"Nest of Vipers" by
nicked
Duelin' wizards, you gotta love it. The Archmage and Vice-Chancellor of a reclusive order of mages are caught in some kind of argument, and the Vice-Chancellor has contacted the greatest Master Thief of them all... well, actually he contacted Halyard the cutpurse, who then realized he was in over his head and needed a professional, which is why Garrett is getting involved. Do the job, split the fee, what can go wrong?
Halyard has done the ground work and cased the joint... the joint in question being a veritable mountain fortress. A magical item needs destroying, and that can only be done with another magical item. Halyard's job is to secure the second item, as well as secure Garrett an entrance to the fortress. Garrett will then do the rounds, find the first item, do the deed, then collect the payment from a secret room before making an exit. Sound solid, no?
This is a Nicked-mission at its finest. The gameplay is finely balanced, not too easy, not purposefully made difficult, even though all the candles will have you cursing. An optional ghosting-objective is provided, though I quickly decided I wouldn't be having any of that. In a single sitting I managed to be only 400 loot short of the total, and found all five secrets. The clear winner here is the architecture though. Roman arches, a shoutout to a ceiling painter, a helical staircase, the largest telescope you've ever seen in a Thief-FM, and even some straight-up man-made horrors beyond our comprehension. The only downside to the entire FM is at the end, when it's time to make an exit. I secured the exit, I made sure it was clear. Nicked thinks that's not allowed, so a man-made horror is spawned at the bottleneck to the exit once you've completed all your objectives. Not cool, but not a big problem either.
Rating: 9/10. I agree with the
Rookie