1. 11-23-2003, 11:56 AM by Peter Smith #1

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Default Lord Fishkill's Curse

FM: Lord Fishkill's Curse
File: LFCurse.zip

Play mode: Ghost (success)
Time: 3 hr 15 min
Loot: 4245 of 4255
Pockets picked: 17 of 17
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 2 of 2

Comments:

Dafydd encouraged me to try this one, so I did. As a beta tester I had an unfair advantage because I had already ghosted the human AI with 100% loot (-10) several times. The only difference here was that I ghosted the curse monsters as well using Dafydd's technique. Dafydd deserves all the credit. I did not think it would be possible to ghost the monsters, so I never tried.

I tried to avoid the monsters by taking alternate routes, but I had to activate them a dozen times or more. I used two methods. One was to activate them carefully so they were not alerted, step back into the shadow, wait for them to time out, and then run for it during the 30 second monster-reset period. The second method was to aim them somewhere out of your way and go the other way, for example, by backing out of a doorway and leaving them inside a building.

One problem with this method, as Dafydd stated, is avoiding the monsters' interactions with the human AI. This is necessary under the rule that forbids the player from starting melees. Frankly, these melees are so much fun you don't really want to avoid them, but I did so just for the ghosting record. There were a couple of such places worth mention.

One was in the two story building after the generators, where my normal route had been to enter the ground floor window and follow the guard into the living room. I could do this without alerting the monster, but the monster stayed alive long enough to fight the guard when he came back to that entry area, so I had to enter from the window in the stairwell instead. Hiding the monster upstairs was also a problem, but I did it. This could all have been avoided by bypassing the building and coming back after getting the amulet.

The second was in the three story building not far from the necromancer's tower, the building that was being looted by thieves in LOTP. By the normal route, second story window, I could not avoid interactions between the monsters and the patrolling guard, so I had to leave that building until later, after I had the amulet.

So, Dafydd's technique works great. If we ever get another spawned monster FM, I'll know how to proceed unless the author programs them differently. 

As for normal ghosting after obtaining the amulet, this was routine for the most part, but a couple of things are worth noting.

I could not enter or exit the mage's laboratory building via the necromancer's tower because the mage in the building was stationary and facing the ladder. In an earlier version, he was patrolling in the room, and I was able get around him. Solution was to use the chimney for entry and the tower's "service hatch" for exit, then go around later and loot the top of the tower from the window entrance.

The bald storekeep in the white shirt was a probem. It is easy enough to get the loot because he does not notice you in the store. You can turn off the light before taking the loot, and he does not see you take it. Nevertheless, after the loot is gone, he is extremely sensitive, making it impossible to leave the store. The noise of opening the door alerts him. I should have left the door opened to avoid that problem, but I didn't. I tried various methods to silence the door but could not do it. In the end I had to leave by the back route, climbing the drain pipe, going throuch the armory, and back through the bank. A long way around to correct a mistake.

Finally, the pub in the same area, near in the town square, was a little difficult. All the AI in there are sensitive. It helps to extinguish the lamp on the table by the patron with the purse. The other lights are electric and can't be turned off. The bottles above the bar can be taken by jumping onto the bar between the two AI. The items behind and under the bar can be taken by a very slow crouch - creep, staying as close to the bar as possible. The mutter a lot, but they do not go on alert.

Last, a note on loot. I could not get the last 10 because that amount (not 5 as stated above) is the reward for rescuing Jimmy. To get that reward, you must BJ Jimmy and carry him down to his parents. That is easy enough, and is the humanitarian thing to do, but the ghost rules forbid it. 

This was fun. The LOTP map is great for having many alternate routes you can take to avoid the monsters - not necessary in normal play but very helpful when ghosting. I had to explore many routes I had never taken before. Thanks for suggesting it, Dafydd.

And thanks again for developing this mission, Shadowspawn. I developed a new appreciation for the moster timing and interactions this time around. Very well done.

Playing without ghosting is also fun because you can be more creative in toying with the monsters and Jimmy.

  1. 11-24-2003, 09:52 PM by dafydd #2

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Default L'Arsene

FM: L'Arsene
File: LArsene.zip

Play mode: Ghost (success)
Perfect Thief (failed, but very close)
Time: 4 hr 30 min
Loot: 3858 of 3958
Pockets picked: 11 of 14
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 1
Damage dealt: 1 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 1 of 1

Comments:

The one knockout (thus one damage-dealt point) was per objective, to capture L'Arsene without killing him. That doesn't seem to leave much option  .

WARNING! This write up is very long (over 18,000 characters). Read at your own risk!

I am still totally amazed that this FM is ghostable. I played it once before, attempting to ghost... but I blew it in the Ambush room and thought it was unghostable.

But then Old Man mentioned that that room could be ghosted by hugging the left wall (see below), and I got to thinking: how about the other two really bad stretches? If they could be ghosted, the entire mission was ghostable.

I still had the savegames from my (non-ghost) game, so I found a save near the really, really bad one (the Admiral). After a lot of fumfahing around -- oops, sorry, taffing around (fell out of character there!) -- I figured out how to ghost it. Then I started, figuring I would have to suss the middle Bad Stretch when I got to it.

With brilliant play and some breathtaking luck, I managed; so here we go!

There are three Bad Stretchs in L'Arsene. The rest of the mission is bad, with too much light and too many guards, but it's ghostable with a little running here and there (when nobody is nearby to notice).

The first Bad Stretch is what I call the Ambush room; if you've played the mission, you know exactly which one I mean. You are in a zig-zag dark tunnel that leads from the locked gate where Lantern Guard patrols to another gate you can open by a lever on the left-hand side of it; at either end of your dark tunnel is a half-gate you can walk around. Exiting the dark tunnel on the openable-gate side and hooking around to the right, you see a low door near an "X" made from masking tape... this is the sign of L'Arsene, and wherever he leaves it there is something you need to investigate.

Open this low door and crouch-run through it. The low passage leads to a little courtyard with a door. Through the door is a wooden hallway that leads to a stairway going down into a very brightly lit room. This is the Ambush room.

L'Arsene Lupin has set three thieves here to bushwack you. You will eventually leave the way you came in, but there is a key you need in the Ambush room, so you cannot bypass it.

One of the thieves is directly beneath the stairs you would descend; the second is in the doorway on your right immediately at the bottom of the stairs; and the third is on your left, in the far left corner of the room, behind the illusion of a painting leaning against the wall.

If you start down the stairs, a gate will fall shut behind you, blocking retreat; you must avoid this at all costs! If that gate falls, your ghost is toast: the only way to raise it is to move through the Ambush room into the rooms beyond, and you cannot do this without alerting the thieves.

Old Man discovered that the gate does not fall until you get to the first or second step down; while you're on the landing, the gate stays put. I slid off the landing to the left, landing carefully on the wooden floor. The thief under the stairs said "Hey!", but that was his first alert, and he didn't to go second alert. After crouching there for a few seconds, giving him time to recover, I crept forward hugging the left wall. There was some rubble in my path, but I was able to stand and run over it without making much noise.

I was too far away to be seen by the thief in the doorway to the right of the bottom of the stairs, and the other two had bad angles. I could hear that the gate did not lower. I crept forward until I could lean and reach the key, which is on a table (with a healing potion, big whoop) in the lower left corner. I returned as I came to the stairs.

I plugged a rope arrow into the landing above me and climbed up. Old Man had warned that it was a real pig trying to mantle onto the landing. After a couple of failed attempts, I was able to do it by steering about two points larboard (left) of the top door. I was worried this might put me far enough down the stairs that I triggered the gate, but it stayed up. I retrieved my arrow and high-tailed it out of there. End of Bad Stretch number one.

