side of the porch, and a guard who faces the porch always sees you. You must leave the inn from a window in the stairwell, from which you can't get back into the inn or to the dock side of the map. So, you must go through the mechanist temple to get back to the docks. There are three routes: out the priest's balcony to the roof on the 2nd floor, out the window in the nearby hall, and out the open balcony above the docks. I did all three. From there, you can cycle back to enter the inn. Owing to placement of keys, at least two such trips are necessary, I believe.
In the City Watch station, I had to nudge the guard to get into the torture chamber in the jail, needed to satisfy the objective to find out what happened to Troy. That was a tight squeeze. The guard was forced into the chair.
Opposite the inn is the Jeweler's house and shop. To get in there, one must rope up to the balcony to snag the door key and then rope down and enter the side door of the shop with the key. While on the balcony, snag the toughest loot in the mission, a spice bag in an upper window in the adjacent building.
A tough move, one that I failed to complete the first time through, is to snag the gold nugget in the pool in the courtyard of the Keeper's complex. It is easy enough to get into the pool, but it is quite difficult to jump out without attracting attention unless you take the perfect path on the stairs and splash around a bit. All it took was persistence, timing, and care.
Keeper Bouron's key
The normal route to the key is to slash a banner and enter a passage above the fireplace in Bouron's secret room. Deadfall is to be congratulated for making an outstanding but serendipitous discovery which makes the banner slashing unnecessary. As Deadfall reports, if you have a "keeper notebook" forward in your inventory, then if you hit the "r" key, instead of dropping the book floats in the air. Not only that, but you can jump onto such a book and remain elevated. Not only that, but you can mantle onto it. If you look straight ahead when you release it, the plane of the released book is horizontal, so you have a nice platform. If you look down or up, the book is slanted along your line of sight and very awkward to move on.
There are two books with these properties to be found in the mission. Using these two books, you can make a staircase that moves along with you for climbing up, but you can't place them below you in order to climb down. Deadfall used a method of swimming up the water column by the key loft. Somehow he placed the books outside the water column and used them as a bridge to the key. I couldn't quite follow that description, so, after a little experimentation, I just went up outside the water, building book stairs, like this: Crouch. Release book, mantle up. Turn 180 degrees. Crouch. Release book and mantle up. Lean out, look down, and retrieve bottom book. Turn 180 degrees. Crouch. Release book.... In this way, you can easily climb as high as you want using only two books without entering the water. After getting the key, I jumped down on the books, snagged the highest, jumped into the water, snagged the lowest, and swam down the water column to safety. Simple.
The spider
This is what you have been waiting for. I had to leave it for last because it was last. After opening the double door below the Keeper's jail, using the keeper and mechanist keys, you enter a labyrinth with two spiders in it. Only one of the spiders is a concern. The spider in question, a big green one, is almost as wide as the passage. You can't creep past it because it blocks the way. You can't jump over it witout an alert. Moss is no help. Crates are no help, because the spider alerts with the slightest sound, like placing a crate gently on the floor. So the spider has good hearing, but it has less than perfect vision and, most important of all, it has no sense of touch. That is the key, folks. You can nudge the spider directly if you are quiet enough. But that is not all there is to it. See below for the complete story.
Come on Baby, let's do the twist
Any of you remember Chubby Checker? Well, as he said, "It goes like this." You approach Ms. Spider carefully from her right side and begin nudging her forward in the passage. It’s a little slow at first, but she moves. And she drifts to the left, because you are on her right side. As she drifts to the left, the tips of her legs penetrate the left wall, creating a little more space on the right. So you can get more or less beside her at a 45 degree angle. At that point, she accelerates her forward motion. With every pivot, which occurs maybe on a five second period, she moves forward around six inches. So, in no time at all, relative to normal nudging speeds, you can dance Ms. Spider to the far end of the first corridor. And it is very much like doing the twist. Ms. Spider is twisting like crazy and marching down the hall. It is really kind of surreal.
I should add that during the Perfect Thief run I did this maneuver twice successfully, and each time I carried a crate in front of me in the misguided impression that the crate would protect me from the spider. Later I went back and did the entire procedure without a crate.
