T3 FM: Veil of Deceit (18.09.2015) Update: v3.0

[Savar]

llanita
Lockpicks & Weapons Objectives https://youtu.be/TLEqNUWW_QY

[llanita]

Savar thank you so much.

[zogmeister]

Cooper is in his office in the room at the back of the mansion at the base of the spiral stairs

Crown....Go to the courtyard of the Hammers (where the pagan is) when you exit the temple turn around and look up to the left.......and you'll see 3 statues......to get there get up to the balcony from the stairs and do a bit of roof climbing to the higher balcony

How long do I have to wait for cooper to arrive?

[fortuni]

Oops....My bad. That post was related to how to find and kill Cooper when playing V2 version, in V3 version Savar changed the location of Cooper (have deleted that post)

To find Cooper go to Cooper's Manor: In the basement (key in safe in SE bedroom) there is a hidden button (hidden behind a bottle of fine wine in the south wine rack. Right hand wine rack, 5 bottles up from the ground, left hand side of wine rack) this moves aside a wine rack on the east wall giving you access to a torture room, Cooper will appear after a short time.

[<Username>]

I did it! I completed a Savar mission on Expert without any hints. I was so pumped when the completion screen came up, I jumped out of my chair in excitement. This was one of my most satisfying accomplishments in Thief fan missions.

Veil of Deceit is my favorite mission by Savar so far. The main reason is: It feels fair. There are mandatory secrets, but not that many, and I felt I had more of a chance to find them in this particular mission. There is even a journal with a hint on the location of most challenging secret in the mission. I appreciated that.

Stats:

• Expert difficulty
• 131 minutes
• 95% loot
• 0 hints needed

Elements I liked:

• Challenging, but not unfair.
• Great architecture in most areas. Savar's strength is the quality of his interiors and exteriors.
• The hidden basement at Cooper's Estate is delightfully creepy.
• This mission reuses the Old Quarter map from the original game. After playing T3 fan missions for over a year since completing the main story of Deadly Shadows, it was interesting to see the work of the Ion Storm developers combined with the design of an amateur from the community.
• Good use of ambient music in different areas.
• The new areas behind Fort Ironwood are neat.
• The Golden Medallion (special loot) is hidden in plain sight, but not easy to get. Felt good getting it after multiple attempts.
• The Pagan Crown is hidden in a clever location. A hint from a journal gave me an idea of its location, but I still had to carefully search there.

Elements that could be improved:

• The briefing makes sense to me until the last sentence. Then I am stumped on what this is supposed to mean.
• You get an objective to find out information about a massacre but are not told what this massacre was or why Garrett is interested in it. This is a recurring element in Savar missions: Plot points and objectives that are not properly explained.
• The mission's objectives generally feel like a bundle of tasks related to several different plots. The mission lacks a narrative focus.
• Savar's signature teleporting doors make another appearance in this mission: Sometimes frobbing or getting near a closed door will teleport you to an area that appears to be connected to the one where you came from. I think Savar uses this to connect areas that are located at different coordinates in T3Editor, maybe because it kept the framerate high or because he wanted to add a room where one wouldn't fit into the rest of the architecture. Whenever one of these teleporting doors appears, the sudden transition feels jarring.
• Replacing the Shalebridge Cradle with Cooper's Estate felt a bit weird.
• In the bedroom where the stairs down to the hidden basement in Cooper's Estate are, there is an odd round object that can be picked up but which does not have a function in the mission. I was wondering if it would be necessary to use it in a puzzle, but it appears there are no uses for it.
• The torches of the gargoyle statues in the hidden basement of Cooper's Estate cannot be extinguished with water arrows.
• Savar likes stationary NPCs with their backs so close to the wall you can't sneak up behind them. I never understood this preference in any of his missions.
• The sitting guard in the guard station north of the entrance to Fort Ironwood is alerted when you open the safe behind him. I had to knock him out before opening the safe.
• The pictures of real persons like George Washington and Stephen Russell were a bit of an immersion breaker.
• It is possible to get to the upper ledge of the tower south of where the Pagan Shaman is. If you peek inside, you can see the interior is not finished.
• Some victrolas in the mission are frobbable, but do not play a sound. This was an issue in previous missions by Savar as well.
• If you open the hotel's door, you can see it is not connected to the wall.
• There is a guard sitting at a table in the hotel's bar. He occasionally mutters to himself he wished he could be at the tavern. That was amusing.

[<Username>]

There appears to be no v2.0 of Veil of Deceit. It seems Savar went straight from v1.0 to v3.0. I can't find information on the release of a v2.0 on the WWW. The community members I asked also said there never was a v2.0.

