Welcome to the Thief II Guide to the Strange & Unusual.

This is your guide to making your way through Thief II while operating beyond the normal boundaries of the game. In each section of this site, I intend to show you scenic collections of all the wonderful stuff you can use and play with - from potions to carrots to a gravity defying cooking pot and how you can use them to 'work outside the square'. I'll also be showing you useful tricks and exploits in the game that will, at the very least, make your gaming experiences a lot more fun, if not more efficient. Of course, then there is the Strange and Unusual section for each mission which details all the bizarre things and happenings you can find in the game. From Easter eggs, to bugs that ended up being shipped when the game went gold, there are many things that make the world of Thief II a very weird and wonderful place to be. Climbing also plays a major part in the Guide. Many of the Strange regions cannot be accessed except via climbing to get into the nooks and crannies (and several unexpectedly huge areas) you were never meant to see. In the middle of constructing this Guide, Luthien from the TTLG forums came up with the technique of staircasing which makes climbing a breeze. You will see how this technique makes climbing easier when you compare the initial stacks of crates shown in the earlier missions to those in later ones. He later advanced this technique to create the amazing Elevatoring ability. Both these techniques can be found in the Tutorials section and make exploring the world of Thief even easier.

Each of the missions will, due to their large size, be dealt with individually. Just click on the mission links on the left side of the screen. In upcoming versions of this site, I'll be including a more detailed look at terminology, your opponents, equipment, advanced thieving techniques and whatever else I can think of. Azal.

Running Interference
Your mission is basically to get Basso to his lady, Jenivere, and back out alive. You also need to collect some loot and a few scalps. This is very simple mission as it serves the same purpose as the Training mission in the first game of the series. If you look very carefully in this mission, you'll even find a Bonus objective. Now, this is what you can collect during the mission: 46 crates 1 speed potion 6 yellow keys 1 silver key 13 green bottles 16 black bottles 5 wood goblets 3 trays 5 decorative plates 6 blue vases 2 metal bowls 9 metal plates 6 metal goblets 2 hand mirror

2 hairbrush 6 flares 1 pair of spectacles 2 deerlegs 3 decks of cards 3 cheeses 1 carrot 3 loaves of bread 1 healing potion 2 flash bombs 1 gold key

Now, the Dark Engine which powers the Thief series doesn't like it too much when you pile a whole bunch of stuff together. It makes some of the items turn invisible! Because of this, I've broken up the screenshot of the pile into two separate images.

One way you can play Running Interference is as a minimalist. I.e. what is the minimum effort you need to expend so that Basso can retrieve his lady love from the gnarled clutches of Lady Rumford. The best way at answer this question is, of course, via experiment. Using a saved game from the very start of the mission, various methods would be attempted to determine the minimum required effort to get an 'Objective complete' for Basso bringing his girlfriend out of the house alive. First Attempt: Blow the birdwhistle at the start of the mission and let Basso do all the running around while Garrett waited outside twiddling his thumbs. Result: 0 Successes; 10 failures. Average time: 1min 10sec.

Basso Smackdown

Well, that was a pretty dismal failure. Upon inspection, it was found that the two guards in the guardroom with the reinforced glass window were the problem. When Basso ran past them, they would quickly chase him down and kill him.

You light up my life!

Second Attempt: Looked like Garret would have to get off his bum and do something after all. A water arrow into the torch outside the guardroom did the trick. Now Basso could walk past the guards without being spotted and getting himself killed. Result: 1 success; 9 failure. Average time of failure: 2min 45sec; time of success: 2min 40sec.

One success out of ten tries is better, but more work is obviously in order. At least Basso was lasting more than twice as long. Following Basso into the mansion, it was seen that he was able to pass the guardroom without any problems, he ran past the stationary archer in the hallway easily. In fact, Basso went past him so fast and into the darkness of the large storeroom that the archer rarely even went into full search mode. However, there's another archer patrolling the corridor near Jenivere's room and while Basso was trying to pick the lock, the archer was sticking arrows into him. Third Attempt: Douse the arrow in front of the guardroom and knock out the patrolling archer. It is necessary to run quickly past the stationary archer and through the kitchen to avoid the sword guard in his little alcove and to knock out the archer as he walks along. Otherwise Basso will find himself facing several alert and angry guards when he makes his way to his lady's door. Result: 9 success, 1 failure. Time of failure: 18min 50sec; average time of success: 2min 40sec. Much better. I have no idea why it took Basso nearly 20 minutes to die but it was probably because he got stuck somewhere. Here's my 'Eye of the Tiger' victory shot of Basso and Jenivere making their mad sprint to freedom:

Fly you fools!

So, all you really have to do to complete the main objective of this mission is use up one water arrow and KO one guard. Very simple

But 'simple' isn't what you came here for though, is it? Time to ramp things up a notch...

Garrett Gets Pushy:

Did you know that Garrett can push people around? It's very slow and tedious work, but if you have the stamina for it, you can push people just about anywhere. This sort of thing is easiest when the AI is set to ignore Garrett. If you intend to try it with an enemy guard be very careful As Basso is the most oblivious character in the game (with the exception of Karras) I decided to have a little fun with him. I call this my 'future blackmail' shot:

Stupid guard won't even lie down when he's unconscious!

If ever Basso tries to get me involved in another damn fool scheme - or if I need a particularly difficult safe opened - I'll just threaten to show this picture to the city Watch. "Look officer, here's the man who broke into Lady Rumford's mansion and kidnapped that poor servant!"

But then I remembered that this mission has two AIs who are suitable for pushing around. So, with a little thought and a reload, I managed to get this pretty picture:

Two restarts later and he STILL won't lie down!

Thankfully, Jenivere will follow Basso wherever he goes, so you don't need to push her. And, once they're both inside the garden they are no longer classed as having escaped. The objective "Help Basso and Jenivere get out of the mansion together." will become unmarked and you're free to KO all the guards and create your own, very special, Kodak Moment

Climbing opportunities:
With 46 crates, there's nowhere in this mission you can't go! Five crates on the ground and a four more tossed onto the roof make for a leisurely climb to the top of the mansion.

Up we go!

You get a lovely view of the garden area from up here. Getting onto the roof of one of the wings of the house is even easier as they're not as high.

I see dead people

If you look carefully around on the centre roof, you can find the miminalist chimney that leads all the way down to the kitchen in the basement.

What's cooking?

If you jump down there you'll end up behind the fireplace in the main hall on the ground floor. There's a grill that blocks you from falling all the way down to the kitchen There's not much of a view and you'll be well and truly stuck, but if you feel like approaching things from the other end, you can climb up the chimney in the kitchen with the help of a few crates. If you make it all the way up, you can even see (barely) into the main hall.

Ho, ho ho - it's Garrett Claus!

Not really that much of a view is it? Don't worry, there're still more places we can explore. Using most of the crates will let you get a look at the chandelier in the main hall from above.

Just doing a spot of dusting.

Don't try to jump onto it though - it isn't solid and you'll just plunge all the way to the ground and an untimely death. The large hedges at the front of the mansion make for an easy challenge. The mission designers were even kind enough to provide a couple of large crates (indicated by the arrow) on the other side to make it easy to get back safely.

Climbing at the edge of the world causes brain-melt!

You can walk right along the hedges and over the gateway to the other side - but be careful about looking at the underneath of the new sky texture, it'll turn your brain to sludge.

Unusual Gameplay:

Ever wanted to get an annoying guard out of your hair, but didn't want to, or couldn't, blackjack him? Ever wanted to torment one from a place of safety and laugh as his threats and pleadings grew ever more desperate? Well, it's very easy to do! Just put a few barrels or stack a few crates in front of them, and they'll be unable to get to you.

Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Unlike Garrett, the guards lack the leg muscles to push crates and barrels out of the way, or the brains to hit them with their swords until they break- so that guy will be stuck there forever This technique is also useful in missions with limited equipment or with a limit or your *AHEM* 'interaction' with guards. You can block off a patrol route with a barrel and then roam safely with no fear of compromising your mission. If you like a challenge, why not enter the mansion through the front door? You may have noticed an archer who patrols the front garden, he is (literally) the key. But if you look for him at the start of the mission, he's nowhere to be found. To get him to appear, you need to enter the mansion via the side door and listen to the Garrett Quip. Run back to the garden and he'll be ready for your attentions. Wait until he gets close and bang on the gate to make a noise:

Ding dong! Avon calling!

He'll see you and chase you. Run into the pitch black area near the building where Basso is hiding and the guard should lose you. Now just sneak up and blackjack him. Your reward is three arrows and a key to the front gates and the doors to the main hall.

The next mission is Shipping...and Receiving. It's not the end of the world, Garrett just has to pay the rent and the local shipyards look like a good candidate for picking up some easy loot. This section details all the bits I missed in the mission and the people who pointed them out. If you can think of anything not mentioned here or in the previous pages, please email me.

Addendum:
(by Graywolf) Question: how long did it take to push Basso out to the garden? A: Pushing Basso from the gatehouse to the garden - about an hour. From the side door of the mansion to the garden - nearly two hours. As I said - it's very slow work. Pushing the AI around: (by tacky) Actually I believe this is called "Nudging" or "Snudging" which was discovered by Sneak when he attempted to Ghost T2's "Life of the Party" and found that he could slowly push idle AI away from a certain area.

Shipping and Receiving

Your aim in this mission is to pay the rent. Not exactly glamorous, but the game designers are still just warming you up. This mission is a lot larger than the first one and we get a special bonus - playing about on a ship. Yo, ho, ho. Now, this is what you can collect during the mission: 1 Cucumber 1 Silver Gear* 1 Deck of Cards 1 Horn 1 Decorative plate 1 Davidson's key 1 Building B keys 1 Yellow key 1 Ancient hammer 1 Red & Gold hammer 1 Stone hammer 1 Scroll 1 Parchment 2 Building A keys 3 scouting orbs 3 Metal goblets 3 Slow Fall potions 3 Invisibility potions 3 Anchors 3 Large Hammers 4 Healing potions 6 Rotten wooden crates 7 Apples

8 Green bottles 8 Black bottles 8 Flares 52 Crates * The silver gear is used to get into the musician, Blackheart's, studio. As that area nets you a Horn (of Quintus!), a flute and a music recording, it's worth using the gear - even though you can't get it back. As you can only have so many objects in the one place before the Dark Engine has a fit, I've decided that I will split up the piles into Crates and Everything Else.

I had to paste in the image of the silver gear, as once you use it you can't get it back

Enough crates to block off a highway!

Of course, you can pick up other things in this mission aside from those I listed above. What are they? Why, all the AIs. There are: 10 Yellow & purple sword guards 9 Purple archers 5 Red archers 3 Smugglers 2 Purple sword guards 2 Male nobles* 2 Male servants 1 Female servant 1 Hammerite* 1 Rotting corpse. * The Hammerite and one of the nobles have a conversation outside of Kilgor Weapon Smithing and then go inside. If you don't collect them before they go in, they will eventually disappear! I decided to stack all the bodies in the storeroom of the troubled Gilver Exporting Company. That way everyone should be far too busy with all the bodies to ever notice the changed shipping label Now this may just be me, but has anyone else ever suspected that the rotting corpse you find on the smugglers' ship is, in fact, none other than (un)Lucky Selentura?

For some reason all those purple & yellow guards lined up like that remind me of the 'Knights of the Round Table' song from the Holy Grail

Now that we have the formalities out of the way, let's get down to business.

General Gameplay:
The most basic tip for playing this mission is that if you see a crate or stack of crates climb them and look on top of them. You'll never know what you might find.

Thar be booty in them thar crates!

This is also the first mission where you get to play with some of the newer additions to your inventory - the slowfall and invisibility potions and the scouting orb. The first thing most people do when they get the orb is to take a gander at what Garrett looks like. I'm certainly no different.

Peek-a-boo!

Anchors, like the various hammers in this mission, make great door openers. Two hits should open just about any non-metal door. You can destroy barrels with 5 overhead swings of your sword or 13 normal swings. Great if you want to clear out an area without wanting to push around a bunch of barrels. Save yourself some effort when you want to grab the recipe for Steak. Don't enter the giant fridge to get the key for the safe - it's a pain. Just climb on top of it from the outside and pick the key up off the roof.

Strange things are afoot:

Of course, the universe of Thief isn't the same as ours and we shouldn't be surprised when we see some unusual things in it. For instance, Kilgore weapon smiths - my, what an appropriate name - have a desk on their top floor. Look closely and see if you can spot the problem.

You could lose a whole suit of armour behind this desk and the shelves are floating in midair.

In Building B you can visit the Mechanists and catch a glimpse of what they've been working on over the last year.

As you can see from the relative size of the crate, that's a bloody big head. Was Karras' orignal plan to build Mechazilla?

Things are just as strange when we venture from land and onto the briny deep. Look at the two sets of screenshots below and see if you can spot the differences.

One of these things is not like the other...

Two of these things, not quite the same.

When too many objects are onscreen at one time, the Dark Engine turns some of them invisible. Sometimes, even the water will become invisible and you appear to be flying when you are, in fact, swimming.

Pieces of Eight:
Well, now that we've made our way over to this jolly, rogering ship. Let's look around and see what we can do. These smugglers keep a well stocked ship; there're apples and spices, bottles and explosives, spiders and secrets and a lovely, rotting corpse to top off the ensemble. Q: The ship's masts look mighty high - I wonder how many crates it would take to climb to the top of them? A: One crate

Well, _that_ was surprisingly easy.

How is this possible? Some of the large objects in Thief II aren't actually solid. So, despite the fact that the masts look like they go high up into the air, in truth they're only the equivalent of 4 crates high. But there's no need to feel cheated by this little deception. You can have quite a bit of amusement if your mind is sufficiently twisted.

How high up can _you_ get the unconscious guard?

I think it's time...it's time to climb:

Although this mission only comprises two building, a boundary wall and a ship, the sheer size and scope of the views you get is very rewarding. There are two basic places to make it onto the roof of the buildings. The first is on top of Building B.

Up we go!

Once you make your first pile on the balcony of Building B, you'll need a few more crates to get on top of the roof of the office/meeting area (where you meet your first Watchful Eye). Of course, you can avoid all this by taking the much easier route onto the roof over at Building A. You can already explore a very limited section of the roof of 'A' by simply climbing a ladder - as long as you play by the rules that is.

Up the ladder and in the window.

You cannot jump from the ladder to the edge of the building as there are invisible barriers blocking you on either side and the skylights are too steep and slippery to walk on So, we need to look for another way. The end of this section of roof is bordered by a metal grill. Fortunately it only takes four crates to climb over. You can grab the crates once you're over the grill. This makes it very easy to return when you're done exploring.

Retrieving the Crates

Once you're up on the roof you get some great views - as always.

View from the roof of 'B'

You can also see the Amazing Disappearing Building!

Something's missing, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

This sort of effect is caused when you look 'through' the sky texture onto an area with objects, buildings, etc. Normally, it can only be seen when you're somewhere the designers never expected youd be able to get to - in this case, the wall that surrounds most of the mission. It's an easy jump to make from the roof and you can see extraordinary distances from that vantage. Once you're up on the roof, you will eventually turn your mind to how you can get down. Well, the easiest way is to just jump onto Building 'A's garbage chute.

Jump onto the garbage chute for a quick, painless trip to the ground

The walls lead right up to the edge of the water and even though the big green rocks looks nice and solid - they're not. Just like the ship's masts, you'll pass right through them. And from that height you'll die.

Not your ordinary views of the ship

If you want, you can try to jump from the wall to the water, but it's very unlikely you'll make it. More likely, you'll smack into the ground and become Garrett pizza. But you get several slowfall potions in this mission, so why not make use of them? The view from behind the imaginary rocks is worth the effort. You get to see the ship in drydock.

I didn't know Jabba's Sail Barge was in this mission.

Having fun with the AI:

Broadhead arrows will pass harmlessly through most unconscious or dead AIs. This allows you to set up twisted images like this one.

That's gotta hurt!

Remember how we got to the roof over at Building A? Well even though you can't walk on the window textures, it doesn't stop the AI from doing so. You may be on the roof, but any AI patrolling inside the building beneath your feet can hear you running around and will start to search for you. Sometimes they'll find you...

Hey...what the...! That guard's cheating!

If you follow the arrow you just barely make out my half-completed stack of bodies. And just to satisfy my own curiosity, I decided to see if I could get the Hammerite to join me

I don't think he's here to fix the shingles

You do need to be careful when you do this though. Trying to outrun an AI in the confined spaces on the edge of the roof isn't easy - unless you don't mind falling to your death, that is Here's a very useful trick that's been around since The Dark Project was first released. If you jump and land on an AI you won't take any damage from the fall. The easiest way is to find someone who's polite enough to stand still, and use them for a landing pad.

All the people look like ants from up here.

I chose the archer in front of the art dealer at Building A (he's pointed out by the arrow as you can barely see him from the roof). He's standing still and is nice and close to the wall. Just line yourself up and run off the roof and you should land right on top of him.

As long as you don't run right over the top of him, you should land behind him without even making a noise. This is a very useful technique and I'll be exploring it later it greater detail - there are some areas you can _only_ access by using it.

The next mission is Framed. Garrett is asked, for a hefty fee of course, to plant evidence on a cop who has stuck his nose somewhere he shouldn't. Problem is, the evidence must be planted in the middle of a bustling police station.

Addendum:
(stoxy) the corpse in the ship: most people think it's Lucky Selentura (an extra clue is that the card game is left unfinished); but someone else was sure the corpse was deliberately put in and unexplained, to be referred to in Thief 2 Gold. (stoxy) this level has sloped glass in it. Back before I patched the game, it was possible for moss patches to slide through the glass. I've not checked since patching... but maybe there's more bugs involving these glass panes (Burt) I would've liked to see some screens where you make the guards and the spiders fight each other (Illuminatus) I once managed to reach the top-most ledge of Building A by using that ladder you mentioned. It's not easy to jump over the invisible wall, but it's not impossible either. (Azal) - You can also distract the ship guard by letting the little spiders on the ship loose. They normally won't hurt each other, but it's very amusing to watch the smuggler get red in the face trying to smack them. They can also lead him on a merry chase into the warehouse - perfect it you don't want to be seen (Uncia) On, that invisible barrier on roof A? It's apparently made of invisible wood. Just hit it a few times and it falls apart into... Nothing

Before we start this instalment, we need to list a few definitions:

Strafe jumping: Running while holding down one of the strafe keys will make you
run at an angle - but it also makes you run a lot faster. Doing this and jumping makes you jump a good distance further. Very useful for bridging gaps you're not supposed too. Combined with a speed potion, it may not let you leap tall buildings in a single bound, but is good enough to qualify you for an Olympic event.

Orb Mantling: Requires more than one scouting orb in the inventory. Step up to a
wall (for example) that is slightly too high to mantle over without assistance and select a scouting orb. As you can see from the screenshot below, this wall is a foot or so higher than a normal-sized doorway. Drop the orb straight down - don't throw it! - and you'll see that it stops at chest height. Get out of orb-view and jump twice (three or more jumps will often cause the orb to drop to the ground) or until you hear the gasping noise indicating that you are trying to mantle. From the image below you can see that Garrett is now up in the air with the orb wedged firmly between his thighs (either that or he's developed a very nasty case of elephantitis of the testicles). You normally won't be able to mantle straight onto the wall as the orb will be stopping you - though it can happen that you'll make it. Now, look straight down again and simultaneously pick up the orb and jump/mantle. You should not only be on top of the wall, you should have picked up the orb. The neat thing about this method is that you make it up there and without having lost anything from your inventory. FYI - this is the only way I'm aware of to enter Shoalsgate without having to go through the sewers at the start of the mission (and without taking damage). Also, it's not just scouting orbs that you can do this with - any object you can pick up that exhibits similar effects is just as good. Orb mantling is equivalent to just over 1 crate in height

Orb Mantling in action

Ghost objects/building: Objects, buildings or otherwise in the game that, despite

looking real enough, are actually the Thief equivalent of holograms. The masts on the smuggler's ship in Shipping, are a good example. So are most of the buildings you find outside the walls of a mission, or in other areas you're never supposed to go. They appear solid, but you can walk right through them. We now return you to your regular programming...

Framed
In this mission you have to frame a high-ranking police officer by planting evidence against him. The catch being that you need to infiltrate all areas of an active police station without the alarm being sounded; and you're not allowed to kill or KO anyone. This is the first mission where the objectives make you keep a low profile, a quasitraining mission for the upcoming Casing the Joint. And here're the various things you can collect on your wanderings: 6 5-bottle sets 7 green bottles 19 black bottles 4 scouting orbs (3 bought from loadout screen) 1 Slowfall potion (bought from loadout screen) 1 carrot 3 bread 5 flare 12 metal goblets

1 Strongbox 1 Letter from Lt Hagan 1 Scroll* 2 Letters from Truart* 1 Tip (bought from loadout screen) 2 scroll 1 Blue vase 2 Bunsen burners 1 Lt Hagan's handkerchief 4 Healing potions (2 bought from loadout screen) 3 Yellow keys 1 Secure Records/Vault key 22 crates * These are the screwed-up pieces of paper. As before, the crates are shown separate from the rest of the objects to prevent the Dark Engine from becoming overloaded and making them turn invisible.

Steal everything and then place it in the secure vault. Oh, the irony

Not too many crates. But more than enough to climb anywhere in this mission

Despite being forbidden to knockout or kill anyone, it is still possible to get rid of all the guards and civilians in the mission and line their bodies up. NB: The guard and civilians in the prison area cannot be collected as the doors they're behind cannot be opened. There is also an immortal guard patrolling near the officers' lounge who cannot be harmed in any way - so I just got him to accompany me for a picture. But you can collect: 1 Noble lady 1 Mechanist priest 6 Police archers 3 Un-KOable police swordsmen 10 Police swordsmen

Yet another blackmail shot, methinks

And now on to the specifics of what you can do, see and enjoy...

General Gameplay:
The mission objectives state that if anyone, be it guard or Watchful Eye (camera), sets off the alarm, then you fail the mission. This isn't exactly true. You can set off the cameras outside both entrances without any worry. But you need to ensure that no guards set off the alarms and the easiest way to do that is to switch them off. You can also block off the alarm buttons with a small stack of crates piled in front of it. However, with a single switch controlling every alarm button, it's really not worth the bother. Though it is useful if you want to get a guard out of the way. If a guard is somehow blocked from reaching their destination (by a stack of crates, barrels or just by getting stuck against a wall) they will continue trying to reach their destination to the exclusion of everything else - sometimes forever. Judiciously switching the alarm on and off can allow for some truly advanced gameplay as the section Playing with Fire demonstrates.

Strange Things are Afoot:

This mission contains the first Easter Egg in the game - and right at the very start of the mission too. An Easter Egg is something special that LGS threw in to the game as a treat for the player. If you look over the wall to your left when you start the mission you can see two carefree young zombies dancing together. You can view them easily by throwing one of your scouting orbs over the wall, but it's also very easy to get over the wall and meet them in person.

It's boogie time

You can see from the shot on the right what happens when you look at the edge of the mission - things get very Strange. There is a disadvantage to climbing around all the nooks and crannies of the mission, the game can become unstable and cause bizarre things to happen. In this case, the water turned invisible and remained so for the rest of the mission. It was still there and you could swim through it; you just couldn't see it.

The water in these sewers is crystal clear!

One of the more common Strange things you may encounter in the game that happens all on its own is that doors can fly away into space or simply vanish.

Is it just me or does this corridor feel more draughty than usual?

There are several places where this can happen and once the doors have gone, there's no getting them back. Fortunately, it is very rare for a door you will probably need to close at some point to do this. It only ever seems to happen to out of the way doors.

Having fun with the AI:

If you make your way down to the cells under Shoalsgate you get to see the ghost of a Hammer Haunt. Ponder for a moment how something which is already dead can die again and become a ghost... Like other ghosts in Thief II, you can see and walk right through him. Unlike other ghosts, he's no danger to you.

The ghost of a ghost?

You get to meet an old friend in Framed. Remember how you rescued Jenivere from Lady Rumford in the very first mission? Look into the interrogation rooms and you'll see her Ladyship making a report to the police.

I assure you ma'am, I _am_ a police officer!

In the original and Gold version of Thief you could climb safely out of the reach of anything without a ranged attack by simply jumping onto a chair. This has been somewhat corrected in the sequel and you'll often see guards in positions like the ones below.

Eek! A mouse!

We are also introduced to a new sort of guard in this mission. They wear a helmet that extends over the back of the neck and cannot be knocked out. If you hit them with the blackjack, you'll hear a resounding metal clang, but rather than falling down you'll just make them very angry.

Big helmet = Un-KOable

One of the un-KOable guards in this mission is, as I described above, totally unkillable. He patrols on the first floor (second floor if you're American) near the officers' dining area. He doesn't even drown if you get him to fall into one of the moats!

As the mission doesn't let you blackjack or kill anyone (more on this later) you may find your wanderings through Shoalsgate hindered by patrolling guards. The easiest solution to this is to get them out of the way where they can't cause any trouble.

The portcullis at the front gate is excellent for this as the guards seem unable to open it on their own, while the player can even flip the switch from outside.

Here're half a dozen guards I won't have to worry about any more

You can also steal the keys to the vault and trap unwary guards in there. Without their keys they can no longer get out.

Trapped!

But if you do ever find yourself with a mad horde of police chasing after you, there're always the secret passages in the basement to escape to. The AI in Thief doesn't like to walk on objects, eg crates, drawbridges, doors, pressure pads in the floor. You can take advantage of this and use these objects, or areas accessed via these objects, as safe havens.

Three guards but you're in no danger

The secret doorway in the above image lowers itself into the ground when triggered. As the AI won't run over the door - even to get to you - you can wander the passages without worrying about pursuit.

