hard luck

[Shadowcrawler]

Playing this fm as well. Not a bad one, like it. found a room upstairs with a bookcase and lever that open a discolored stone door. Inside found some treasure and another metal door that I cannot open. Can I get through this metal door or is it a decorative thing to ignore?

thank you for those that read this and more thanks to those that reply.

[Nightwalker]

That door just leads out into the hallway where the guard stands, so just ignore it. I don't believe it is possible to open it and it's not necessary anyway.

[Dawggon]

Nightwalker, yoo hoo,... help, please. I'm re-playing this FM on Ghost and may have a bug. In the basement

spoiler:

I flipped the switch in the big room, then went into the smaller room. All I see is a black door where, I think, it should be open. I can't strike the door or use any key on it.

Upstairs at the end of the hall is a room with a locked door. I did find the key for that, but after I

spoiler:

pull the switch in the small gap between the bookcase and wall, nothing happens to the black door. In my case both the black doors should open after pulling the switches, but I notice some taffers say they have a stone door.

This sounds buggy to me. Would appreciate any help...and I know it's an older FM, so you may not have played it recently

[Nightwalker]

It does sound like you've encountered a problem. I believe this mission was made for Thief Gold. You aren't by any chance trying to play it with TDP without the TG patch installed are you? That could account for things being missing or not working properly. Other than that, I'm afraid I don't know what could be causing it.

[Dawggon]

Thank you for the reply Nightwalker. That is probably the problem. Have a lot of older FM's I'm replaying without checking for a patch

[Dafydd]

[Nightwalker, or anyone else]

I'm short on loot, only 1907 or so (I need 2000 to finish). I found the secret door in the basement, but I can't see any way to get in there without alerting the AI -- in classic "screw the ghosters" fashion, we have an AI staring fixedly at the only door in a brightly lit room, clearly placed that way for the sole purpose of preventing anyone from ghosting.

Is there any other easy to miss loot that I could take instead? I only need 100 more. (But I find this very irritating; why must some FM designers go out of their way just to make sure no one can get Perfect Thief?)

Dafydd

[Nightwalker]

I don't believe you're going to get into that secret room. As you said, there's no way to do it without alerting the woman in there. I don't think these things are designed to frustrate ghosters, though, Dafydd. The question about whether ghosters want missions that are deliberately designed to be ghosted has been asked many times and most of the time the answer is "No". Most feel that the challenge is in trying to ghost a mission, not knowing if it can be done. You don't always need to be successful. A lot of these older missions were designed long before ghosting was an accepted style of play, too.

As for loot, did you find

spoiler:

the gold plate under the sofa in the Library and the cup lying near the chair in there? The tiny gold ring on the dresser in the servant girl's room. (It's the locked bedroom upstairs. I never found a key to the door. Did you??) The gold coinstacks tucked behind the bed in the servants' barracks that has Jurgen's diary on it. There is only 2 gold candlesticks in the secret room, by the way, so it's not a lot.

[Dafydd]

Thanks for the loot tips, Nightwalker; I definitely missed some of those! I hope I can grab enough to finish.

The tiny gold ring on the dresser in the servant girl's room. (It's the locked bedroom upstairs. I never found a key to the door. Did you??)

Yes, it's the Master Bedroom Key, and I think I found it on the AI in the kitchen (the big kitchen that has the room in the back that you can't get into while ghosting but which has no loot anyway, or at least nothing major).

I don't think these things are designed to frustrate ghosters, though, Dafydd. The question about whether ghosters want missions that are deliberately designed to be ghosted has been asked many times and most of the time the answer is "No". Most feel that the challenge is in trying to ghost a mission, not knowing if it can be done. You don't always need to be successful.

Apples and apes, Nightwalker: I'm certainly opposed to designers deliberately making their missions "ghostable."

But I'm equally against deliberately making missions UN-ghostable. Look, it's easy to do: you put one of the objective items at the end of a well-lit corridor, and you put a guard behind a counter there with no door into the corridor... et voila! nobody takes damage -- but the mission is now unghostable.

But why? What's the point?

The best mission design doesn't cut off any particular style of play: even though I never use the blackjack (unless I strike out ghosting), I'm against missions that simply take it away in order to force ghosting, or which require "no killing" on all three levels -- then give every guard a BJ-proof helmet. Hey, not everybody wants to play that way, so why make a mission that you know going in only a fraction of the Thief community will like?

My advice is: get a ghoster to beta-test and remove anything that he says makes it literally impossible to ghost -- and this mission, by the way, is likely ghostable, since as you say, it's not much loot -- and also take the ghostly betatester's advice when he says "this part is too easy." (My one objection to my all-time favorite FM, Ominous Bequest, is that it's literally impossible to ghost: a couple of the objectives require doing things that bust the ghost, no exceptions.)

But also get a KO-artist to betatest, and a homicidal maniac... lots of people like each of these modes of play, and it's limiting (and frustrating) to cut off any of them via a mission design that absolutely forbids it.

In this case, I was just frustrated because those two candlesticks would give me enough to finish (I did a test run and discovered that)... but I can't get them without busting the ghost. So I'll go back and see if I can't snag enough other loot to finish out.

Thanks,

Dafydd

[<Username>]

Finished on Normal in 20 minutes with 2212 of 2362 total loot. I had bought an additional rope arrow in the store but played the whole mission without using one: It is possible to climb onto a tree and mantle up the outer ledge of the keep to get inside. Didn't use any of the other equipment either, except for a couple of water arrows. I think this mission is a little too easy. Bisfult is quite the character though: The journals of the narcissist himself, Jurgen, Morgana, and "S." are the mission's strongest elements.