Note: It's possible there is some minor loot in the back rooms; I don't recall from my non-ghost tour, but I'll check a loot list. If there is, that would of course mean that Perfect Thief is impossible in this FM. I'll try to let y'all know.

Finally, after a commodious vicus of recirculation, leaving the odd rope arrow here and there (you get a lot), I arrived at the police station. The only way to ghost the police station is to go all the way around the left side of it (over the bridge, on the street parallel to the street of the station itself), turn right, and go all the way to the streetlamp at the dead end. There is a frobbable window beneath a wooden overhang. You know what to do.

Once inside (the Autopsy room, oddly enough), you need to exit to the corridor and move clockwise around the atrium to the door in the far left corner (passing a locked office on the way); inside this door is a key which opens the locked office you passed that was just to the left of where you entered the corridor from the Autopsy room.

Once inside the locked office, you notice some loose boards on the floor. A sign warns you about loose boards on the floor. Hm... I think someone is trying to tell us something!

Mantle over the desk to the other side and crouch-walk gingerly onto the floorboards where the two join. You will drop through onto a desk in the office one floor below. (You must mantle over the second-floor desk above because if you drop through in front of it, you will land on the floor and take a point of damage.)

From here, you can creep out the office, turn left, and without being seen by the guards, enter the corridor that leads to the main second floor. The patrolling Hammerite carries the key you need to exit via the back door.

Note: Do not forget to frob the bag that's hanging in the storage area in the main second floor! You pick up a bunch of equipment you need... including a critical invisibility potion.

The next Bad Stretch comes a little later, when you must burgle L'Arsene's rooms at Chez Serge (again for a key, but also to collect the loot and equipment he stole from you, which is an objective).

Chez Serge is an L-shaped inn in its own courtyard, with the long part running east-west and the short part at the left edge. There are two guards, one at each door; each guard stands below a very bright Klieg light over the respective door.

I tried a dozen times to sneak to either of the two doors without success; there was simply too much light, and the guard at the other door would always see me.

Then I left the courtyard into some shadow to contemplate the situation. I was now in the street south (I think) of the inn courtyard, staring at a doorless building or thick wall that screened Chez Serge from the street. Then I noticed there was a hole on the second story of this wall-building... and the butt end of a wooden beam sticking out above it.

Doh!

I roped up into the hole, leaving my rope arrow there, and followed the passageway left. It led eventually to a trap door into the roof of Chez Serge!

I was able to get in and blackbag L'Arsene's quarters, in which a couple of guards had been slain; I grabbed the key to the Abandoned Section of town, grabbed my stuff from the door that you open via a switch behind the bed, and roped back out the trap door. I returned to my rope arrow and slid part way down, grabbing my arrow and dropping, undetected, to the street. Bad Stretch two was down.

If you run down the street, keeping Chez Serge on your left, you will come to a tiny, dark alleyway on your left. This will take you back into the inn courtyard, but along the right edge. Go all the way north; the inn is on your left, and the gate you need to open with the key you just retrieved from L'Arsene's room is on your right.

This brings you to the real bear: the Admiral set piece.

To ghost this requires three rope arrows, though you can retrieve one and sometimes two; you will leave either one or two rope arrows behind, so plan accordingly.

Here is the setup: You enter through a door, pass through another couple of doors (when you open the second, you hear retreating footsteps), and end up in a warehouse. The only way to continue is to climb to the rafters and crawl through a hole. The hole leads to a tunnel, which brings you to another room in the warehouse.

Garrett will exclaim that he lost the trail. The only way forward is a long corridor with two glowing mushrooms, leading into blackness.

If you walk along this corridor in the normal course of play, just after you pass the first mushroom, a thief spawns immediately behind you (I backed through the corridor to check this... he just winks into existence). You run; he chases you; past the second mushroom, the thief hot on your heels, you suddenly plummet through a hole, dropping about thirty-five feet into a pool of water.

You have been chased into another trap: in this room is a zombie-like creature called the Admiral.

The admiral walks like a zombie, and like a zombie cannot be knocked out. But he talks like a demented, despairing prisoner. A note from L'Arsene stabbed to a wall informs you that you are stuck here for all eternity.

Three problems here from a ghosting standpoint:

1) When the thief materializes behind you, he alerts; you're busted.

2) When you fall through the hole into the water, the Admiral alerts; busted again.

3) The only way out of the trap is to shoot a button high up a wall in a room with a giant spider. The sound of a broadhead striking the button alerts the Admiral and the spider. Three strikes, and you're going down.

I How to get past the spawning thief

Remember that invisibility potion from the bag in the Police Station? Now's the time to use it. Face down the corridor, quaff the potion, and run along it. The thief will materialize behind you, but he never sees you; by the time the potion wears off, you are in the dark section at the end of the corridor. Look back; he's just standing there like a big, dumb baboon. But be careful not to run too far... you don't want to fall down the hole, because that will absolutely alert the Admiral.

II You're at the hole... now what?

Creep as close to the hole as possible without toppling over. You are facing west, and the hole is a square about six by six. The hole itself runs down about fifteen feet before opening into the ceiling of the Admiral's prison.

The sides of the hole are dirt, and they will take a rope arrow. Or in this case, three rope arrows. (1) Plant the first arrow about four feet down from the top and directly in front of you, in the middle of the west wall. (2) Plant the second rope arrow a little further down, but not past the halfway point, on the north (right hand) wall, but closer to the west wall. You may have to turn north and lean left to do this; you definitely have to lean to plant the third arrow. (3) Plant the third rope arrow on the same (north) wall as the second, but in the very bottom right corner -- that is, closest to the east wall and just barely high enough that it will stick. This last arrow is the most critical.

Turn back west, toward the back wall of the hole, and just crouch-run off the edge. (Garrett will scream; don't worry about it, it's scripted to scare the bejesus out of you when, in normal play, the thief chases you.) When you catch hold of arrow (1), downclimb a little, then turn and jump to arrow (2) -- Garrett will scream again... geeze, what a big baby!

You can upclimb a bit here and snag arrow (1). Then downclimb. When you get to the bottom of the hole, just above the ceiling into the Admiral's room, slow down; if he sees you well enough, even on the rope, he will alert. But you are on the north wall... and that means you are at the extreme of his peripheral vision.

Continue downclimbing on arrow (2) until you clear the ceiling. As soon as you can, rotate around 180 degrees; you are now even more to the Admiral's side, and he cannot see you from here. But if you climb until you drop off the arrow, you will land too hard and alert him by sound.

That's where arrow (3) comes into play. Downclimb some more on arrow (2), then jump from (2) to (3) (you probably want to save before trying this; it's tricky, and you can miss the rope and land hard). (Once you're safely on (3), you can climb up and see if you can retrieve arrow (2) -- sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. But it's not really necessary; there are plenty of rope arrows.)

Rotate around (3) until you are facing south (the Admiral is now on your right). You are in light, but don't worry; he cannot see you. The spider might first alert, but that should be about it. Climb slowly down until you fall off the bottom of the rope. You should land quietly on the ground right next to the water you would ordinarily have fallen into. Congratulations, you're now stuck with the Admiral. But at least you didn't alert him!

III All right, I'm in with the Admiral... now what?

Take out the torch with a water arrow and take a deep breath; the worst is behind you. Creep towards the Admiral, right along the edge of the water; you should be in total darkness. The Admiral is behind some rocks west of where you landed; you must pass right in front of him to get to the place where you can hit the button and open the gate to let yourself out.

Creep right across the front of the Admiral's rocks; he's blubbering and making noises like Jim Backus as Mr. Magoo. If you pass in front of him right next to the front of his rocks, then angle slightly right towards the "stairstep" rocks, you will remain in near total darkness, and he won't notice you much. Once you reach the stairstep rocks, you are around on the Admiral's right side, and he can't see you even if you're in light. (If he takes a step, you're busted; that's his second alert. If he just keeps raising and lowering his arms, you're cool.)