Playing with Fire:

In the original and Gold versions of Thief, the AI wasn't that smart. Archers had no hesitation in shooting at you - even if there was one of their friends in the way. A quick thief could even run behind their backs while they were drawing their bow and the archers would shoot themselves! In Thief II, however, things have changed somewhat. If an archer has his/her shot blocked by someone they will not fire, but will instead step sideways to get a clear shot. Thankfully, the turrets have a more 'old fashioned' point of view. They don't care who's in their way - be it a guard, servant, robot, camera, barrel, or even another turret. In many instances they can be made to shoot at walls next to them. If the turret fires cannonballs, it will most likely bounce back and destroy them. Sadly, this option isn't available in this mission, but you can get some first-hand experience with the cannon turrets at the south entrance.

Turrets = not too bright

If you set off the camera and then run into the tavern and stand in front of the window, the turrets will happily shoot at you despite the heavy metal grill blocking their shots. Those of you who read the Guide for Running Interference will remember that it is possible to push the AI around if you have the patience. What you may not know is that you can also push turrets around - and it's a good deal faster, around half normal walking speed. The cannon turrets by the South entrance where you start the mission are stuck firmly in place, but the arrow turrets at the West entrance can both be pushed around with ease. The way to tell if a turret can be pushed is to look at its feet. If you can see the feet, or the turret is floating slightly above the ground, then it will be stuck firmly in place. If the feet are sunken slightly into the ground, then you should be able to shove the turret around. With the alarm system disabled, you can push the turrets around with no danger to yourself. I hope I don't have to tell you what happens if you try to push a 'live' turret about? I decided to take the arrow turrets for a stroll around Shoalsgate. They don't get around much, so the fresh air should do them good. Besides, I wanted show off my shiny new toys to some of my police friends. Getting them from the West entrance, through the corridor to the South entrance meant having to get past the two guards who patrol the corridor.

Fortunately, you can block guards with a stack of crates to get them out of your way. And that's just what I did. I made two stacks in the little passage where the guards pass in front of the training room and kept another stack handy. When the guards passed the stacks, I quickly stacked the reserve crates up and blocked the guards in. There is a room next to this passage which the guards could, in theory, use to escape, but as the AI doesn't understand that they've been suckered, it's not really a problem. But, if you're feeling paranoid, you can push one of the barrels in the room so that it blocks the doorway.

How to get your new toys past the patrolling guards.

You can push the turrets as far as your imagination will take you. I decided to get a group photo by the South entrance.

Smile for the camera

Of course, this left a camera without any turrets to talk to...

Go on, sound the alarm! See if I care! MwaHaHaHaHaHaHa!

Now you may be wondering how to collect all the AIs in the mission if you're not allowed to lay a finger on anyone. In order to get them all without raising a sweat you need to take advantage of four things: 1) any damage/deaths that aren't caused by the player don't count; 2) the turrets don't mind shooting through someone to get to you; 3) you can block the AI with just two crates when they're stacked in a doorway; 4) the police are very tough opponents. They'll go into search mode more easily then normal guards and stay in search mode for longer. Set up an arrow turret just outside the door to the front office. Then stack two crates next to the doorway and venture off to find yourself some baddies.

The killing zone

Get them to follow you to the entrance of the control room, but make sure you're far enough ahead of them to stack the crates in the doorway and then take a few steps back. You will now have an angry cop wedged in the doorway with an inactive arrow turret pointing at his back. All you need now is the coup de grace. Leave the guard (don't worry he'll still be there when you get back - the police are very tenacious) and turn the alarm system back on. Now run out to the camera which controls the turret and get its attention - I hope you've moved the other arrow turret somewhere safe! I recommend pushing it into the moat Now run back to the very upset guard who should still be wedged in the doorway - and the now active turret directly behind him. Get close to the doorway and let the turret see you. Two or three arrows later you should have one dead bowlhead. Make sure you step out of the turret's line of fire when the AI dies or the turret will start shooting the crates, or worse, you. If it destroys the crates you can run and get another one without too much hassle. Now, from your position of safety out of the turret's vision, wait patiently until the camera by the entrance leaves alarm mode and the turret will turn off. It may sometimes take two runs out to the camera to ensure your victim gets enough damage to die, but that's a small price to pay.

Going in via the front doors:

If you've only playing the mission in a normal manner, then you've probably only made your way inside Shoalsgate through the sewers. But Shoalsgate has two main entrances; one in the South near your starting position and one in the West. The advantage of entering the mansion via the doorways is that you don't have to swim through excrement to get to them.

Jim, your mission, should you choose to accept it...

Directly ahead of your starting position is a small tavern with a big, metal waste container next to it. You need to get onto the tavern's roof. It's looks impossible, but it's actually a ghost roof and you can climb right through it.

Follow the arrows onto the roof

Mantle onto the large metal bin and then onto the roof of the tavern. Facing away from Shoalsgate you now have two options.

Zombie disco or Ghost town - you decide

If you choose to make the easy jump to the wall on your left you can visit the dancing zombies and then climb around behind your starting position. The spikes on top of the wall are ghost objects so you don't have to worry about them. But we'll be heading to our right at the moment. It's a large jump and a bit tricky so you'll need to strafe-jump to make it over the wall. Once over, you'll be able to explore Ghost Town.

Welcome to Ghost Town. Enjoy your stay

Every object here is a ghost. You can walk right through the buildings, trees and streetlights and even see a few floating off the ground. Ever wonder what a tree looks like from directly underneath? Now's your chance to find out. Keep walking and you'll eventually find your way blocked by a wall - you can see it behind the floating trees in the above image. You can easily orb-mantle on top of it. From there you can mantle onto the small building right on the edge of the mission - it has a ghost roof too, so there's no problem there.

Now jump over to the wall on the other side and run behind the big metal castle. You now have two choices on where you can go. Keep heading North through Ghost Town and you'll eventually come to a wall on the very edge of the mission's boundary. Orb-mantle onto it and you can follow it onto the wall that surrounds Shoalsgate. You can also mantle onto the wall on the other side of the metal castle and thence onto the building joined on to it (shown in the image below).

Getting ready to make a grand entrance

From the roof of this building you can jump onto the metal wall around the police station. You are now free to walk along the wall and make you way into Shoalsgate by whichever of the entrances takes your fancy.

A Climbing We Will Go:

I'll put this bluntly, there's not a single roof in this mission that you cannot climb on top of - and without very much effort too. As long as it isn't a ghost building, a maximum of six crates will get you anywhere - more often you won't need any at all. At the start of the mission you have a metal utility building next to you which contains the sewer access. On top of this building are two chimneys.

From reading the Front Doors section for this mission, you should now know how to reach the dancing zombies. Follow the wall along to the East and mantle onto the building behind them. From here you can explore a smaller version of Ghost Town. But, if you stay on the roofs, you can jump down onto the wall with the spikes directly behind your starting position and then mantle onto the top of the metal utility building. Now, you'll need three crates (or two crates and a scouting orb) to climb onto the shorter chimney. From there you can jump and mantle onto the taller chimney and enjoy the view from the highest spot in the mission.

Climbing spots at the start of the mission

The building at the West end of the wall near the tavern is an easy climb too. Make a stack four crates high and up you go. The metal castle in front of the West entrance to Shoalsgate requires to the most effort (such as it is) with a stack six crates high needed to make your way onto its roof.

Storm the metal castle

Not to be outdone, the police have given us a climbing option inside Shoalsgate too. Go to the viewing platform outside the officers' lounge and walk up to the telescope. Mantle onto it and carefully step onto the railing. Now walk to the nearest wall and climb up.

Follow the arrows

There are a couple of other buildings you can climb, but the ones listed above are the most notable. As I said at the start of this section - there's not a single roof in this mission that you cannot climb on top of, and without very much effort too. Framed is still a rather small mission, all the activities centre around one building. This trend is set to change, however, with the next mission: Ambush!

After this excursion into the police station, Garrett comes face to face with some very angry cops out for his head in the next mission, Ambush! Garrett must escape the trap he walked into and make his way safely home and then out of that section of the city, all the while avoiding the many police who want him dead.

Addendum:
(Burt) How long did all this take??

(Luthien) Hey, if they'd finally write a multiplayer mode we could have a turret race around shoalsgate Eek! A mouse! Did anybody ever watch how all these people got on the tables? I'd really like to see a video of that scene (Illuminatus) I discovered the turret pushing trick a while back, but I never considered using it against the AI. Very funny stuff! Keep it up!!!! Might be a little bit late to say this, but I recently tried stacking up all the crates in Bafford's Manor (I arranged them around the indoor pool), and I can truly say that Azal makes this look very easy. Stacking the crates isn't that tough, the real challenge is moving them all around the level. Carrying 40 crates just up the stairs from the basement to the first floor took me about 20 minutes. Whew! (Uncia) How did you destroy the two cannon turrets? Was the splash damage from hitting the arrow ones so strong or did it require more fiddling? (Luthien) It's much faster to make a big heap and then thro them (crates) one by one into the target direction. (Stan_The_Thief) And about that unkillable dude...I also found him once too. I think it's one of the things DromEd does. It happened in my mission a couple of times. An AI or object gets a property Damage Model -> Death Stage: 12 (without user's intent), and then you can't harm the AI or object in no way. (telliamed) How could you do all that and not feature... the guard with no eyes.

(Azal) Burt: I couldn't really say how long it took me. I usually go through a mission several times in order to get everything done; once 'normally' to get all the loot, and however many times it takes to do everything else. For instance, I may make a pile of twenty crates at position X and save the game there. Later I may want to take ten of those crates over to position Y and do stuff with them. Now if I find a spot at position Z that's on the other side of the mission from Y - rather than lugging all those crates the extra distance, I'll reload from the original position X. And a direct example - when I was using the turret to kill off all the AIs, it would occasionally destroy a crate if I didn't get out of the way fast enough. So the screenshot with all the crates together had to come from a separate game. Luthien: The guards climbed up there while looking for me. One second they're walking around on the floor, then they come to a table and up they go. Amusingly, half the time they get stuck up there Uncia: I didn't destroy the turrets. I just pushed them out of the way. Sadly, arrows (even the arrows from a turret) don't have sufficient power to destroy a turret - or a camera. You can, however, push the arrow turrets in front of the cannon turrets and destroy them that way. Illuminatus: Luthien's got it there. Make a pile of stuff and then just throw them all in front of you. It saves a heap of time and effort. You do need to be careful with the crates though or else they can break. Telliamed: Yes I noticed that the helmets of the un-KOable guards don't seem to come right down to their heads. The 'see-through' bit is actually just above their eyes, which means that they have no forehead! (Stan_The_Thief) Yes, I've seen cannonballs remaining after being fired out, too. Must be the same "Death Stage: 12" thing. (paulcoz)"There is also an immortal guard patrolling near the officers' lounge who cannot be harmed in any way - so I just got him to accompany me for a picture." Just talked him into posing for a snapshot with his unconscious friends did you? He must be a nice guy. (Azal) Once you lock a guard out of Shoalsgate using the portcullis, they'll search around for a while. Eventually they'll want to go back to their patrol route, but they cannot. This causes them to sort of freeze up. They'll stand there and make comments and 'I'm bored' movements, just like a stationary guard, but will totally ignore you. A very useful trait when you're piling the bodies of their comrades around them (Golden Skull) Luthien's Silent Project? read: Golden Skull's Silent Project (Baccus) Hmm..just a thought: can you knock out the un-KOable guards with gas arrows?

A: YES (Crowley) A: No. People with gas masks or diving helmets and air mages are immune to gas arrows. You can only kill that particular mechanist. (Our Newest Acolyte) There seem to be a few of these indestructible/semiindestructible AIs around the place. In the TDP version of Cragscleft, one stationary Hammer was immune to attack - my blackjack & sword just passed straight through him (without his noticing). And one of the small bots in LotP seems to be immune to water arrows - I shot 5 into his boiler without effect (fortunately he got stuck on the library stairs and I was able to blackjack him to "death").

Before we start this instalment, we need to list another definition:

Crate Equivalents: The humble crate is the grist of the climber's mill. It is the most
versatile and often the most easily obtained of all the objects you can use to make stacks with. As such, all stacks are defined in this series using standard crate heights. A stack of two crates and three potions or two crates and one scouting orb is equivalent to three crates. Thus all stacks, when listed here, will be referred to solely by their crate equivalents. And now, on with the show...

Ambush!

This mission starts with Garrett having been ambushed by a group of police in the Crippled Burrick pub. The player needs to return home and thence to Shalebridge. There is no loadout screen, but you start with more than enough equipment to make this mission a walk in the park or, as the case may be, a walk in the city. This is the first 'city' mission. You get to explore the highways and byways of Garrett's city and home. You will be seeing this mission later in the game so it's a wise move to take note of your surroundings while you're not rushed. For a city, there's not that much you get to play with in this mission. Here's the list: 1 silver key 1 green bottle 1 black bottle 1 wooden goblet 1 slowfall potion 1 scroll 1 Shalebridge key 2 wooden bowls 2 carrots 2 speed potions 3 decorative plates 3 metal goblets 4 scouting orbs 4 healing potions 4 cucumbers 4 metal plates 5 cheese 5 crates 6 apples 6 bread I chose a very special location for this screenshot, but more on that later.

Behold! The loot from an entire city.

And we cannot forget all the little people who made this mission possible: 1 Sergeant 2 Male Nobles 4 Female servants 4 Un-KOable guards 8 archers 37 police swordspeople And what better place to put all these bodies than in a cemetery?

Haaaaaaaaands across America!

With the formalities out of the way, let's us now turn our attention to the mission itself and what we can do there.

General Gameplay:
Whenever you meet an un-KOable guard and want to get rid of him, you have several options. Gas him with a mine or arrow, get him killed by friendly-fire, or drown him. It is this last method that we'll examine here. The AI in Thief has no hesitation in cheating and you can see this most clearly whenever an AI is near the edge of something - be it a wall or building. Often, in their attempt to reach you, they will actually walk out onto thin air yet remain standing as if supported by an invisible plank. This can be exploited by either of two methods. 1) Get the AI to run out so far in his attempts to reach you that he does fall; 2) quickly save the game while he is standing on nothing and then reload. When the mission loads, the AI will lose its magic levitating ability and fall. If the AI is above water when this happens, he'll fall in. As the AI cannot swim, it won't take long for him to drown. This removes annoying guards from your hair and neatly gets around any injunctions against killing or knock outs. Later in the game you will encounter AIs that cannot be knocked out and cannot drown, but we'll examine those when we come to them.

Strange things are afoot:

This mission has the second Easter Egg of the game, but one that might not be easily noticed by younger players, or those unfamiliar with classic comedy movies from the '60s. If you follow the canal North along the Southern section of Helena Way, you'll notice this series of torches shaped like a big W:

A big W Easter egg

In the 1963 movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) buried a large amount of money beneath a "Big W" and the chase for the hidden fortune formed the basis of the movie. If you look beneath this big 'W' you might find something similar. This mission also treats us to a conversation between the beloved Benny and a young lady who offers to "keep him warm". Sadly, Benny doesn't twig to her none-too-subtle hints and is doomed to be knocked unconscious and dragged to the local cemetery with all his friends - well, that's how it happened in my version. But there's something unusual about this lady. It may just be a programming error or a subtle joke by the mission designers but have a look at what happens when you pick her up (literally that is - not figuratively!)

Something's not right here.

When you carry the women her dress appears bright red. Perhaps an allusion to the fact that she's a scarlet woman? The North Eastern section of this map is closed off by large arches, each blocked by a portcullis. In this restricted area is the graveyard, where much that is unusual may be

found. Instructions on how to get to the graveyard will be dealt with later in this instalment of the Guide. Once in the graveyard area you will notice that this section of the map looks rather unfinished. There are buildings and crypts, but they're empty of all furnishings and most are unlit. One large building near the cemetery has a staircase that leads upstairs where you get a good example of what I mean by 'unfinished'.

3 b/room apt, renovator's delight. Next to dead centre of city.

[One of the problems inherent with creating a guide like this is that many of the areas you explore, which are outside the boundaries the designers wanted you to go, don't have any lighting at all. Taking a screen capture in a pitch-black environment leads to the washed-out and grainy kinds of images seen above. Sadly, there's nothing that can be done about it] Once you've explored the barren house and rooms, it's time to move on to the graveyard itself. Most of the tombs are without doors (or occupants) and the gates that later separate each section of the graveyard are also missing. One thing which is there however, is the portal you will need to use in Trace the Courier. Right now though, it isn't switched on but it does have it's funky mood lighting activated.

Oooooh, spooky.

This tomb is also the only one that currently has doors - but that can soon be rectified. There is a Dark Engine bug that's been around since day one that occasionally makes doors fly away. The doors of this tomb are famously prone to this and as they are set at an angle, the effect looks quite spectacular as they zoom off into space.

Up, up and way!

Fun with the AI:

Perhaps the only thing I enjoy more than exploring new areas is tormenting the poor fools who dare to stand against me in my rampages. With that in mind, let's see what we can do.

The AI in Thief II are slightly different from those in the first game of the series. Some have 'volume' when knocked unconscious. In the Dark Project, if you tried to stack unconscious or dead AIs, they would all fall through one another onto the ground. But with a little perseverance you can now achieve effects like this:

Pile O' Bodies

Interestingly, if you make a stack of AIs so that part of one of them touches an object and then remove the pile beneath that AI, he'll stay suspended in the air. Stacking bodies isn't easy though. They're very slippery and tend to slide off each other and onto the ground at the slightest bump. Also, reloading a mission where bodies were stacked can make all your hard work disappear as they collapse into one another as their 'volume' mysteriously vanishes. The ability of the AI to just hang in the air when partially wedged into an object can be used to great advantage.

Damned gatecrashers

Carrying an AI over the top of a wall is very difficult, but when you pile them against a portcullis, you can climb over and still grab them from the other side. The above-right pile of bodies contained every AI in the mission.

Climb Time:
With an outdoors mission like this, that has so many roofs and opportunities, there's an embarrassment of riches to be had by even the moderately-skilled climber. Indeed, some of the places you can visit were most likely deliberately designed that way. We'll start with the most obvious and deliberate areas and work on to the more difficult ones. When you finally arrive at Garrett's home, there is a squad of police waiting for him. This means you might want to take another way in. There's a wooden construction out the back that's just right for a rope arrow, or you can make your way into the building opposite Garrett's and take a look out the window.

Jumping through windows

The above image on the left is looking into Garrett's bedroom and one on the right is looking out. You can very easily jump from one window to another without alerting the police below and then run away, chortling merrily with your hands full of equipment. It's no use listing all these climbing locations if people can't find them or understand where I mean, so I'm including this map of the mission with each of the locations listed on it.

Locations of points to climb

Position #1. There are two crates in a little alley on the South section of Helena Way,
near the bridge. Just one of these crates is enough to get you on top of the area above the doorway.

Simple climbing

From there you get a view onto Sparrow St. There's no loot up there, but you can take pot shots at passing police if you're on one of the lower difficulty levels.

Position #2. The entrances to Shalebridge are blocked off until you collect the key
from the secret area in Garrett's home but can still be accessed with a few crates. You can climb over either the small gate or over the stone archway.

Shalebridge - your gateway to Wonderland

It only takes the equivalent of five crates to climb over the archway or the gate and enter this area. But as there are only five crates in the entire mission, you can just as well use a few potions or a scouting orb to make up the necessary height. As long as you don't have the Shalebridge key in your inventory, you can amuse yourself by walking around on the ground once over the wall and repeatedly setting off the 'Escape to Shalebridge' objective over and over again. If getting "Objective Complete" to appear infinite times is your cup of tea, you can do it even more simply by dropping and picking up the Shalebridge gate key. If you climb on top of the stone archway you may want to pause before you jump down to the ground. There are some excellent exploring possibilities to be had from this position.

View from above Shalebridge

You can climb onto a wide range of buildings in the area and even make your way into the wastelands outside the city. The area outside the city is completely silent as it is one of those areas the designers never expected you to reach. From here you can examine some very curious architecture and gardening strategies.

Two of the four spots in the mission with grass

[Again, this area is pitch black, so you'll just have to endure the quality of the screenshots, I'm afraid] To prove that this is indeed grass, I shot a few broadheads into it. Notice that the two grassy sections are almost hidden beneath the buildings sticking out above them. Why where they placed here? Only the Builder knows. If you have keen eyesight you may notice that between two of the stone buildings, there is a thin section of wood. If you shoot a rope arrow into it and climb up, you'll find yourself behind the tomb with the magic portal in it.

Reaching the graveyard from behind

Position #3. At the South end of Sparrow street is a blocked archway which leads off
the map. This is a five crate climb and well worth the effort as it leads to another section which is outside the city.

The Sparrow St arch

There are roofs aplenty here to climb and your imagination's the limit.

The wastelands outside the city

Position #4. The crenulated wall at the Southernmost tip of Helena Way can be
climbed with the equivalent of five creates and leads directly to the outside of the city.

Another way out of the city

If you look at the image above this one you can actually just make out this wall - it's being pointed out by the arrows.

Position #5. Along the nameless street just to the SouthWest of Garrett's home is yet
another archway blocked off by a portcullis. With a mere four crates you can make it onto this arch and explore a few more roofs.

Simple climbing

Position #6. Directly South of the marketplace is still another arch. This one leads to a
small section of map outside the city and be easily climbed with only four crates.

Once more outside the city

These were all the climbing area I could find in the mission. Most of the buildings within the city either don't have a roof at all but instead connect directly to the sky, or have a roof made from the super-slippery purple tiles. Given the sheer number of buildings, however, it is more than possible that I missed something. The best way to check that out of course, is to go looking yourself. Ambush is the first mission to truly showcase the revamped Dark Engine's abilities to create large cityscapes and does so to very good effect. The twisting streets and system of canals make for a confusing first visit - but a visually pleasing one.

Next in the series is Eavesdropping. Our first visit with the Mechanists as Garrett slowly tries to unravel the plot against his life and find some security and peace - both from the police and the Keepers.

Addendum:
(Burt) you could've mentioned the Ambush Bow Upgrade (bottom of the page) (BR796164) What's interesting about the big W except that there is a bag of coins in the canal below it? (Luthien) Talking of "bow upgrades": part of the information at the keeper's chapel is wrong: "Grab the arrow, but don't switch to another weapon - this only works so long as the arrow is armed (it disappears if you disarm the weapon or change to a different weapon) " The arrow can be armed again after a different weapon was selected. You can just not use the number keys to do it. Instead, cycle through the weapons with the "next weapon" key. (Anastazius) Regarding Ambush, I do have a very cool and intriguing easter egg which you may not know about / may have forgotten about. It the Ambush's Mysterious Monolinth - 2001 reference?

Before we start this instalment, it would help if we briefly cover advanced crate stacking: Crate Stairway: This technique was only recently discovered by Luthien and details on how to perform it can be found in the following threads: Atop the lighthouse The Floating Staircase of Crates How-To And now, on with the show...

Eavesdropping
The plot thickens as Garrett gets a night-time visit from some old friends and pays a visit of his own to the new Mechanist order to try and get a lead on who is trying to kill him. Your main goal in this mission is to listen at a door and hear a conversation between Sheriff Truart and Father Karras. This is a small mission, contrasting with the rambling expanse of cityscape of the last. It consists of only a small Mechanist cathedral that has been modified slightly from its days under the Hammers. This small mission doesn't have that much stuff available to play with (sadly, the Mechanists don't appear to have the same love of alcohol as the Hammers as there is not a single bottle of cheap wine to be found). But we do have the following: 1 Ancient hammer 1 Putty knife 1 Bank key impression 1 Holy symbol 1 Safe deposit key 1 Mechanist mace 2 Skulls 2 Scrolls 3 Papyrus 3 Speed potion (all bought at loadout screen) 3 Scouting orbs (2 from loadout screen) 5 Lab equipment 7 Rotten crates 7 Health potions (4 bought at loadout screen) 9 Gold keys 17 Flares (all bought at loadout screen) 35 Crates Due to the dearth of objects in the mission, I padded it out a bit from the loadout screen - gotta spend that money on something!

Flares are coming back in style - better stock up

Use the crates to relive your childhood and make a little fort

This mission is lightly populated, but given its small size seems a bit crowded at first glance. On second glance, however, we see: 1 Servant 1 Combat Bot 1 Worker Bot 1 Female Civilian 1 Female Pagan 1 Male Pagan 2 Male Civilians 2 Hammer Haunts 4 Archer Mechanists 9 Mace Mechanists With a chapel as its main feature, it seemed appropriate to collect all the people there.

Father Karras can send even the most faithful to sleep with his sermons

General Gameplay:
In the last instalment of the Guide, we talked about how to make the AI fall to their deaths - either from a great height or into water. But this method can also be used simply to get the AI out of the way. Getting the AI stuck somewhere removes a potential hazard and frees up your movements.

A Mechanist in a pit with the 'fruits' of her labours

Trapping them in a pit, making them fall onto an isolated ledge they can't get down from, or getting them stuck on a table are all ways you can humanely remove AIs from your way. If you head straight to the meeting area before you start collecting keys you get a Garrett Quip of "Wrong key" every time you pick up one that isn't the safety deposit key. But if you clear out the mission first you get no such message - even when you pick up the right key. After all, Garrett doesn't know he needs it yet. Fortunately Father Karras is nice enough to give the safety deposit key's location in his speech, so returning it to its original location isn't much of a problem. If you enjoy hearing the 'Objective Complete' noise over and over again you can repeatedly drop the safety deposit key. Once you have made a wax impression of the key you need to be careful about dropping it. Once you have dropped it and looked away, the wax will evaporate (read: disappear) and you will need to make a new one.

Strange Things are Afoot:

The Mechanists have been an unknown element in the game so far, but this mission doesn't do much to endear them to the player. The dead bodies waiting to be turned into Servants show a darker side to their order. In this room we also see two Servants in water filled tubes.

