I agree with baeuchlein. Especially when it comes to FMs which are story and atmosphere driven. When you come to a point when you have to quicksave every minute, the frustration rises so high, that all the immersion evaporates. It really causes anger and disappointment and I had this feeling in Wailing Keep too. Partially it was because of my technical problems, when I wasn't able to use the magic staff. But then when I found a way to avoid creatures without being attacked, the immersion slowly kicked in again and I was able to enjoy the interior part. But I also played fanmissions, which basically broke all the great atmosphere that they had built in the first half of the game, due to some extreme challenge, for no real reason.
It's always the experience that matters and stay in players heads. And it isn't a particular skill to make overly difficult missions - you just need to add twice as much hostile 'stuff' as normally...
But again - 'Wailing Keep' managed to keep me satisfied after all.
Personally, I quite enjoy the frustrating element of certain games or missions. If I can walk away from the computer and still be thinking about a game, ruminating about my next step, then I know I'm hooked. That's just me, though. It's all very subjective, after all. We all have different opinions on what makes a great FM.
I thought the difficulty level on expert was perfect. I found myself quick stepping along walls and darting through open areas, worried I'd be seen but mostly this never happened. If you are sneaking around all the time, figuring your not gonna be noticed two inches away from an enemy than this would seriously be difficult mission. The one thing I thought about the other missions was that once you knew the layout it was too easy staying unnoticed by traveling familiar routes. That's what made the keep so nice as an ending.
I don't get it. I updatet my Thief 2 version 1.24 to 1.25 and the Holy Staff still doesn't work!
It is alwas like a blackjack. What's wrong? How can I fix it?
What steps did you perform to update the game?
E.g. if you did it manually via the 1.25 zip file (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147689) you have to open that, and then open NewDark.zip and extract its contents (it may be okay to only extract the .exe if you have settings you want to keep), and then you have to go up one level and open contrib.zip, and extract its contents too (especially squirrel.osm).
Tafferpatcher should do it correctly, but check your T2 folder for that .osm file.
Yes! Finally now it works. Thank you so much! ^_^
Well, that's an opinion I can live with, even without sharing it myself.Originally Posted by Purgator
Very enjoyable mission pack Yandros & team, thanks a lot. This last one was a bit exhausting (especially as I didn't realise I hadn't updated to v1.25 until it all went dark after the final ritual), but I still enjoyed it - good & scary!
I'm way behind everyone and so, keep spoiling things by reading what I think is what I need so I'll just come and ask - Where is the key to the top right room of the middle tower. I've done nothing but enter the middle keep by lighting the 4 fires and see the energy wall in center tower. I've looped around 5 times and can't find the key, I feel like this would be my point of advancement.
Edit: NM found the dead priest. The somewhat sameiness of the place made me think I already checked that corner. Other than that it's been fun and challenging.
Last edited by gamophyte; 25th Nov 2017 at 15:30.
Yeah it is rough, I think the sneaking is awesome but now with so much back tracking it's starting to get old. I wanted Clara to read you know what and she's gone, no footprints no blood. Breaking a rule already established. I looked everywhere for the key, and it was nowhere near the door. If the door plaque read something to make me think it would be on the walkway, like who would be there, it would have better than the hour some pixel hunting I did. Now I have taken another hour walking to every room all over again looking for Clara. How has no one else here mentioned this, how am I missing where she is now?
Edit: On expert.
Edit2: Oh it's a glitch. I replayed from an earlier hard save and she appeared sitting down. In my quicksave for no conceivable reason, she is just gone and I'm stuck with untranslatable scroll.
Quick save: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Z6...Ox4w46nQtbQvCY
Last edited by gamophyte; 25th Nov 2017 at 17:44.
Sorry about that, that was seen a couple of times during testing but it was never reproducible. Now I have a save to look at, I'll try to figure out what happened to her.
Maybe using the staff does it or something similar. I did loads of stuff though before making it back to her, so I have no idea. Thank you for the release!
I am stuck in the small tower with the magic portal elevator. I have the staff, and am in the inner courtyard, but there's a button missing, and there's nowhere to place a rope arrow. (the tower you use the old bronze key on) Any assistance would be appreciated.