Doin' the spider squirt
This is another dance you probably don't remember. The need for this occurs when you get to the corner, because Ms. Spider does not cooperate and just walk around the bend. Even when you get far to Ms. Spider's right side, she does not steer around the corner as you might think. She gets jammed there in the corner, no matter how you push. What to do?
Have you ever squeezed a watermelon seed between your fingers and shot it across the room? Of course you have. Well, it works just like that. You move over to her left side and jam Ms. Spider in the corner and apply force. Lean into the spider to apply even more force. That, combined with your and her elastic properties, and her twisting motion, seems to build up potential energy in the spider. Periodically, she squirts out of the corner in various directions, but you have all but one direction blocked. Eventually, when you get your angles right or only by coincidence, she will squirt left down the corridor some distance, say 6, 10, or even 15 feet. And what's even more amazing, all this occurs without the slightest peep or pause from the spider! No alert, no bust.
Sinking the putt
But that's not the end of the story, folks! You see, the distance that the spider squirts is somewhat random. There is a branch corridor off to the left, and you want to persuade Ms. Spider to enter that branch so you can proceed straight, and you don't have to nudge her all the way around the labyrinth. Apart from the time wasted, there is a good reason for not wanting to do that. When you get into the third leg of the maze, the lighting becomes much brighter. About half way down the third hall, she quits dancing and bites her partner.
To get around this problem, you must get Ms. Spider to go left into the first side passage, but there is no corner to exert the force needed to squirt her into it. If you apply force, she just goes straight ahead, which is doomed to failure. The solution to this is just blind luck. It turns out that if you make a successful "left squirt", then a certain fraction of the time the spider will go past the passage, and a certain fraction of the time she will stop short, and a small fraction of the time she will land right in the center of the side passage entrance. On those occasions, there is a good chance that she will spontaneously make another squirt move to the left and enter the side passage, totally on her own. That's a double squirt. Again, she does this with an instantaneous shift of position, making not a peep, and is not alerted.
So, that's it. You dance, you squirt, and you take your chance.
-----------------------
I wrote up a loot list during my final play to resolve a question of missing loot. I found an item worth 100 that was missing from Nightwalker's list posted on Jason's Cheap site. It is a huge and obvious item, a purple urn in Keeper Room #4, that was evidently omitted by clerical error.
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13. 5th May 2003, 19:56 #38
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FM: A Keeper's Betrayal
FM: A Keeper's Betrayal (probably version 1)
File: betrayal.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 1 hr 39 min
Loot: 2080 of 2181
Pockets picked: 2 of 3 (i.e., all)
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 50 (required kill) Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 1 (required)
Secrets: 2 of 3 (but know where last one was)
Comments:
- In a PM, I mentioned to Peter that entering the mage's sleeping quarters by using the roof over the front door of the Mechanist seminary prevents him from waking up from his sleep when you open his hallway doors. However, when you open the door to the adjacent office, he still wakes up. However, you can bolt around the doorway while he is still getting up. So you can't help but wake up this mage, but he can still be ghosted.
- I used the method of using the levitating books to build steps, like Peter. My problem is that you cannot jump when atop the book unless you are at its very edge. Creeping to that edge usually had me fall off so instead I would repeatedly jump atop the book. Each jump nudge me ever so slightly in one direction and eventually I could tell when I could jump. However, jumping to the next book requires moving forward and jumping at the same time, but any forward movement would put me into that "locking" section of the book where I couldn't jump. I found that if the book was dropped in mid-air but part of it was embedded in a wall then I could jump anywhere atop the book that was sticking out of the wall. So I wedged between a wall and pillar so I could make the books stick into a wall but force them to be close enough so I could jump onto each higher one. I took the water pillar down but had to wait until the footsteps for any Keeper went out of hearing range so they couldn't hear my splash into the water column.
- I got the nugget from the pool in the Keeper's compound but would *always* make a belly flop splash sound. I had to wait until the 2nd floor walkway Keeper was in a far corner and inside a small building at the corner and that the 1st floor Keeper was also in a far corner or near to one. Lots of waiting on this one.