Somehow I don't think this is a Servant spa

If you return later in the game you'll see that the Servants have vanished to locations unknown, never to be seen again. Behind and above the altar in the chapel are three rooms, each above the other, and if you journey to the very top you'll see a destroyed Worker Bot.

Don't look at me, I didn't do it (for once)

How this flat footed robot made it up two ladders to this room and how it was then destroyed are two of the great unsolved mysteries of the Metal Age. The symbol of the Hammerites was the ubiquitous hammer symbol. For the Mechanists it must be the art deco angel. There are angels at either end of the chapel and from the ground they look perfectly normal. But climbing up and looking at them from the side gives a slightly different picture.

Have you lost weight recently?

At the top of the large towers at the front of the building can be found big brass bells. Presumably they are meant to be rung to summon the faithful to worship. But hit them with your blackjack and you might be surprised.

Ding...Dong...*thunk*???

The bell is actually made out of wood. One Mechanist innovation that probably won't catch on amongst the City's other religions.

Fun with the AI:

This mission comes with some pests in the basement - but these pests are a lot nastier than mere rats. Hammer Haunts are possibly the nastiest of all the enemies you can face in Thief. They run as fast as you and can perform multiple strikes as quick as lightning. But when you recruit them to your cause, they make very good allies - as long as you don't get in their way.

If you go down the stairs near the barracks area, you come to a workroom with two mechanists having a conversation. There is also an entrance to the catacombs here where the Haunts wander around. If you let them out, fun times ensue.

Thar be trouble a-brewin'

You may need to coax the Haunts out with a broadhead or two. These arrows make a lot of noise when they hit a wall. This should also attract the Mechanists. If the Haunts get the first swing in they'll kill both Mechanists without any trouble. At this point it is advisable to retreat up the stairs as the Haunts will be heading out and looking for trouble.

Haunts - bad for your health

A Worker Bot wanders between the chapel and the barracks area and the Haunts will happily fall upon it with their hammers. But bots aren't damaged by the Haunts' hammers or swords - only real hammers (such as those used by living Hammerites), the Mechanist Maces, water, gas, fire, crushing and the blackjack can destroy them.

It's not easy being a Haunt - your pants ride right up your bum

The little Worker Bot will run around the mission looking for help and the Haunts will follow along hitting it without causing any damage. The noise will draw nearly every Mechanist in the building and the Haunts will take out their frustration on them. Eventually when running away has failed, the little bot will seek refuge in the Servantcreating area.

Part robot, part kangaroo

Once up on the bench, the bot will be trapped and unable to patrol any more. This gets it out of your way and you don't have to worry about it alerting any surviving Mechanists to your presence.

Climbing:
Any mission with a wall around it practically begs the inquisitive thief to climb over it and explore. The wall around this mission is a bit different as it has a spiked fence on top of it. But there are still several places where you can climb as the fence doesn't completely encircle the mission. The front gate and the walls can be climbed with only three crates.

Over the wall

Some parts of the wall have invisible barriers that stop you from climbing over at that point. They are made out of wood (hit them with your sword and listen to the noise) but cannot be broken. Travel along the wall from one area to another is simple as the spiked fence can be mantled onto as long as you are side-on to it. Once over the wall you can explore the city. Many of the buildings are solid rather than ghost objects, but you can still walk right through the majority of them.

Inside the ghost town

If you look up while exploring around the rear of the mission, you'll see a most unusual phenomenon - a floating stone wall.

The sky wall

Getting back inside the wall is made simple as the Mechanists, despite professing in a later mission to hate "weak and shoddy" wood, made the entirety of the outside of the wall from it. All you need to do is shoot a rope arrow into it and you can easily climb back in. The cathedral itself also offers climbing opportunities. The metal hall where Karras meets Truart can be climbed with a stack of four crates from the rooftop area with the patrolling female archer.

Sadly, you can't listen in at the Cathedral's skylights

If you climb onto the roof of the small shack in this area you can make it all the way onto the roof of the cathedral with a stack of five crates and a stack of three crates.

Onto the roof

Even though the shack's roof looks like it should only need three or four crates to get on top of, there's another invisible barrier in your way which surrounds the shack on all sides.

Floating crates - spooky

Once on top of the shack, carry three crates with you to the archway indicated by the arrows in the picture. It's an easy climb onto the roof and grants a view of some of the Mechanists' strange design choices. Jump down onto the lowered section of roof at the front of the mansion and you'll see banners wedged halfway into the roof.

Strange place to put banners

The two turrets can also be climbed onto, but with their jutting edges it can be a bit difficult. Once up there you get the satisfaction of having reached the highest point in the mission. There is another way you can climb to the roof - or indeed the top of the turrets. Making a staircase of the many crates to be found in the mission lets you access the roof directly.

And she's climbing a stairway to heaven

Staircasing is quite a difficult skill to master. In this staircase I overshot the turn and ended up two crates too high before I could safely reach the roof of the turret. For small piles of less than ten crates high, I recommend using the traditional stacking technique as it is a lot quicker in most cases. But when space, or crates, are limited or you're trying to get somewhere really high, then staircasing can save a lot of effort as it requires far fewer crates.

Next in the series is First City Bank and Trust. Another mission based around a single building with a wall encircling it - but on a whole different (larger!) scale. Garrett needs to retrieve the recording Karras made of his conversation with Truart so that he can blackmail the sheriff into telling him who wants him dead. The problem this time is that the recording is locked away in a huge vault in the middle of a massive bank that's teeming with guards and Mechanist security devices. Fun!

Addendum:
(telliamed) Didn't you forget to make a piece of junk wax? (Luthien) And an enhancement request: could you include information about which objects are stackable in your guide, please (Illuminatus) What? No picture of the security bot battling the haunts (Azal) telliamed - the junk wax is like the fragments left over from a destroyed barrel or robot - it "evaporates" very quickly. I tried to include it, but it just kept vanishing on me. Luthien: Good idea about including stats on stackability. I've found that, in the right combinations, just about everything is stackable. I'll include that in the wrap-up threads on advanced gameplay and thieving techniques. Illuminatus: Heh, I was going to include the CombatBot versus the Haunts, but the bot just kills them so quickly, it was hardly worth the bother. Besides, I normally take out the big nasties before I do anything else. (Stan_The_Thief) re the busted up bot: As far as I know, that sanctuary behind and above the altar was set alone for Karras. And the third floor of it was his workshop or something, so he could design some new devices. So that's what the parts were for, IMO. And Haunts cannot destroy the bots by hammering them because their actual 'weapon' is Sword not CritterWeapHammer (as of Mechanists or Hammerites). This is the same reason why there's blood when a Haunt hits someone. Although AI with real hammer can destroy a bot, even to pieces.

First City Bank and Trust

A deceptively straightforward mission, this one. Garrett needs to retrieve the recording of Father Karras' and Sheriff Truart's conversation from the previous mission so he can twist Truart's arm and find out who hired him to kill Garrett. But as the bank is a huge, rambling building with an embarrassment of tile floors, the now ubiquitous Mechanist security devices and a timedelay vault, this is no walk in the park. The Bank follows the general theme of 'large building with wall around' but gives the player a wide choice of entry positions (more on this later). The guards are as tough and alert as police and the tile floors make almost any misstep a dangerous proposition. Being a bank, there're a lot of items lying around ready for the player to pick up: 1 Golden key 1 Safety deposit key (from previous mission) 1 tip (from loadout screen) 1 Slowfall potion 2 Shovels 2 Speed potions 2 Trays 3 Scouting Orbs (from loadout screen) 3 Mines 4 Plain vases 5 Healing potions (two from loadout screen) 5 Green bottles 6 Black bottles 6 Silver keys 7 Potted plants 10 flares (eight from loadout screen) 17 Metal goblets 40 Crates

Metal goblets have been added to sandbags on my list of "things I hate to lug around"

Many, many crates. What more can I say?

Given that this is such a large mission, it's not surprising that there're quite a few AI wandering around the place. 1 Nobleman 1 Turret that decided to come along for the ride 3 purple and yellow guards 8 CombatBots 11 red archers 14 purple guards 16 WorkerBots

The haul hall

General Gameplay:
The bank has many entrances, most of which the player can access. Some are locked and cannot be opened without the proper key and some require a bit of climbing to reach. Bank is the only mission where entry via the roof was deliberately included by the designers and possibly explains my unnatural love for it. Head West from your starting point and you will see a large wooden crate next to an archway. Mantle on top if it and you have a clear run to the roof. There's a doorway up there which leads to the meeting hall. From your position on top of the roof you can also jump onto the wall surrounding the bank - but that is covered in the section on climbing. There are hemi circular balconies just above ground level and, with a few crates, you can enter the Bank that way.

Another way into the bank

Of course to get the crates, you have to enter the bank anyway. But, when you go in through these doors, you enter into an area relatively free of AIs and get a head start on exploring the building.

A useful way to take unexpected shortcuts from one area to another is mantling with doors. Standing side-on to the door so that you have enough room for the manoeuvre is necessary for it to work. The mezzanine in the meeting room is one of many useful areas where you can apply this technique. It is also a useful way to hide from AIs. The tops of most doorways are in darkness and if you jump down as they pass you can register an airborne knockout. In the original and Gold editions of Thief, the only cameras the player faced were in Cragscleft prison and they were easily bypassed or destroyed. The security cameras made by the Mechanists pose a bigger challenge - if only because there are so many more of them and they are often linked to turrets. But fortunately for Garrett, the cameras have the intelligence of a retarded mushroom and directly beneath them is a blind spot.

The camera can't see you here

If you hide underneath the camera it cannot detect you and will eventually return to it's unalerted state. When the camera controls the locking of a doorway and is hard to pass, pausing directly beneath it until it returns to 'green' can make it easier to get where you want to go without setting off an alarm. Speaking of cameras that control doors, you will encounter this camera (pictured below) when you attempt to open the time lock on the vault:

The bank's Red Light district

If the camera sees you it will close the doors near it if you have left them opened. But fortunately for the player, you can open them just by pulling the lever again. As you can still make it through the doors before the CombatBot in the area attacks you (assuming you left it alive), it hardly seems worth the bother. NB: I have included cameras in the Gameplay section rather than the Fun with the AI section as they are stationary obstacles. For all intents and purposes, they're more like furniture with eyes than anything else. The stated objectives for this mission require you to find out which safety deposit box the recording is in from the Hall of Records. But if you head straight to the vault and try the key on every door until you find the right one, you can bypass this objective entirely. If you do this, the objective gets crossed off and you don't have to worry about it any more. If you do go to the Hall of Records after you have picked up the recording and find and read the correct parchment, the objective becomes active again and gets ticked off.

Strange things are afoot:

The mission contains the only Easter egg that wasn't found on its own. It took a hint from Randy, the mission's designer, before it was eventually found by Exraven at the TTLG forums The bank's vault has a time delay lock that the player must open before they can get to the Mechanist recording. But if you wait for eight hours the lock will open all on its own! It wouldn't be much good for the bank to have all those guards if it didn't have an armoury for them (and you) to stock up from. If you shoot a rope arrow into the little balcony on the West side of the bank's main entrance you can climb straight into it. Looking around you will see a bunch of the red, explosive crates. These can be set off with a fire arrow.

Boom!

This isn't strictly a Strange and Unusual piece of the game, but it is a hell of a lot of fun. In previous Guide's we talked about how the AI in Thief cheats with respect to obeying the laws of gravity. The AI can step out over a ledge and not fall.

Floating guards

But saving and reloading the game will make the AI drop as it is supposed to. If you make it to the Great Hall without having reloaded the mission, you get to see the hovering guard in the image above. Once you do reload the game, the guard will fall to the ground and start patrolling. Another instance of how the AI defies gravity is when you knock out someone on a ledge. The way the game is built means that they will lie flat even when not on a flat surface. If the ground is uneven, parts of them will disappear below ground; if you knock them out so that they fall over above a drop, they'll hang in space.

These archers have VERY strong ankles! (couldn't think of a decent Achille's heel joke for this one, sadly)

Once you have the recording, all you need to do is to get out of the bank and the mission will end - or do you? Just South of the meeting hall, on the second floor, is a room with a harp and one of the bank's two secrets.

'Outside' the bank

If you go down the stairs pictured above and stand next to the window, the mission considers you to be outside and it will finish. This is a very useful shortcut if you've left guards wandering around and don't want to go past them again. Down in the basement next to the small pool of water you will find a valve that you can turn. It does absolutely nothing when you turn it. It was left in there by mistake. Give it a turn for luck as you go past.

Useless valve

In almost every game made by Looking Glass Studios, the numbers 451 appear, often as one of the first codes you need in the game. In System Shock, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, 451 or 0451 is the first door code you will use. Even though you might think that 0451 would have been used in Shipping and Receiving, entering the code in that mission does nothing. But in Bank, it quickly and easily allows you to turn off the time delay lock.

The Time Lock Numbers

If we consider the buttons on the time lock to be numbered as in the above picture, then entering 0451 turns the device off. Why did LGS always use this code? Because it was the door code to their offices. The 451 was itself a reference to the novel Fahrenheit 451. Here's a bit of fun that you don't actually see in the mission itself: When Randy was making the mission he used what he termed a "placeholder" map which he had drawn by hand before a proper map had been created. This map, that was never supposed to be seen by the public, ended up getting shipped with the game and can be found in the Interface.crf file.

The map of the bank we were never meant to see

Thief's *.crf files are actually plain, old zip files that can be opened with just about any compression programme.

Fun with the AI:

In this Guide, we have already covered how to persecute the AIs and amuse yourself with the none-to-intelligent turrets by pushing them around or getting an AI to stand between you and the turret so that it gets shot. This time we will investigate how to have fun with the mechanical doohickeys on their own terms. NB: You can only push those turrets that aren't properly placed. If you can see their little feet, then you won't be able to push them. But if their feet are below 'ground' level you will be able to move them about.

We'll start with the Children of Karras - the robots. The WorkerBots (the little golden ones with no weapons) cannot hurt you and will run away at the slightest hint of danger. However, they will often 'run away' straight to the nearest CombatBot (the nasty, big blue ones with the bastard-guns). You can basically treat them as steam-powered servants. If you remove the armed AIs they alert, you can leave them alone as they will no longer be able to cause you any trouble. And it's always enjoyable to watch them scurrying about the mission calling for help that will never arrive. The CombatBots are a different story. They are armed with very nasty cannon that shoot out timebombs like you see in old cartoons - a black ball with a burning fuse. These do twofold damage. They travel so fast that if they hit you, they cause impact damage, and when they detonate they cause explosion damage. These features combine into a weapon that can send Garret from full health to death with a single shot. But this potent weapon can be turned against the CombatBots.

Big bot goes bye bye

Get them to look around a corner or a doorway so that their head and body are exposed but their cannon is still in front of a wall. When they shoot (they're not too bright), the cannonball will bounce straight back into them and with its explosion will cause some serious damage. You only need to get them to do this twice and they'll destroy themselves. The bots can be destroyed in several different ways ( beside the one listed above): 1) Water or gas arrow into the boiler. This is the standard method a neutralising a bot. The WorkerBots only need one water arrow to disable them and the CombatBots need two. Once disabled, the bots are dead for the rest of the mission - they won't come back to life on you. One gas arrow will disable any bot, but given how expensive and rare this sort of arrow is, youd want to be in pretty desperate circumstances before you used one this way. 2) Fire and Explosions. Fire arrows and mines are very effective in disabling bots, as long as you don't care about how much noise they make. A single fire arrow will take out a worker and two are needed for the CombatBots. A single mine will disable any kind of robot, no matter what it's level of alertness. 3) Impact/Crushing. The cheapest and quickest way to get a robot out of your hair is to lure it under an elevator. Lowering the elevator onto the bot will kill it. The traditional warhammer of the Hammerites is very good at disabling robots, but the mechanist mace doesn't seem to hurt them at all. 4) Blackjack. It only takes 9 hits with the blackjack to disable a WorkerBot and 18 to disable a CombatBot. It may seem impossible to hit a CombatBot 18 times without getting a cannonball to the forehead, but when an unsuspecting bot is hit by the blackjack it reels back for a moment, this gives you time to hit it again. If you time it right, to can hit the bot as many times as needed and it won't even be able to move out of the way, let alone shoot you. Once disabled, it takes another 8 hits with the blackjack (or three overhead swings with your sword, or one hit with a hammer) to destroy the robot completely and make it fall to pieces.

This mission also introduces the player to the first serious traps so far in the game. There isn't too much variety in the traps - each is activated by pressure pads in the floor and causes a turret to attack. The first one most players will come across is in the basement.

Trap-O-Vision

The white outline in the floor shows the pressure pads in the floor and the white arrow shows the sliding panel that opens to reveal the turret. If you look carefully you will see that this turret actually floats a little way above the ground. The cannonballs fired by the turret are the same as those fired by the CombatBot. If you're holding something large in your hands when they fire at you, you can deflect the bomb away by throwing the object at the incoming projectile.

Not-quite-human shields

You can also climb into the recess with the turret, but I would most heartily recommend that you destroy the turret before you try this. Be careful though - the sliding panel closes after a minute or so and if you're inside with the turret when that happens you will be forever trapped inside - as I found out the hard way. The second trap you will encounter is right out in the open on the ground floor, and has two separate triggers. One is hidden amongst the green tiles on the floor in front of the turret. The other is on the wooden walkway above it.

Trap-O-Vision 2

This turret is the only one in the mission you are able to push - all the rest are stationary. As you can see in the images, I pushed this one off its pedestal and eventually got it all the way to the third floor to join all the AIs for a snapshot. The third and final trap is in the marble Hall of Statues on the third floor and has perhaps the most well concealed pressure pads of any trap in the game.

Active Trap-O-Vision

The use of light in this part of the mission to produce variations of colour on the marble floor is simply stunning.

Even though the hidden area containing the turret is above the doorway, it only takes one crate to mantle up there. As with the first turret, you can climb around in the little hidden area, but if the sliding panel closes while you're inside - you are stuck with no way out.

Well and truly stuck

If you want to visit these areas and not worry about getting trapped, you can place heavy objects (three bot boilers will do the trick) on the pressure pads until they depress and stay down. This causes the sliding doors to remain open indefinitely.

Keep the trap triggered or you can get trapped yourself

Climbing:

You can reach any spot on the roof without effort in this mission as it was deliberately designed that way. Thus there's hardly any challenge to be found there. But there is a wall around the mission you can climb over. You have two options for doing this - from above or from below. If you want to get on top of the wall from above, all you need to do is find a suitable spot on the roof and jump off. You might take a few points of damage, but it's quick and easy. In the image below, I circled all the points on the roof where you can easily jump onto the wall - some require strafe running to make the distance to the wall.

Roof jumping spots

As you can see, there're quite a few of them. The point marked with the 'A' indicates the point on the roof where you can jump down to the room on the second floor between the vault and the Great Hall. You can also climb from the balcony of this room onto the roof.

From the roof to the room next to the vault (and vice versa) in one easy step

Once on the wall, you can walk almost its entire length - except for one section. The point marked with the 'B' on the above image shows that spot.

The one spot on the wall you cannot walk

The spiked fence is placed very close to the edge of the wall here and when you try to walk along it, the end of one of the fences (marked with an arrow in the above image) will not allow you to pass without falling. To get onto the wall from below requires a minimum stack of 9 crates if you start from the ground. If you build your stack in front of the main gate you can get by with one less crate as you can climb on to the top of the archway.

Climbing from the ground

to the wall

Fortunately, there are four other spots where you can easily climb up onto the wall. (1) the shed in the NorthWest corner, (2) the shed halfway along the North wall, (3) the stone wall blocking the North and South halves of the bank along the East side of the bank, (4) the stone arch that is your first step up to the roof.

Three points where you can access the roof

With the exception of the fourth area, which is a very straightforward two crate climb, there is something to note for each position. The shed in the NorthWest corner requires the use of a rope arrow. In the (left) image above you can see that shooting the arrow into the wood underneath the roof allows you to climb onto it. The shed along the North wall can be done in either of two ways. If you stack directly on top of the roof you will need three crates to reach the top of the wall. But if you mantle onto the lamppost next to the shed - as shown in the (centre) image above, you only need two crates. To climb onto the East stone wall requires three crates. Once on top of it though, you only need a further two crates - shown in the above (right) image.

Finally, with all the above out of the way, we come us to what you can do once on top of the wall itself. The spiked fence encircling the wall is slightly too high to mantle over without assistance, but you only need the equivalent of one crate to make it. The next part is the painful one - getting down the other side.

If you haven't grabbed the slowfall potion in the domed room next to the vault, you can look forward to losing most of your health points jumping down the other side. The area outside the walls consists of not just ordinary ghost buildings - most of them are floating ghost buildings.

The city in the sky

If you look carefully around on the ground outside the walls you'll also find some leftover equipment.

Excess stuff

In the words of the level designer, Randy, "...the equipment items are there because when I tune the inventory, I add stuff and take stuff away by adding or removing links, but I leave the actual physical object there since normally you can never see them anyway. and that way if I want to re-add them to the inventory at some point, I just have to link them back up, I don't have to re-create them from scratch" It just goes to show, that when you follow the path of the Strange and Unusual, you never know what you might find.

Next up in our tour de theft is Blackmail. Garrett visits the Truart estate, the recording in hand, to have a few words with the good sheriff - but it's no social call.

Addendum:
(Luthien) - You missed the "frob counter" on the timelock controls. After pressing any button several dozen times, the vault door opens too. Focus one of the buttons and hit the right mouse buttons as fast as you can and the door opens in about 15 seconds. There is some explanation for this in the bank egg thread. - The vases from the guard room that can be pushed around are not mentioned. (Azal) You can push the rubbish bins, and (theoretically) the little paper trays on the desks as well. If you shoot a fire arrow onto a desk the paper trays fly phenomenal distances. Since you can block the AI with one of the large vases, I'll put some stuff in about them too. I'm waiting for Casing the Joint before I go into that in detail. In Casing it is very easy to get most of the turrets to blow themselves up. I didn't include it here as that sort of thing will eventually go into a separate "Opponents and Allies" section where I'll detail all the AIs, their abilities, strengths and weaknesses and how to exploit them. Thus far I have only taken a cursory, mission specific, look at ways to play with the AI and various objects. When I've finished with all the missions, I'll post threads on a variety of other relevant topics. (Illuminatus) You might already be aware of this, but there is a slightly easier way to enter Ghost Town. Instead of using a crate to get over the spikes, use a speed potion from one of the highest points on the roof. This way, you'll make it over the spikes and the wall in one go. Unfortunately, unless you drink a slowfall right after, you'll fall to your death (on Expert). (Azal) Arrgh! I can't believe I forgot to include jumping from the roof of the vault. It's the only place on the bank's roof that doesn't have sound and, as you said, you can make it all the way over the wall from there too. The problem with such an involved mission like Bank is that while looking for the obscure, you sometimes forget the obvious. (Luthien) The basement where all these bots are walking is riddled with tight corridors. You can easily block off one of the small tunnels near the station with the two inactive combat bots with only two or three crates. Now make a lot of noise to alert every single bot in the area and wait for a few minutes in a safe place. When you come back you should find both combat bots and half a dozen worker bots desperately trying to get past the crates. Ready the blackjack and begin the dirty work.

Blackmail
With the recording of Sheriff Truart's conversation in hand, this mission sees Garret breaking into the Truart Estate with the intention of confronting the Sheriff to find out who wants our antihero dead. Of course, it's not that simple in practice. The estate is crowded with police of all sorts and even a guest or two recovering from the Sheriffs party earlier that evening.. Again, this is your basic 'building with a wall around' style mission, but is broken up into several sections with small guest houses to explore at the start of the mission and a secret graveyard to the South that gives up a hidden objective later in the mission. The estate has quite a bit of stuff lying around which can come in useful later if you decide to get off the beaten track. You can find: 8 Rotten crates 6 Crates 1 Shovel 1 Blue vase 16 Flares 1 Papyrus 1 Mechanist's mace 1 Red and gold hammer 7 Metal goblets 4 Wooden goblets 9 Black bottles

12 Green bottles 1 Skull 1 Ribcage 9 Wooden bowls 2 Scouting orbs 2 Mines 2 Gas mines 1 Tip (from loadout screen) 1 Tray 1 Sword hilt 2 Decks of cards 2 Bread 2 Cheese 1 Apple 1 Deerleg 1 Slow-fall potion 2 Invisibility potion 3 health potions (2 health potions from loadout screen) 2 Balcony keys 2 Estate keys 1 Silver gear 2 Metal gears* 1 Bronze gear* 1 Golden gear* * NB: You cannot keep multiple copies of the gears in your inventory. If you have a gear of one type in your inventory and pick up another of the same type you will still only have one. This happens with the Metal gears if you try to pick up a second one and the Bronze and Golden gears will merge together as well. Ordinarily this isn't a problem as you use up the gears to get from one floor to another. But if you climb up the outside of the mansion via the balconies, you don't need to use the gears and will experience this when you try to pick up a second gear.

The Truart Collection

Not too many crates. But enough for climbing

As Truart has given a party, there are a few people wandering around the mission and more than a few police guarding the place. 1 WorkerBot 1 Female Noble 2 Female civilians 1 Female zombie corpse 1 Hammer Haunt 6 Male Nobles 1 Male Pagan 2 Male civilians

1 Sheriff Truart 12 Police archers 1 Un-KOable police swordsman 7 Sergeants 20 Sword police

Feeling blue

General Gameplay:
This mission gives us a hidden objective to complete. If you take the body of Sheriff Truart from the top floor and carry it all the way to the graveyard, you get an objective complete message saying "Bonus Objective: It's time to bury the difference between you and Truart" At the top of the stairs in the locked corridor on the ground floor are two guards having a conversation. One decides to go and look for Benny and the other guard tells him "Don't trip over your own feet in the dark again. This time, try turning on the lights." And when this guard reaches the bottom of the stairs he does indeed turn on the lights. If you're standing in the open, this means the shadows you were hiding in are now gone and the guard will see you.