In the lift room, you can shoot a rope arrow two floors and then rope up from there.
I was frustrated at first with the difficult enemies. After many deaths, I decided to not try to progress with the mission for a while and instead just trying to understand the enemies better. Once that was done, I devised a plan:
The middle floor of the perimeter walls should be mine, and devoid of enemies. It became the base to flee to whenever I was in danger (well, the middle floor and the ladders). Only travel on top floor the parts I need to in order to get past middle floor blockages.
Save often, in several slots.
Brown/green crawlers and blue crawlers: when they are unaware of me, follow, get close, crouch and make a sword swipe. (Just like you can kill a patrolling spider). Their death is quite noisy, so run somewhere safe quickly, then keep working a bit away where the enemies are calm.
Orange crawlers: Kill with broadheads. As long as I am in darkness, it really doesn't matter if the first few arrows miss, just keep trying some slightly differently aimed ones.
Lightning crawlers: Go nuts with the staff. If they spot me, walk backwards, look a bit down and go even more nuts with the staff!
Big guys: just run and avoid.
Enjoyed the campaign immensely. It's a milestone in FM history.
The first time must've been a glitch, re-loaded an it worked. Was able to finish it.
Truly awesome mission at the right holiday time. Only bugs I had were at the end of wailing keep is the final objective for taking care of Mathieus and get back to camp were both not checked even though they should've. resurrecting Julia, it should've transitioned to the final scene and only showed a black screen. I did a CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+END to progress.
Again, this was a truly awesome achievement , which was worth-while.
If that happened in the Keep mission, it probably means you were not on NewDark 1.25, or at least did not have squirrel.osm in your Thief2 folder. If your Thief2 happens to be from GoG.com then that's a recently known problem (they don't put squirrel.osm in the root folder for some reason, which makes no sense).
Just out of curiosity, are the little guys infinite in number/regenerate?
No, there are just a lot of them, especially on Expert.
I liked the missions that "guide" the players into being stealthy, instead of Rambo ...
I'm having a lot of trouble with this mission. I can't open the portcullis' and I assume it has something to do with the braziers in the towers? I found the notes on the dead explorer but I can't read the cursive writing! It said something about bringing the "urdzone(??)" for the braziers to open the portcullis' . . . so what is that word and where can I find it? I assume it's on one of thedead explorers somewhere, but I've walked all around the perimeter and can't find anything.
Also, the holy staff doesn't work, so I guess I have to update to 1.25 . . .
The only link for it that I found in this thread, I wasn't able to download it---my antivirus program detected it as a threat. Is there another way to download it?
There is a lone survivor hiding in one of these ruined barracks inside the fort . Did you already found her? She will hand you over a staff for lighting the four braziers in each tower. After this is done you can proceed
The holy staff works like your sword and fires magical beams. If it doesn't work, there might be a scripting issue. In this case you have to do an update. You may have to uninstall this FM, for installing it again. Luckily, FMSel allows to backup your save files :/
Please don't give up, this level will develop into an amazing climax - you can do it!
Hmm. . I didn't find anyone alive. I guess I'll have to check again.
As for the scripting issue. . . are there any links to a download (that is free of viruses) that can update it? Also, what are the steps for backing up saved files in FMsel?
The mission will probably not end properly if you don't update to 1.25, which was in big red letters in the readme and the announce thread.
The NewDark release thread is here: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146448
It's also in the Important Links thread stickied in this forum for future reference. If the link in that thread gives you a virus detection, then it is a false positive. It may be easier to use Tafferpatcher to update, though, unless you know what you're doing.
Once you have updated, you should be able to just load your old save. Then you need to look for Clara on the second floor of a building to the left from the main entrance, near where the fire boss patrols.
Ah, I ignored those because I figured I already had 1.25 . . .clearly not. These things update too fast for me to keep up.The mission will probably not end properly if you don't update to 1.25, which was in big red letters in the readme and the announce thread.
Well, I'll download it and see if I can get it to work. Thanks!
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