Save; it's easy to misstep, and if you land, the Admiral will alert. Point west and mantle up the first rock. When you're sure you're clean, stand and run up the next two. If you're careful, you'll end up on the top rock without any alerts.

Jump-mantle up west (same direction you've been going); this puts you on top of a shelf. You have to get across the gap east... but if you jump, you'll probably land hard enough to alert the Admiral. So instead, just run east, pressing the jump key after you start to drop; you will then mantle silently up the other side. There is a crack before you; but again, if you jump through it, you will make noise. So instead, run up the arete just left of it, then turn right and run through the crack.

Crouch walk ahead and to the left, avoiding the small hole, until you come to the overlook into the Big Spider room. The button is very hard to see... but it's in the middle of the far wall, directly in front of you, about two-thirds of the way up. Use your zoom vision to locate it.

Here is the trick: if you hit it square, you can activate the button with a water arrow! The spider will squeal, but it's just a first alert. Save beforehand, because if you don't hit square, you'll waste a water arrow. You'll know if you got it because you can faintly hear the gate rolling aside in the distance (and clanging, which doesn't alert anyone).

Once you've opened it, go back the way you came; do not drop into the Big Spider room because you'll take damage and you'll have to slay the spider. At the crack, go ahead and jump through -- but aim for the sloping wall to the right beyond the crack; you'll hit it and slide down without noise. Crouch and simply drop to the top rock of the stairstep rocks, then make your way down toward the Admiral.

Crouch-walk back exactly as you came, past the Admiral, along the edge of the water, and through the now-open gate. Climb two ladders, and you're home free!

Out the steel door and up the ladder, then through the Sleeping Thief room. There is no reason to take his note; he'll just wake up, and it's just instructions where he will meet L'Arsene later. Instead, just creep right, pick the De Charry key from the scion of the house (locked in the cage), and continue out the far window.

If you crouch, you can drop down from the ledge below the window to the street without taking damage. Go left (south), around the corner right (west), and look up: over the archway is a circular tunnel above another wooden beam. Rope up, then turn left at the intersection and continue all the way to the end.

You are now looking at the roof of the De Charry house. To get down without damage (and without making noise to alert the two guards at the entrance), just crouch-run off the edge; you'll bouce off the roof and land silently and pain-free... behind the guards!

The rest of the mission proceeds as normal. The key opens the double doors upstairs, which leads to L'Arsene himself. Pick his purse, blackjack the jerk, and haul him out (I think the rest of the house is already stripped bare -- that bulging purse is the take).

I had a little trouble bring L'Arsene back to the jail cell. The only way to reach it without being spotted is to swim... but when I swam while carrying the unconscious L'Arsene, he had a disturbing tendency to drown even when I was all right!

First, I made the swim myself, without L'Arsene, to open all the doors ahead of me. I crept into the empty cell to the right of where I entered the jail and frobbed the glowing mushroom, so I wouldn't be seen with the body.

Returning, I grabbed L'Arsene and swam as fast as I could to the place where I could take a breath; but I think L'Arsene isn't able to breathe as well as I (face in the water, maybe)... so the first time I tried this, he drowned on the last swimming leg, failing the game. The second time, I swam to the breath-taking place but only took a gulp or two before continuing on the last swimming lap and up the ladder.

When I dropped L'Arsene in the empty cell, the game ended.

MISSION COMPLETED

Last edited by dafydd; 11-24-2003 at 11:55 PM.

  1. 11-25-2003, 05:44 PM by Gumdrop #3

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Excellent write-ups recently. I am enjoying reading them... particularly that last one, dafydd. Keep 'em coming.

  1. 11-25-2003, 06:17 PM by dafydd #4

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[Gumdrop]

Thanks, I will as long as I can keep ghosting.

But -- but where are the rest of youse? Why am I doing a solo act here? Isn't anybody else out ghosting?

I know it's not that everybody else has already ghosted every FM out there... aren't y'all still trying?

I mean, I have an ego the size of a gas giant, but even I eventually get tired of reading my own words! 

Dafydd

  1. 11-26-2003, 04:09 AM by Old Man #5

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commodious vicus

C'mon R&M. I had to look these up myself. BTW, dictionary.com doesn't do "vicus." But I get the point just the same.

Nice work, dafydd.

  1. 11-26-2003, 01:08 PM by dafydd #6

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[Old Man]

It's from the opening sentence fragment from Joyce's Finnegans Wake:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Am I correct in concluding that you did not ghost the entire mission, just part of it? If you did, how did you ghost the Admiral room?

Dafydd

  1. 11-26-2003, 03:37 PM by Old Man #7

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I tried Joyce's Ulysses a long while back. Way too much Latin for my taste. And I knew Latin back then!

So, I loaded up L'Arsene in DarkLoader and had a looksee. I've got a completed save from seven months ago. But I don't think it's a Ghost because it has four knockouts. Got all the loot, though! And I'm thinking only L'Arsene himself needs to be blackjacked. Also, I'm having difficulty remembering the mission -- seven months and eighty-eight FM's ago. I do remember your Ambush room but the Admiral's I can't bring up into my mind's eye. Maybe ... still a bit left to the golf season. We'll see ...

BTW, is L'Arsene conscious to begin with? If so, then the recent (okay a year is older than recent, not current anyway) discussion about only objectives explicitly requiring Ghost Rules breaks would be accepted. But I don't think clayman ever did update the rules even after his vote poll timed out. Lesee, "Catch L'Arsene and put him in one of the cells of the Security Office." "Catch?" Not "BlackJack?" I dunno ... And what was the wording in the original French language version? Mayhaps the translator didn't get it correct. 

Last edited by Old Man; 11-26-2003 at 03:48 PM.

  1. 11-26-2003, 06:38 PM by dafydd #8

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[Old Man]

I think "catch" can have only one meaning in Thief: the only way to take an AI into custody is to knock him out, either with a gas arrow, a gas mine, or a blackjack. Unless a bunch of people jump in to overrule me emphatically, I'm going to conclude that "catch L'Arsene" means knock him out.

You should only have a single KO and no kills; so I think you must have BJed a guard or two.

[Folks]

I'd like to introduce a *Brand Spanking New!* Thief mode of play... it's called Contingent Ghost.

Contingent Ghost means you ghosted everything possible to ghost in a mission... but the objectives implicitly require you to bust the ghost -- slashing a banner, for example, or cutting the electric cord in Ominous Bequest. Something that is not explicitly mentioned in the objectives (which would allow you to claim a full ghost), but which is nevertheless required.

And if later, someone figures out a way to finish the FM without doing that, then you retroactively lose your Contingent Ghost  .

And the first FM I want to claim it for is....

  1. 11-26-2003, 06:59 PM by dafydd #9

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Default Emilie Victor

FM: Emilie Victor
File: emilievictor.zip

Play mode: Ghost (failed; see below)
Contingent Ghost (Success)
Time: 5 hr 35 min
Loot: 2524 of 2984
Pockets picked: 10 of 18
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 2 of 7

Comments:

Alas, there are not one, not two, but three places where it's impossible to proceed without slashing a banner or otherwise causing property damage.

First, although you can frob open a secret door by reaching right through a banner in the tower (behind the Secret Passage Key lock) without cutting it -- perversely, the secret door itself opens right through another banner, leaving it blocking your entrance! You must slash that second banner to enter the secret passage.

Next, there is another banner you can slash to leave the theater that you ultimately reach via the Secret Passage; but you can avoid this banner by dropping quietly to the ground (using a rope) and going out the front door. So this one is all right.

But the third banner you cannot avoid: when you are following Emilie Victor's trail from the iron door past the graveyard through the realm of Maurice, You must climb up into the rafters and jump into a secret passageway to the church -- that is blocked by a banner. Two banners down!

