Thief fan missions and campaigns

[Maggot]

Ended up finishing Seven Sisters because I'm autistic and had already gotten too far to drop it. Not sure why but I didn't have any of the hyper alert AI problems I had with night 1 and 2 in night 3. I'd say Rowena's Curse and The Tower are both better missions but night 3 had some interesting areas. Also this thread deserves to be re-stickied.

 

[cowking]

Been playing some contest missions lately.


Lone Rock Outpost - short and sweet, nice details inside the manor, good layout, nice guard positioning, even liked how you learn the guard names, imo clear winner of the contest


The Sunken Temple of Dielya
+ looks nice
+ gateway mechanism was cool
- too much walking/backtracking without bunnyhop
- bridge jump gets char stuck like 75% of the time
- should be a clue for lighting the candle, thought I had wrong version of newdark or something


Morning Light - liked the comfy lighthouse, too cramped for my taste though


A Midsummer Night's Heist - I was sold as soon as I dropped down and saw the shadows when checking out the mission, too bad it's ruined by poor gameplay (almost dropped it).
+ looks pretty (although I don't like mechanists or the dark brown T2 look)
- dogshit gameplay, yawn inducing short patrol routes that cockblock you 95% of the time forcing you to stop and wait 30s constantly making any kind of even semi-ghosting an exercise in frustration
- annoying stuff like getting stuck in a window that looks like you can mantle through it (but you can't) and get instalocked by a camera, wait another 60s for guard to complete his cycle to get out etc...

Maybe it's just that I entered the mansion from a wrong entry point or something but I just couldn't enjoy it. I was surprised it was a skacky mission which I only realized later.


Shadow Play - excellent mansion heist with good gameplay (this schlock dude is quickly becoming my favorite map maker)
+ very TDP esque, simple yet the layout of the mansion was oddly complex, maybe due to lack of a map
+ fun details inside manor
- loot goal pretty tough, didn't like how loot was hidden outside the manor taking the goal into account

Iron-manned it, absolutely worth playing, easy 4/5


Vanishing Point - impressive considering build time, worth trying
+ good plot and readables
-+ personally don't like the HD textures (too noisy), although some interiors were nice and reminded me of T3 in a positive way

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The only new FM that's dropped in a while is "Nameless".

First things first, this is a FM originally started in 2003, then picked up a couple of times through the years and finally finished and released now.

If you go into it with the foreknowledge that it's a 2003 FM, then you'll have fun with it. It's also a daytime-mission, meaning those shadows while outside matter 2x more.

With that in mind... it's alright. Doesn't do anything wrong, readables aren't that bad, architecture is very much right angles and straight corridors.

 

[Maggot]

Out of those FMs I recently played A Midsummer Night's Heist and Lone Rock Outpost and I thoroughly enjoyed both. My only problem with Lone Rock Outpost is with some of these big open FMs, (I had the same issue with Feast of Pilgrims so I assume it's map size related) I get stuttery movement as if I had phys_freq 60 enabled despite having FPS capped to 100. No idea how to fix it but it's not really a deal breaker and the layout was fun. Regarding A Midsummer Night's Heist I don't remember the mission being particularly frustrating, although I didn't do a pure ghost run.

 

[cowking]

My only problem with Lone Rock Outpost is with some of these big open FMs, (I had the same issue with Feast of Pilgrims so I assume it's map size related) I get stuttery movement as if I had phys_freq 60 enabled despite having FPS capped to 100. No idea how to fix it but it's not really a deal breaker and the layout was fun.

Lone Rock Outpost actually ships with a .cfg that sets phys_freq to 60 and audio channels to 16, why I have no idea. Personally I didn't notice because I cap my FPS at 60 anyways.

 

[Maggot]

Finished Behind Closed Doors and Turning of the Leaves. I didn't bother with the major secrets for either one (the masks and the flower petals), but I did enjoy how unique both missions felt with Behind Closed Doors being a more modern looking city, and Turning of the Leaves being a mishmash of weird things you generally don't see in FMs. My two complaints would be that I wasn't a big fan of how goofy the cultists in the latter mission looked and I'm just not a fan of the "HD" models that show up in these FMs. They're always 10x the poly count of the surrounding brushwork and some of them have broken smoothing groups like a wooden table with a massive dark seam going across it diagonally. High resolution/poly assets just don't look very good in the Dark Engine and they often seem to be missing mipmaps which means they're extremely grainy unless you're standing right in front of them. They're never a dealbreaker for me though, and others seem to like it, but I think missions that remix assets or make new assets that fit the original look will stand the test of time better.

 

[octavius]

Played some of The Turtle on its Back, an old T2 FM. Nice premise, escaping from a sunk ship, but just too frustrating with too few pockets of air and too much save scumming needed. So I didn't finish this one.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The Turtle on its Back

Did Cleveland Mark Blakemore make this one too?

 

[Riskbreaker]

Considering you're all sufficiently awake now: So I've started playing FMs again after longish pause and I'm currently catching up with the stuff I missed. I'm at the first mission of the much praised Godbreaker campaign right now and fuck it I'm not exactly enjoying myself here. The thing is smallish I guess, small square slice of the City, but it is incredibly cumbersome to navigate. Seems like you can access fuck all from the patrolled ground level, so it's all finicky Dark Engine Platforming (tm) and climbing on the upper level, with precise jumps, narrow ledges, mantling from angled roofs, jumping from angled roofs, all the while praying the engine won't decide to produce a noise whilst you're performing any of it. It's pain in the ass getting from point a to point b in what is, again, this small space. And not too rewarding. But it looks nice and I do love the Sean Connery sound-a-like. And I'm persisting for the sort of location the following missions promise, going by the screens.