This guard has mastered the difficult skill of turning on a light

But the guards aren't too bright. If you've already turned on the light before he reaches it, the fool will turn them off again! The gears used to access the higher floors in this mission can only be used once. Once they are placed in the unlocking mechanism they cannot be removed. This applies not only to the player but to the AI as well.

Careful alerting these guys, it'll cost you a gear

The two guards talking at the top of the staircase from the ground floor are standing next to double doors with an unlocking mechanism next to them. One of them has a metal gear on his belt. If you alert these guards so that they start searching, the guard with the gear may unlock the doors to take a look through them. This will remove the gear from his belt and you will not be able to pickpocket it from him.

Strange things are afoot:

This mission has more AIs standing in strange areas than any other. Replaying the mission will see the AI in certain areas moving around a little and sometimes ending up on top of something. The female servant in the kitchen sometimes ends up on top the stove. Luckily for her it's not hot - even though it's glowing red. The dining table in the room outside Truart's bedroom can see a variety of different people standing on it. The guard, male noble and female noble all like to takes turns on top of it.

Eeek! Mice!

Once the nobles in the dining area outside Truart's room have their conversation, the male noble begins patrolling between the two rooms. He must be blind as a bat because he doesn't even notice the dead body he walks past.

Truart's dead? That's news to me!

On the ground floor foyer is a banner that conceals a path down to the cellar. If you cut it away you can see that it has some most unusual properties.

This was no boating accident!

Even when the banner is cut, the AI treat it almost like it is still there. They can't see you through it - which makes it a great spot for ambushing them. Also, when you drop a body halfway through the entrance it will partially disappear. With all his money, you would expect Truart to have decent tables that don't have holes in them. However, if you look closely at the table in the ground floor dining room you can see right through it.

There's a hole in the table, dear Liza

The barred door on the Southernmost guest house also has a small hole in it. These transparent 'holes' are caused by a black section on the textures covering the objects. Thief treats the colour black as transparent and will not show it.

Inside the guest house where you begin the mission is a shelf with some bottles on it. Whoever put away the green bottle must have slammed it down really hard because it is wedged halfway into the wooden shelf. You can do a spot of housecleaning by picking the bottle up and putting it away properly. The ground floor dining table also has bottles doing strange things. If you look underneath it you'll find three green bottles sitting on the floor. I guess they're there for when Truart drinks someone under the table. The table in the banquet hall has its own peculiarities - it's floating! The second floor toilet also has some floating objects in it. It must be hard to flush a toilet when the handle isn't even attached.

Despite their gift for evil schemes, the Mechanists never really got the hang of plumbing

The dungeons below the estate aren't immune from strange happenings. They have magically appearing spiders and very unusual barrels.

So this is what people did for fun before TV was invented?

If you give the barrels a few good hits with your sword you will destroy them. But unlike normal barrels and crates, these leave no debris - they just vanish into thin air.

The bedrooms on the first floor have small rooms with treasure chests in them. Opening one of these chests will make it go right through the wall.

Objects behaving badly!

The ladders into the attic must have been installed by an Indian fakir. They're not actually attached to anything and just float in midair.

The grounds of Truart's estate are divided into sections by large walls with wooden gates in them. Sadly, these cannot be used to crush the AI, but if you stand under one as it descends, you will end up inside it.

View from inside a gate

The image on the left shows the view if you look up; the gate seems to disappear. The image on the right is what you see if you get perfectly under the gate as it lowers and look down at the grass.

Fun with the AI:

Most of the basic techniques for having fun with the AI have already been covered in previous Guides, but there is one thing you can do in this mission that truly deserves mention. In the Southernmost guest house at the start of the mission, you'll find a male pagan asleep on the floor. He was probably sent there to spy on the comings and goings at the estate and doesn't appreciate Garrett waking him up. He will try to attack you, but as he's unarmed he can't do anything. What makes him so much fun is that, if you let him, he'll follow you anywhere. You may need to notch a fire arrow or light a flare so he can find you in the pitch black house he sleeps in, but once outside he'll dog your heels like a puppy. With a bit of imagination, and a large dollop of sadism, you can make him follow you all the way to Truart's room.

The pagans made one small error in their assassination plans they left a small clue. Say 'Hello' clue

You can drop a flashbomb and leave the pagan in the room next to the corpse if you want and enjoy imagining the fallout as the police come to investigate the death only to find a scruffy pagan standing over the body.

To finish this section, there's one more strange thing you can see in this mission, and it's common to every mission where you can play with the scouting orbs.

Garrett learns to fly

If you look at yourself while kneeling you'll see that Garrett actually hovers a few inches above the ground. If he would only put his Kneepads of Levitation on his feet hed be able to walk anywhere without making a noise.

A Climbing We Will Go:

Even though there aren't any really out of the way places to get to in this mission, there are still quite a few places to climb. The guest houses at the start of the mission lend themselves to climbing as most come with either a wooden shutter to stand on or a wooden beam to shoot a rope arrow into.

Onto the roofs

One crate is usually enough to be able to mantle onto the shutters of any of the guest houses which have them. Once you're on the roof though, you can't get too far. The roofs are made of the super slippery purple tiles and as soon as you stand on them you'll start sliding off. You can climb onto the wall above the main gate at the start of the mission with the aid of two crates. If you stand on the edge of the turret and try to mantle up without them you'll just fall back. But jumping from the top of two crates will allow you to make it onto the wall and walk along it right up to the front of the mansion.

Wall climbing

Along the Southern side of the mansion is a partially hidden section that leads to the graveyard and the canal at the back of the mansion. You can walk along the entire length of the stone outcrops without having to touch the ground.

The canal that runs the length of the mission leads into a cave at either end and, with a bit of perseverance, you can climb into the one at the North end. The front entrance of the mansion has a veranda roof around it. Using three crates you can climb onto it.

Onto the front of the mansion

Now, for those who have been patiently waiting for details on how to get onto the top floors of the mansion without wasting the metal gears, here it is.

From the ground to the first floor balcony

Using a stack of six crates, you can climb from the top of the stairs at the rear of the mansion onto the balcony of the first floor. If you throw the crates onto the light posts and the railing above you, you can grab them as you go to make the climb even easier.

From the first floor to the second is a bit trickier. The doors at either end of the balcony open outwards and you need to get their angle just right so that you can climb on top of them and still reach the balcony above. If you stand in front of these doors as they open you will block them with your body and they will not open fully. It is a tricky matter to stop the doors at exactly the right place so that you'll be able to mantle up to the top floor.

A tricky mantle onto the top floor

It will take at least three health potions stacked on top of the door to be able to mantle onto the balcony above. But you may want to use the invisibility potions as well to you give yourself a bit more height to make things easier. Once you've reached the upper floors there is one more place you can go. Between the two attics there is a section of roof where you can walk between two rows of railings.

Onto the roof

You can jump and mantle onto the overhang above the door and then it is an easy jump onto the roof itself. Be careful though, much of the roof is slippery purple tile. Be sure you don't fall off!

Next up we will explore Tracing the Courier; a mission in two parts where Garrett follows his last lead to try and find out who is trying to kill him and why.

Addendum:
(Stan_The_Thief) re: flashbombing the Pagan to get him to stand next to the dead sheriff. In fact the pagan will walk away to his "starting point" right after he gains his vision. But he will likely be slain by guards when getting out of the mansion, in case you left any guards standing. Or maybe he'll just meet a guard with his back turned and will stand in attack-position against that guard, without making a sound, and will stay this way until some other guard notices this. Just imagine what he might say: "Hey, Benny! Did you bring this pagan in? Yes, this one behind you."

Before we start this instalment, we need to list another definition:

Frob: can be used as a noun or a verb. It basically means "use". If you frob a door, you
open it; frobbing a light turns it on, frob a corpse, you pick it up. And now, on with the show...

Trace the Courier

With Sheriff Truart dead, Garret has only one lead left to help him discover who wants him dead - the keychain left by the assassin who killed the Sheriff. As the keychain featured Lt Mosely's emblem, Garrett begins to carefully watch her, and that is where this mission begins; with Garrett following Mosely as she leaves the station before schedule and carrying a letter. Mosely eventually drops the letter (location varies depending upon the difficulty level), but it is soon picked up by a pagan. This mission runs as two basic sections, follow Mosely and then follow the pagan. Mosely's section is rather basic, she's not very alert and you can make several mistakes without causing her to start searching for you; when she does start searching for you she won't do it for very long. This is the warm-up for the next round. The pagan is very alert and even a small misstep can set him off and cause the mission to fail. Once the pagan reaches his destination he gets a very nasty surprise and this segues into the next mission, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Well, we're back in the cityscape we first saw in Ambush, but with a few changes. For one, the portculli that blocked off the graveyard section are now open. For another, this time Garrett is not running for his life. As before, there's really not that much stuff lying around. After all, you're supposed to follow hot on the heels of the courier, not go sightseeing. Here's the list: 6 Crates 1 Shovel 1 Pick 3 Bread 3 Apples 2 Cheese 2 Cucumbers 2 Flares 4 Metal plates 4 Metal goblets 3 Decorative plates 1 Papyrus 4 Wooden bowls 2 Wooden goblets 4 Black bottles 5 Green bottles 1 Blue vase 1 Invisibility potion

2 Health potions 5 Scouting orbs (all from loadout screen) 5 Potted plants 1 Grey key 1 Silver key Here's the shot:

More stuff in the portal tomb

Though this mission might not have a cast of thousands, we do get: 3 Zombies 4 Police archers 1 Purple Swordsman 1 Purple and yellow swordsman 1 Lt Mosely 2 Mechanist archers 1 Mechanist maceman 2 Female civilians 2 Male civilians 11 Police swordsmen. The actual tally of AI in this mission is higher then that listed here as some AIs are teleported out of the mission when Mosely drops the letter.

Son of Hands across America!

Now that we know what we're dealing with, lets explore how we can deal with them.

General Gameplay:
The objectives for this mission require you to follow the courier without alerting him/her to your presence. In the first part of the mission the courier is Lt Mosely, but a few seconds after she drops the letter the game no longer defines her as the courier. So you are now free to let loose your frustrations on her.

Konk the Courier - has a nice ring to it, no?

Give Mosely at least five seconds after she drops the letter and you can blackjack her without any consequences. You can now wait for the next courier to come along, but if that is a bit too passive for you, you can try hunting him down. The pagan comes from outside the graveyard and if you're fast and use the two speed potions you can buy from the loadout screen, you can intercept him just as he begins walking towards the letter. Don't forget to pick the letter up first or you'll get a 'Mission Fails' message once you get too far away from it.

Pagans go to great lengths to get the mail

The above image shows the pagan outside the cemetery, just after he has started walking. The white "X" in the image shows where he stands while waiting for the signal to begin. After this, you need to follow the pagan as he collects the letter and heads back to where he started. This mission is tightly scripted and too much dallying will cause you to fail - at least, up to the point when the pagan makes his dramatic exit. After which, you're pretty much free to do what you want. When the pagan eventually returns to the cemetery, hang back. Bad Things are about to happen. As he approaches the entrance to the cemetery, the pagan pauses and takes one last look around. This proves a fatal mistake as three Mechanists attack him. Originally, when playing this mission I thought that the female mechanist with the crossbow who comes out of the doorway right next to the pagan was the one that shot him, but upon

examining the evidence, my gaze was drawn to the grassy knoll wooden balcony and a second 'gunman'. Just look at the below screenshot:

Mechanist Book Depository

As you can see, the second Mechanist archer walks onto the little balcony and is the one who actually fires at the pagan. Even with this knowledge in hand it is still, sadly, impossible to save the pagan from his fate. You need to stop the archer on the balcony from shooting and you'll have to deal with the archer right next to the pagan as well - and all in just a few seconds and all without the pagan becoming too alerted or seeing you. It can be done, but it takes a bit of skill and luck. You can shoot a noisemaker arrow through the balcony door just as the archer opens it and she'll be so busy looking for the source of the noise that half the time she won't remember to shoot the pagan. Now you just need to worry about the archer on the ground. Drop a flashbomb as she opens the door and you can run right up to her and blackjack her. The flash should blind both her and the pagan - remember, at this point you're still not supposed to let the pagan see you. If you blackjack the archer on the ground before she finishes speaking it seems to 'break' the scripting of the attempted assassination event. This will cause the pagan to stand around for a few seconds, but as he was alerted when you flashbombed him, he will soon go into search mode. As soon as he nears the doorway the second archer came out of he will react as if he's just been shot, start bleeding and run away - even though no one has actually shot him. It's sort of like Pagan stigmata. So you can stop him from getting hurt but, in the end, he'll just hurt himself.

But going through all this isn't totally worthless, if you distract the Mechanist right next to the pagan before she finishes speaking, the 'broken' scripting means that the archer on the balcony and the mace carrying Mechanist will never come running out of the 'Book Depository'. They will stay inside and if you want, you can leave them there. Even banging on the door or shooting more noisemakers onto the balcony won't make them come out. If you really want to play with them, you can climb up onto the balcony and enter through the door there. Once you do, the scripting seems to turn itself back on and the Mechanist with the mace will run screaming through the door looking for a pagan who is no longer there. (to climb onto the balcony you'll need to use several crates, but it's no too hard) Of course, once the pagan gets hurt and runs away into the graveyard, you can follow him with no need for stealth. He's far too interested in getting away from the Mechanists to care about you.

Sir Robin bravely runs away

Just because the pagan has run through the portal, doesn't mean you have to run right in there after him. He's safe now and you have all the time in the world, so why not start exploring? This exploring is the subject of the following chapters of this instalment. So sit back and enjoy as we make our way to some strange lands.

Strange things are afoot:

Onto the raison d'tre of the Guide - hunting down the bizarre things you can find in the world of Thief. We'll start with some simple things - sunken bottles and looking inside torches

Today on Jerry Springer - Not quite solid objects and the men who love them

At the top of Whipple St is a drunk guard with several bottles around him. If you look closely at the fine wine (the golden bottle) you'll see that it's sunk halfway into the ground. At the SouthEast entrance to the Market area is a torch on a wall. If you walk underneath the torch and look up you can get your head right inside it and see what flames look like from below. At the West end of Hill St, at the spot marked with an 'A' on the map shown in the Climbing section, can be found two guards, an archer and a swordsman. At least, they're there when you start the mission. On Expert, when you're following Lt Mosely, you can take a small detour and pay them a visit. But as soon as Mosely drops the letter they vanish. However, one of them leaves behind a little souvenir for you.

Floating arrows and an invisible

invisibility potion

The arrow floats in the air waiting for you to pick it up and even counts as pickpocketing on your stats. On the right hand side of the above image is an invisibility potion that has truly lived up to its name. Not only has it become invisible, it has also made the two crates, the parchment and the lamppost underneath it invisible as well. At the Southern end of Sparrow St, at the spot marked with a 'B' on the map shown in the Climbing section is evidence that there has been some construction work going on since Garrett was last in the area. The image below shows screenshots from both Ambush (left) and Courier(right). See if you can spot the difference.

One of these things not like the other. Two of these things not quite the same.

The barred gateway out of the city has been removed entirely and the doorway on its right has somehow vanished. If you're thinking of returning to Garrett's apartment, you're out of luck. You can look at it from the outside, but there have been bars placed on all the windows and the door has been made unfrobbable.

Garrett was barred from his apartment

Turning our gaze back to the cemetery, there are quite a few things to be found. In the sealed-off section of the graveyard is another zombie, some loot and another partially sunken object (on one of the tombs is a potted plant which has sunk part-way into the roof of the tomb). Taking a close look at the statue on top of the tomb with the portal, we see that it is another ghost object. Although the body is solid, look what happens when I put a crate on its head.

The Hammerites were rather embarrassed about

Brother Crate-for-a-Head

Moving on to the 'Book Depository' where the Mechanists are staying, we find a few more strange things. You can enter this building by climbing over the balcony, or through the door. If you want to enter via the door you need to be standing right outside it when the Mechanists exit. Frob the door as he starts to close it and it will stay open. If you're too slow, the door will shut and you won't be able to open it - it is unpickable, there are no keys for it and you cannot bash it down.

Lee Harvey Oswald never had it _this_ good!

The last time we were in this building, in Ambush, it was totally unlit and unfurnished. Now we can actually see what we're doing, and what a strange sight it is. The bookcases face the wrong way and all the tableware is underneath the table rather than on top of it. Things aren't any better in the other room - in fact, they're a lot worse.

Garret found why the building now had lighting, someone had installed a plant room

There are potted plants underneath the dresser and there's a corpse on the floor. In all likelihood this poor sod was killed by the Mechanists so that they could use his apartment without being disturbed. That in itself leads to the conclusion that the Mechanists know far more than they have any right to. In the sealed section of the cemetery (marked with a key on the map in the Climbing section) is a grey key on the ground in one of the tombs.

Return of the infamous 'blue' key

This key unlocks no doors whatsoever. It has absolutely no use in the mission, so why is it there? My guess is that it's like the famous blue key in the mission Sword in the original Dark Project; it was left there by a programmer who just forgot about it.

Fun with the AI:

As I included the section on the Mechanists attacking the pagan in the Gameplay section, the AI section will be pretty small this time through. So to make up for it, I've included this happy little collection of images of the most entertaining things you can do in the mission once the courier is out of your hair.

The Montage of Death!

The tombs in the cemetery have three zombies in them. The 'fresh' zombie won't leave his tomb as the entranceway is slightly to low for him to pass. The other zombie, though, will follow you out of his tomb with little need for encouragement. Once the zombie's out of the graveyard, his eternal lust for blood will see him following you like a rabid puppy. The above screenshots show the zombie as we blazed a trail of death across an entire city. The best way to get the zombie to attack someone is to lead them to the general area where the unsuspecting AI is and then run past the person so that they are between you and the zombie. Then the zombie will attack them in passing and you can watch from safety. None of the civilians, police or guards can actually hurt the zombies, but a quick swordsman may be able to knock them down. Once the zombie falls, the guard will stand over its body and continue to attack. The only way to get the zombie back on its feet is to distract the guard and stand next to the zombie until it wakes back up. The Mechanists, like the Hammerites, can destroy the zombies with a few hits from their weapons. So if you want to go on a zombie rampage, get rid of all the Mechanists first.

A Climbing We Will Go:

Even though the Guide for Ambush covered half a dozen of the obvious climbing spots in the mission, thanks to the discovery of staircase stacking by Luthien, new vistas have opened up for the experienced climber (plus I also overlooked a few). As with Ambush, it's no use listing all these climbing locations if people can't find them or understand where I mean, so I'm including this map of the mission with each of the locations listed on it.

Location! Location! Location!

Position #1. Behind Garrett's house is a wooden construction. Stacking three crates on
top of it will allow you to climb onto the roof of his building. Sadly, there is no way into Garrett's room from here either and the sky is so low that you can't even stand upright once on the roof. In fact, once you're on top of the crates you have to crouch and run to get onto the roof rather than mantle.

Garrett manages to avoid the Landlady one more time

Position #2. Just to the East of Garrett's house, next to the canal, is a crenulated wall.
Making a staircase out of the six crates in this mission will allow you to climb on top of the wall. From here to can partially run along the red tile roof to your West and catch a glimpse of Garrett's house. You can also jump down and access the vast areas outside of the mission.

Just like storming a very small castle

Position #3. Here's a nice easy climb that anyone can do. In the building with the
patrolling archer on the East side of the Market area is a walkway along which he patrols. Two crates stacked here will allow you to access the roof. There's not much to explore up here though, but you do get a bird's eye view of the market.

Medivil mallrats

Positions #4 and #5. Just next to the guard post on the map is another area that only
became explorable with the staircase method of stacking. Using all six crates you can climb onto the roof area here and see a doorway with a torch next to it that is otherwise completely hidden from the ground.

Secret rooftop area

The area is surrounded by the super-slippery red tiles, which makes exploring further difficult. You can still head East and jump down to the ground and explore Outside the mission's boundaries. If you head North you can strafe/run over a red roof and make it to another partially hidden area, a small balcony with a torch.

Another hidden area; views from above and from the ground

Position #6. This is a moderately difficult climb so I'll include precise instructions.
You need to use a lamppost as well as all six crates and the papyrus, a flare, a loaf of bread, a cheese, a cucumber and an invisibility potion in order to get enough height. You can throw most of the crates on top of the lamp to make things easy on yourself. Then, when you start stacking crates, you can reach up and grab them off the post. You'll need a stack of four crates to be able to get on top of the lamp and two more along with the items from your inventory to reach the roof. The easiest way to do this is to stack five of the crates, pick up the sixth from the top of the lamp post and then jump onto it. Now turn and face the stack you just made and drop the crate you're holding. Without otherwise moving, crouch and then lean forward. You should be able to reach the crate on the top of the stack. Now stand up and jump until you are on top of the crate. Drop the second crate and get on top of it and then drop the items from your inventory and you should be able to mantle onto the roof.

Getting a boost off a lamppost

Position #7. This one is a straightforward climb. In the same area where you just
climbed the lamppost (position #6 above) turn around and face the wall to your South. Staircase the six crates and up you go. Nice and simple.

Simple staircase

Position #8. Here's another moderately difficult climb, getting onto the turret to the
NorthEast of the pub. You will need all six crates, a zombie torso (or equivalent), the parchment and the invisibility potion. First throw all the crates and the zombie torso onto the ledge surrounding the turret as seen in the left hand image below. Next you need to get up there and join them.

Mantling from the top of the sewer grate is perfect for this. If you try to climb from the sewer grate when it standing upright you won't be able to get onto the ledge; it's not wide enough. So you have to shut the grate about halfway. Stand in front of the open grate and frob it. It will hit you partway down and stop. Now you need to get onto it and thence onto the ledge. When the grate is at an angle you cannot stand on the top of it without sliding off. So, once you mantle onto the grate, quickly run, jump, grab the ledge and pull yourself up. Now you need to start stacking. The best way to do this is to make a stack on either side of you and try to get as high as possible. With six crates and a zombie torso, you can make a stack consisting of four crates and a zombie torso. When you're on top of it, drop the papyrus and potion and get on top of them too. You should now be able to mantle onto the small ledge surrounding the top of the turret. There's no need to stop there though, if you look to the East you will see a flat roof on the other side of the street. You can just make the jump if you take a tiny run-up and strafe/run and jump. It may take a few tries but you can grab the edge of the building across the street and pull yourself up. Once again, you can access the Outside of the mission from here as well as enjoy the satisfaction of a difficult climb well done.

Climbing the turret - not for the beginner

Position #9. Between the pub and the Eastern portcullis is a lamppost with a flat roof
above it. Using six crates you can reach the roof and explore a bit of the area around the pub as well as Outside. The image on the left of the below screenshots is the setup. Throw three crates on top of the lamppost and stack the other three as you would normally. Now grab two of the crates from the lamp and stack them. You should now be standing

on a stack of five crates. Grab the sixth crate and jump onto the lamp. Make sure you're cantered on the lamp and then climb onto the final crate. From here you can jump and mantle onto the roof without difficulty.

After a night at the pub. Garrett felt like having some fun

Position #10. Here's where we get onto the pub itself. Beside the NorthWest corner of
the pub is a piece of machinery with big spikes sticking out of it. This will be the leg-up you need to reach the roof of the pub. It is very difficult to make a staircase when you're on top of an object, so start it off while you still have your feet on solid ground. Stand in front of the object and drop a crate on top of it - drop it on the right hand side or you won't have enough room to get on top of it yourself. Standing back, and stepping sideways a small amount, you can drop another two crates onto the staircase. For the last three crates, you'll need to climb up there and angle them towards the roof of the pub. Once on the roof you will find yourself in an enclosed section of the slippery red tile. As you can't fall off you can have some fun letting Garrett ice-skate around for a while.

The Crippled Burrick's secret ice-skating rink

Position #11. The Big W climb. On the other side of the canal from the Big W, to the
South, is a walkway and a tall building. On the corner of the walkway, its highest point, you can stack six crates into a staircase and climb onto the building's roof. From here you can reach literally dozens of other rooftops and make your way to the edge of the map and explore another section of the Outside.

Big W means low prices

Position #12. In the furtherest point on the West edge of the mission is a walkway that
leads nowhere. It's isolated by the canal and you must jump and mantle to get onto it and there's nothing there once you do. Nothing, that is, at ground level. A simple stack of four crates at its North end will let you mantle onto the red tile roof. Fortunately the roof here has a very gentle slope and you can stay up there without too much difficulty. Once up on the roof you can explore either to the North or the South. Heading South will take you all the way around to where a gate out of the city once was (see position 'B') and even to the Outside.

The road to nowhere leads somewhere

Last time through this mission, there were only six known areas where you could climb. Now, with the use of staircasing and a more thorough examination of the mission, that number has increased to 18, making it the most climbable mission yet.

Next in the series is Trail of Blood, a mission that really is in two parts. Garrett travels through the magic portal, still hot on the trail of the now-injured pagan courier. He's in for a hell of a trip as his journey takes him all the way back to the 'green, leafs-infested Maw' and a meeting with an old...associate.

Addendum:
(Luthien) re: teleported AIs. I guess they are just revived and teleported to new patrol routes, like in Assassins. Re: the 'fresh' zombie in graveyard. You can push the zombie out of the tomb if you are *very* *very* patient. Nudging him just the three steps took about one hour of game time.