Finally, the third piece of property damage is required when you get the two mask-keys (in the ghostly realm) and enter the Hall of Howling Statues. The only way to proceed is to smash the pedestal with your sword; this opens the gate behind the statues and lets you into the area whence you'll eventually get to meet and talk to Emilie herself.

Thus, I believe that Emilie Victor is not properly ghostable.

However, in the lesser category of Contingent Ghost, I succeeded... in the sense that apart from cutting those two banners and smashing the pedestal, I got no alerts, did no other damage, no KOs, and took no damage. If I could have opened or jumped through those banners and opened the door by frobbing the pedestal, it would have been a ghost.

Not much else to say; I did abysmally on the secrets -- only two! And I was 460 short on loot. I'll probably dive back in with an earlier savegame and see if I can hunt them down (with a lootlist or secrets list, so I won't bother posting it here).

Dafydd

Last edited by dafydd; 11-26-2003 at 07:18 PM.

  1. 11-26-2003, 08:20 PM by Peter Smith #10

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With some minor trepidation (considering how some similar discussions have turned out), I suggest that you start another thread on "contingent ghost." I can see a serious logical flaw. That is, any result, no matter how poor, could be claimed a contingent ghost success. All you have to do is try hard and claim you could do no better. The game forced you to BJ 40 AI, etc. Think about it a little bit and then suggest some realistic ground rules that maintain the central challenge of ghost. It will not be easy.

  1. 11-26-2003, 09:11 PM by dafydd #11

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[Peter]

Shifting to a new thread....

Dafydd

  1. 11-29-2003, 07:57 PM by dafydd #12

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Default Durant

[Folks]

FM: Durant
File: durant.zip

Play mode: Ghost (Probable fail; see below)
Perfect Thief (fail, of course)
Time: 5 hr 35 min
Loot: 2662 of 2807
Pockets picked: 15 of 18 (per the author, 16 of 18 is a perfect pickpocket score)
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 85 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Innocents Killed: 0 Others Killed: 1 (Per objective)
Secrets: 2 of 2

Comments:

This one is a heartbreaker.

The only way to properly ghost Durant, I believe, is to avoid reading one of the books in the upstairs rooms in the Mechanist temple... it gives you an objective to kill one of those irritating "Child of Karras" robots.

Not that killing the verminous thing is all that hard, and not that it isn't soul-satisfying. The problem is that once you kill it, you cannot pick up or relocate the body.

And of course, no matter where along its patrol route you take it out, it's sure to be stumbled across by an extra with a mace.

Note of caution: You absolutely do need the rolled up parchment in the same room; it's a map of the big manor estate you'll loot later. I think it's the same room. In any case, save before frobbing either of those two books... when one of them gives you the new objective, just reload and avoid it like flesh-eating bacteria.

The Child of Karras's patrol route starts from the second-floor office... well lit and patrolled by two Mechanists. The little weasel goeth from there to the chapel, patrolled by a female archer along the same (lit) route the robot follows. Then it goes down the metal stairs, just as she does, to the basement (a.k.a. first floor) area, patrolled by the archer and also another mace-man.

Thence the patrol path of the Child of Karras starts to follow the same route as the mace-wielder, but it deviates slightly -- into a much more brightly lit area. Even so, you may get your hopes up, because it patrols on the other side of some huge generators. Aha, now's your chance....

But lo! the mechanist macer, with his enhanced sight (enhanced all the way to Superman's X-ray vision, evidently), can see right through the solid steel generators, and he will spot the dead body anywhere along this stretch... even in the nether regions, where the Child is in near darkness, in a disused corner, behind some scrap, wearing a +7 elven cloak and shrouded by the invisibility blanket from Harry Potter.

In short, once you read that stupid book, you cannot end the game without killing the thing (except by Shft-Ctrl-Alt-End); but if you dare fulfill the objective by killing it, your ghost is toast.

So why did I write "probable" fail above? Because I cheated: I shot the Child of Karras (with the handy acidic arrows) just as he started up the metal steps from the basement, after both patrollers had just left. Then I hotfooted through the door to the sewers, around the haunt, and down into the water, swimming far away.

So I didn't actually see with my own eyes that somebody stumbled across the body. Oh, sure, the stat says a body was discovered... but actually it claims that TWO bodies were discovered. Since the stats also show only one kill and no KOs, only one body exists. Thus, the bodies-discovered stat is obviously unreliable.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  If the author, Donald F. Mazur, can mess up our ghosting by forcing us to leave a body in plain view, then by Black Bartelmy's bloody blade, I can mess up Mazur's carefully laid schemes by being unable to say for absolute certain that my ghost was busted.

So there.

Now that I got that off of my chest, I can focus on the rest of the mission. This is another one of those "Garrett doesn't have his equipment because he stupidly left it behind" FMs, where step one is to find it.

(Curious... the last two FMs I played both required Garrett to steal his equipment and both forced a ghost fail. They also both involved stealing stuff and both starred Garrett; the coincidences are mounting.)

In the case of Durant, named for a painter whose painting we never actually get to see, nor the dauber himself, the equipment issue is a double-whammy: you have to make your way to a safehouse to pick it up, only to discover some other taffer has beaten you to it. Ordinarily, the find-your-equipment objective annoys me; but in this case, the surprise (which I just blew for all of you readers) was clever enough that I appreciated it.

I didn't find the enchanced guards much of a problem, except for spotting the acid-melted body of that repulsive thing. In fact, I really didn't notice any other difference: if you're in total darkness, they can still stand three and a half inches away and miss seeing you. I suppose they can see you over a longer distance if you're standing out in the open, lit up like a Roman candle; but if you're going to do that, despite everything you have been taught, you deserve a cranial-rectal inversion from the nearest bluecoat anyway. "Not responsible for advice not taken."

Even so, you're better off taking to the Thieves' Highway -- whence you can climb into the room where you get the rest of your stuff... plus three invisibility potions, which I found invaluable (and one more inviso potion that is a secret).

(The other secret is really aggravating: in a wine cellar, you flip a torch-switch and open a cabinet with a gold bottle; buf if you frob the plain-looking green bottle inside next to it, you discover (a) it's a secret, and (b) it's valuable.)

A good way to get around the map is to use the sewers; but you won't really be able to do that much until you get the sewer key, which is in the Mechanist temple's chapel, in the far left corner as you enter, inside a safe. You must then go down to the room below... but unless you know exactly where the patrolling female archer is, don't use the stairs; go back through the door into the office, through the office, and to the left into the elevator room. Ride the metal disk down one level, then step out and head right.

In that room at the bottom of the stairs is a red door, which the sewer key will open -- thus simultaneously opening all the manhole covers throughout the mission.

You won't be able to make the loot requirement unless you break into Grimworth & de Parrin Fine Relics, and you can't do that without a gear-key, and you have to make the gear-key in the Mechanist temple, so that's two good reasons to head there first after you get your stuff.

There is a storyline here that seems both bizarre and odd, involving a homosexual love-hate relationship between Grim and de Parrin, that I think Mr. Mazur would have done well to drop. It might make sense in a story or novel, but in a Thief fan mission it's distracting and eye-rolling.

There is a very tricky switch combo you can do in G & dP's, very tough to ghost: you have to press a button in the metal-door room upstairs, then run down and frob a coat hook in the cloakroom downstairs, then climb up the vine arrow you conveniently placed before you started (did I forget to mention that?) to the safe hidden behind the painting that just opened up, for which you need the safe key from the other room upstairs, which you had to get before pushing the button and heading down. You follow?