- Again I could never ooze into the water without making a big splash noise so getting into the water in the sewers in the room with the 2 spiders would never work. They would hear the splash and go on full alert. I thought that I'd try using crates in the water to slow my descent since oozing edgeways off the walkway to slow my descent didn't work. However, I found that crates in water become massless and you cannot get atop of them, so I'd pile a 2nd one atop the one floating in the water but it, too, was a wee bit in the water and was massless, so I piled a 3rd atop and that one I could jump atop. But removing the crate underneath provded too much height in the fall and I'd make a splash noise. As I was pondering how to get into the water without alerting the spiders, one fell off the path and drowned. This put the other spider on alert but not for very long. The problem that I had with the spiders getting alerted to the splash noise is that they were perfectly identical in timing (i.e., speed on their preset path) but were too far apart so they would never be in the far corner at the same time. But now with only one spider left, I could splash into the water with the lone spider at the far corner and not have it alert. This pathing defect where one or both of the spiders will fall off the walkway and drown has been experienced in 2 prior plays of this mission so it will happen, but it can take a long time to happen.
- My technique for getting past the big green spider in the maze just before you find the book and Bouran used crates. My intention was to use a single layer of crates to get over the spider. I had one moss arrow and hit the spider with it. It doesn't feel anything. This distributed the moss evenly on both sides of the spider which I would need to lay down crates on both sides. The first crate was laid against the spider on the entrance side by crouching and looking down. The second crate was meant to go atop of the spider. I didn't know if the crate would overlap the spider or lay atop but had hoped that there would be enough ceiling height to let me jump atop of it if it laid atop the spider. However, the crate fell slightly to the other side of the spider but atop the spider at a slight tilt (because the spider is round). Garrett is pretty poor at getting just the right distance when dropping stuff. While pondering if I wanted the crate where it landed, something akin to Peter's "squirt" technique happened. As the spider rotated, the crate would wedge a bit farther down between the spider and the wall. After a couple rotations, enough tension built up that the spider squirt right past me and back toward the entrance, leaving the way clear for me to move forward. The spider made a first alert but that was it. It was queer to see the spider shoot supersonic right past me and end up behind me and a bit to the left (I happened to the pressing to the right against the wall) and not know that it had just flown 5 feet in an instant. I was too happy to bother trying that again. It worked, Peter has shown that "squirting", and getting the crate on the far side and atop the spider put the tension so it flew past me and freed up the maze path. Pretty cool.
- When I killed Bouran, a required objective, all objectives were then checked off so the mission ended. This eliminated me having to figure out how I was going to get back over the green spider in the maze. However, it also eliminated me going back to the weapons shop and checking off the secret route over the shop using a rope arrow, so I only got 2 of the 3 secrets.
- I'll go back in blackjack mode to see if I can find the last 100 in loot but I'm not much of a super scrounger. I did get the nugget in the spider's jail cell, the purple vase in #4 Keeper's room, the nugget in the pool, and the other stuff mentioned in other posts and messages. I'm just so happy that I got past the spider and finally figured out how to make the book stacking work that I have no hard desire to find that last piddly 100.
Me, too. Me, too. I ghosted it, too. Alas it wasn't Perfect Thief'ed but tis good 'nuff for me.
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14. 5th May 2003, 21:19 #39
Schwaa2
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Hey Deadfall, thanks for playin and glad to see you pulled off a ghost. Peter said he did too, but didn't want to count it as official since he Beta tested and new the mission pretty well. So I guess that makes you the first official ghoster of Left for Dead
It was my mistake to not mention in the text file that Darkloader 4.1 IS needed, all of the custom voices are MP3's and only 4.1 can convert them, sorry you missed out on all of that. Garrett does say "There's Thomas" so you know who to kill without grabbing his key first.
The Trickster does automatically run from you. This was probably the ONE thing thatI did that was not ghost friendly (OK, the fire arrows Dragonfly thing too), I tried as much as possible to make it ghostable but a few things just had to be done that way.
The dragon flies shouldn't have fallen by gas arrow. That is something that I might have to fix. maybe even let gas arrows work so the ghost is easier. I'd still like to fix the Trickster so he has to SEE you before running but I just couldn't get him to work like I wanted so that was a comprimise.
Baddcog's Thief II GalleryLeft 4 Dead now available
Custom Objects, Missions, 3d Tuts, ect...
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15. 8th May 2003, 08:00 #40
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Hmm, Isn't it possible to use the keeper's note method to pass the spider? Place one in the air ij front of it (that shouldn't make any noise) then shoot a moss arrow to the other side of the spider to make a soft landing and then just jump over him onto the moss. I haven't tried this but from what I've heard about the keeper note method it seems like it should work.
