Thief fan missions and campaigns

[RNGsus]

I'm in the middle of playing Deadly Shadows. Not hating it, but it's sort uninspired all across the board compared to its predecessors. Can someone suggest some fan missions, from any engine, that they are sure do not have spoilers from Deadly Shadows? I think I know where the plot is going but I want to see it through to the end. I would especially like anything that's crazy like Constantine's house. I can handle any sort of difficulty, as long as it's not scavenger hunt bullshit like the haunted temple.

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144797

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm in the middle of playing Deadly Shadows. Not hating it, but it's sort uninspired all across the board compared to its predecessors. Can someone suggest some fan missions, from any engine, that they are sure do not have spoilers from Deadly Shadows? I think I know where the plot is going but I want to see it through to the end. I would especially like anything that's crazy like Constantine's house. I can handle any sort of difficulty, as long as it's not scavenger hunt bullshit like the haunted temple.

Overall I recall there being very few FMs made for T1 or T2 that take place after the events of T3, and even fewer that spoiler the plot for the game. Can't speak for T3 FMs as the ones I've tried out turned out to be even more uninspired than the OMs.

That said, keep going. You haven't reached Shalebridge Cradle yet. That place turned heads back when the game was released, but it may feel a little old in the tooth today.

 

[JarlFrank]

Shalebridge Cradle is just Return to the Cathedral except spookier, and the fetch quests are more tedious.

Meh.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

I'm in the middle of playing Deadly Shadows. Not hating it, but it's sort uninspired all across the board compared to its predecessors. Can someone suggest some fan missions, from any engine, that they are sure do not have spoilers from Deadly Shadows? I think I know where the plot is going but I want to see it through to the end. I would especially like anything that's crazy like Constantine's house. I can handle any sort of difficulty, as long as it's not scavenger hunt bullshit like the haunted temple.

Are you playing with the sneaky upgrade patch, that makes levels entire pieces and have no loading screens between sections? plus it now adds T1 and T2 style briefings.

Shalebridge Cradle is just Return to the Cathedral except spookier, and the fetch quests are more tedious.

Meh.

The Cradle works only the first time you play. And its first act is actually much better than the latter parts. But return to the Cathedral never really gave me a chilling experience than the start of the Cradle. To this day, my most memorable scary part in gaming was one special part in that level, in which I really considered that games could kill you with an heart attack.

 

[RNGsus]

TDS physics makes Garrett feel fat.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

TDS physics makes Garrett feel fat.

Well, it's after T1 and T2 and a lot of fan missions. And that is bound to happen with a thief who steals food (burrick meat, carrots, cucumbers, apples...). Funny thing is that I can't remember if there is edibles in T3.

 

[Andronovo]

Well, it's after T1 and T2 and a lot of fan missions. And that is bound to happen with a thief who steals food (burrick meat, carrots, cucumbers, apples...). Funny thing is that I can't remember if there is edibles in T3.

Speak for yourself. All I ever ate was plums and health potions. Doesn't food only heal you on hard and normal but not expert? I don't know because I only ever played expert.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Food has a percentage rate of restoring 1 health if eaten in T2, even on Expert. In old T1 this didn't happen, but this feature is now part of T1 thanks to the TFix patch.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Well, it's after T1 and T2 and a lot of fan missions. And that is bound to happen with a thief who steals food (burrick meat, carrots, cucumbers, apples...). Funny thing is that I can't remember if there is edibles in T3.

Speak for yourself. All I ever ate was plums and health potions. Doesn't food only heal you on hard and normal but not expert? I don't know because I only ever played expert.

My garrett eats by daytime, all the food he stole by night. He never eats in mission, because I play avoiding to lose any health. He doesn't drink, either. Also, I always play on expert.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Well, it's after T1 and T2 and a lot of fan missions. And that is bound to happen with a thief who steals food (burrick meat, carrots, cucumbers, apples...). Funny thing is that I can't remember if there is edibles in T3.

Speak for yourself. All I ever ate was plums and health potions. Doesn't food only heal you on hard and normal but not expert? I don't know because I only ever played expert.

My garrett eats by daytime, all the food he stole by night. He never eats in mission, because I play avoiding to lose any health. He doesn't drink, either. Also, I always play on expert.

In a pinch my Garrett borrows a page from Mr. Dewitt:

 

[Andronovo]

Food has a percentage rate of restoring 1 health if eaten in T2, even on Expert. In old T1 this didn't happen, but this feature is now part of T1 thanks to the TFix patch.