Blood
Having followed the now-injured courier through the magic portal in the graveyard, Garret now finds himself in the land of the Pagans. Sadly, the Mechanists got there first and exacted a terrible price from them. Now Garret must follow the trail of blood to it's conclusion and come face to face with an old adversary. This mission is separated into two separate sections by a magic portal; the first being the Pagan village and the second is the new version of the Maw (bloody women! - leave 'em alone for five minutes and they'll redecorate) Because of this separation, it was necessary to break things up into two piles of bodies and materil. In the pagan village we find: 2 Red gems 1 Boulder 1 Speed potion 1 Slow-fall potion 1 Health potion 2 Wooden goblets 5 Wooden bowls 1 Scouting orb 3 Apples 1 Cucumber 2 Carrots 3 Flares 1 Dewdrop 4 Shovels 2 Picks 4 Mechanist maces

1 Papyrus 1 Map In the Maw we find: 5 Healing fruits 11 Skulls 2 Mechanist maces 1 Small pick 1 Flare 1 Pair of reading glasses 2 Healing potions 1 Speed potion 2 Wooden bowls 11 Apples 5 Letters* *Using several fire arrows I was able to move the courier's letter far enough away from his corpse that I was able to grab it and include it here. Sadly, the courier himself is immovable. Here're the shots:

The pagans held a rummage sale every Saturday

Those greedy Apebeasts... always wanting more, more, maw!

The Pagan village has a wealth of pre-loved corpses and a few meandering Mechanists. There are: 5 Pagan Women 1 Pagan female child 4 Pagan men 1 Mechanist Priestess 7 Mechanists macemen 2 Mechanist Archers 1 Un-KOable Mechanist maceman The New Maw has no living humans, but quite a few wandering beasties: 1 Pagan Courier 2 Dead rats 2 Mechanist Archers 8 Apebeasts with blowpipes 8 Apebeasts 6 Treebeasts

The Pagans and Mechanists were all nice enough to put aside their differences and moon the camera

Any one of these Apemen would make a fine rug

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay

Now that we've tallied what's on offer here, it's time to get down to how to use and abuse it.

General Gameplay:
This mission is definitely one of the prettiest to look at, with extensive use of coloured lighting, falling leaves and roaming frie lights. However, the scenes of carnage Garrett must pass through lie in stark contrast to the beauty around him.

Constantine never could learn to keep his mouth shut

Stalagmites make handy treasure troves

There are items to be found in almost every out-of-the-way place, including the inside of a waterfall. The most general rule when playing Thief is to look everywhere. The Mechanists in the first half of this mission are few and far between and the many shadows make it easy to either avoid or ambush them. To aid you in ambushing them, this mission contains a very special item...but more on that in the next section.

As this is the domain of the Pagans, it isn't really too unexpected that one of the most famed objects from the original game makes a comeback - the glowing, pickable mushroom (or 'shroom, as it prefers to be called). However, in Blood, they are much easier to find and there are more than the mere two you can find in the Dark Project.

Time for some of the famous 'shroom tea

This type of 'shroom is rounder than its mundane kin and has no stalk. In areas solely illuminated by such 'shrooms, you can pick them up to create shadows to lurk in as their light vanishes when you frob them - and so do they for that matter.

Strange things are afoot:

The dead do not rest easy in Garrett's world. From wandering zombies, haunts and apparitions, to ectoplasmic phantasmagoria, the dead _will_ be heard. This mission has more ghosts in it than you can shake a moderately-sized stick at. They helpfully spit out useful chunks of exposition and really set the scene for the massacre that took place before Garrett arrived. The ones found in this mission all ignore you (unlike a certain ghost you'll see in a later mission) and you can pass through them as though they weren't even there.

Garrett had worked as a Ghostbuster in his youth, but the experience left him feeling hollow

The amazing X-ray properties of the invisibility potion is extended in this mission to include slow-fall potions as well. If you drop any potion with a transparent container on top of a stack of objects, you will able to see right through all of them to the ground.

See-through boulders make the Maw a strange place to live (and very rough on the shins)

But the strangest thing you'll find in Blood is the gift given to you by the ghost of a small Pagan child - Dewdrop. Despite being the most famous of the 'Strange & Unusual' there are still those who don't believe he's real. Perhaps because they do not use the patched version of the game. In the unpatched version, Dewdrop is merely a doll you can carry with you so as to not to forget the fate of the villagers when they met the Mechanists; with the patch he has amazing powers.

Dewdrop lays the smack down on some Mechanists

If you pick up Dewdrop and then get attacked by some Mechanists, Dewdrop will magically appear in the air and temporarily blind them. He's like a very flashy flashbomb. Also voice of the little girl who gave you the doll says "Dewdrop doesn't like mechanists." But, he won't always appear for you, and sometimes, if you get the conditions right, he won't have any effect when he does.

Magical floating doll?

What magical floating doll?

If Dewdrop appears behind the Mechanists attacking you, or they are more than ten metres or so away, then they will not become blinded - even if they turn around to face him or come closer to him. In that case, he is of no help at all and the Mechanists will not pause in pummelling you into bite-sized chunks.

Fun with the AI:

Just as we have previously seen police swordsmen with extra-large helmets who cannot be knocked out, this mission introduces the Mechanist with extra-large helmet who cannot be knocked out. As this wanna-be 'Golden Helmet of Mambrino' protects against the blackjack, other methods need to be used to remove the wearer. Thankfully, the old tried and true method of 'drowning the sod' works quite well.

The whispered rumours that you had to kiss Karras' butt to get

one of the new helmets weren't exactly dispelled when the final design changes came through

In the second stage of the mission, the first living AIs you will encounter (aside from rats) are some most unusual plants with eyeballs at the top of their stalks. They're completely harmless and don't even summon anyone to help them if you decide to poke them with your sword.

If only the trees near my house were considerate enough to vanish rather than drop leaves all over my lawn

If you kill one of these eyeball plants they don't leave a corpse, but will rather vanish into thin air. Self-cleaning plants: the wave of the future! Along with velour, of course The mission objectives in Expert forbid you from killing any humans (as they always do), but they do not cover nonhuman creatures such as the ape-like creatures wandering the forests or the Treebeasts. As such, you can let any pent-up sadistic urges loose and be inventive in killing and torturing them.

Would sir like his apebeast medium rare or well done?

You can knock them out and drop them in water or throw them off one of the high cliffs; you can put them in a fire and listen to them scream. The only limit is your imagination.

Bobo the Apebeast wondered why he kept breaking out in large red spots after he finished his shift

You can also, with a bit of prodding, get the AI to kill itself and thus save you the trouble. Plus, when the AI commits suicide, any damage they cause to themselves isn't attributed to Garrett. The beehive in the Trees for all Seasons section is perfect for luring apebeasts to their deaths. A noisemaker arrow shot to land directly beneath the hive will make any nearby apes wander over for a look. Seeing them jump up and down in the air and scream is a real hoot.

Getting the AI to drown itself has been mentioned several times before in the Guide, but no screenshots of the practice were ever shown. This will now be rectified with a step-by-step photo tutorial on the subject.

The Kevorkian Institute for Thieving presents...

Firstly you need a place where the AI can fall into water. A gradual incline won't work in most cases as the AI no longer blithely walks into water beyond waist height. So somewhere they can be made to fall is ideal. For this mission, the magical bridge in the second half of the mission works very well. Get the attention of some AIs and make then chase you onto the bridge. When they are fully on it, jump into the water. As the AI cannot willingly follow you here they will start doing the Frustration Dance (see box 1). If you move around in the water, they will get more and more agitated and eventually step over the ledge onto thin air as they try to get at you. Sometimes they will fall by themselves (see box 2) and other times they will need a bit of encouragement. When the AI is standing out over nothingness, if you save the game and then reload they will fall (see box 3) and end up in the water (see box 4). Be careful at this point though. The AI doesn't swim in water like Garret does, they can run and attack just as they would on land. So if you allow a submerged AI to get too close to you before it drowns, it will attack you as you float there defenceless. In every mission there are areas where the AI just cannot go and these can be used to your advantage. The AI cannot walk on objects, so making a staircase of crates won't leave your hidey-hole vulnerable. Areas which require jumping or mantling to reach are

also pretty good for when you need some privacy. The other kind of area which AIs cannot enter are those that they cannot fit into. For example, running under staircases is a good way of getting out of striking distance of most AIs and as these places are normally pitch black, they will often eventually forget about you and wander off. In Blood, the best such area is at the entrance to the final section of the map - the Land of the Treebeasts.

Teasing Treebeasts not a sport for the timid

Even though the archway looks large enough for them to pass through, the Treebeasts will never go further than the little vestibule between the Winter and final section of the mission. Watching the most difficult to kill AI in the game do the Frustration Dance can warm the heart of even the most cold-blooded player. This convenient spot also allows you to take pot shots at the six Treebeasts in this area with firearrows and your sword. Broadhead arrows have no effect on them - so be warned!

A Climbing We Will Go:

As this mission is basically a series of separate set-pieces , it proved unexpectedly difficult to find any decent climbing locations. The stone walls around each section and the ubiquitous trees all merge with the sky/ceiling so nowhere really out of the way can be reached. The dearth of objects to carry doesn't help matters either.

The trees in Blood really are tall enough to reach the sky - mores the pity

Isolated climbing opportunities for the terminally addicted

Some immovable objects can be climbed onto if you so wish. This normally is of no use when the object is, say, in the middle of a field. But if the player is being chased by a Mechanist maceman, then climbing on top of a scarecrow or a torch can be a life saver. The Pagan village has pretty much all of the climbing spots in this mission and most of those are ludicrously easy.

The Pagans' climbing course for beginners

Most of the huts are so low that you can simply walk up to them and mantle straight onto the roof. Others only require a boulder to reach their roofs. Not exactly a challenge, but great practice for those new to the sport. The final house you come across is a bit taller than the others and needs a boulder and three potions in order to reach its roof. But as you can far more easily reach the roof by climbing up the treehouse next to it and jumping from there, the whole issue of climbing becomes moot.

Climb or jump. Both are easy

Fortunately the barn and silo provide a bit more of a challenge. This building is the only one in the mission that is two stories tall and, as it is built on a slope, takes more than a few seconds to overcome. Dropping objects on a slope and then trying to jump on top of them is an exercise in futility as they slide when they hit the ground. So an intermediate object needs to be used which you can brace your items against and which won't slide around too much. The two barrels inside the barn are prefect for this. Push them around behind the barn and arrange them as shown below.

Barnstorming

Carefully drop the boulder on top of the upright barrel and jump onto the horizontal one. You'll need to carefully centre yourself on top of this barrel and it'll probably take some doing. To see if you're correctly cantered, drop a potion. If it slides to one side, you're not yet cantered. Once you're cantered, drop a speed potion onto the barrel - if you use the boulder directly on the barrel it causes a lot of damage and will probably destroy it - and there goes your climb. You will also have to try not to jump more than the once to get onto the potion. If you jump twice, it will start sliding around. Now drop the boulder and get on top of it. You should now find that things have stabilised a lot more. You can jump up and down as much as you like and it shouldn't slip around. After this you only need to use the health and slow-fall potions and one of the big red gems and you should be able to mantle onto the roof of the barn. Once on top of the barn it is a simple matter to climb onto the roof of the silo; the highest climbable spot in the mission. The second challenging climb in the mission comes at the gathering place where all surviving the Pagans jumped through the Mouth of Constantine and escaped. This structure is taller than it appears and for a while I thought is was unreachable. Thankfully, Luthien (another dedicated climber) was able to make his way up there and was kind enough to let me use the screenshots he took. I'll let him tell the tale in his own words:

I used only the items found in the mission, nothing from the previous one.

Atop the meeting place

They chopped off the trees!

This is the stack

From up there I used apple-mantling (a variation of elevatoring - Az) to get onto the roof. I stacked the barrels on the stairs inside the meeting place. It took ages to get it right. There was a nasty surprise when the stacked barrels refused to move over the threshold of the gathering place. Had to move the top barrel onto the ledge beside the exit, push the lower one up the threshold and then the top one back in place. Barrels make nice stairs too. I put some stacking material on the torch (the four maces and the rock).

Next in the series is the mission you've all been waiting for - Life of the Party. Garrett teams up with Victoria to fight their mutual enemy, the Mechanists. He begins their partnership with a trip across the rooftops of Dayport to the mighty tower of Angelwatch to find some information on Karrass' plans.

Addendum:

(Luthien) I had no trouble at all with the tree beasts. Other than that three tree beasts at the same time make for a formidable challenge, that is. They never tried to run away. Oh, and WIlly-the-Wisp is a bit disappointed that you didn't notice him hovering above the tree beasts (telliamed) I wouldn't worry about the Willies. They're not technically creatures, anyway. More akin to elevators, as they merely follow a pre-determined path no matter what.

Did you know:

Life of the Party was first seen as 'The Unwelcome Guest' when it was released as the Alpha demo for Thief II, but there have been substantial changes in the mission from when it was first seen. The main thing most people notice is how much easier the mission is now that it is no longer necessary to jump and mantle from each and every building. The cityscape surrounding the mighty Angelwatch tower has been shrunk and rearranged and there is now only one main approach to the section of city where the tower lies rather than two. And, of course, the demo gave the player the ability to climb up inside the chimneys of Angelwatch to the roof of the tower where two Mechanist swordguards patrolled. In the final version, all the chimneys have been blocked off and the patrolling guards removed. Actually reaching the roof in the release version of the game was considered impossible until a dedicated climber called Luthien made it up there using almost every last object in the mission (and a great deal of effort). This feat was accomplished before the very same Luthien discovered how to staircase crates, a technique which makes reaching the roof of Angelwatch almost mundane. If anyone reading this guide has not played the demo, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's around 130Mb in size and well worth the download. You can find the demo at Thief: The Circle.com in the Files and Multimedia section.

Before we get into the Guide for this mission, there are a few definitions and techniques to go over.

Orb Mantling: This climbing technique has been covered before, but for those who've
forgotten, here's a brief refresher course. When you have multiple copies of certain items, such as scouting orbs, in your inventory and look down and drop them, they will stop at Garrett's chest height. You can jump up to three times and gain height each time, though any more than twice is a bit iffy. This can help in getting that little extra height when climbing resources are slim. Note - the last object of any type will not work, i.e. when you only have one scouting orb, it will fall all the way to the ground rather than stopping half way.

Frogbeast jumping: (Also known as Frogbeasting) There is a bug...I mean

feature...in the Dark Engine, which causes Garrett to take no damage from a fall if he lands on an AI. In missions with stationary guards, you can jump from even the highest roof onto their heads without harm. In this mission, Garrett gains access to Frogbeast eggs, these are AIs he can carry around in his pocket. If you jump from a height, look down and throw the egg just before you land, Garrett will land on the newly emerged Frogbeast and take no damage. With this technique, jumps from _any_ height can be made without taking a single hitpoint of damage.

Frogbeast Juggling: Very similar to Frogbeast jumping, but uses several eggs. When
Garrett throws an egg he will stop in midair, and on top of the Frogbeast, for a brief instant. During this time he can run forward. Repeating this step several times, with several eggs, can allow Garrett to gain considerable forward travel during a leap.

The Magic Cooking Pot: This pot is unique to this mission and, given its very
special properties and uses, deserves it's own special place in the definitions section. It is a holdover from the Thief II Alpha demo when you could still pick up pots and pans as you could in the first game in the series. In the Metal Age, Garrett has sadly lost his ability to pick up many simple household items. This pot can be picked up as it is hidden inside a wooden footlocker under the stairs in the Shemenov Estate and when 'dropped' or 'thrown' floats in midair. You can also stack items on top of it.

But, as Garrett can no longer pick up pots, it is a one-use-only item. So be careful where you put it. Once dropped, the pot is large enough to mantle onto. Thus, this mission gives the player a very special climbing aid which, when used carefully, can make otherwise impossible feats enter the realm of the possible.

Roof Block: A roof that is made out of a solid, rectangular block rather than being a
'real' roof. They look like a real roof, but have a transparent, flat top that you can easily mantle onto and walk along, despite it seeming that you're walking on thin air. It's like those specimens you played around with in science class in high school where you could handle insects encased in a clear block of plastic. Except in this case, rather than a scorpion or giant green huntsman, it is a roof that is safely enclosed in the transparent block. And now, on with the show...

Life of the Party

At the end of the previous mission, Garrett met up with his old adversary, Victoria, the being who took his eye in Thief: the Dark Project, and reluctantly joined forces with her so that together they might combat the growing threat of the Mechanists. At her request, Garrett must now enter a Mechanist stronghold, Angelwatch tower, to find information on the rumoured 'Cetus Project' and read more of the Hammer texts that are being rewritten by Karras, the leader of the Mechanists. Of course, Garrett's thieving instincts aren't so easily put aside that he does all this without taking home a few things for himself. Everything about Life of the Party is huge. From the height of the buildings to the expanse of Angelwatch, this mission is writ large. So it is no surprise then to find that, when it comes to the available objects you can use and carry, the list is also (very!) huge. I spied with my thieving eye: 1 Starburst device 3 Skulls 3 Blue vases 9 Trays 3 Unrolled scrolls 1 Warhammer 1 Mechanist mace 1 Hairbrush 1 Hand mirror

1 Deer leg 7 Cheeses 6 Breads 6 Apples 15 Flares (10 from Loadout screen) 1 Ribcage 2 Invisibility potions 2 Speed potions 8 Healing Potions (1 from Loadout screen) 1 Deck of cards 3 Scouting orbs 1 Scripture passage (from Loadout screen) 1 Papyrus 1 Loot tip (from Loadout screen) 1 Equipment tip (from Loadout screen) 1 Mechanist Schematics 1 Office key -blue 2 Gold keys 3 Silver keys 1 Castle Carlysle key 2 Gold keys 1 Magic Cooking Pot 1 Metal bowl 18 Wooden bowls 9 Metal plates 11 Decorative plates 8 Wooden goblets 12 Metal goblets 1 Black bottle 27 Green bottles 1 Gas mine 3 Mines 10 Rotten crates 28 Crates 2 Zombie torsos 4 Zombie heads That's a lot of stuff. In fact it's such a huge pile that, due to the Dark Engine making objects invisible when there are too many onscreen, it takes three screenshots to capture it all; two for all general items and one for the crates.

Even the Magic Cooking Pot made an appearance in this one

Karras' office after the party

The amazing crate balancing act

And the situation is similar when it comes to the AIs. LotP has them squirreled away everywhere, some walking along on the ground, and some "safely" behind windows. LotP never scrimps on things for the player to do, and collecting all the AIs is such a quest that it will be covered in its own section later in the Guide. 3 CombatBots 3 WorkerBots 11 Female Civilians 10 Male Civilians 3 Thieves 2 Keeper Agents 6 Red Archers 3 Purple Archers 3 Police Archers 2 Police Swordsman 7 Purple Swordsmen 5 Yellow and Purple Swordsmen 3 Mechanist Servants 1 Mechanist Priest 1 Mechanist Priestess 8 Mechanist Archers 12 Mace Mechanists 1 Golden Cherub 1 Longdaddy 1 Azaran the Cruel

The body politic

By the way, if you're wondering why the above screenshot looks so strange it's because it has been rotated 180. When I arranged the bodies, I had hoped to take their picture from the wall closest to Angelwatch, but that proved unworkable. And rather than move all the bodies again, I just climbed onto the opposite wall, took the screenshot and flipped it upside-down.

General Gameplay:
It can never be repeated often enough: When playing Thief Look everywhere - you never know what you might find. And when you think you've looked everywhere, look again. Secrets are hidden very well and will often be missed by the casual glance. Even common items such as health potions or loot may be placed in none-too-obvious spots; under a table, on top of a small ledge, behind a pot plant... Some of the AIs in Thief can cast spells, and each type has its own special magical projectile. The Mechanist priests and priestesses can conjure fiery gears, which they shoot at you. But unlike broadhead arrows, these types of projectiles move relatively slowly and don't arc in flight. This makes them very easy to avoid

Garrett gets a haircut

Sometimes all you need to do is duck to avoid them, or if you're already ducking, jump. The AI will also 'lead' their shots. If you're moving in one direction, they will fire assuming that you will continue moving. If you stop or otherwise change direction, they'll miss. Occasionally, given the slower speed of magical projectiles, they'll even accidentally shoot one of their own people always good for a laugh. In previous missions you will have encountered the Watchful Eyes, the security cameras of Garrett's world. Previously though, they could be disabled by finding their power switch, or you could just destroy them with a fire arrow. The cameras in Angelwatch, however, are already switched off when you start the mission and cannot be turned back on. As such they pose absolutely no threat to the player. But there is something very special about these cameras though - they are indestructible.

These cameras must be made out of the same stuff as the Golden Child

Even if you set off the Starburst device next to them (Thief's doomsday weapon) they remain unscathed. Care needs to be taken when using the Starburst device. Unlike normal explosives, this device has a dramatic horizontal component to its explosion. A section of the explosion will often break away from the rest and head in the direction of Garrett. This is why it is necessary to be a large distance away when detonating a Starburst, or to quickly seek cover - it may come looking for you! The Starburst device was basically put in the mission to allow the player to access the weapons in the Castle Carlysle Armoury without having to go all the way to the fifth floor of Angelwatch for the key. However, the armoury door can also be opened with a few fire arrows, thus saving the mighty Starburst for grander purposes.

Just North of Sir Cullen's Keep is a building with glass skylights. The glass is perfectly safe to walk - and even jump up and down - on and it won't break underfoot. Like all glass in the game it is susceptible to hits from your weapons, but with a bit of a run-up you can break the glass by taking a big leap onto it. Climb onto the wooden ledge surrounding the roof and take a running jump onto a skylight *SMASH* you'll go right through. Don't worry about falling and hurting yourself though, the breaking glass also manages to break your fall and you'll land safely on the carpeted floor below...amid the highly alert swordguard and his noble friend.

Strange Things are Afoot:

It is perhaps not too strange, in and of itself, that the most complex mission in the game also has some of the strangest things in it. The very first objective in this mission tells you to stay off the streets. Although this can be circumvented with a bit of luck and skill, there is a very good reason for it - things are _strange_ down there!

Weird happenings down below

If you turn left at the belltower and walk along the small ledge which leads to the first secret in the level, you can Frogbeast down to the ground and quickly run along the road the WorkerBot and the male noble travel. This will end the mission as this walkway is considered to be part of the ground, but you have a few seconds before the mission ends. Turn left at the first intersection and you will see that this road ends with sky. As the player was never meant to see this area close up, the designers took a few other liberties they never expected you to discover. Some of the stone archways are actually wooden inside and not all of the lampposts reach to the ground. Next to Fieldstone Estate is a rather decrepit-looking area with a thief and some burning furniture. Look carefully at the blue chest lying on its side in one of the rooms and you will notice that there is something less than normal about it.

Monkey had his flying cloud, Garret has his flying chest

Just because an object looks like its dimensions stop at a certain point, it doesn't mean that they do. Transparent sections of items such as crates, bottles and other items can make the world of Thief a curious place to explore.

The bed-block

Some beds, though they look identical to all the others, are actually large solid blocks and it is possible to climb up onto them or shoot arrows into their sides and marvel at how they seem to float in midair.

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air...

Even many of the rooftops in this mission are solid blocks. This allows the adventurous climber to get to areas which, at first glance, seem impossible - but more (much more) on that later. One part of this mission, which has caused much speculation, is the tower of the Necromancer, Azaran the Cruel. He was first mentioned by the Hand Brotherhood in Thief Gold and now makes his appearance in person - if you can find him that is.

On the top floor of his tower is a nondescript book sitting on an altar; it is the Book of Ash and reading it will summon the undead to you.

Klaatu Verada Nicto!

This can be rather a nasty shock if you're not expecting it - as I guess it was supposed to be. According to Emil Pagliarulo, ExLGS and current T3 designer with Ion Austin, "(W)hen I came up with the Book of Ash, I was indeed just paying homage to "evil" works like the Necronomicon. The "Ash" referred to fire, burning, etc. There was never any intentional reference to the Evil Dead movies, but the more I think about it, the more I must have done that subconsciously (been referring to the character Ash) and never even realized it..." {excerpt from this thread: The Book of Ash} Near the Necromancer's Tower is Sir Cullen's Keep, a building with a small turret- and a patrolling red archer. This archer is different from every other archer in the level (and the game). See if you can spot what the difference is in the screenshot below:

Yikes!

Yes, he shoots fire arrows. Nasty! On Expert difficulty, just one hit with a fire arrow, or even if it explodes nearby, is enough to kill you - even from full health. Fortunately he is also the worst shot of any AI in Thief. You can usually stand still while he shoots up to ten fire arrows at you before he will even come close to hitting you. While we're talking about AIs with unusual properties, let's take a look at a few others who aren't quite what they seem. The purple archers of Master Willey (who get into a fight with Lady Van Vernon's archers) are actually red archers in disguise. Just pick one up and see.

Not quite a many-coloured

dreamcoat, but better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick

On level 4 of Angelwatch is a small room in the West, just North of the library. In this room Lady Margaret is talking about the new Servants Karras has recently given to them with her companion, Lord Christopher. She is wearing a grey dress, but pick her up and she suddenly is wearing a red one. It wouldn't be a Strange Guide without including a few objects that are a bit, well, dodgy

Not Quite Right Supermarkets is proud to sponsor LotP

As you can see, the large metal door next to the Rothschilds' hole in the wall has a handle that hangs in space. The taps in the kitchen of Angelwatch also seems to defy gravity. The lower-left image isn't really strange except when you consider how the properties of certain items have changed since the first game. Many items will now no longer stack up when placed on the ground - this image shows just that situation with twenty green bottles arranged in a circle. They all just fall into one another as if they weren't solid.

You can use scouting orbs as a climbing aid (see definitions at the start of this Guide) to get over walls, but they are also helpful if you want to go climbing around on the heads of some AIs.

Piggy-back rides, Garrett style

Jumping on an AI's head is a good way to get it to move around, so you'll need to pick one that isn't too good at moving; in this case, I used the _very_ drunk guard you meet before you get to Angelwatch. You can jump from the top of the walls onto his head and if you quickly throw down your scouting orb, not only can you see yourself riding this drunkard, but when he moves away you will float in the air for a short period. Good, wholesome fun. To reach Castle Carlysle you must make a seemingly perilous tight-rope walk across a narrow beam with huge banners depending from it. Well, I say 'seemingly' because if you experiment a bit...