My New FM A Keeper's Betrayal
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16. 8th May 2003, 19:34 #41
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In my ghost report I talked about using the notes to try and sneak over the spider. It was possible to get above the spider, but the ceiling is so low that I couldn't jump, and I found that I couldn't drop down without alerting it.
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17. 9th May 2003, 04:51 #42
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I did not try using the floating journals to get over the spider in the maze. You could try it but I suspect that the levitating journal would be too high, even if crouched when "dropping" it, and you could not jump atop of it because you would hit the ceiling, like trying to jump through a window that was not made tall enough.
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18. 15th May 2003, 08:23 #43
theImmortalThief
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Oh, I see what the problem is now.
Another thing I was going to mention was the part the you said you had to stack books to get to Keeper Bouron's platform. Well, there's a much easier way, like looking at the ceiling where the green plaster has fallen off and udsing a rope arrow. Of course this might make to much noise. I also think you might be able tpo kill Bouron after knocking out by throwing him down the well.
My New FM A Keeper's Betrayal
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19. 21st May 2003, 01:40 #44
Peter_Smith
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FM: The Wedding of Sir Andre (Lord Ashton series #8)
File: hochzeit.zip
Ghost - Success
Perfect Thief - Failed - couldn't find loot
Time - 03:40:39
Loot - 7685 / 8100
Pockets Picked - 7/14 !
Locks picked - 18
Damage dealt - 0
Damage taken - 0
Secrets Found - 0 / 0
Comments
This mission is interesting mainly because of its pastries. Yum, yum! Also, there are some nice crystal goblets to add to the loot collection, together with the usual nice textures, fish and teddy bear, Christine's trademarks.
From the ghosting standpoint, however, it is routine. There are no really tricky spots. The main difficulty is navigating a lot of marble floors in the first floor. The mansion is huge, so that's a lot of marble to cross. Also, water arrows seem to be in short supply early on, so I did not use them, which slowed me down quite a bit. I found lots of water arrows on the second floor after I no longer needed them.
The main problem was finding loot and objective items. The mission reminds me a little bit of Casing the Joint in that there are a lot of wooden hallways with similar architecture, so it is easy to get lost. There is not so much variety as Casing. Most of the hallways are without decoration and the same style, so it really is tough to remember where you have been. Doors left open, like a trail of bread crumbs, is the only thing that prevents brain damage. Even then, I found myself retracing steps several times before I found all the items in the objectives list. By then, I was not too eager to keep hunting for loot. Christine is a great loot hider, so I felt like I could be hunting for several hours looking for the last coin -- just like Casing. I guess the way to beat it is to BJ all the AI (there aren't very many, and they are sitting ducks), then do a grid search and make a loot list.
One thing that seemed strange to me is that I see a large third floor from the outside, but I found no access into it. I guess it is just for decoration.
The most fun in the mission, to me, was finding the crystal shard, a fancy crystal sword. Too bad there is no way to use it. It reportedly can kill undead, of which I found none.
I am surprised at my total pickpocket count. I thought I had sniffed them all. None of the arrow quivers contain pickable arrows, so far as I can tell. Maybe there are more AI hanging out in the third floor or the basement with the undead.
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20. 21st May 2003, 12:56 #45
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The Restored Cathedral v1.1
I thought it was impossible, but a taffer called "Some Serious Dough" has successfully ghosted my little FM !
Full wright-up here:
TTLG - TRC v1.1 ghosted
The Honest Thief - FMs, screenshots, DromED, links ... Zaccheus' hospital blog
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21. 29th Jun 2003, 14:52 #46
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FM: The Skull of St. Yora
FM: The Skull of St. Yora
File: theskullofstyora.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 2 hr 58 min
Loot: 4072 of 5027 (4000 required)
Pockets picked: 8 of 9 (all)
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Kills: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0
Comments:
- After diving into the water channel/river and where the underwater passage is to the well inside the cathedral grounds, is an armory. I had to nudge forward the guard standing in front of the door.
- After exiting the well into the cathedral grounds and slithering past the spider there, I had nudge the Mechanist standing at the side of the cathedral. Later I found out it wasn’t needed. You will get a first alert but you can just move behind him and slide past.