Huh. I beat Metal Age on expert without ever learning that. I guess blew a lot more money on potions than I needed to. Most of the damage I took was from falls though because of the GOD AWFUL CLIMBING.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

As someone who's climbed in both OldDark and NewDark I can say this: If you fall and take damage in NewDark due to climbing, there are only two reasons:

# You are expecting NewMantle to be enabled when it isn't.

# You don't know how to climb in Thief.

The last time I took any damage in Thief because the climbing mechanics failed me (instead of it just being my own damn fault) was while playing the T1 FM "Shadow Politics" under OldDark in early 2012, which relies so much upon Rope Arrows that trying to grab hold of one was a dice toss for whether you actually grabbed the rope or got violently ejected into orbit by wonky in-game physics. NewDark not only eliminated all of that, but gives the player options for how they want climbing to behave.

 

[Andronovo]

For me it was ladders and the downright Castlevania jumping. Which is funny because I'm good at Castlevania.

Edit: Heh heh decline. Nice.

 

[ironmask]

Spoiler

What FM is this from?

 

[prengle]

the cradle's one of those levels/missions that really only works the first time you play it, but i first played it when i was a wee little sperg who wasn't into horror at all and it got me so fucking bad that i didn't touch thief 3 for two weeks afterwards; i like the "twisted mental asylum + orphanage" aspect of it more than the hammerite complex from return to the cathedral (which is another one of my favorite missions, ignoring brother murus entirely) but return to the cathedral holds up a little better on replays i think. wish i could go through both of them blind again

there will never be enough fan missions that really emphasize the horror aspect of thief

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Food has a percentage rate of restoring 1 health if eaten in T2, even on Expert. In old T1 this didn't happen, but this feature is now part of T1 thanks to the TFix patch.

Huh. I beat Metal Age on expert without ever learning that. I guess blew a lot more money on potions than I needed to. Most of the damage I took was from falls though because of the GOD AWFUL CLIMBING.

Oh, on the spending money thing, I actually never buy anything other than the "tips", only because I have this OCD in thief that I must read every readable in a mission. Imagine how I felt when I got to that 20+ pages scroll in keeper of the prophecies?

the cradle's one of those levels/missions that really only works the first time you play it, but i first played it when i was a wee little sperg who wasn't into horror at all and it got me so fucking bad that i didn't touch thief 3 for two weeks afterwards; i like the "twisted mental asylum + orphanage" aspect of it more than the hammerite complex from return to the cathedral (which is another one of my favorite missions, ignoring brother murus entirely) but return to the cathedral holds up a little better on replays i think. wish i could go through both of them blind again

there will never be enough fan missions that really emphasize the horror aspect of thief

Well, I mentioned I almost had a hearth attack in a specific part of the cradle... I stopped playing T3 and only got back to it some days after.

The thing with return to the cathedral is that for me, I faced it like any other thief 1 mission. At the time, I imagined I had to steathly kill the zombies or knock them out. Just like I did in down in the bonehoard.

 

[Andronovo]

Uh thanks for the warnings guys. To be true Constantine's house spooked me more than anything else in Thief 1 and 2. That and the room of turrets at Soulforge. Christ how are you supposed to get to that signal tower?

 

[marbleman]

You aren't. That's why even on Expert you have to activate 7 out of 8 towers.

 

[JarlFrank]

the cradle's one of those levels/missions that really only works the first time you play it, but i first played it when i was a wee little sperg who wasn't into horror at all and it got me so fucking bad that i didn't touch thief 3 for two weeks afterwards; i like the "twisted mental asylum + orphanage" aspect of it more than the hammerite complex from return to the cathedral (which is another one of my favorite missions, ignoring brother murus entirely) but return to the cathedral holds up a little better on replays i think. wish i could go through both of them blind again

there will never be enough fan missions that really emphasize the horror aspect of thief

When I was younger I didn't like horror because it scared me. Nowadays I'm too jaded to be scared but I still don't like horror because it's boring. Yeah tension is cool and all that but pure horror is just boring. Therefore the Cradle doesn't have any inherent appeal to me, as I don't give a shit about horror missions. In fact, the Cradle feels somewhat out of place in Thief, like a level from a different game tacked onto it.