After that, just follow the map and taff around. Once you make your way (via the sewers) into the manor in the west, you can do yourself a world of good by getting up to the third floor (via the secret elevator in the broom closet at the north end of the main corridor on all three floors), gulping an inviso potion and whipping south, under the face, through the next set of double doors, then zipping right down the corridor immediately north of the two guest rooms.

At the (west) end of that corridor is a switch to turn off the estate watchers! I don't know how long that lasts; the alarm switch turns itself back on fifteen minutes after you turn it off, but I don't know if this applies to the watcher switch as well. (The alarm switch is useless to use, since an alerted guard busts a ghost whether he hits the alarm switch or not.)

Oh, just so you know: this is also one of those missions where the guards are absolute Illuminati who will relight any lamp you put out, so long as it's within the normal, human, one-hand reach of thirty feet or so. So don't worry too much about water-arrowing things to make it dark; you'll just waste time and arrows. Save the squirt gun for unpatrolled areas that are nevertheless within the enhanced visual range of the AIs.

Other than that, it's all pretty standard taffing. Thieve on!

Dafydd

Last edited by dafydd; 11-29-2003 at 08:55 PM.

  1. 11-30-2003, 05:20 AM by dafydd #13

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Default Gathering At the Inn

[Folks]

FM: Gathering At the Inn
File: Gati_Mission_HighRes.zip

Play mode: Ghost (Success)
Perfect Thief (Fail. Sigh.)
Time: 1 hr 36 min
Loot: 896 of 1048
Pockets picked: 2 of 3 (all?)
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Innocents Killed: 0 Others Killed: 0
Secrets: 2 of 3

Comments:

Everybody and his unkie's monkle has ghosted this one. Nothing special.

"There must be fifty ways to gas Lord Pearsall...."

Dafydd

  1. 11-30-2003, 09:01 PM by dafydd #14

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Default Old Comrades, Old Debts

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FM: Old Comrades, Old Debts
File: oldcomradesolddebts.zip

Play mode: Ghost (Feh)
Time: 0 hr 31 min
Loot: 140 of 140
Pockets picked: 3 of 4 (all?)
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 5 Healing: 0
Innocents Killed: 0 Others Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0

Comments:

Sigh.

Has anyone ever managed to find another way out, other than flipping the sparking switch and blowing up the basement, which (of course) busts the ghost?

For that matter, has anyone managed to flip the switch thingie and not take damage?

Oh well; I'd never played it before!

Dafydd

  1. 12-01-2003, 07:07 AM by Peter Smith #15

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No, that explosion is the required ending. You can ghost up to that point. As I recall, I have done it with zero damage, but it took a lot of reloads. That is why I remember it.  There is a way to crouch right by the switch so the first blast doesn't hurt you. You fly across the room. The trick is to get back to the opposite corner and into the hole in the wall before the second blast goes off. Very difficult owing to short timing.

Last edited by Peter Smith; 12-01-2003 at 07:10 AM.

  1. 12-01-2003, 11:13 PM by dafydd #16

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Default Saturio Returns Home

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FM: Saturio Returns Home
File: saturioreturnshome.zip

Play mode: Ghost (Success)
Perfect Thief (Missed it by that much)
Time: 3 hr 57 min
Loot: 1611 of 1922
Pockets picked: 4 of 8
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Innocents Killed: 0 Others Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0

Comments:

There are four major areas of difficulty ghosting Saturio, three of which Vanguard achieved in his first ghosting (I don't know if he's returned to this FM). I managed to get the fourth (the safe), though oddly I didn't get as much loot as Vanguard did lo these many moons ago.

I) There is an unpickable safe that can only be opened by a key carried by Sigfrido Machado, who sits (awake) in a chair in the tile-floored library.

II) You must find a way around two human guards, a watcher with artillery, and a combat bot to make your way into the East Tower to retrieve an engagement ring.

III) You must make your way around the above guards to enter the West Tower, where Saturio is being held.

IV) You must take Saturio's unconscious body past the above guards to his mother's room in the main part of the house.

First of all, I didn't discover until late that it's not particularly difficult to turn off all the watchers on the property except for the one guarding the Towers; in fact, I walked past the stupid guard who has the watcher panel about nine or ten times before it occurred to me to look and see what, in fact, he was guarding. Surprise! Light dawns on marblehead. He has two switches that, when flipped, turn off the stupid watchers. Yeesh!

This is the stationary guard near the "back stairs," the guard you see through the window when you climb out of the well.

Of course, I found that out after I had already ghosted both rooms commanded by watchers about four or five times each.

One is the back stairs, and I chose to use those instead of the main stairs: the main stairs rise from a tile lobby and are heavily patrolled; the back stairs (actually, they're closer to the front, but they're definitely secondary) are not patrolled by any guards; they just have two stationary guards, a servant who occasionally wanders through on his way out of doors, and a watcher (whom we just turned off).

The guards are staring at the door to the outside, which is where the servant goes... so you can sneak quite close to the stairs before you would come into their view. But you cannot douse the electric lights, so you have to run like a thief -- well, I suppose that's appropriate -- the last few feet to get onto the dark stairs. A couple of times I alerted a guard and had to reload; but most of the time I made it undetected, just a bit of grumbling. Musta been one of them grubbers.

(Though it occurs to me that regardless of what a grubber is, if you find one in your house, you probably want to pick it up and throw it out the window at the very least. Don't know why they just let them run around loose... whatever they are.)

Grubbers aside, I found this clearly the best way between the first and second floors.

I) Ghosting Mr. Sigfrido

I think I know the trouble Vanguard had: he must have made some sort of noise earlier in the library or nearby. When Sigfrido first-alerts, he stands up and turns ninety degrees to the right, so that he faces one of the library doors (the closer one). The library is brightly lit, so you cannot subsequently enter that door, since he would see you.

But if you enter by the other library door, you are still in front of him (though off to the side)... and there is no way to get around behind him to pick his key without being seen.

I discovered (quite a while ago) that it seems that standing as far away from a door as possible -- and in as much darkness as possible -- lets you open the door more secretly. This is perversely true even if there is no line of sight between you and any AI. When I first opened the nearby library door, Sigfrido stood, making it impossible to ghost his key. I tried a few more times, but he did it every time.

Then I moved so far from the door (in the corridor) that I had to lean to frob it... and this time, Sigfrido did not alert.

I crept across the tile. Since he was sitting with his right shoulder to me, I kept left, which allowed me to get close enough to pick his key. I exited the same way then returned to the safe and looted it.

II) Storming the Bastile part 1

For maneuvers II and III, I followed Vanguard's candle-soot arrows like he was Arne Saknussen. In the second-floor guard quarters, which you pass through directly you mount the back stairs, there is a box. If you take that box to the courtyard outside, set it down near the right side of the door, and hop aboard, you can mantle up onto the roof of the quard quarters.

Look up; the window in the wall on your right leads directly into the East Tower. Take the elevator up, and the engagement ring is in the cell, which is unlocked. Exit the same way.

III) Storming the Bastile, Part 2

As Vanguard noted, you cannot open the bars across the Tower doors from the inside (they're prisons!) This means that you have to retreat and find a separate way into the West Tower.

Again, I followed Vanguard's path. I carried a bunch of boxes (too many, as it turned out) from the wine cellar up to the flat roof you can access from the big Attic room that has the two guards, the watcher, and the combat bot. As it happens, you need only two boxes; if you stack one atop the other against the wrought-iron fence (next to the peaked roof leading south towards the Towers) and hop aboard, you can mantle up onto the fence.

(This actually surprised me; I'm not used to being able to mantle onto a spike fence... I thought I had to jump down onto it, which is why I brought up every box I could find.)

I had a hard time dropping down without plummetting off the roof to my -- er, Garrett's -- death. But I used the sideways key, which gave me just enough juice to come to a stop on the roof. You want to drop onto the left side of the peak and "strafe" right.