- You can go around to the side gate but probably will have to nudge forward the Mechanist on that side since he alerts to you creeping past and underneath the bright light near the gate. Instead, I went in through the front door. A patrolling gal Mechanist came through the inside double doors and got close but she didn’t spot me although I wasn’t completely darkened.
- The author starts you out with 10 water arrows. You find another 10 in the armory mentioned above. There are 3 more in the courtyard. The author felt this was more than sufficient. However, something the author did accidentally or deliberately in the mission made the patrolling Mechanists on the first floor of the cathedral always relight the gas lamps near the altar area. I would douse the gas lamps by the altar area (with the angel statue) and the patrolling guards would relight them, but they could be 30 feet away when they relit the gas lamps. I’ve seen random relighting of gas lamps in OMs and FMs as it seems to be an attribute of the AI but it occurs infrequently, not always as happened to me. This ends up using up lots of water arrows because you cannot move too fast on the tile floor. I reloaded a saved game, mossed the tile floor, waited until the patrolling Mechanists were away from the altar (in the side hallways), doused the gas lamps, and ran in the dark spot before the patrols came back through the doors and could relight the gas lamps from a very long distance away. The cathedral is highly lit with both gas and electric lights (for which there are no switches) and you’ll end up using most of your water arrows. In fact, when I ended the mission, I had 3 water arrows left. These were the ones found in the courtyard pond after leaving the cathedral, and I didn’t need them anywhere else.
- I thought the power station outside the cathedral’s cellar door might off the cathedral lights. Nope, all it turns off is 3 street lamps. When you exit the cellar into the town, there are window openings in the covering leading to the cellar. Although they are large enough to move through, their bottom is was not made mantle-able. I toted over some crates but laying them down, even when looking straight down while crouched, made too much noise and alert the Benny guard very close by. I had to moss the stairs to put down the crate. Although laying a 2nd crate atop the first also made noise, Benny didn’t alert to that noise. I went through a window on Benny’s side so I could sneak behind him and nudge him forward so I could get up the ladder to the archer with the power station key (and pickpocket his arrows). The ladder doesn’t reach to the ground and jumping off makes noise that will put Benny on full alert. I didn’t want to waste a moss arrow and don’t remember if I had left any at this point. So I nudged him forward of the ladder quite a ways but not so far forward that he would see me creeping to the power station door from the opposite side of that street square. I needed him forward of the ladder so he wouldn’t see me go up the ladder, but I needed more forward of that so I could move to the side of the ladder towards the street square which let me slide and fall off the ladder quietly.
- In a building with a gal on the 2nd floor (actually it is the 1st floor as you enter from the street), is a very hard to see ring on the floor. You can sneak up behind the gal and nudge her forward and sideways to let you slide between her and the chair. I repeatedly tried jumping over the chair but Garrett is too clumsy and always landed on the upholstered chair that makes noise like it is a wood chair. If you can manage to jump at the chair and catch just the edge of it, you will land without making noise, but that’s harder than nudging the gal.
- In a town house with a guy standing and facing two loot masks on the wall, I had to nudge him forward to snatch the mask closest to the corner.
- Thanks to Old Man for coming up with a quiet means of getting the gold plate off the angel statue in the altar area of the cathedral. There are a couple books or notes about how the thin gold plate on the statue will melt off with the smallest of fires so you get clued in that there is gold to be had from the statue. In the room next to the statue and also in a town house, you can find fire arrows. Using them would put every AI inside the cathedral on alert, including the ones way down in the basement. But Old Man came up with the idea of tossing a lit flare at the statue. That works and you end up plucking the gold nuggets that hang in mid-air after the statue disappears. I forgot about the flares. They are also useful for detonating sunburst bombs if you’re out of fire arrows or don’t want to use them up.