This correlates with Savar's posts in this very thread:

1. 12th Nov 2010: Announcement of the development of the mission
2. 4th Jan 2012: Announcement of the release of v1.0
3. 18th Sep 2015: Announcement of the release of v3.0

[<Username>]

Two major changes in this version: One, what used to be Cooper's Manor in v1.0 is now Arman's Manor. Savar added a new area with a new Cooper's Manor in v3.0. Two, several smaller side-areas from v1.0 were removed, including the original location of the Pagan Crown. Since I could not find a changelog for v1.0 > v3.0, I wrote down further changes I noticed below.

I could not complete v3.0 without hints, even though I spent a considerable amount of time checking every corner of the mission for loot and secrets.

Stats:

• Expert difficulty
• 169 minutes
• 90% loot
• 3 hints needed

Hints needed:

1. Cooper's Manor: Missed the hidden button in the wine cellar. I had searched the wine racks for hidden buttons, but unfortunately, this button can only be seen when you are either crouched or looking at it from a specific angle, which I did not happen to do.
2. Pagan Crown: I thought it might be hidden up there. It is hidden in plain sight, but I guess my view was blocked by one of the pillars on the sides of the building, otherwise I would have seen the loot glint.
3. Even after using two hints, I could not get more than 89% loot. I used a third hint on the location of piece of loot I had missed to achieve 90% loot.

Changes to existing areas during the update from v1.0 to v3.0:

• Several areas of the mission: The skybox was replaced by a higher.quality one.
• Several areas of the mission: New ambient music was added.
• Several areas of the mission: Frobbable victrolas in the mission now play music. In v1.0, none of the victrolas did play music when frobbed.
• House where you get the lockpicks: The sleeping woman on the bed was removed and replaced by a book about the recent history of the Shalebridge Cradle.
• Hotel: Moved to a new location closer to the starting location, near the gate to Stonemarket.
• Hotel: The interior was updated, including an overhaul of the textures.
• Hotel: In the pub, the barkeeper walks through the room instead of just standing behind the bar.
• Fort Ironwood: The Hammerite in the pews is sitting instead of standing.
• Cooper's Manor: Is now Arman's Manor. The interior of the building has been updated.
• Arman's Manor: The painting on the west side of the entrance hall does not count as loot anymore.
• Arman's Manor: I now had trouble getting off at the top of the ladder in the south corner of the garden, but I had an easier time getting off at the top of the tower where the telescope is.
• Arman's Manor: The teleporter door on the balcony to an upper floor corridor is now closed and feels a bit less awkward to use.
• Arman's Manor: Some rooms up the spiral staircase east of the hall with the round table were removed. In the corridor, an unfrobabble glass door was added through which the stairs to the creepy basement can be seen.
• Arman's Manor: The stairs leading down to the creepy basement are now connected to the rest of the house: A secret door that can be activated with a Keeper Glyph now leads from the stairs to the study.
• Arman's Manor: In the creepy basement where the dead Enforcer can be found, the living statue is not active immediately but becomes active if Garrett steals a valuable manuscript from the hands of a gargoyle statue in the area behind it.

Removed during the update from v1.0 to v3.0:

• Streets of Old Quarter: In the small guardhouse north of the starting location, an unusable mine which previously could be found there was removed.
• Streets of Old Quarter: The rooms in the small house a few steps south of what is now Arman's Manor have been removed. The door is not frobbable anymore and there is nothing behind it.
• Streets of Old Quarter: The unreachable guard above the gate to what is now Arman's Manor was removed.
• Fort Ironwood: The outside area with the Cataclym Memorial was removed.
• Fort Ironwood: Magister Kronos is not in his room anymore.
• Arman's Manor: The tiny sideroom in the room below the telescope on the roof, which previously had just enough space for the servant inside, was removed.

Added during the update from v1.0 to v3.0:

• Streets of Old Quarter: In the armory north of the starting location, there is now a full-body armor on display that wasn't there before.
• A large new area with a new Cooper's Manor was added.
• The west garden around what is now Arman's Manor has been slightly changed and a new gate with blue mist leading to the new Cooper's Manor was added.

Elements that I think should have been changed from v1.0 to v3.0, but weren't:

• The typo in the briefing remains: "Dunver dave me the address".
• The unintelligible last sentence in the English version of the briefing remains.
• In the small guardhouse north of the starting location, it is still not possible to open the safe without alerting the sitting guard next to it.
• You can still climb up to the ledge above the Pagan Shaman, creep along it to the tower in the south corner and peak inside to see the unfinished interior.
• There is still an unusable round object on the shelf of the bedroom with the stairs to the creepy basement in what is now Arman's Manor.
• The torches in the hands of the gargoyle statues in the creepy basement still cannot be extinguished with water arrows.

Issues introduced in v3.0:

• The mission now has even more locks that must be picked before the player can proceed. There are too many locked doors.
• When I frobbed the healing potion on a table on the upper floor of the pub of the hotel, Garrett gulped it down immediately. It did not go into the inventory.