From there it was fairly easy to climb down to a little half platform, jump to the next roof -- this is right behind the combat bot, so I mossed the opposite platform -- and then scuttle up and around to the window hole.

IV) Rescuing Prince Charming In Distress

Once I got in, picked open the cage, and retrieved Saturio, I deviated from the Path of Vanguardness: I found a much easier and more elegant way to get down with Saturio's body.

(We shall all pause now while Beaver and Butthole laugh and declaim "he said he was going to get down with a body! Huh Huh-huh Huh-huh!" All right, got it out of your system?)

I simply took the elevator down to the level of the guards and the combat bot. Just as with the East Tower, the West Tower has a window on that level... and this window looks directly down onto the hedge next to the horse trough I swam through to get to the well.

It's also one floor lower, and with no roof to navigate. I simply dropped Saturio near the window, climbed up into it, gulped a slowfall potion, picked up Saturio, and slid off.

(Wait, is the potion necessary? Let me see if I still have a savegame there.... Oh yeah, you sure do need that slowfall potion; I just tried it nude and lost all but one point of health!)

In any case, with the potion you land without a scratch, and you're right in front of the kitchen door -- which you wisely opened from the inside a long time ago. Maybe I should have mentioned that earlier.

Hike him up to the second floor and drop the Oedipal Saturio into his mother's bed.

I have no idea where the rest of the loot is; I don't think there are any big caches I missed, so it could be the sort of scattered coins that bug the heck out of me, which practice is singularly responsible for my inability ever to get Perfect Thief. But that's a wrap, folks.

Dafydd

Last edited by dafydd; 12-01-2003 at 11:22 PM.

  1. 12-02-2003, 07:22 AM by Sneak #17

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Nice work Dafydd!

Got a kick out of this comment, "Light dawns on marblehead." That got a laff outa me! 

Just Sneakin' Through!

  1. 12-02-2003, 02:10 PM by dafydd #18

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Default Marbleheads

[Sneak]

Got a kick out of this comment, "Light dawns on marblehead." That got a laff outa me!

It was a favorite comment of my old drill instructor, SSGT. William S. Carney, who uttered it whenever one of us finally "got" something that he thought should have been a leeeetle more obvious.

Dafydd

  1. 12-03-2003, 07:28 PM by dafydd #19

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Default Sisterhood of Azura pt. 1

FM: Sisterhood of Azura pt. 1
File: sisterhoodofazura1estheridge.zip

Play mode: Ghost (Success, on the ragged edge)
Perfect Thief (Fail, but who cares?  )
Time: 3 hr 41 min
Loot: 2094 of 2594
Pockets picked: 11 of 25
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 2 (game error; see below)
Damage dealt: 28 (per objective) Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Innocents Killed: 0 Others Killed: 1 (per objective)
Secrets: 7 of 8

The "other" killed was the "renegade Keeper Joshua," and there is an objective that says to kill him. I killed him the same way Vanguard did, in the accepted fashion: repeated blows with the blackjack. The first knocks him out (hence the knockout), the rest eventually beat him to death.

I don't know why it claims two knockouts, but I only slugged the one guy, Joshua. This is a game-reporting error, like when it shows one more possible pickpocket than actually exists.

Comments:

First, may I rise to a point of order.

When I first started posting here, I had hold of a set of Ghost rules from http://land.heim.at/yellowstone/230430/rules.html that included the infamous Amendment 4:

Amendment #4 - A clarification is needed. No KO's are allowed at all, under no circumstances, regardless of the alerted or unalerted status of the AI. It has been noted that the use of gas arrows does not cause damage, nor is the resulting KO of the AI added to the stats. Despite these facts, the use of gas arrows or any other frobbable or inventoriable item to render an AI unconscious or alter its otherwise normal behavior is prohibited.

However, I was told (in no uncertain terms  !) that Amendment 4 was not canonical and had no effect, and in fact, that nobody had even seen it before or had any idea where it came from. The only canonical rules, I was told, were in Clayman's post in the archives on this site:

http://forums.eidosgames.com/old-ubb/

There is nothing in the official ghost rules that forbids the use of gas arrows or gas mines. Nevertheless, I generally try to avoid them, viewing them as a last resort.

Well, meet Ms. Last Resort: the Sisterhood of Azura pt. 1!

This FM is brutal: much of it is lit up like Vatican Square at high noon on Easter Sunday; there are watchers everywhere; there are millions of guards; there is a lot of stuff to do; and there are a lot of violent scripted events, from a terrible melee in the Tippled Burrick, to a brawl between a bluecoat and a greencoat, to a vicious fight between rival teams of haunts, to a cutscene showing child sacrifice... many of which (not the cutscene, of course) have the potential to involve Garrett right in the middle of everything. Which would certainly bust your ghost  .

I did indeed use gas arrows and gas mines in ghosting this FM; but I feel vindicated, in that when I read Vanguard's report of a failed ghost attempt on this very FM, he did not report the use of gas as a bust, and nobody objected; he had to resort to the blackjack a couple of times, and that is why he listed it as a fail. I ended up using gas mines on two AIs and gas arrows on four others; all of them fell without alerting any other AIs or taking any damage whatsoever -- I checked after each use to make sure no "damage dealt" points had been added from the gas.

So without further dubious justifications and self-serving rationalizations, let's get right to the report!

I'll focus on those areas that Vanguard was unable to ghost. I did not, actually, follow his lead this time; I struck out on my own. For example, you actually can grab most of the loot in the Tippled Burrick without triggering the melee... which would not itself be a bust, I maintain, since it is scripted -- but it almost necessarily leads to a bust:

1) One guard comes boiling out from the hallway, and she will almost certainly spot you, no matter how fast you scuttle under the counter, unless you use an invisibility potion, which you probably don't have yet (you get one from the secret room in the apothecary down the street from the weaponsmith's shop and the Tippled Burrick Inn, one in the haunt' chapel at the cathedral, and supposedly one more, though I never found it).

2) If you lay a gas mine for her (you can get one in the secret space in the weaponsmith's shop), then her body will be spotted by one of the other guards; since her dropping would have been the result of your actions, this should count as a bust (re-alerting an already alerted guard).

In any event, you can get all but 100 loot without triggering this cataclysmic raid, so why bother? It turns out that you can hop onto the counter, so long as you do not cross a line about midway across it. It's not easy; I tried eleven times before I got all the way onto the counter but without blundering across the DMZ.

Once you're up there, you can creep forward a step, save, creep forward, save, and so forth. Eventually, you will creep too far and all hell breaks loose... so just back up to the save right before that.

At that point, if you crouch and lean forward, you can actually frob all the loot except for the rear two gold goblets (you have to move left a bit to get the gold bottle). Since I certainly got more loot there than the amount by which I cleared the loot requirement (94), this Tippled Burrick Inn loot turned out to be critical to my success. If I hadn't gotten this, I would have had to find some other loot somewhere else; and since I ended with no invisibility potions left, that might have been impossible.

Incidentally, I had no trouble nudging the (single) stationary guard while heading into the Tippled Burrick Inn. I blew out the two torches on either side of the Inn door, then waited until all three patrollers (the two Mechanists and the woman) were out of sight and darted behind him. I kept jamming hard with crouch-run, and he moved fairly quickly. The patrollers grumbled as they passed, but none went beyond a first alert.

Another word: this FM has some programming errors that make it look as if you have been busted but are obvious mistakes. Some of the AIs will react very peculiarly around torches that have been put out... they will pass the put out torch with either a mild comment ("Again? third time this shift") or with no comment whatsoever. They'll pass it again, completely ignoring it this time. Then a third time. Then a fourth time. But then, about the fifth time passing the same torch, with Garrett hiding far, far away in total shadow, the AI will suddenly scream and stagger as if struck by an invisible arrow, then go into search mode.