- To get the skull, you’ll have to get to St. Yora’s Olde Library but there is no route to it from within St. Yora’s. Next to the courtyard between the cathedral and St. Yora’s is a gated garden for which there is no key or means to open the gate. You have to get atop the walls. I found 3 routes to get atop the roofs and walls: (1) The cathedral’s top-floor outside balcony (jump onto the outside wall, then jump and mantle onto the courtyard wall); (2) Stack crates in the courtyard to get atop the walkway roof; and, (3) Use your 2 mech eyes by stacking them to get atop the outside wall. In the OM, you had skulls and rib cages you could stack vertically to get high enough along the outside cathedral grounds wall to mantle up, but not in this FM. There were 3 crates at the bottom of the basement stairs in the cathedral but they weren’t enough to get high enough to mantle the outside wall. I found you could use the eye orbs of which I had 2 in my inventory. Get up against the wall, drop one, deactivate it, and keep jumping up until it falls to the ground. Do the same for the 2nd orb except jump only enough to get high enough to mantle the outside wall. As you jump, you will go up an altitude but the orb will fall a tad. You need to mantle when jumping up from the 2nd orb while it is still high enough to reach the edge of the wall but before it falls down and lands atop the 1st orb on the ground. You can also stack food but it tends to be a much less stable pile because of its shape and often you fall off to the side.
- While you can find a slowfall potion in a wood chest on the top floor of the cathedral, you can fall atop an AI from any height and not incur any damage. Often you will bounce off the AI and the height from where you hit the AI to where you land is the only measure of how far you fell to determine damage, if any, on the fall. There is a female Mechanist in the gated garden (with no key) alongside the courtyard between the cathedral and St. Yora’s. While atop the wall, I would fall off to land on her head (and usually bounced off, so I’d have to hit just right to bounce and land out of her sight). Obviously this took a quicksave and several retries before getting it just right. I tend to not use potions unless absolutely needed since I might need them later.
- Getting to the skull was relatively easy. Just time the mage pacing in a short 10-foot circle at the top of the ladder so you are to his side and run and jump onto the ladder so you land on it and grab it low enough so he won’t see you. He will alert when you move and drop the rotted crates. I was out of moss arrows (didn’t find the 2 moss arrows in the gated garden area until later when I nudged the gal Mechanist in there). However, you can move around until the rotted crate is no longer lit to be frobbable, and frob the hidden switch behind the crate. Getting out was much harder. Garrett moves too slowly when doing up the ladder and also pauses a split second at the top of the ladder, all of which delays him getting onto the floor and behind the mage before the mage turns around to spot him. Instead, climb up the ladder until your eyes are level with the 3rd rung from the top. When the mage is overhead and you are to his side, turn right and jump at the floor and mantle up to run back into the dark entranceway. You are lit up before getting to the dark but the mage’s range of view is diminished with distance.
- Getting into St. Yora’s is tough. You have to come in from the courtyard. You can crouch to the pillar side of the doorway and just inside to let the patrolling Mechanist get by you with only a 1st alert. However, crouching behind the door in that dark corner will get you noticed by the patrolling guard, so I would wait until he walked out past me and when the guards inside has just past, then slither around to the right to get into the next room (away from the guard standing just inside the door on the other side of a pillar).
Perfect Thief is probably impossible. There is 185 in loot behind the bar and in the office behind the bar at the Lion’s Inn. However, the bartender never moves or rotates and the place is far too lit for you to approach the bar unnoticed. In St. Yora’s, you cannot get the 600 in gold on the dining room table because 2 guards watch over the table. Tthey are in the same alcoves occupied by haunts in the OM but this time the room is highly lit and there is not switch to turn off the electric lights. There aren’t any switches to turn off any electric lights except for the “power station” which turns off all of only 3 street lights in the town.
The author neglected an important attribute of objects used to satisfy objectives: to keep them locked into your inventory. Normally in T2 missions, it has been the default that any object needed to satisfy an objective remains locked in your inventory (i.e., you cannot drop it). Not here. I had read the instructions left for me in the inn but didn’t bother to take them. The ding-dong alert sound played when I grabbed the paper (which should’ve been after I read them, not when I took them) so that objective checked off. Since I don’t care to tote a bunch of garbage in my inventory, I either leave keys where they got used, drop flashbombs where they won’t be noticed or heard, drop mines off in rivers, and drop or leave papers after reading them or somewhere later when I get too tired of cycling through too much stuff in my inventory. I also don’t like to carry any more evidence than required that could incriminate me or my employer. The idea is to not get caught, but always plan on or notice escape routes and keep only the minimum needed to complete the job. If you drop the instructions, you lose the checkoff for that objective. Same for the objective to get an old scroll, or for the skull. In this mission, you can drop objects that are required to satisfy an objective. I couldn’t remember where I had tossed the paper with the instructions and didn’t want to replay the entire game, so when I got to the north bridge gate, I hit Ctrl-Shift-Alt-End to end the mission.