From tight-rope walk to walk-in-the-park

The apparently narrow walkway is actually a lot wider than it looks. More than wide enough for three crates placed side by side. So take it easy when you walk across, you won't fall unless you really try. Once across the banners you can explore a small greenhouse before making your way to the armoury. This greenhouse holds a small green spider, but before you shoot it, wait for a minute.

Longdaddy, the gardener's friend

This is the only spider in the series that doesn't try to kill you. In fact, if you read the gardener's journal you'll see that he's quite friendly. Why not leave him some food as a treat? Remember that drunken guard we played piggyback with before? Well he has a friend. Actually, that should be "he had a friend". Look over the wall and you'll see him lying on the ground. That's quite a fall, but it only goes to show that you shouldn't drink and patrol. In the 'Unwelcome Guest Alpha Demo' this guard was lying on the wall next to the conscious guard. In the reshuffling of the mission architecture he got himself moved, and not for the better.

Splat!

While you're looking over that wall at the poor, dead guard, take a look at the small building with the purple roof next to him. Now to me it looks like a building, and to you it probably looks like a building, in fact Id say that most people would agree - it's a building. Not according to this mission it isn't though. If you get too near it, or walk on its roof, the mission will fail as the game considers it part of the ground. Now we come to the strangest part of the strangest mission - Angelwatch tower. Where to begin! All the items available in this mission were separated into several screenshots because the Dark Engine will make items invisible when there are too many on screen at one time. This can actually be a good thing in some instances. Take Karras' office for example, it has a hidden panel behind the lovely (and presaging) picture of a lighthouse.

Hey presto! Secret revealed

Putting a huge pile of stuff in his office will make the picture vanish so you can see inside. If you ever wanted to find a secret hiding place and were at your wits' end, you could theoretically gather a huge pile of stuff to see where it's hidden. Though that seems a bit too much like overkill. Before we go any further into Angelwatch, let's examine Father Karras - founder of the Mechanist Order, technophile, creator of Garrett's eye, and nutcase.

Must...resist...urge... ...to...draw...moustache...

Some people reckon that Karras has a claw for a hand - similar to the ones used by the Children of Karras. But if you look carefully at the picture, you can see that the metal 'fingers' on the painting at Karras' chest height don't actually belong to Karras' hand. His left arm is actually down by his leg - you can see his sleeve. Despite his less-than-perfect mental balance and less-than-masculine vocal talents, Karras has certainly created some impressive things: Who can forget the inflatable banners?

Just like Karras - it looks big until you cut it down to size

Or metal underwear?

Garrett wasn't impressed when Brother Cyril asked him upstairs to help "polish his gears"

The vanishing paintings in the guest bedrooms?

I can't think of anything witty to write here

The sunken crockery in the storerooms?

Revenge of the shoddy wooden shelves

The gramophone that tries to sink through a table?

Transparent tables don't quite work properly yet

Remember how some beds are actually solid blocks? Well so are most of the couches in the mission.

Despite being a militant order, Mechanists did enjoy their novelty seat cushions

The only couch that isn't a solid block is the one in the library with the scarlet lady sitting on it. In fact this couch is so far from solid that the lady will fall right through it if you knock her out - to crudely amusing results. A well-known bug in LotP is Angelwatch's elevator. Sometimes you can make yourself pass right though it but not fall. The best way I've found to do this is to crouch and walk along one of the walls of the shaft while the elevator rises and then jump a few times. If you do manage to pass through the elevator, you will keep rising at a pace with it and be able to walk around as though you were on an imaginary lift.

Garrett learns to levitate

If you hit a button as you go past and the lift changes direction, you will too. The only way to get yourself out of this is to walk out a doorway as you go past. Once you're outside of the shaft you will cease to be affected by the bug and be ruled by gravity once more. Because of this, I don't recommend you do it while high above the ground floor. Speaking of the ground floor, walk up to the front door while you're there and give the doors a frob. Garrett tells you that the doors are locked. You might now think that you can't get out this way, after all those doors are metal and you can't bash those down with your sword. Give them a bash anyway - notice something? Yes, those art deco doors are actually made out of wood and you can bash them open like any other wooden door. And directly outside the front doors is a huge blank area where you can wander freely and check out the sights - including the largest purple statue in the known universe. When you read the Revised Scripture of the Master Builder you get a little surprise - a Golden Child, also called 'Golden Cherubs', 'Mechanical Children', and 'What the hell is _that_ freaky thing!'

The Golden Child lays down the groove

In this, and in the other mission he appears in, it seems to be his function to warn other AIs about you. In this mission, however, that bit of scripting seems to be broken.

What's that Lassie? Someone fell down the well and they can't get out?

Once he runs from the room, the Cherub heads to the kitchen and tries to alert the Mechanist Servant there. However, the Servant pays no attention to him. This is also the case for the Cherub - if you remove the Servant, the Child will tug at empty air in a vain attempt to raise the alarm.

The Golden Child is invulnerable. He cannot be killed or harmed in any way. However, he can be temporarily blinded with a flashbomb. Let's consider something from the start of the mission for a moment: When you reached Fieldstone Estate back at the start of the mission, you could steal a golden key from the patrolling swordsman there. Well, this is a very unusual key - it will open the doors on level 5 of Angelwatch that lead to the room where the Scripture and the Child may be found. Why a key from the opposite end of the map can do this is a mystery. But far greater strangeness surround this key than which locks it can open. There is a Mechanist maceman patrolling the corridor outside these rooms and he has a small silver key, and there is another small silver key on the ground under the desk in the room with the Child. If you pick up these silver keys while the gold key from Fieldstone Estate is in your inventory, the silver keys will turn gold and increase in size to match the Estate's key. But if you pick up the gold key while having either/both silver keys in your inventory, it will turn silver and shrink. But perhaps the strangest thing about Angelwatch tower is that no matter how hard you look, you won't be able to find any toilets. No wonder the Mechanists are always so grumpy.

Fun with the AI:

The great heights of the buildings in LotP mean that it is not always easy to make a quick escape when spotted by an enemy - sometimes there's just nowhere to run. But the heights can be used to your advantage in the classic technique of "Making the AI kill itself". The yellow and purple swordguard you encounter at the start of the mission is a very good example of this. If you let him see you and quickly run back out the window, he will climb out after you. But he will only do so if you stand on the raised edge of the roof.

Over he goes!

Running to the opposite edge of the roof means that the guard will have to run around to get at you. When he turns the final corner though, he will often stray a bit too far and end up over the edge for a few moments. If you quickly save the game at this point and then reload it, the guard will fall down to the ground. Sometimes he even takes enough damage from the fall to die. When you pass the Fieldstone Estate you can see two thieves having a conversation about breaking into an apartment. This apartment complex is protected by a patrolling guard who does not look kindly on intruders. This, of course, is your cue to try and get the two parties to meet and exchange 'friendly' greetings.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

The ways to get these three AIs to meet are only limited by your imagination. You can shoot a noisemaker arrow through the window, you can run through the building yourself and get them to chase you, or you can just jump up and down on the building's roof until they meet each other while searching for you. Just like the arguing archers, the results of fights between the guard and the thieves are not set in stone. Sometimes the guard will kill both thieves, sometimes only one. Sometimes the thieves will get the drop on the guard and he won't even get a lick in.

So...you guys come here often?

But one thing you need to remember at all times - even though some AIs hate each other, they all hate YOU more and will forego fighting between themselves in order to nail your precious hide to the wall. In the Strange section, the archer who shoots fire arrows was briefly touched upon. He patrols Sir Cullen's Keep and though he should usually be avoided, you can have a great deal of fun with him if you're daring. Unlike broadhead arrows, fire arrows will explode when they hit something. Thus if the archer can be convinced to shoot a wall next to him, the resulting explosion will often kill him and anyone else foolish enough to stand next to him

Didn't your mum ever tell you about playing with matches?

If you hide outside a window and let him shoot at you, he will often miss you completely (he's not a very good shot) and hit the doorframes or window frames beside him. So all you need to do is lure him so that is standing right next to one of those frames when he fires - the results can be seen in the above screenshots.

Fire is not only good in killing guards, it can kill almost any creature in the game - only ghosts are immune. The cleansing power of flame is also very effective against the undead, such as zombies. This mission gives us two zombies to play with; they're summoned by reading the Book of Ash. But rather than wasting precious, and expensive, fire arrows on their rotting corpses, there is another method you can use to destroy them.

Zombie BBQ

A sword cannot kill a zombie, but it can knock one down and send it into a sort of sleep. It will remain in this 'sleep' until the player approaches it again and gets near enough to wake it up. Other AIs can't wake up a zombie, it's a job you have to do yourself. But if you knock a zombie down while it is standing, say, on top of a fireplace, then it will fall into the fire and remain there no matter what - unless you get too near to it. As the fire in the fireplace doesn't damage them too quickly, it will sometimes take up to half a minute before the zombie is overcome and explodes(!). An unintended bonus of this is that if you haven't pressed the secret button in the fireplace, the flying zombie giblets will do it for you - killing two birds with one stone, as it were.

There is one short stop to make on the way though. Just before you reach the tower is the famous drunk guard. Now, this guy's no Benny who can spend an evening drinking but still be able to chase Garrett for half an hour and poke him with his sword until he yells "Ouch, I'm dead!".

Hic!

Although he will run towards you like he is going to attack, once he gets there he finds that the spirit may be willing but the flesh is altogether too weak. He's harmless and can be a lot of fun. In Thief the Dark Project and Thief Gold, AIs with a ranged attack could be easily made to kill their own people, or even themselves. The AI in Thief II has been made slightly less suicidal and wont fire if their shot would otherwise impact one of their own people. But you can still get 'friendly fire' if you practice. AIs with magical weapons are the easiest as the projectiles are so slow that other AIs have time to get in the way and get hurt.

Sorry, my bad

You need to get an AI between you and the one with a ranged attack and then step from side to side. This means that although the ranged AI may have a clear shot when it fires at you, a second later that space will be filled with one of their friends. LotP has two Keeper agents hiding away in it. They're supposed to vanish if you get too close, but you can grab them with a bit of lateral thinking (an explanation on how to do this is detailed in the Collecting the AI section). Once you have your unconscious Keeper, what should you do with him? It would be rather churlish just to throw him off a roof, or leave him to the rats in a run-down cellar. I decided to take him to Angelwatch to see what sort of reaction the Mechanists would have upon seeing him

This was no boating accident!

Now you're probably curious as to what the reaction is when one AI meets another whom it was never meant to see. And frankly, I don't blame you.

Collecting the AI
There are three types of AIs in this mission who pose greater than ordinary challenges to collect; 1) both Keepers, 2) the Rothschilds, 3) the AIs at street level. The Keepers are a bit tricky as the first one is behind impenetrable glass and the second one is a non-physical ghost and both pull vanishing acts if you get too close.

The first Keeper is right at the start of the mission behind reinforced a glass window above some large generators. There are two gas arrows to be found in this mission and, if you shoot one of them at the window, some of the gas will pass through and knock the Keeper out. As the room isn't wide enough for the Keeper to fall down without bits of him poking out, you will sometimes find that his feet stick through the wall and seem like an easy grab.

Keeper under glass

But don't celebrate yet. As soon as you approach to within a few feet of the body it will vanish. But if you approach via the rooftops and shoot a vine arrow into the wooden shutters you can jump down from above and bypass the invisible trap that deletes the Keeper. The rooftop pictured from above in the right-hand image above can be reached easily with three scrolls, a health potion and an Orb mantle. Once you have the Keeper, leave the area and don't come back - the vanishing trap is still active and no matter where the Keeper is, he will disappear. The second Keeper is a lot easier to grab as you can come right up to him. Just before Lady Louisa's suite is a small, open window on your right. As soon as you approach it you can see a Keeper appear out of thin air and walk through a doorway. If you're very quick you can jump through the window after him. But you cannot blackjack him, in fact you will find that he is about as solid as air. Be careful about taking your eyes off him as well, as soon as he leaves your sight or gets more than a few steps down the corridor behind the door, he will vanish.

The Ghost Keeper

In order to grab this one you need to delay him long enough to shoot him with your second gas arrow. Fortunately, even though he is immune to your blackjack, he is not immune to flashbombs. As soon as he appears throw a bomb or two into the room and blind him. Then, while he stumbles around, climb through the window and gas him. Unlike the other Keeper, once he is in custody he won't vanish on you if you go exploring around his room. The Rothschilds are a different kind of challenge all together; you can see them, you can get real close to them, and there is nothing between you and them and except an open window. Sadly, the window is not open enough to fit through. In Thief: the Dark Project and Gold the AIs were unable to climb anything taller than a small step. If you jumped onto a small table they were stymied. In Thief II this situation has been rectified somewhat. They are capable of climbing onto tables, chairs and desks - the only trick is in convincing them to do so. This is made even more difficult with the Rothschilds as you only have such a small window to access them through.

Juniper Rothschild the Third,

meet Mr. Frog

Once the Rothschilds are done with their conversation, they will start searching for you if you've been making noise. Ordinarily they will stay away from the window, and if they approach they won't climb onto the table. So extraordinary measures need to be taken. In other words, you really need to attract their attention. If you can get a noisemaker arrow to land on the table under the window it can make them approach the table, but to ensure success nothing can replace...time. Standing outside their window and repeatedly jumping will eventually lure the two of them onto the table. And by 'eventually' I mean several hours. If you don't want to suffer from repetitive strain injury, I recommend finding another way to hit the jump button than using your hand. One of those drinking bird toys is great for the task but they don't last too long. If you bind "jump" to another button beside the space bar, and hold it down with a small, heavy weight Garrett will jump up and down indefinitely. Once they eventually do get their sorry butts up onto the table, you still need to have patience. This mission only has two gas arrows and you need those for the Keepers, so you'll have to find another way to get your grubby hands on them. Fortunately, the Frogbeast eggs you start the mission with are perfect for this purpose. The eggs are too large for you to throw through the window, but if you rest a crate in the gap between the ledge you're standing on and the window, the froggie will sit there happily...until you shoot it, that is. Once you have one Rothschild down, the other will often head straight to their downed companion and allow you repeat the process with a second crate and egg. With the Keepers and the Rothschilds safely in the bag, that only leaves the AIs wandering along on street level. These can be easy or difficult to collect depending on how your game has defined both "street level" and their patrol paths. Some people find that they cannot step on the ground in most parts of this mission without it failing, others are able to explore a lot more and the very lucky few can walk the ground with impunity. The script which defines "Street level" doesn't seem to be the most stable of things and can vary widely not only from each installation of the game, but to each restarting of the mission. The AIs themselves don't always behave in an orderly fashion. The noble who starts off next to the belltower will sometimes walk the entire path with the WorkerBot and other times only go halfway before turning back. In order to collect the AIs on the ground, you need to have a mission which allows you at least limited ability to walk on street level and for the noble to walk the entire length of his patrol route before turning back. The AIs are grouped into two separate patrol routes - the first route is mentioned above; the WorkerBot and the noble who wander the length of the mission. The second is the

Baron's Way where a CombatBot and several humans wander back and forth. This means that you only need two places to reach the ground in order to collect everybody. The first place you need to go is to the window between the Necromancer's tower and the apartment building. This small gap has wooden windowsills and if you shoot vine arrows into them you can climb all the way down to the ground.

'Stay off the streets'? Pah! I laugh at your puny objectives

Even with the help of vine arrows you'll need to take a crate with you as the vines don't reach down low enough for you to reach them from ground level without a bit of help. Once you're down you may need a bit of patience for the WorkerBot or the noble to pass by - it's a very long patrol route they have. Then you only need to make a bit of noise and get them to start looking for you and then whip out the blackjack. The WorkerBot can take a bit more convincing before it strays from its patrol route, but it can be done. This leaves only the AIs patrolling along the Baron's Way, the main thoroughfare in Dayport. If you head North through Sir Cullen's Keep you exit onto the roof of a building with glass skylights. The East side of this building leads down into a small alley which opens onto the Baron's Way and even has a wooden ledge encircling it so that you can attach a vine arrow there. But getting onto a vine arrow from above is no mean feat when the vine itself is facing away from you. You can try crouching and walking backwards to get onto it, but it is still all to easy to miss the vine and fall to your death, or bounce off the vine, get thrown against the opposite wall and die - and then fall to the ground. You can't drop crates from the roof to the ground to make a stack to climb down on either, it's too high and the crates will break. So what is needed is a way to both safely grab hold of the vine and take a few crates down to street level without losing them the vine doesn't reach quite to the ground, so you'll need some way to get back up.

This is where the special properties of the Magic Cooking Pot come in to play. As the pot is unaffected by gravity, once you let go of it, it will remain suspended in midair forever. What you need to do is to pick it up and take a flying leap from the edge of the roof into the small alley. Once you've travelled a suitable distance, look straight down and throw the pot - just like you would when Frogbeasting. But, as the pot is not an AI, you will take some damage when you land on it. You should now find yourself standing on top of the Magic Pot, hopefully at least halfway down to the ground. Now you can easily shoot a vine arrow into the side of the roof you just leapt from and jump from the Magic Cooking Pot onto it without fear of harm.

Making a Pot staircase

Now it is a simple matter to make a staircase on top of the pot by dropping crates on top of it and taking a small step to the side each time you add a new one. Repeat this until you have a neat staircase you can reach from the rooftop. Climb down it with a crate in your hand and gently drop crates onto the ground (see image below). You need to drop enough crates that you can make a stack tall enough to can reach up to the vine arrow and thus be able to return to the rooftops once you have collected the AIs wandering around the thoroughfare.

Visiting time at the zoo

Attracting the AIs on the road is just as simple as it was before, though as they are so far away you may need to shoot a broadhead arrow or a noisemaker to attract their attention. Take care when attracting the CombatBot, the alley isn't all too wide and unless you have a mine it can be tricky taking him out. Quick Tip: robots are affected by flashbombs too. You can blind them in order to get behind them. Also, the blackjack is surprisingly effective against them and a dozen blows to the head will kill any robot. If you time your strikes properly, they wont even be able to fire back at you as they rock slightly with each impact. There is one more AI on the ground in this mission, but he's not going anywhere. The building with the extremely drunken guard on its roof has a little secret you can find if you look over the ledge. Down on the ground is another guard who must have gotten a little too tipsy and fallen to his death. If you exit Angelwatch tower by the front doors (just hit them a few times with your sword to open them) and hug the walls while outside and you should be able to reach him. Don't stray too far from the walls or the mission will realise that you're on the ground and end in failure.

A Climbing We Will Go:

With all the above completed, we come at last to the section for all the mountaineers and spelunkers out there- climbing. With its massive size, Life of the Party has a wealth of climbing spots on offer, if you're heading up or down there is plenty to keep you occupied for quite some time. Starting from the start (as one is wont to do) of the mission, we'll explore all the areas you can climb down and then the ones where you can climb up in the order you would encounter them as you play through the mission. You begin this mission at the belltower and there are two spots right here to head down to street level safely. Both require Frogbeasting and are one-way trips. The belltower has a narrow space between it and the surrounding buildings along its East and North sides. Walk to the edge of the tower and drop off the side. A Frogbeast egg will let you land safely. You can walk along this thin strip right up to the road with the patrolling AIs. Just to the SouthEast of the tower is a small ledge which leads to a secret. You can drop down from this ledge into the small area of street next to the road the WorkerBot and the civilian walk along.

The tower with Master Willey's archers, who are arguing with Lady Van Vernon's archers, has a small area of street on its East side you can reach safely. This, like all the other areas mentioned here, is a one-way trip which requires a Frogbeast egg to reach. There are other areas on the ground you can reach safely and return and they are listed in the section Collecting the AI.

Safeground to the SE of the belltower and Master Willey's archer's tower

The next section you come to is East of the housebreakers. The roof the thieves are using to reach the apartment building has a very narrow gap on its East side. You can jump down there as long as you're not afraid of tight squeezes. If you take the route which leads through the Astronomer's room, you come out by a patrolling swordguard and a stationary archer. In front of the archer is a stand-alone tower and you can jump down on its North side

Top: next to the Housebreakers Bottom: the tower North of the Astronomer's room

Just before you reach Lady Louisa's Suite, on the rooftop where you meet the second Keeper, there is a small gap on the East side you can jump down into. Once you have passed through her suite and out the other side, immediately turn West and you will come across another spot to reach the street level to the South.

Going down at Lady Louisa's

These are all the places (with the exceptions of the two locations mentioned in the Collecting the AI section and the areas around Angelwatch which are detailed below) where you safely walk the streets in LotP. Most of the places have little to see and little to do, and the only reason to visit them is to be able to say you've done it. Now we continue the Guide by heading in the other direction - with all the places where you can climb up. From the belltower where you start the mission, head West until you reach the area with the generators and the first Keeper. The wall here is easy to climb if you bought all the scrolls in the loadout screen. Stack the three scrolls and the health potion and you're nearly there. Now if you use one of the scouting orbs, you can orb-mantle onto the roof.

Climbing the roofs around the first section of the mission

From this roof you can access every other roof in the first section of the mission - from the areas around the Belltower right up to the boundaries of Fieldstone Estate. But there is another way to get onto the roof, and one which requires the use of none of your equipment. Next to Lady Van Vernon's archers is a pipe on a section of wall which sticks out slightly. Stand on the brick ledge where the Van Vernon archer's are and strafe-run towards the edge of the small section of wall. Using strafe-run gives you an increase in speed, enough to be just able to reach the top of the wall above the pipe and mantle your way onto it. You can head back East towards the belltower (start of mission) from here and can mantle onto the rooftop you quickly come to. As it abuts the sky, you need to be right up against the edge (North side)

This narrow ledge takes you back to the Belltower and an unusual roof. Look Ma, I'm walking on air!

Once you're heading back East on the ledge, you have two option on where to explore once you come to the next building - it's the one which has the archer in a small room, next to the generators. You can step down to your right into the area behind the roof or you can mantle onto the invisible block of the roof itself. From this roof you can walk right over the top of the red roof block to the East and you will be back on the first roof listed in this section and all without having to use any items or equipment. You can now easily wander around and have a close look at the roof of the Belltower it is a block roof as well, but it cannot be climbed as it touches the sky. You can also wander around the belltower and explore the roofs to the North. If you walk along this Northern section you will eventually come to the large red tile roof block of the building which has the patrolling sword guard and leads to the quarters of the Astronomer.

The Astronomer's roof gives quite a view

With two scrolls you can mantle onto this roof block and enjoy the great view. It is also easy to see how the fogging for this mission is broken from this vantage point. From this rooftop you can jump down onto the roof of the small building you walk around when you make your way (via conventional means) to the arguing archers (see top image below).

Jump down from the Astronomer's roof to visit the small building next to the arguing archers

From the Northern section of roofs (described above, i.e. from where you can jump down to the roof next to the archers), you can head West and you will come to a purple roof block next to the roof of Master Willey's tower. This roof requires three scrolls and two potions to get onto (you can pick up a second health potion behind a pot plant on the upper floor of the building where the swordguard patrols -the building with the Astronomer's room). From this roof block you can jump onto the roof of Master Willey's tower and look down on the arguing archers.

View from Master Willey's tower's roof

Just to the East of Lady Van Vernon's archers is a rectangular, suspended corridor aligned North-South. You can easily jump onto its roof and to the South is another roof you can climb onto. A stack or staircase of 4 crates will get you high enough for you to reach the roof here. You need all four crates as there isn't enough headroom to mantle up - its crawling room only and it can be a bit tricky getting from the crates onto the roof.

A low roof provides the climber's first minor challenge

The best way to get from a stack onto a roof with low headroom is to first get as close as you can to matching the height of the rooftop with a stack of crates. Then, from the top of the stack, crouch and run at the wall and you should make it. Sometimes you won't quite get up there, but if you get as far onto the roof as you can and then quickly tap the jump key, you can usually make it the rest of the way. The next area with climbing possibilities is Fieldstone Estate - the building with the crenulated roof and the patrolling swordguard with the key that can open doors all the way over at Angelwatch tower. Starting with the SouthEast corner of the Estate, you can stand on top of the crenulations and simply mantle onto the flat roof here and get a nice view of the terrain you've just traversed. In the NorthEast corner, two crates stacked on top of the wooden roof of the Apartments next to Fieldstone Estate's crenulations will get you up onto the metal roof here. From this metal roof you can head NorthEast past the Necromancer's spire. See that nice, flat, stone roof just East of the spire? Looks like an easy jump - but it's protected by an invisible barrier of sky and cannot be reached from here. Don't worry though, we'll be getting up there in a minute from another direction.

From the top: The SE corner; the NE corner; the roof next to the Necro' Spire that's out of reach

Stack 4 crates in NorthWest corner of Fieldstone Estate and you'll be able to mantle onto the purple roof block next to the Estate and from there reach a brick roof to the North. If you're up for more of a challenge you can try and make it onto the brick roof to the North by running, jumping and mantling. The purple roof block sticks out slightly so it'll take a bit of work to get up there. Once up on the roof you will have the pleasure of seeing the area surrounding the housebreaker's and the Necromancer's tower from a unique vantage point. The last place Fieldstone offers to climb is the roof of the Estate itself and there's not much room between the roof and the sky. This is the biggest climb so far, requiring a staircase of no less than 12 crates to make it up there. If you start from the top of the crenulated wall you'll save yourself the effort of carrying a few more crates. It's a

squeeze to make it up there and it can be a bit tricky to know when it's safe to jump as the top of the roof block is invisible, but it is possible.