Yes, Thief always had horror aspects to it. Being surrounded by zombies in the Bonehoard, getting lost in Constantine's mansion with the creepy laughing ringing through the corridors, Return to the Cathedral's haunt-filled church, Soulforge in Thief 2 and those Mechanist servants with their creepy voices, etc. But it was always thematically connected to the Thief world. Pagans, Hammers, Mechanists - the creepy levels always focus on one of these three major factions. Thief 3 should have had a horror mission focusing on the Keepers, but instead it has its horror mission focus on... an abandoned orphanage and insane asylum where the orphans were treated badly and the inmates were experimented upon. Uh, yeah, okay. Sounds like typical horror fare that we've seen a million times in horror novels, movies, maybe even games (but I don't give a shit about horror games so I dunno; still feels utterly cliche regardless). Where's the connection to the Thief world? Where are the Hammers? Pagans? Mechs? Keepers? They could've written it to be an insane asylum that was secretly used by the Mechanists to experiment on people, and boom, it would instantly be a much more interesting Thief level, and the downfall of the Mechanists would explain why it's abandoned now. But no. Instead it's the most generic horror-genre insane asylum ever. Cold-hearted doctors perform electroshock therapies and lobotomies on the poor, defenseless patients! It's like the backstory of every single real-life Victorian insane asylum that is supposed to be haunted! Where's the connection to Thief lore? There is none. This mission feels completely out of place.

Now, for the gameplay. In a Thief mission, I expect to taff around and loot shit, primarily. There's some of that here, but it doesn't feel like the primary thing. The first half is just you stumbling through an empty building with spooky noises everywhere, but there's nothing there. Oooo how exciting. Yawn. Yes, it's creepy, but it's boring gameplay and I don't play games to be creeped out. If you're into the horror genre, this part is great, but if you don't care about the genre at all this is just lame. I wanna sneak around, avoid enemies and pocket loot.

When the mission finally gives you some enemies to avoid and a task to complete, you go and fetch some item for the ghost girl. Then you fetch another. Then she sends you back again. Three fucking times. If there's one thing that ruins the tension of a horror mission, it's sequential fetch quests. You get to spend so much time in the place running errands that you grow familiar with its architecture and the enemy behavior, and it stops being creepy after a while as you grow familiar with the place. At that point it just becomes tedious and you want to get out of there, not because it's a creepy place, but because you want to get on with the game and play an actually good level again.

The Cradle is a massively overrated level that has nothing going for it other than "It made me shit my pants when I played it as a 14 year old lad" and it feels completely out of place in a Thief game because it has no connection whatsoever to the overall Thief lore.

If you wanna make an abandoned hospital, do it like T2X's The Cure, not like this boring piece of shit level.

 

[Andronovo]

You aren't. That's why even on Expert you have to activate 7 out of 8 towers.

I certainly hope so. I guess you just chug invisibility potions and book it.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

IIRC you don't need the invisibility potion(s). The turrets can be navigated without much hassle, but I can't remember the exact route. You will have to run like mad a few times, though.

 

[Andronovo]

IIRC you don't need the invisibility potion(s). The turrets can be navigated without much hassle, but I can't remember the exact route. You will have to run like mad a few times, though.

I preferred the last level of Thief 1 over 2, even though Thief 2's finale was more of a challenge. Maybe I just like TWL better than K. I got REALLY tired of hearing K's voice at that point. It wasn't bad just kind of tedious. Took me about 5 hours to beat the first time, of course a lot of that came from trying to manufacture a fuckton of mines.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

One of the high points for me was meeting Karras himself, in his little 'safe space'.

Unfortunately the little slot by the floor won't accept mines, otherwise the game's ending would have been MUCH more interesting.

 

[Andronovo]

One of the highpoints for me was meeting Karras himself, in his little 'safe space'.

Unfortunately the little slot by the floor won't accept mines, otherwise the game's ending would have been MUCH more interesting.

When I did that and started banging on the window, he walked up and played the same voice clip that is played if you get detected by the mechanical eyes. So he's like "Time to die!", as if a bunch of iron beasts are about to pop out, and then nothing happens and he goes back to pacing his office.

I like the Children of Karas as enemies. One of my major criticisms of Thief 1 and 2 is how overpowered the blackjack is, but against the Children your ability to defeat them is limited, as in order to do so you are required to expend resources.

 

[Mechs Delight]

Nice to see I wasn't the only one who was disappointed by Shalebridge Cradle (although I actually thought the following level, the Museum, was even worse - just another generic, bloated and giant glorified FM).