There is 5027 max loot available in this mission (according to the end-game stats). 600 is unghostable from St. Yora’s dining room table and 185 is unghostable in the inn behind the bar and the office behind the bar, leaving 4242 left to find. I managed to get 4072 so I made the 4000 loot objective. I went back through on a blackjack run but couldn’t find the other 130, even with the hints provided by the author in another thread. For a long time, I only had 3872 and was going to be short of the loot objective. I found a 200 necklace that I missed back in the inn in front of a gal on the 2nd floor on a desk. Don’t know how I missed such an obvious trinket on my first pass through. But then I had ghosted the Hammerite in the inn suite thinking we were enemies and later found out he doesn’t alert to you.
I had played the author’s first remake of the cathedral and thought this wasn’t going to be much different. However, the addition of the river, inn, the town, and changes to St. Yora’s and the cathedral were significant. I see why the author changed the title of this FM since it is a big change to qualify it as a wholly unique mission. Ghosting this FM, especially since the author didn’t intend it to be ghostable, often proved to try my patience (in the length of waiting and the number of retries) – or my stubbornness.
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22. 29th Jun 2003, 15:57 #47
Zaccheus
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Congrats Vanguard!
A few comments from the author:
* Getting onto St.Yora's roof: You can shoot a ropearrow into the wooden windowframe and get onto the stone catwalk that way.
* Also, when you come out of the cathedral basement, the roof above the stairs is made of wood, so you could use a ropearrow to get through the opening on your left, if the sound it makes is not too loud.
* I had no idea that the guards in the cathedral relit the torches.
* My german beta testers tell me that you can get onto the cathedral grounds without going through the well, by scaling the walls near the armory.
The Honest Thief - FMs, screenshots, DromED, links ... Zaccheus' hospital blog
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23. 30th Jun 2003, 01:01 #48
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I did later find out how to scale the outside cathedral wall using the eye orbs as mentioned. I was hunting around and decided that I needed to revisit the inn, not really to see if I missed something (which was the 200 necklace) but to see if perchance I could get behind the bar for that loot. I couldn't go back out using the well since the water splash on entering would alert the nearby spider. Of course, any means of getting atop the walls would work as well as the eye orbs, like crate stacking (if there are enough) and jumping off the 3rd floor balcony on the outside of the cathedral. I had to come back in using the well because I had used up the 2 eye orbs to scale the walls to get out.
In the courtyard, I kept wondering why there were ladders on the roofs and walls to get into the gated side garden. I figured some players might use crates here or go along the outside cathedral walls to get atop the courtyard wall. I missed that there was wood above where I could sink a rope arrow to get atop the courtyard walkway roof. Oh, well, sometimes even a seasoned player will miss the obvious and figure out an alternate method to achieve the same ends. I missed a 200 necklace back in the inn in front of the woman on the 2nd floor, and when I went back I wondered how the he<i></i>ll I could miss something so obvious and so easy to snatch. Doh! No matter how expert you be, occasionally we all do something that makes us look like an idiot. Hopefully in real life, it isn't a lethal stupidity.
The patrolling guards would relight the gas lamps by the altar area with the large statue in the cathedral. Each time they passed the doused gas lamps, they would remark about them. Usually an AI only makes one remark on their first encounter, so maybe something caused them to get reset so they would make the comment everytime on passing a doused gas lamp and so the probability that they turn it back on got raised. I'm assuming they are relighting them since the gas lamps got relit when they reappeared from the side hallways although the relighting would occur when they were like 30 feet away; could've been the nearby stationary guards doing the relighting. Relighting torches seems to be an attribute of certain AIs (the human ones). I think I first encountered it when playing the Framed OM when I doused a gas lamp in the room next to the interrogation room with the side door outside and a bunch of switches; I'd douse the torch, a guard would complain, and they'd relight the gas lamp. Most irritating as it consumes your water arrows before you might actually been able to utilize the darkness.