The brick roof to the NorthWest and the Roof of Fieldstone Estate

We will now get back to climbing onto the roof of the building to the East of the Necromancer's Spire (I said wed get back to it). Take the 12 crates you used to get onto the roof of the Fieldstone Estate and carry them the short journey to the ledge of Sir Cullen's Keep - where the archer who shoots fire arrows patrols - and staircase them up to the rooftop. This is yet another tight squeeze as the sky is very low in this part of the map. Once up there, you can head East until you come to a metal roof - above the Rothschilds - but as the sky is so low here you can't make it over. Yes, we will be getting onto that roof as well before we're done, so hold tight. From this section of the map you normally head through Sir Cullen's Keep and onto the area above the Baron's Way, but there is a section of map which we've missed - the area you explore if you head through the Astronomer's room and from there to either the Shemenov Estate or back to the area we just covered. In the Astronomer's room is a window with a telescope pointing out of it. Sadly, this window touches sky so you couldn't get out through it even if you could get past the large telescope. But there is light at the end of this tunnel, light in the form of more climbing opportunities, that is. A trip through the Astronomer's room will take you out to the rooftop of the Shemenov estate and a guard area with a patrolling swordsman and a stationary archer. To the East of the Shemenov's chimney, staircase 7 crates on top of the low ledge that runs around the rooftop. This is another of the very low sky areas that LotP seems to have in abundance, so be prepared for a tight squeeze.

From the SouthWest corner of the Shemenov roof, staircase 7 crates and you can reach the roof above the guard building with the archer. This is another low roof, but it gives access to a host of other roofs, so is well worth the effort.

The roof next to the Necromancer's tower (where the fire archer patrols) and both of the 7 crate climbs around the Shemenov Estate

Heading West on top of this rooftop will take you onto the metal roof above the Rothschilds that was inaccessible before (if approached from the rooftop next to the Necromancer's tower). Directly North from this point is a small (tiny, really) building with a red tile roof that looks like it was custom made to be a bridge to more roofs to the North. Be very careful when crossing this roof, it is made from super-slippery tiles. You _can_ make it across - and finally get to stand up again too! This roof will take you all the way North to the roof of the Dayport Trader's Bank and a very strange roof it is. Backing up briefly, when you first get over the slippery red roof of the tiny building there is a red roof block to your East. Stacking 3 scrolls and a health potion - or 1 crate will take you onto the roof block. This roof belongs to the Shemenov Estate where it comes out next to the Dayport Trader's Bank and there's another flat roof to the South (on the other side of the roof block) you can walk right onto from here and which gives a view back to the area you just came from.

Over the slippery tile roof gives access to a roof block and a view of the area you just came from

We'll get back to this area shortly, but first let's go back to where we were before - the area where the two paths we could choose at the start of the mission (through the Astronomer's room, or East past the duelling archers) join together again by the Necromancer's Spire. Heading North from the Necromancer's Spire takes you through Sir Cullen's Keep and out onto the main thoroughfare; the Baron's Way and the first truly difficult climb in the mission. The sky in this section of the map touches the roofs of the buildings and because of this you cannot climb on top of Sir Cullen's Keep or, across the banner tightrope, onto Castle Carlysle's roof. But, above the Baron's Way itself, the sky is very high and you can stack many crates without banging your head. It was while doing just this when making a screenshot of all the crates that my view turned West and I noticed:

A new roof to climb!

Getting to the roof to explore it is quite tricky and it's a one-way trip - you'll need 1 speed potion, two Frogbeast eggs and 18 crates. Start making a staircase on the edge of the building with the glass skylights - you have to make a corner after 5 or so crates to get around the building blocking your way. When you reach a staircase of 18 crates you will find that you head is just touching the sky when you stand on the top crate. Now comes the tricky part. Even if you made the most perfect staircase possible, it will still be too short for you to just jump off and reach the building. Even running and jumping won't do it. You need to drink the speed potion, strafe/run and jump off the last crate. Hopefully you made the staircase extend sufficiently so that you land on the roof. But you were so high up when you jumped that landing on the roof is often fatal. This is why you need the Frogbeast eggs; throw the first egg just before you land and you will do so safely. Once on the rooftop, take a few moments and just savour the view of the Baron's Way seen from a new spot for a few moments before you go and explore. At the very Western end of the roof is a long (dark!) drop to the ground. This is what your second Frogbeast is for. Take a running jump and launch yourself off the roof and use the egg to land safely. This section is not considered to be part of the ground and you can walk around safely in the total quiet and total dark. If you look to the East you can see a tunnel that leads out onto the Baron's Way and watch as the AIs patrol in circles. They don't walk out into the area you're wandering around in, but you can shoot a few arrows to attract their attention and make them come out into the safe area.

Garrett joins the West Enders

Moving on to the next climb now...from Sir Cullen's Keep, you can head East to the Dayport Trader's Bank. We saw earlier that you can reach the Bank's roof (eventually) from the roof above the archer's platform next to the Shemenov Estate, but the bank offers three more routes to its roof and only one requires the use of crates. Staircasing 6 crates will take you right up the West face of the bank. There is a slight overhang around the roof so you need to make the stack far enough away from the wall that you don't bang your head and, possibly, fall all the way to the street below. The East face of the bank opens out onto a balcony and you can climb up onto the roof from either of two places here.

Climbing onto the bank via the West face and from the roof next to the East face

To the South is a flat roof with a ledge around it that leads to the Shemenov Estate and, to the North, is a roof with wooden beams protruding out of it. Running and jumping from the edges of these roofs will allow you to grab the edge of the balcony roof and mantle up. As explained earlier, the bank roof gives access to several others to explore.

Climbing onto the bank via the roof to the North and the view from the roof of the bank itself

Just to the North of the Bank, on the roof with the wooden beams sticking out of it and two large barrels, is the next stop-off point on this journey of discovery. The sky is very low here - no surprise! - and to reach the roof of the building next to the barrels you'll need to staircase 5 crates and then crouch and run to get up there . Tip: Crouching and running to get onto a roof is necessary if the crate you're standing on is slightly lower the roof and there is little headroom above the roof itself. Jumping just as you reach the roof's edge can also help if you're getting stuck.

Now our path takes us through Lady Louisa's Suite and onto the Endgame Angelwatch tower and the buildings surrounding it. The roof of every building in this area can be reached - even Lady Louisa's. From the South, her apartment touches the sky, but from the North, you can readily make it onto her roof. And what's more, all the rooftops in this area can be reached with one simple climb of two crates. Head North to the roof with the extremely drunk guard, stack 2 crates against the East wall and mantle up.

The roof of the building next to the bank with the large barrels and, on the right, getting to the roof next to the drunk guard

If you walk and climb to the roof of the building to the SouthEast, you can look down into the space below Angelwatch's South Side. Frogbeast down and you can wander around without the mission ending. If you look back up at the building you just leapt from, you'll see that it has an illuminated window - why this is there when you can't actually see it from a 'normal' vantage point is a mystery.

A mystery window

If you head North while down on the ground here you get to an area at the front (East side) of the tower where there is sound again. This area does count as part of the ground and the mission will fail once you're there. The roof of the building in the SouthEast (mentioned directly above) comes very close to the East face of Angelwatch. If you strafe/run and jump from this roof, you can mantle onto the angled ledge around the tower. Once on the ledge, you can easily walk around to the back sides of the tower.

Jumping onto the tower and the hidden Mystery Lights

When you get to the tower's West face you will see a sight very few people have ever seen - red alarm lights set into the wall high above your head. These lights cannot be seen from any normal vantage point and they are not connected to the alarm lights within the tower. Why are they there? Another mystery of the Strange and Unusual. If you head North from where you first climbed up by the drunken guard, a HUGE statue will become revealed to you. It can barely be glimpsed from a normal vantage point, so enjoy this special gift the designers left for the pleasure of climbers. The sky on top of the building running along the East part of this section of the mission is quite low and, if you step back away from the edge, you see some strange effects when the sky overlaps the top of Angelwatch.

The famous topless tower with giant statue

Looking down over the edge of the Eastern row of buildings you can see three buildings; 2 with red roofs and 1 with a purple roof. Each building has a solid block for a roof, this means that you can walk along the top without sliding off. You can jump onto the closest red roof easily. You may want to use a Frogbeast egg here as you lose quite a few hit points when you land. Don't jump down onto the purple roof though, as detailed in the Strange section of this guide, it is treated as part of the ground and you'll fail the mission. The second building with a red roof is too far to reach. Even using a speed potion and strafe/running won't get you far enough to make it. But if you really want to get there, grab at least 5 crates and take them onto the roof with you and throw them down onto the roof of the first building - don't worry, the crates can easily survive the drop - and staircase them towards the far building and then jump off.

Making your way across the roof blocks

You'll now be right underneath the huge statue and able to appreciate how truly huge it is. But if you want to jump off the roof onto the ground it can be a bit tricky. The area surrounding the building is classified as 'street level' and if you land too close to the building the mission will end. If you head as far North as you can from where you first climbed up by the drunken guard, you can jump down onto a series of blank buildings running from East to West. From this row of buildings you can safely Frogbeast to the ground and make your way to the front doors of Angelwatch.

The statue is so large that it dwarfs the doorway underneath it

The doors may look as though they are made from metal, indeed all the other doors in this mission that look like these ones are made of metal, but they are in fact made of wood and you can thus open them by hitting them with your sword. Even though you may now enter the tower, the objective 'Infiltrate Angelwatch' won't be marked off as this isn't one of the two ways you were supposed to be able to enter it. To get the objective to be marked as complete you will need to venture to the manhole cover or the open window.

Knock, knock! Who's there? Garrett. Garrett who? *THUNK*

There is another way you can enter via the front door. It involves climbing on the tower itself and was first discovered by the enigmatically nomenclatured, 242. Get to the ledge around level 4 of the tower and follow it around to the huge statue. There are vertical sections sticking up from the ledge but these can be bypassed by running and jumping over them. It's a bit tricky, but doable. Once you've gone all the way around and are behind the large statue you can jump down to the pedestal it's standing on, which is also the passage that ends in the front door. You can Frogbeast down, but this technique had not been discovered when 242 first made his journey, he took advantage of a special 'feature' of the Dark Engine and aimed for the very edge of the pedestal. If you fall so that you just miss the edge but can still grab it as you go by, Garrett will mantle up and take no damage from the fall. Once on the pedestal, you still need to get down to ground level and you can take advantage of the AI to do this. The Mechanist who stands just inside the door won't open it, so you must do it yourself. Shoot several fire arrows into the ground directly in front of the doors until they open or, if that doesn't work, try getting his attention with the Starburst device. The Mechanist will come to investigate and, when he steps outside, you step down and land on his head. Remember, if you land on an AI you don't take damage from a fall.

Another route to the front door

The inside of Angelwatch doesn't have many real opportunities for climbing, but that deep elevator shaft is just perfect of some Frogbeasting. So too are the metal girders on the ground floor. Now that you know how to climb down and inside Angelwatch, it's time to learn how to climb up the outside of the tower. The first step is to get 18 crates onto the pedestal with the statue on the East face of the tower - above the manhole cover. This pedestal has grillwork on the side so you can fire a vine arrow into it and get up that way. Now start staircasing those crates! If you aim your staircase towards the edge of the roof of the tower you only need 18 crates to make it onto the roof - half that needed to go straight up past the large windows. The edge of the roof is very steeply slanted though, so you won't be able to mantle onto it. You must jump onto the roof to get there safely. The quickest way to do this is to use the Magic Cooking Pot.

Up to Angelwatch's roof

As you can mantle onto the Pot, it is a great way to save yourself a few crates when making your way onto the roof. You need to 'drop' the pot a small distance away from the wall while standing at the top of the staircase and then mantle onto it. Now you can jump onto the roof.

You need to be careful here as the roof is so steep that you can slide off. Run up the roof until you reach the guardrail barring you from the roof. It's not too easy to mantle over the rail while on such a steep slope, but it can be done. Now you can wander around the roof level of Angelwatch and enjoy the peace and quiet. Don't get too comfortable though - there is one more climb to go: The top of the crystal spire. You'll need to take just about everything in the level up with you, all the crates, bottles, zombie pieces, goblets and so on. Start with staircasing all the remaining crates and then build piles of items on the edge of the crates near the top to help you get some more height.

Halfway up the Crystal Spire

Traditional stacking (i.e. look down, drop and repeat) is all you can do at this point until you are as high as you can get. Things may start to get pretty weird at this point as your height combined with all the items you have concentrated in such a small section of the map will probably make things start to turn invisible. All you can do is to grit your teeth and bear it - you're almost there!

Hey! Where did the spire go? It was here a moment ago!

Even with all the items you can carry you'll find that you will still come up short. This is where another useful climbing trick comes in handy - flare elevatoring. When you carry multiple copies of certain items, such as scouting orbs and flares, you can use them to climb with. It works best when you're almost flush against the wall you're climbing, so adjust yourself until you're not quite touching the invisible block surrounding the spire. Using this technique, you should make short work of the remaining distance to the very top of the tower. Congratulations, once on top of the spire, you will have made the most difficult climb in the game! To top off your amazing effort, why not strafe/run and jump from the edge of the crystal spire? You can make a leap all the way to the ground. It's one hell of a ride, so don't forget your Frogbeast parachute.

Next we come to the mission, Precious Cargo. Garrett travels out of the city to Markham's Isle where he hopes to find Brother Cavador in order to unravel the mystery behind the Cetus Project and gets a lot more than he bargained for.

Addendum:

(Luthien) Well, I'm impressed. It took me a full hour to read everything, and I'm afraid to say that I didn't know which places you were talking about in the climbing sections. It's just too big * It should be mentioned that you can sometimes save a precious frogbeast egg. Simply take the damage and then eat food to heal you (save before eating and reload if you are not healed). * For me, the drunken guard was by no means harmless. No idea why he didn't attack you, but he does kill *me*. * To knock out the first keeper I could just aim straight at the window. No need to aim for the bottom of the window. * There is a very simple way to generate auto-repeating jumps. Just open the console and type "bind b jump". Hold down the 'b' key and Garret will jump again and again. You can also put this in your user.bnd or dark.bnd file. Much easier than fiddling with bird toys * You said the vine arrow used at the necromancer's tower doesn't reach far enough down to grab it from below without a climbing aid. It does reach down far enough when you frogbeast down and shoot it from the ground. It can still be tricky to grab the rope. * Although it's not this important, it should be mentioned that one half of the front doors opens inwards and the other opens outwards. (D'Juhn Keep) Would I be right in saying you can go down to the ground level as long as you aren't noticed by NPCs? That's how it seemed to work for me when I got down there. (Luthien) Nope, it definitely works differently. When I went down there I didn't care at all if anybody saw me or not. Still the mission did not fail. (Our Newest Acolyte) re:But perhaps the strangest thing about Angelwatch tower is that no matter how hard you look, you won't be able to find any toilets On the contrary, they have the very latest in front wall fresh-air orifices combined with a wide-capacity gutter installation below ;-) (Bumbleson) To knock out the second Keeper, I found it easier to approach the window with the bow already drawn and aiming at the window. As soon as the Keeper appears, I let the gas arrow fly. In some cases, he will fall through the door and vanish, but most of the time he can be picked up safely.

(Azal) reply: Luthien - I don't know why the drunk guard attacks you and not me. Maybe he just doesn't like you ;-)

As for the climbing section - it helps if you're playing the mission while following the guide. Especially in the first section of the mission, there're so many rooftops and different ways to get from one to another that, unless you're in the game while reading the instructions, it's easy to get turned around. I will try and make it clearer though.

Precious Cargo
In Life of the Party, Garrett retrieved a set of blueprints and they have now lead him far away from the city. Markham's Isle is a huge, possibly volcanic, spire of rock which juts from the sea. In the centre, in what may have once been the hypothetical volcano's caldera, a tall lighthouse points towards the sky. Once a lighthouse keeper and his wife lived here, until the island was over run by pirates led by the infamous Captain Markham. Now the pirates are long gone and the island has been overrun again - this time by Mechanists. And somewhere on the island is Brother Cavador, the key to unravelling Karras' plans. This mission is a diamond amongst gems as what seems a simple enough task kidnapping Cavador - soon becomes a trip through the islands history and a voyage into the creations of the Mechanists. Underwater bases, submarines and scubamen, ghosts and lost pirate treasure keep the player on their toes and never quite sure of what could be around the next bend. Larger than it first appears, this mission puts a veritable trove of booty at the disposal of the dedicated thief.

2 Drilling machines 1 Anchor 9 Diving helmets 1 Bedroll 4 Apples 5 Black bottles 6 Green bottles 1 Bread 2 Chart Compasses 1 Cheese 1 Deck of cards 1 Deer leg 18 flares (10 from loadout screen) 1 Scroll 2 Lab equipment 1 Navigation globe 1 Rust gas container 3 Mechanist maces 4 Scouting orbs (1 from loadout screen) 1 Scroll rolled 2 scroll unrolled 2 Papyrus 4 Metal trays 1 Sextant 4 Health potions (1 from loadout screen) 5 Breath potions (1 from loadout screen) 1 Speed potion 1 Cargo locker 1 key 1 Cargo locker 2 key 1 Cargo locker 3 key 1 Cargo locker 4 key 1 Cargo locker 5 key 1 Cold storage key 1 Main cargo storage key 5 Mines 1 Gas mine 11 Rotten crates 28 Crates

There's a Yo ho ho, but no bottles of rum

Crates and rocks and rubble, oh my

As this is a secret Mechanist stronghold, the only people you will find here are Mechanists and their creations. However, to make things more interesting, there are a few new types to play with. 7 Mechanist Maceman 5 Mechanist Archer Female 5 Scuba Archer Male 12 Scuba Macemen 2 Helmeted Scuba Archers 1 Mechanist Priest 1 WorkerBot 2 CombatBots

In the Navy... (hands up who didn't see that coming)

The scuba Mechanists are, for the most part, the same as their land-lubber brethren (and sistren, of course) but the ones wearing scuba helmets pose more of a challenge than even the unKO-able guards. More on this in the next section.

General Gameplay:
This mission sees the return of the tiny, hard to see coins we saw from the very first mission and illustrates a point which cannot be made often enough - look everywhere and look closely.

The Mechanist robots hated it when people mistook them for coin operated carnival rides

Even in the extreme close-up in the image above, the coins are almost impossible to see unless they're highlighted. This mission demonstrates how the inclusion of weather into the game can dramatically increase a level's atmosphere. With both fogging and rain, many parts of Precious Cargo look breathtaking.

Oooh, pretty

Unlike in Life of the Party, the fogging in the mission isn't broken, though it does tend to be a bit overdone - there's fog everywhere! The rain is nowhere as ubiquitous, but it does get into a few places it shouldn't (see the Strange section for this mission)

There are four Watchful eyes in this mission, none of which poses much of a hazard. The first one is encountered halfway up the elevator shaft at the beginning of the mission and must be circumvented in order to open a grill to access the Mechanist workshop. Fortunately the On/Off switch is located directly above the eye, on top of the wooden beam it depends from (indicated by the red arrow in the picture below).

Many Eyes have power switches

The Mechanist order is only a recent addition to the Thief universe, and its creations even more recent still. Because of this, in most places where you will find such security devices, the cameras and turrets will have power cables running along the walls rather than inside them. These will often lead you straight to the switches which control them. If power cables aren't present, then a switch may be found on a nearby wall. As a general rule, it will be within spitting distance. The second camera you come across is in a corridor that leads down to the Cetus Amicus and, in conjunction with a large switch, controls the large, metal firedoor which gives access to the area.

The Rebel Alliance obviously used Mechanist surplus when they built their base on Hoth

If you alert the Watchful Eye, it will close the door and lock it until it returns to a normal level of alertness. This Eye has no off switch and you'll need to sneak past it. You can shoot a fire arrow at it to get rid of it permanently, but as you'll only go past the camera once or twice in the entire mission, it's a waste of ammo. Once down in the tunnels by the submarine, you will come to two large water-tight doors leading to Subaquatic Posts 1 and 2. The levers which open these doors are 'guarded' by a WorkerBot. Unless alerted, WorkerBots are blind and if you're quiet, you can sneak past them in broad daylight without being seen.

Doing a great job there, pal

There're two mechanists in this level who wear full scuba gear and cannot be knocked out or gassed (fortunately one of them is already dead by the time you get to him). I'll detail more on how to deal with them in the Fun with the AI section, but there is one very special feature about these Mechanists that bears mentioning - they glow.

Thou Golden Helmet of Mambrino With so illustrious a past Too long hast thou been lost to glory Th'art rediscovered now at last

You can carry these scuba guards around and they will act as a mobile light source for you. The light may not be as good as what you can get from a flare, but it is free and won't go out.

Strange things are afoot:

For a relatively small mission, there is a surprising amount of strange things to be found. So many in fact, that it rivals such huge missions as Life of the Party for bizarreness. The first one the player will come across is right in front of him at the start of the mission - the drilling machine. The drill can be turned on from the control panel you can access at the rear of the machine. The drill bit is one of those 'block' objects - i.e. it is encased in a large, transparent block. Even when the drill is rotating, the block remains stationary.

Blocks - they're everywhere

The top of the block is so close to the roof of the cave that you can't get on top of it, but a thrown scouting orb demonstrates the principle nicely as it appears to float in mid air. The strangest thing about the drill bit is that, despite what you might suspect, it is not actually made out of metal. Give it a thump with your sword and you'll see that it is made from wood. Another block-object you can find is the boat behind the lighthouse keeper's building. It is also made from wood....so...uh, no surprise there then. It wouldn't be a Strange & Unusual if there weren't a few floating objects, and Precious Cargo doesn't disappoint. The fish in the freezer where you find Lotus; the deer leg in the mess on the submarine, the mines in the Main Pirate Base's diving area, and the scuba Mechanists all float gently above the ground.

There is no greater horror in a water mission than finding 'floaties'

Misplaced objects are another mainstay. Lights are often misplaced as they are so small and, by their nature, often placed somewhere the player doesn't have direct access to - a roof, for example - so the level designers pay less attention to placing them than they do with other objects. The lights in the entranceway to Aquatic Post 2 and the roof of the submarine berth are just two examples.

Unsupported lighting

The keys for the cargo lockers aboard the submarine are all kept together on a convenient board in one of the old pirate buildings. If you take a close look at the key for locker 4, you will notice that is hanging in thin air a few centimetres from the board.

No wonder the keys kept getting lost

The watchful Eye that guards the wooden walkway near the submarine is placed properly. Hit it with a fire arrow so that it explodes and it will end up misplaced. When an object like the Eye is destroyed, it is not actually broken into small pieces, rather a model of a broken Eye replaces it. Normally this swap goes unnoticed, but occasionally you can spot it.

The splinter in mine Eye

But what if there is no model to replace the object when it is destroyed? Crates are replaced with splinters of wood, CombatBots are replaced with dead CombatBots, and so on. The rotten barrels featured prominently in this mission have no such model.

Pop! It disappears

Hit them a few times with your sword and they will just vanish. With that little diversion out of the way, let's get back to the misplaced objects again, shall we? Looking through the diver's lockers in Subaquatic Post 1, you will find a bedroll wedged halfway into the floor.

[Insert witty comment here]

At the beginning of the mission you can take an elevator up to the surface or make your way there via jumps and climbs across a series of ledge and vines. The vine closest to the platform halfway up doesn't quite make if to the rock it is supposed to be supported by.

Even better than the Indian rope trick

Ropes and vines will do very strange things it you shoot a fire arrow at them. When the explosion hits them, they go crazy. But what do they do if a detonation hits them while Garrett is climbing one? Ordinarily this situation never comes up. It is very rare for an archer to carry anything besides a broadhead arrow and the magical projectiles of Mages and Priests don't have sufficient explosive power to send the ropes into seizures. But this mission has CombatBots and ready-placed vines. The combination of the two is just what is needed to take Garrett on one hell of a ride. Tempt the first CombatBot you encounter down into the area and jump onto a vine. When the bot sees you, it will fire. If you survive the blast, the cannonball will detonate and send the vine wild. Once it has settled down again, the vine will never be the same well, not unless you reload the mission. For some reason, when Garrett rides the vine during an explosion, the vine ends up with a large bulge in it - see image above. Partially transparent objects have never worked that well in Thief. Items placed behind them sometimes appear as though they are actually in front, or on top of, the transparent object.

Transparent troubles

The pirate flag in the Old Pirate Shanty will develop a large hole in its centre when approached from an angle. This sort of thing happens when a flag, banner, or picture is placed too close to a wall. From the right angle, the wall behind can be seen.

Bizarro banner and freaky flag

The Mechanist banner, found on the notice board next to the lighthouse elevator, changing size is another example of how a separate model is often used when an object is destroyed. The banner was shrunk to fit onto the notice board, but the corresponding, destroyed version was not. In the Mechanist workshop is a WorkerBot in small pieces and a deactivated CombatBot in an alcove. The CombatBot is an unusual case as the alcove is protected by an invisible and indestructible wooden wall. As such, you cannot climb around the bot to the rear of the alcove.

Forcefields and out-of-place Garrett Quips

There is a small space in the top left and right corners of the alcove where the invisible wall stops and you can throw in a scouting orb or a few mines. Throwing in the mines is educational as it reveals that the CombatBot is totally indestructible. Even using all five of the mines available in the mission will not harm the bot in any way. It's a good thing it isn't working, then! When Garrett enters the freezer building on the surface of the island, you are treated to a Garrett Quip about how cold it is. This quip can also be activated while you are still outside the freezer. In the lower image above, a large cross has been placed to mark the spot where Garrett can be made to flub his lines. We'll bring this examination of the Strange to a close with two last pieces of the unusual.