 

[cowking]

Godbreaker didn't earn it's praise for the first mission which probably only exists for the purposes of being a plot prelude while all the time was spent on mission 2 & 3.

A Short Night's Work
Into the Odd
Lost Among the Forsaken
Malazar's Inscrutable Tower
My Favorite Year
Shadow Play
Whispers Below the Cobblestones

... are all 4/5 or 5/5 from the ones I've played, probably forgetting something.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Godbreaker didn't earn it's praise for the first mission which probably only exists for the purposes of being a plot prelude while all the time was spent on mission 2 & 3.

4. Mission 3 is a cutscene, mission 4 is the nice cityscape with the crippling gameplay issue(s).

 

[Riskbreaker]

Godbreaker didn't earn it's praise for the first mission which probably only exists for the purposes of being a plot prelude while all the time was spent on mission 2 & 3.

A Short Night's Work
Into the Odd
Lost Among the Forsaken
Malazar's Inscrutable Tower
My Favorite Year
Shadow Play
Whispers Below the Cobblestones

... are all 4/5 or 5/5 from the ones I've played, probably forgetting something.

So far I've played Malazar - and quite recently too, sorta autumnal look to the woods and light in the opening section, when you're approaching the tower, attracted me to it https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/screenshot-thread.72409/page-1218#post-7548655 - and yeah, it's pretty unique. It's really more like one of those mid-90s Zork games or Myst clones set in Thief's package with some looting and platforming. Very creative and mindbending with some nice humour.
I had to use walkthrough more than once tho.

 

[octavius]

Completed Warehouse 51. This was a nice, short T2 mission. Should be especially interesting for X-Files fans.

 

[Mechs Delight]

Beltzer also released a new campaign. Heaven help us...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Beltzer also released a new campaign. Heaven help us...

... taff it, I'll give it a go.

 

[Mechs Delight]

Some of the graphics inside the mechanist building are interesting and it's nice to hear SlyFoxx as Garrett again, but other than that, it's just the same old, same old...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Some of the graphics inside the mechanist building are interesting and it's nice to hear SlyFoxx as Garrett again, but other than that, it's just the same old, same old...

I'm not so sure... the one thing I've always hoped that Beltzer did, was for him to learn and grow. And lo, I see signs of that here.

Granted, I'm basing this off of 30 minutes of gameplay and going in with a touch of pessimism... but it looks like that he's improved. There's a spooky building SE of the hotel there that actually pulls off some spookiness. I enter through a window and there's a whispery voice warning me of horrible things, while there are two crimson eyes staring right at me from the opposite corner of the room. (If I had been sober, that would actually have creeped me the taff out.)

I'm not gonna write this one off yet. It's not poised to win any medals, but it's not crapping out either. Time will tell.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Finished "Lonmore", Beltzer's latest FM. It's a 'Thieves' Highway'-setting split into two parts across two missions (plus a third pointless CamVator mission at the end) where Garrett must taff about to earn loot, help out a Mechanist and catch a serial killer.

For me, the second mission was more enjoyable than the first, due to the layout. Traveling around the first mission involves a rather large 'C'-shaped path that skips the center, but the center area can be used to make the trip only one way. The second mission has a central area which branches off into various directions, making for much less frustrating journeys. The puzzles also weren't so convoluted in the second mission, the two biggest puzzles of the first mission are getting into the bank vault, and getting into the restricted parts of the library... and I honestly can't tell which one is worse. That a library has security comparable to a bank is a sight to see.

Aesthetically this FM uses all those 'new' assets which are a hit-or-miss affair for me, so for me everything always looks wrong, with the sole exception of the Mechanist facility. That place looked great.

But the big question is: As this is a Beltzer-mission, whose output hasn't been well-received here in the past, is "Lonmore" worth bothering with? I'm gonna say Yes, Beltzer finally made something that's worth playing. That said, I'd rate it about 7-7.5/10. There is one real good reason to play this for the more seasoned Taffers out there, and that's the memorial placed in the catacombs in the second mission.

 

[flyingjohn]

So,what is the best place to find almost all fm's with some form of rating system?
I only found thief guild so far.Wondering if there is anything better.

Tried downloading EVERYTHING from other sites,soon ballooned out in size and said fuck it.
It only works with dark mod because of the low amount of missions.

 

[Alphons]

what is the best place to find almost all fm's

https://www.taffersparadise.co.uk/

with some form of rating system?

Keep of Metal and Gold has been offline for several years, while The Circle has not been active for over a decade (last FM uploaded there is from January 2009).

http://www.thief-thecircle.com/miss...&which=fm&sort=date_d&pagenum=1&numperpage=16

 

[Curratum]

I like to source my FMs from https://darkfate.org/ because almost all of them have preview screenshots.

 

[Alphons]

I like to source my FMs from https://darkfate.org/ because almost all of them have preview screenshots.

Didn't know about this one, time for another bookmark.

 

[Curratum]

I like to source my FMs from https://darkfate.org/ because almost all of them have preview screenshots.

Didn't know about this one, time for another bookmark.

It's linked in the right sidebar on Taffers Paradise too, man

 

[nicked]

https://www.thiefguild.com/ also has user ratings.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

A new T2 FM is out, "Katharsis". Garrett is sent to a castle/estate to steal a Precursor Mask for some nobleman and to be able to pay the rent. Except there's a bit more to this one, I feels.

After ten minutes I can say this: Don't pick "Challenge" difficulty unless you're tired of your life; it binds you to a single HP. No more, no less. Oh, and not blackjacking anyone is an (optional) objective as well.

"Expert" has a lower loot requirement, but seems to dodge the tryhard challenges.

Architecture is interesting, and a slight fog is actually used to good effect here.