With the drop of a crate when looking straight down while crouched is the quietest way to drop a crate without using a moss arrow, I'd suspect it would be iffy that the Benny guard by the power station wouldn't also hear a rope arrow although the AIs seem to react differently to different sounds. Even if I could sink a rope arrow, I'd still have to land somewhere on jumping off the rope (unless you manage to catch the edge just right) so I'd still have to use a moss arrow, so I used a moss arrow and a couple crates to simply walk through the window in the overhang for the cellar door. I can toss a empty bottle at a guard without any alert at all, but sometimes dropping a key on a hard floor will put them on alert. He<I></I>ll, sometimes a guard will alert from my footfall that makes no sound to me (nothing is heard through the speakers); i.e., the game made a sound but didn't bother to play it so I hear nothing but the AI sure heard it and react.
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24. 12th Jul 2003, 03:39 #49
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The Diamond
FM: The Diamond
File: diamondv1_1.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 1 hr 30 min
Loot: 5074 of 5474 (5000 required)
Pockets picked: 9 of 10 (all)
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage taken: 0 Dealt: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 3 of 1 (of 1?)
Comments:
- There must be a bug in counting the secrets in that the maximum number is wrong. I found 3 but the maximum specified is 1. So I have no idea how many secrets there really are and if I found them all. You cannot get enough loot without them.
- There is a loot purse in a small pit which is surrounded by a metal ledge on which patrols a small bot (blind until alerted by sound). In the pit are 2 big green spiders. The pit is highly lit and there is no way to kill the glowing mushrooms (I didn't try shooting them with broadheads but these were the flat small mushrooms, not the rounded fat mushrooms that are frobbable). So I had to skip that loot.
- On the 2nd floor by going up the vent ramp by the big bot, you have to pick and frob through banners where there are 2 of them in a room. This room is by the bathrooms/showers where you enter the 2nd floor and the closest room down the hallway with 2 banners inside, one of each side of a portrait.
- I had missed the key on the sofa to get into the loot room with the secret stash. The other key that is hard to find is under a baby crib with a wood chest.
- I found the "Bob" key in the dungeon. I had a heck of a time finding the "Henry" key. Both keys are needed to get into the room with the diamond, an objective. I paused my ghost run and lured the zombies outside and then either lured the guards to the zombies to get killed or lured the zombies inside the mansion to wreak havoc. I even lured the zombies into the dance hall to kill off all dancers (boy, that music is horrifically loud). With all the guards (except in the basement/dungeon) killed off, I kept looking for the "Henry" key. I didn't find it until later when I continued my ghost run. It is in the dance hall on the guard that patrols inside that room, but for some reason I didn't see the key on him when he had been killed by the zombies.
- The objective "get back to the gates" is NOT to get back where you started. Instead you have to get to the outside "gates" (the doors at the end of the outside stairway with the watcher and turrets). You cannot actually get to the gates without getting spotted by the watcher; even though you get the objective checked off, the watcher rotates back before the mission ends and spots you on yellow alert. The trick here is to get onto the stairs behind the watcher and then get under the watcher which is a blind spot for the watcher and the mission will end.
- Minus the 100 loot in the spider pit and the 5094 that I found, there is still 280 that I did not find.
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25. 12th Jul 2003, 22:48 #50
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The Greyfeather Gems 1: The Shipment
FM: The Greyfeather Gems 1: The Shipment
File: tggpart1.zip
Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 2 hr 0 min
Loot: 2426 of 2675 (2000 required)
Pockets picked: 12 of 13 (all)
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 3 of 4
Comments:
- Be careful of getting stuck in spots where there is no escape. I decided to mantle onto a roof and go over the Watling Gate only to find a short deadend and no way back out. Reload.
- Finding the [gear] key to the Mechanist seminary at the first house was elusive. You have to get onto a balcony to get into the room with it.
- I got into the bank vault but didn't have the safe deposit keys. The log inside tells you who has them. I had missed them on my first pass through the owners' residences but found them and went back.
- You only get a 2-minute shutdown of the watchers in the bank, but it turns out the police station with the switch is pretty close.
- At the end, I decided to use up the inviso potion (from the bank vault security deposit box #2) to get into the crate in the Machanist warehouse. I probably could've gotten in without it but this was at the very end of the mission and that's when I usually use up everything that doesn't violate a ghost, and where I drop all the fluff I end up with at the end of the mission (scrolls, keys, potions, whatnot).