This is so aberrant -- and such an obvious error in either the Dark engine or (more likely) the mission -- that I simply ignored it. It only happened with one AI -- the bluecoat who patrols with a Mechanist along the road that leads from Cathedral Square to the house with the archers in the two windows. I reloaded a number of times and finally got a run where he didn't do that (at least, not while I could see him); but I think I was overly cautious; it shouldn't count as a Ghost bust.

When you leave the Inn, even without triggering the melee, two more guards have spawned; but I was able to creep right in front of one of them, despite my gem being not totally dark, and head into the darkness next to the patrol path of the two Mechs and the woman, pointed at the door to the Weaponsmith's shop.

Getting in through that door is a bear. Patrollers passing me from right to left (as you face the Weaponsmith's door) wouldn't notice me; but any of the three passing from left to right saw me and alerted. I had to wait for a gap when all the patrollers were headed right, then dart forward, using the forward-then-shift speed, not the faster shift-then-forward speed, work the lockpicks until I was passed by an AI (right to left), then turn and dart back. This got me grumbles all around, but nobody went beyond first alert. I would then wait, seething with impatience, until I got another break... then I would dart forward and continue with the lockpicks.

Once you get the door open, you can edge forward until you are in total darkness (in that doorway "sweet spot"), then lean in and watch the watcher. (So now we know the answer to "quis custodiet ipsos custodes!") When it turns to look at the doorway opposite you, and you're clear behind, run in and quickly left to get right underneath it. Lean out and frob the door closed; you will never go out that way anyway.

The next maneuver was decidedly uneasy, chancy, even: I stood, waited until the watcher was just starting to turn away from the counter toward the doorway to my left, then ran like hell towards the counter.

My object was to o'erleap the counter in a mighty bound, then drop immediately to a crouch, so the watcher would not spot me. Again, it took many, many tries until I perfected the timing: leave too soon, and the watcher will see you and go yellow before you get halfway to the counter; leave an instant too late, and you'll be busted before crouching after jumping over the counter. You can tell by the noise; but just to be sure, when I thought I had made it, I faced the counter (on the other side now) and backed up slowly towards the basin with the water arrows until I could see the top of the watcher and verify that it was still rotating.

On that side of the counter, of course, is the switch that shuts off the watcher. Don't bother with the basement yet; you need the basement key, which is labeled the Weaponsmith's Key and is found at the police station.

Note: Beware, the weaponsmith can see right through that steel door when he is coming towards you. treat it as if it were an open door.

There is a secret in the target range: shoot the far target to open a door in the central, circular room. You can vine up to it to grab some gas mines... you'll need 'em!

If you crouch at the far end, away from the weaponsmith's grilled door, then when he's walking away, you can stand and jump onto your vine.

With the weaponsmith himself, it feels kind of ridiculous, but you can quick-walk right along behind him and to whatever side is away from how he turns -- when I first went through there, he turned to the right; when I came back to get into the basement, he had changed his mind and was now turning to the left. Go figure! There is some loot in there (a figurine), and you want to push the button to open the back door, which cannot be opened any other way... as you'll need to get in here later, do not close it behind you!

I didn't need to nudge the female guard in the locker rooms of the Pool House Cafe; I was able to get close enough to lean from behind her and frob the key (police station, I think) and the loot. I didn't find anything in the pool or the pool area, but I'm notoriously bad at finding loot, so I can't say for sure it's empty. (I saved my game, went upstairs, jacked the two guards in the entryway and killed the two people in the cafe proper with broadheads, just so I could look into the kitchen... there being no way to get in there without alerting everyone and his monkey's uncle. Just a gold bottle, 50 loot. Hardly even worth the effort. I reloaded my savegame, of course.)

At the police station (far side of Cathedral Plaza), there is a security office down a hallway where you will find a switch to shut off the cathedral watchers and to open the cathedral gate -- which I think is necessary to order to get into the cathedral and end the mission. Vanguard says he was reduced to blackjacking this guard, later explaining:

There is no way to get into the security office in the police station to hit the switch to open the cathedral drawgate (and turn off the watchers). A Mechanist stands inside the door and blocks entry to that small room, the hall is brightly lit, and there is no on-off switch for the hall light. You could use an inviso potion here but I needed both of them to get loot. Besides, I'd have to nudge this AI backwards and nudging doesn't work when on the face side of an AI as they will spot you that near to them.

But this is not strictly true: there is a door directly opposite the security office. Behind this door is a dark office (or maybe I had to splash a lamp; I don't remember... at the least, it can be made dark). Once inside, crouching in total darkness, you can frob the door to the security office; you are now staring directly at the guard, but he cannot see you. (The security office is locked, I think, but you can either open it with the police-station key or else stand to the side and pick it open (then close it again!) before getting into the dark office.

Once opposite the guard, you can point down at the floor and pitch a gas mine in right at his feet; he generally won't alert unless you throw it too near him. After a moment, he shifts or something, and the mine goes off... and he's out with no damage. Now you can shut off two of the the watchers (the two nearest the cathedral) and open the cathedral gate without busting your Ghost.

You also get the key to the weaponsmith's basement here, I believe, in one of the other offices of the police station ("Sgt. So-and-So has the key," it says in the weaponsmith's book). You really, really, really need to get into that basement; there are two safes in there with a total of 375 loot or so.

When you return to the weaponsmith's joint and head down the basement stairs, you end up in a brightly lit corridor outside his room (on the left); he is facing directly towards the door... and this brings up another point: I think we thievers tend to be a bit too timid sometimes; in many missions, including this one, you can dart right through bright light directly towards an AI who is standing only five feet away, and so long as you are only in the light for a fraction of a second before entering total darkness, sometimes they won't notice; they're a bit slow on the uptake. Especially this guard.

Once inside his room and in darkness, you can use another one of your gas mines, as Vanguard did.

Later, inside the Wilson house, I had no trouble edging carefully into the room with the burglar, getting around behind him, and nudging him far enough forward that I could get behind him to get at the loot there (plates, a bottle). I did take the same route to Sara Deavant's house as Vanguard: out the window in the back bedroom, where the woman is sleeping, and down via vine arrow to the street below.

Sara's house is the other place where Vanguard busted his Ghost; he was unable to get rid of the guards left over in Sara's bedroom after they attack her. Maybe it was just the luck of the draw, but where the guards ended up in my case, I was able to get into the anteroom before her bedroom by hugging the left wall, and they didn't spot me.

Then I opened the door (no reaction, not even a first alert), got a gas arrow ready, and downed my only invisibility potion. I stepped quietly up to the open door, aimed the gas arrow -- no small feat, considering my bow-sight was likewise invisible! -- and shot it right between them. The gas expanded enough that both dropped simultaneously without either alerting the other.

As soon as I entered Sara's bedroom, I got the chime ticking off that objective. Interestingly, when I picked Sara up (to lay her on the bed), I discovered she was still alive, just unconscious; I put her in the dark space in the entry room instead, hoping maybe she would wake up before the guards did and make her escape.

Oddly, though I picked up the key to the "back door" to the Sisterhood's mansion, I never had to use it. See below.

I got another invisibility potion after playing the cutscene in the haunts' chapel, where you get the eye; but I burned it immediately getting the candlesticks from the altar. (On a trial run, I went invisible, then ran around around, alerting the haunts like crazy, grabbing everything... and I discovered the two gold skulls have no loot value. I have no idea what they're for -- maybe something to do with the last secret, which I missed?) When you return, you discover that there has been a melee, and two other haunts have spawned and fought the haunt and the mage who were there earlier. It's more or less random who wins and how many are killed, and possibly where they end up standing. I was left with two haunts, probably the two who spawned, standing on either side of the altar, the left one closer to the back wall than the other. I had no trouble sneaking out the side room where I had gotten the eye and into the central aisle, and even quite a bit towards the altar before I had to gulp the potion, run up, and grab the candlesticks... and that was the moment at which I finally passed over the loot objective (2004 at that point) and breathed a sigh of relief.

Before leaving, I went on a loot hunt and managed to find another 90, bringing my total up to 2094. On my way back, I took a savegame detour to get a look at the big gun; impressive.

Strangely, as I mentioned above, I didn't need the backdoor key. When I crossed the drawbridge, I just crouch-walked right up to the door directly in front of me and frobbed it; it was carelessly left unlocked. (I reloaded and tried it again, just to be sure.) I also didn't need to pass the mage; the moment I walked across the threshold, I got the chime, telling me my last objective had been fulfilled.

Like Vanguard, I am utterly amazed that this FM can be ghosted; the first time I tried it, I quit shortly after triggering the melee in the Tippled Burrick Inn, absolutely convinced that it was unghostable -- in fact, convinced that you couldn't make it through without ambush-killing a dozen guards! I read in a thread on TTLG that the author himself doesn't think it's ghostable.

Well, there we are: neat, sweet, petite.

Dafydd

Last edited by dafydd; 12-03-2003 at 08:03 PM.

  1. 12-04-2003, 01:30 AM by Old Man #20

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I was slapped down hard when I used a Gas Arrow on Lady Louisa and a Frog Beast Egg on the Angelwatch Front Door Guard. Neither affected the statistics page. That has got lost in the forums shuffle somehow.

  1. 12-04-2003, 02:14 AM by dafydd #21

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Default Frogs & gassers

[Old Man]

A frog-beast egg alerts the AI -- he goes insane and tries to kill it. But with the gas, he never knows what happened... no alert. (If you have two AIs, and when you gas one the other sees him and goes off, then yes, that counts as an alert.)

Also, regardless of whether the damage shows up in the stats (since it's one AI attacking another, as far as the game is concerned), clearly damage is being done. But with gas, the only possible damage is someone may bruise himself falling to the ground. And considering that being hit in the head with a blackjack constitutes only 1 point of damage, I can't imagine how infinitesmal would be the damage from gas! I think this clearly falls in the same category with the tiny "property damage" that occurs when you pick a lock or drop a crate on the ground.

In any event, the "official rules" (Clayman's post) say the following:

8.) No alerts means no distractions, noisemakers, artificial diversions that cause an AI to search for you, even if it is away from where you are. No Garrett/artifically induced suicides of AI or melees that intentionally cause AI to attack each other. No use of frog eggs allowed.

(Emphasis added.)

It says absolutely nothing about gas.

I think the gas should have been fine, and had I been around then, I'd've stuck up fer ya. but I agree that freggs are a no-no.

Dafydd

Last edited by dafydd; 12-04-2003 at 02:17 AM.

  1. 12-04-2003, 02:29 AM by Old Man #22

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IIRC, clayman insisted that the AI alert before passing out when being knocked out with gas. I'm also thinking that amendment # 4 was there at some point. Just got lost when the newer rules thread was made up. There must have been some discussion of whether they alert or not. Thus "regardless ..." And I seem to recall also that they sometimes do make a alert-like sound before collapsing similar to the sound made when an AI wakes up. "Builderrrrrr ... !", or something. I could have sworn I made a copy of the original Ghost Rules thread but I can't seem to find it now.

Whatever, the age of rigorous rules seems to have passed and Ghosting seems more of a "spirit of the thing" exercise now.

  1. 12-04-2003, 02:51 AM by dafydd #23

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[Old Man]

Well, regardless of the history, the official rules as now championed by Peter, et al -- and evidently the rules in place a year and more ago when Vanguard posted the only other attempt on Sisterhood of Azura that I could find written up -- allow for the use of gas but explicitly disallow freggs.

As I said, I consider it last resort... but SoA is such a booger that I felt perfectly justified in relying on technicalities  .

Dafydd

  1. 12-04-2003, 06:55 PM by Peter Smith #24

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Default The Seventh Crystal Version 2

FM: The Seventh Crystal Version 2
File: T7Cv-2.zip

Play mode: Perfect Thief (success)
Time: 2 hr 00 min
Loot: 2303 of 2303
Pockets picked: 4 of 10
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Damage dealt: 0 Taken: 0 Healing: 0
Killed: 0
Secrets: 0 of 0

Comments:

Klatremus posted about not being able to find all the loot in this mission. We got into a discussion about a guard with a purse on a catwalk, so I went back in to check it out. This inspired me to play the mission again and to prepare a loot list, which is now posted at Jason's site. I was reminded once again that The Seventh Crystal is probably my all time favorite mission. It is a beautiful ghoster. Fun but not difficult. And, of course, the mission itself is beautiful and has a fine story.

I have perfected this mission several times and written about it once before (in Part 2 of the FM Ghost archives). Vanguard also perfected it. So this is nothing really new other than an update for a different version.

In version 1 (previously reported) there was a loot bug where the total was off by 50. Version 2 has been released twice with the same version number. In the first release the loot obtainable was only 2103 of a reported 2303. In the current release all 2303 of the loot is available. I think some loot has been moved around or changed in value to make up the difference, but it has been about a year and a half since I last played it, and I could not tell what the differences were. Anyway, there are only two loot items in the mission that I would say are difficult to find: a poker in a dark corner by the library fireplace and a flute on a window sill in Brady's room. The rest of it is in plain sight - you simply have to visit all the places. There are no tricky coins, no difficult hiding places behind furniture, and no secrets or little switches. This is one of the things that makes the mission great in my opinion. It is not fussy. You can just sit back, relax, play Thief, enjoy the atmosphere, play with the timing of the AI, and enjoy the great story. This is what it is all about, folks.

Ghosting items of interest include a guard on a metal catwalk. I thought he had a purse in Version 1, and as I recall he was difficult to ghost. In this version he did not have a purse. So either that purse was moved or I am wrong and wasted a lot of time on that guard. 

Either this version was easier than the last version, or I am getting better. I think the former. Getting up the stairs to the third floor was a piece of cake. There were fewer guards circulating than in version 1, so I had lots of time.

There is a slight challenge getting the flute in the ballroom, or at least there used to be. This time I just went down the stairs, jumped over the banister, went down the right wall, got the flute, and used a rope to get back over the banister. The lights were bright, and the guard was a little blind at that angle. No problem.

Getting the front door key off the guard in the front vestibule was a little difficult owing to many guards circulating, but it was not necessary to do that anyway. I could not get the three arrow pockets on the guards in the front yard because I could not sneak by that guy to open the door. He was looking straight at the door in bright light.

Perhaps the biggest ghosting challenge, apart from finding optimal routes and timing, was leaning past the guard by the library fireplace to get the poker. I had to try that several (6-8) times before I could do it without being seen.

That's it. The ghosting is fairly easy, but it presents a challenge the first time through it. No nudges or any special moves are required. In any case, the mission is a blast to play in ghost mode, and I recommend it highly.

Last edited by Peter Smith; 12-04-2003 at 06:58 PM.

  1. 12-04-2003, 11:23 PM by dafydd #25

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Default Ghosting, Perfecting

[Peter]

I think I ghosted 7th Crystal a while back, but I certainly didn't perfect it. In fact, I am mystified how anyone can actually find all the loot in a mission. How do you know where to look? People like you and Nightwalker and such... it just pops into your head that if you shoot a rope arrow into the glass skylight, you can climb up and through it into a snowcave that's invisible from the ground, but which contains a white diamond exactly the same color as the snow, but which is worth 8 loot.

(All right, not this mission -- but some missions, when I look at a loot list, I don't have the foggiest idea how anyone would think of looking there.)

How do you know where to look?

Dafydd