Watery weirdness

One of the most obvious properties of rain is that it happens outside. It is very rare that it occurs inside a building. This is what makes the rain inside the lighthouse such a remarkable occurrence. In the large room at ground level inside the lighthouse is a secret elevator. Once you begin to head down to the Aquatic areas, the rain will start to fall as soon as you pass the second wall-light and continue until you reach the bottom. The entire shaft, from the second light down, is actually classed as an outside area despite, obviously, being indoors. In the lower image is another example of how water can turn invisible under certain special circumstances. If you collect too many objects in one place, some of them will turn invisible as the Dark Engine cannot display too many objects at once. Once objects have started turning invisible, or you have climbed somewhere with a view that displays too many polygons, any water in a level will cease to be rendered. It's still there and you can swim in it (and drown in it for that matter) but you can no longer see it unless you're in it.

Fun with the AI:

Lotus, the Pagan spy, was foolish enough to get himself caught and thrown into the cooler (ha, I kill me!) and Garrett has the option of killing him or letting him freeze to

death. Once he's dead, Lotus will remain in his sitting position and you cannot pick him up. Of course, with the aid of a trusty scouting orb, you can have some fun at his expense.

No comment - I plead the fifth

In fact, you really don't need to spend that much time with Lotus at all. If you want you can run in, grab the missing piece to the wheel and run out again. Don't worry about the conversation you're having. Garrett will continue his side of it even if you're well outside the freezer and walking around inside the lighthouse. The small WorkerBot who guards the door controls to the Aquatic Posts will, when alerted, try to get help first from the CombatBot who patrols nearby and then run into Aquatic Post 1 to alert the Mechanists there. If you take out the CombatBot and keep the door to the post closed, the WorkerBot will have nowhere to run.

You can run, but you can't ...oh...you can't even run

The poor bot doesn't have the brains to return to his post to open the door and will bang its head against the closed door in a most amusing fashion until you either open the door or put it out of its misery. The Dread Pirate Roberts...I mean Markham, guards his treasure even in death. Once you open the chest with the large gem in it, he will appear and try to take his revenge.

WoooOOoooOOooOOooo!

Markham's ghost can be thought of as part Apparition and part Haunt. It is armed with a weapon (like a Haunt) but when defeated will disappear in a puff of smoke (like an Apparition). And like all undead - with the exception of ghosts, who do not interact with the environment - Markham is vulnerable to a variety of weapon's. You can kill him with just two flashbombs, or if you're feeling adventurous, you can try and take him on with your sword (or even your blackjack!). It is on Markham's secret ship that you find one of the two helmeted, scuba Mechanists in this mission. Fortunately, Markham's ghost has already dealt with him and he poses no threat. The other one patrols the deck of the submarine.

Sealab 2020 gets an unexpected visitor

With their large helmet, these Mechanists cannot be blackjacked. And as the helmet also contains its own air supply, they aren't vulnerable to gas arrows or even drowning. They can be stunned with flashbombs, but the effect is, of course, temporary. The only way to get rid of them without violating the 'Kill no one" objective is to use the Frogbeast eggs. The damage they cause is not attributed to you and using them to kill someone won't make the mission end in failure. With all the trouble he causes, it is worth the effort to have a little fun at his expense in this case with the help of one of his own arrows which got stuck in the decking.

A Climbing We Will Go:

This mission starts and ends underground and there aren't many opportunities to go awandering. That said, it does contain the second highest climb in the game - the lighthouse. We'll get to that in a moment, first let's begin at the beginning. You start the mission beside an underground stream. If you travel back along the stream you quickly come to a small waterfall.

Climbing upstream

Using crates to climb up here is difficult as they tend to try and float away. The mission's many large rocks/rubble come to the rescue. A stack of 5 rocks lets you mantle onto the small area behind the waterfall. You'll need a total of 7 rocks to be able to get on top of a 5 rock stack. Even though Garrett was supposed to have come from there, it is a featureless area in total darkness that quickly terminates in a dead end. You have to wonder how Garrett intended to get back out while carry Brother Cavador's body with him. The technique of Frogbeasting has been mentioned before in this Guide because of its unparalleled use for making huge jumps without taking damage. The elevator shaft which takes you from the starting area to the surface is a great area to hone your skills.

Into the mists

The roof of the lighthouse keeper's home is an easy climb. Shoot a vine arrow into the top of the wooden wall which bisects the surface area, climb up onto the wall and then safely jump onto the roof of the building.

Death from above

Only the Eastern wall will allow you to make it onto the roof. From the top of the Western wall, it is too far to reach. Once on the roof, you can walk along it and surprise the Mechanist waiting in the attic. From the Western wall you can staircase 17 crates and mantle up onto the top of the cliffs which surround almost the entire island.

Climbing the cliffs

There may not be too much to do once you get up there, but there's a huge amount of space to wander around and you can try out your Frogbeasting skills again by making a dive down the break in the cliffs to the sea.

Going down

The large green rocks you can see down there are only ghost objects and you can swim through them and examine the weird effects caused when sea meets sky. The next area you can climb is the lighthouse itself. Again, starting from the top of the Western wall will save you from having to stack a lot of extra crates as you begin the climb almost half the way up. As this climb already takes 27 crates, you need all the headstart you can get.

Long way down!

The lighthouse is quite a climb as the image above illustrates. The tiny shape indicated by the arrow is a crate. As the designers never expected players to reach the roof of the lighthouse from the outside, they did not bother to trim down the area where the lighthouse mood music played. When you are still quite a way from even reaching the glass windows, you can make your climb while grooving to background music.

The Lighthouse

The presence of fog in this mission causes objects at a distance to become shrouded, but it adds a great deal of atmosphere - more than enough to justify keeping it switched on while taking screenshots, even though it makes them very difficult to turn into something viewable. Reaching the top of the lighthouse from the outside seems to particularly disturb the Mechanist Priest up there. You can break the glass windows with the blackjack and get him into a state of apoplexy and he will be unable to harm you because of the bars in the way.

A very angry Mechanist Priest

There is only one more place to climb in this mission and it is underground. The main storage area is the only building in the Aquatic area which has enough space above it to walk around on and is not normally accessed as part of the game.

Cargo Area - nil climbing skill required

This is a wooden building in a mission where vine arrows are available. It also has a door which opens outwards. If you need more help to get onto its roof, then it's time to put the game away and tell your friends you're ending it all as you are obviously undeserving of all the effort your parents and teachers put in raising you.

This mission ends with Garrett taking a short cruise on the good ship, Cetus Amicus. The next mission begins immediately after he arrives at the vessel's destination - the enigmatic KD site - still hunting for Brother Cavador.

Addendum:
telliamed - One bizarre thing about this mission which can't be seen from inside the game is that the lighthouse has a hollow core with a ladder going up the length of it. It's completely blocked-off, though. The only way to get to it is through dromed.

Inside the lighthouse

stoxy - A small thing I noticed straight away in Precious Cargo... your initial objectives require you to get back to your boat with Cavador... I wondered how Garrett was going to get the rowboat up the waterfall again?

Kidnap
Garrett's underwater adventure comes to an end in a most unexpected place, the lost city of Karath Din. Last time he visited, it was a place of roaming fire elementals, burricks, craymen and Fire Mages. Now it is filled with Mechanists and their creations, but is no less deadly for its more mundane foes. The place has seen a few changes during Garrett's absence, but there are more than enough familiar sights to cause deja vu.

Your goals in this mission are simple - kidnap Brother Cavador and get him out of Karath Din. But, as always, things are easier said than done. The Mechanists and their security devices are out in force and many of the excavation sites are veritable fortresses. With all its nooks and crannies, this mission has quite a large amount of items lying around. 1 Bedroll 2 Black bottles 5 Scouting orbs 16 Flares 6 Flashmines 2 Gasmines 5 Healing potions 2 Invisible potions 2 Iron goblets 1 Silver key 1 Gold key 1 Drill 2 Metal Plates 4 Mines 7 Rotten crates 2 papyrus 4 Picks 1 Porcelain plate 4 Shovels 1 Skull 1 Slowfall potion 1 Speed potion 1 Unrolled scroll 35 Crates 1 Wood goblet 1 Cavador's Diary

Hi ho, hi ho

Karath Din bulk storage

When it comes to Mechanists, Karath Din crawls. 36 Mace Mechanists 11 Female archers 1 Priest 2 Priestesses 1 Brother Cavador 1 Helmet Guard 3 WorkerBots 3 CombatBots

The KD extravaganza

General Gameplay:
The primary focus of this mission is Brother Cavador; finding him and kidnapping him. At the base camp, two Mechanists have a conversation revealing that Cavador faithfully follows an itinery, a copy of which is kept in the steward's office. The papyrus with the itinery on it can be found on its own on a table in the same room as the switch that opens the large metal door to the rest of the KD site. Cavador begins the mission at site 5 and will stay there until you read the itinery. Knowing this, you can control where you meet up with him and his entourage. If you wish, you need never to read it and he will spend the entire mission in his room while you clear the way for his kidnapping. When Cavador does his rounds, he is accompanied by two guards. One is an ordinary Mechanist with a mace but the other wears a large helmet and cannot be blackjacked.

Cavador and a helmet guard spot the difference

Many people seem to have trouble recognising Cavador, but there are several things which distinguish him from his fellows. As revealed in the conversation at the beginning of the mission, he wears a gas masks and is thus immune from gas arrows. His guards, however, are not. Cavador may be a Mechanist, but he bears more in common with civilians in that he can be blackjacked even when fully alerted and facing you. When you pick Cavador up and carry him, his name appears under his body to let you know you have the right person.

Brother Cavador, I presume?

Each site has one or more green lights and when Cavador visits the site, they light up and will stay lit for the remainder of the mission. The lights are a useful hint as to whether or not Cavador has yet visited there and allows for ambushes to be set up.

One thing to remember about Cavador's route is that it changes each time you replay the mission. One time he may travel from site 2 then 4, then 6 and 1. Next time he may travel 1 then 8 then 3 then 4.

Cavador went to Karath Din to seek enlightenment

When the Mechanists moved in, they bought or built cameras and turrets to protect their sites from all the dangerous creatures in the underground world. Even though those dangers are no longer present, the security was left in place. Because of this, Garrett faces a wealth of challenges when making his way through the KD site. Fortunately there are many ways a resourceful thief can circumvent the cameras and turrets, or failing that, destroy them. A single fire arrow will destroy a turret or camera, as will a mine. These weapons are expensive and not all that common. Flares, on the other hand, are plentiful and can be used as impromptu detonators. Scattered around the various dig sites are explosive red barrels, and with a bit of pushing, they can be placed against turrets or underneath cameras.

Cleaning out turrets

Once the barrel is in place, a lit flare thrown against the barrel will cause it to explode, destroying the turret. This mission also contains two bonus objectives: stealing the silver drillbit at site 6 and filching Brother Cavador's diary. A very special point to remember when playing this mission is that using the blackjack is no longer always silent. When you KO someone in one of the many winding tunnels, any nearby Mechanists will be able to hear you.

Strange things are afoot:

Kidnap is a large, sprawling mission and has its share of strange items and occurrences - but perhaps fewer than you might expect, a lot of care was taken with this mission. The first thing the player will come across is the parchment tacked to the wall of the base camp at the beginning of the mission.

Going, going, gone

From the front, the parchment appears normal, but as you look at it from increasingly obtuse angles it slowly disappears. Given all the torches in the mission, surprisingly few are misplaced.

Strange & Unusual Lite

The lights shown on the left are correctly placed, the ones on the right are their corresponding misplaced version. One of the rooms at site 7 has two wooden chests and a small barrel which is half sunken into the ground.

Objects amiss

At site 9, one of the rooms on the upper floor has its bookshelves facing the wrong way. It was mentioned in the Guide for Precious Cargo that when an object is destroyed in the game, it is actually replaced with a broken version of itself and, when appropriate, assorted debris. With the cameras (aka Watchful Eyes, or Watchers), when they are replaced by their broken version the alignment is slightly off.

Out of focus

This mission sees the return of the flash mine and its peculiar way of arming itself. As shown in the image above, when disarmed (or in the inventory) the flash mine has its own unique shape. But, when it has been armed, it changes shape to look just like a regular mine. At site 6 is a most peculiar statue that adds some dark shading to the history of Karath Din and its ancient fall. The statue is of none other than the Great Old One, Cthulhu. "Poor Johansen's handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God!...The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. " - Excerpt from The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Given the dark powers of the Ancient One, it is a brave thief who takes a piggy-back ride on the statue. The top half of the statue, from the wings up, is not solid and jumping from the ledge behind the statue allows you to climb onto it and ride on the wings of a dmon. Wheeeeeeee! Most of the dig sites have several large switch boxes at various spots and many can be used to turn on/off cameras, lights or alarms. The switch at site 2 starts the giant cogwheels turning but has no useful purpose. Some switches however, do nothing. The switch at site 4 is one of these and at site 1, the switch will highlight but not move.

Broken switches and magic water arrows

In the NorthWestern corner of site 4 is a generator and some water arrows on top of one of the small buildings. Looking at the arrows, it may seem as though there are only three of them, but the arrow closest to the generator is actually two arrows taking up the same space. Just outside site 1 is a broken, iron gate which no longer opens - not surprising as one half of it is wedged partway in the ground and the other is lying prone. Despite this, both halves of the gate will light up when you approach as though you could frob them open.

A broken gate, or is it?

Over at site 7 are the remains of a poor WorkerBot which has been destroyed somehow. The bot's boiler, lying on the ground near some machinery, is different from all the other bot boilers - it cannot be picked up. You can move it around by pushing it or shooting a fire arrow at it, but that's as much as you can do. At site 9, in the stairwell which leads up to the first floor, is a small glowing ball suspended at waist height. The ball marks the 0,0,0, spot in the mission.

Boiler and ball

In missions with torches or AIs with magic spells, the Dark Engine stores their glowing/fiery components at the zero coordinates of the mission. Normally, the level designers will conceal this spot inside a wall, but occasionally they forget and a small glowing ball hovers there for all to see. One of the two bonus objectives in this mission is to pick up Cavador's diary and rifle through it. Normally, items that are the subject of an objective cannot be dropped once they're in your inventory. Brother Cavador's diary is an exception to this as not only can it be dropped, it will then hover in mid air.

The Hammerites had Brother Crate-for-a-head, the Mechanists have Brother Book-for-a-head

The floating diary can come in quite useful as it is a solid object. You can use it to block off doorways or you can climb on top of it and pretend it is a very small flying carpet. Don't worry about the bonus objective becoming crossed off, once you drop the diary it disappears from your objective screen - until you next pick up the diary.

The lost city of Karath Din is famed for its many lava pools and rivers. Their glowing deadliness is a warning to the careless thief to watch his step. But there are four pools of lava where you don't need to be careful and can in fact hop into them and take a nice swim.

Safe lava

On the top floor of site 9 are two small pools of lava next to each other and with a bit of wiggling you can settle in for a nice bath. At site five, there is a small pool of harmless, ankle-deep lava on the ground floor just past the large generator near the entrance. At the back of site five are stairs leading down to a room almost totally submerged in lava - the same room where a Fire Mage was 'chilling' out back in Thief Gold. It has the deep rumbling sound effects and even smoke coming off it and looks very dangerous. However, you can run right into it and be totally submerged.

All you need is a rubber asbestos duck

These four lava pools are the only ones in the mission which Garrett can safely step, or swim, in. But what about the AIs? How do they handle lava? I'm sure everyone has, on at least one occasion, dropped an unconscious AI into lava just to hear them scream. From these Mengels-esque experimentations you could conclude that the AI is just as vulnerable to lava as Garrett. However...

Conspiracy time: Were the Mechanists an offshoot of the Hand Brotherhood's Fire Mages?

When they are conscious, the AIs don't think twice about walking through lava that is deadly to Garrett. But if you knock them out, they become just as vulnerable. Another strange facet of the lava at Karath Din is what it does to barrels and crates. You would expect red hot lava to quickly destroy these wooden items and, for the most part, that is true. But some laval pools operate a little differently. Some pools destroy both crates and barrels. Some destroy barrels but not crates. Some destroy neither. Yet all of the pools (with the four exceptions detailed above) are equally deadly to Garrett. Kidnap shares something in common with the mission Life of the Party - its doors. All of the doors in Angelwatch were made out of metal with the exception of the front doors on the ground floor. All the doors in Kidnap are the same as those front doors and, similarly are made out of wood rather than metal. As such, you can bash them open with your sword if you don't have one of the two keys in the mission and don't want to use your lockpicks. Speaking of doors, from the outside, the front doors at site 5 are completely silent when you frob them or try and pick them. From the inside of site 5, they sound normal. If you try to collect all the loot in this mission you will send yourself mad - it is impossible. There is a small gem worth 50 loot which got itself wedged inside a mound at site 9 and cannot be picked up.

Fun with the AI:

When Brother Cavador performs his rounds of Karath Din, he is accompanied by two guards - one in front and one behind. This can make things a bit tricky when trying to grab him, but understanding their arrangement can make things easier.

Follow the leader

The Mace Mechanist leads the way and Cavador follows him and the Helmet Mechanist follows Cavador. This means that if you knock out the leading Mechanist the other two will grind to a halt. Or, if you knock out Cavador then the leading Mechanist will continue on his way, but the Helmeted Mechanist will come to a stop. Curiously, they will continue to play follow the leader even when the leader is unconscious. So, if you knock out and then pick up the leading Mechanist and carry him off, both Cavador and Mr Helmet will follow you. Make sure you're not seen or Cavador will run away and the Mechanist will attack you. You can also carry Cavador around and have the Helmeted Mechanist follow you like a little puppy.

Cavador at Base Camp

With a bit of patience, you can make Cavador kidnap himself by taking him to the exit at site 9. Or, you can take him all the way back to the base camp at the beginning of the mission. In Cavador's itinery you are told that when he is visiting a site or has just left, the green light will be on. But the light will also go on if he is unconscious and you are carrying him through the site. Several of the dig sites have switches that activate alarms and will alert any Mechanists in the area - not to mention turning on any turrets.

Poking the hornet's nest

Turning on the alarm will send any nearby Mechanists into conniptions, but if you want to draw nearby guards into a dig site and away, for example, from somewhere else, it can be worth the increased danger.

Of course, you can always just turn on the alarm for the pure hell of it.

A Climbing We Will Go:

Being a mission set entirely underground, there are limited opportunities for climbing and only one really challenging climb. Most of the climbs in this mission are strictly beginner-level stuff. One thing to remember when looking to go climbing is that many unlikely objects can help you on your way.

A bit of light climbing

You can climb on top of lights and torches sticking out of walls, or the tall torches placed in the ground. Doors can also be climbed when you approach them end-on. Lampposts and small trees require a crate or two but are good for a leg up. The first climb in the mission is also the most challenging with 20 crates needed. The Mechanist base camp is a huge structure which merges with the cave roof, but at the very front is a small section you can explore.

The big climb

Once up on the roof you can carefully jump down and walk along the small ledges on the side walls. To enter Karath Din proper you must cross a wooden walkway over lava with ruined buildings on either side. The cavern roof is too low here to climb onto these buildings and their windows are too narrow to pass through but you can throw a scouting orb through them.

Magma wonderland

You can even jump down a little and take a peek under the walkway to see the lower floors of the buildings. The lava under the walkway doesn't destroy crates, so you can

drop a few down into it and jump down. Be careful though, it is very easy to slide off the crates into the lava. In front of site 1 are three buildings side by side. With a bit of luck you can climb onto them by walking up the slope on the left hand side. Failing that, two crates will take you onto the roofs.

Climbing at site 1

The top floor of the building in the middle cannot be accessed, but you can mantle onto the light in front of the building and use a crate to get high enough to look into the window. Just before you reach site 6, there is a partially buried building. A stack of three crates is enough to let you climb onto it.

Climbing at sites 6 and 2

Just South of site 2 are two buildings and a freestanding light. Jump onto the sloping cave wall and you can mantle onto the light. Drop a crate onto the light and you will have enough height to reach the roof of the lower building. Between sites 7 and 8 are a few more ruined buildings. You can mantle onto the lowest one and from there climb up and jump onto the tall building opposite. Once on the roof on the tall building (pictured below) you can drop down through the hole in its roof (shown by the arrow) and explore the hidden room.

Climbing between sites 7 & 8 and the hidden staircase

Between sites 5 and 6 is a large staircase. You can walk up one side of the staircase, but the other is blocked off by an encroachment of rock. From the top of the staircase however, you can mantle on top of the surrounding wall and climb over to the blockedoff half. Most of the buildings in Karath Din are very easy to climb and the roof of a low building often leads to many other, higher rooftops. If the is a small balcony or walkway between two buildings with a low wall across it, you can often jump onto the wall and then mantle straight onto any nearby roofs.

Most buildings are easy climbs

Wandering around and choosing the right building to climb can allow you to bypass whole sections of the mission by walking along rooftops rather than the ground. It also lets you avoid all the meandering guards and security devices. At site 9 you have two more simple climbs. The large device in the middle of the lava can be reached with a staircase of 7 crates and you can enjoy some peace and quiet in the middle of a lake of lava.

Climbing at site 9

The roof of site 9 can also be reached. Two crates will take you onto the top of the entranceway and three more will gain you access to the roof. Sadly, the original entranceway to the lost city is no longer there so you can't head back to the waterfall present in the original game.

The very last climb you can make in the mission is the exit itself. Normally the game just requires you to be on the ground near it, but with a little bit of effort you can go one better and reach the exit.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Garrett has left the building

A combination of strafe-running and leaning forward will allow you to follow the creases in the rock wall up to the exit. Once you get there you will find you cannot leave as the 'sky' touches the cavern walls. So near, yet so far.

Next up, we visit the mission Casing the Joint. With Cavador safely in hand, Garrett and Victoria can now start to unravel the twisted plans of Karras. It is in the hope of this that Garrett visits the mansion of Lord Gervaisius, an art collector with an interest in old masks, to try and get his hands on some precursor artefacts to see why Karras is so interested in them.

Addendum:
Yametha - If anyone's interested, I opened up dromed and compared the two maps... there are more differences than I thought, including some strange shiftings, and the fact that one of the northwest tunnels goes right through where the fire tower used to be!

Thief 1 - the lost city

Thief 2 - the lost city

Major changes include the drifting of the first building you get to in T1, the drifting of those three small buildings on the other side of the lava pit at the north end of that large open area, a big change in the clutter in the afore mentioned area, which includes the drifting of some walls. There is a whole new building complex to the east, and the stadium area and beyond has now been cut off. The place where the water talisman was is also unavailable. The former location of the tower of fire seems to have collapsed, and there is a tunnel going though where it used to be. There is a new site to the south, and the mechanists of course have made their modifications to existing places.

Casing the Joint

The kidnapped Brother Cavador reveals his mission was to find thirty masks and an equal number of 'cultivators' and deliver them to Karras post-haste. Still not knowing what these devices are for (apart from turning people into slaves), but suspecting a connection between them, Garrett and Victoria decide that they should get their hands on a sample of each. Fortunately, Garrett knows a collector of rare antiquities named Bram Gervaisius and Victoria's spies tell her that he will shortly be holding an exhibition containing the very items they need. But the security at Gervaisius' house is very tight and the third floor, where the exhibited masks are to be shown, is so difficult to gain access to, that Garrett decides to have a look around before the Lord returns from his summer home in the country. Time is running out and Garrett knows he cannot afford to waste any of it once Gervaisius arrives. As you are only scouting the place in this mission, it is important that no one knows what you're doing or that you were ever there. If they do, all your work will be for naught as they would probably change their security arrangements and increase the

guard. Because of this, if any guard or servant sees you, or you (directly) attack anyone, then all your work will be for nothing and the mission will fail. With its master away, the mansion is running on a skeleton staff and most of the household goods are stored away or at Gervasius' summer home. This leaves very little for the conscientious thief to steal. All you can find are: 1 Cuckoo 1 Flashmine 1 Healing potion 1 Scouting orb (from loadout screen) 2 Papyruses 3 Metal goblets 4 Precursor Masks 5 Flares 8 Crates

Why 'case' when you can collect?

With the small Summer staff at the mansion, the task of remaining unseen is somewhat easier than it would be in a more populated mission and, with a bit of finesse, you can get every one of them to pose for a picture - despite the 'don't get into any confrontations with the locals' objectives. See the Playing with the AI section for details on how to collect all the AIs. All up, there is a paltry:

1 Philemon Abernathy (new librarian) 1 Giles 1 Lorna 1 Ghost Giles (library Apparition) 1 Ghost Lorna 1 Forewoman Hobart (Mechanist Priestess) 1 Sergeant Kelvin Porter 13 Swordguards

In Thief, even the impossible is possible

General Gameplay:
The first decision you need to make in this mission is how to gain entry to the mansion without being seen. Fortunately there is a wealth of options. You can go in via either of the two back doors, but you'll need to distract or kill the guards stationed outside them.

In the door or straight up to the middle floor

The next most obvious entranceway is the secret passage above the small shed in the garden where you start and that leads into the small chapel. The other entrances require a bit of work. To gain entrance to the courtyard between the two main doors and which leads directly to the ballroom, use the three crates found next to the shed to climb up and over the railings. Shoot a couple of moss arrows on the tiles up to the guard and, when he turns away for a moment, run up to the doors, pick the lock and enter there. Another way onto the ballroom courtyard, that doesn't involve messing the place up with too many moss arrows, is to climb onto the roof of the mansion (see Climbing section for details) and from a suitable position above the guard you can drop down onto his head. Thanks to an...oversight...in the programming of the Dark Engine, you take no damage when you land on an AI after a fall. So, if you land on the guard, you will easily survive the long drop without taking any damage.

Geronimo!

But, as you will be bouncing off the guard onto tiles, you will need to first shoot a single moss arrow onto your landing zone. Amazingly, the guard - who will take no notice of a large thief landing on his head - will get terribly upset if he hears you walking about. You may need to try this a few times until you are able to bounce off

and land behind the guard rather than in front of him. The ballroom doors are locked so you will have to pick them - be careful or you will alert the guard. The Northern ground floor entrance lets you easily climb onto the section above the doors and walk up to the windows. A quick tap with the blackjack gives you entrance. Or, if you're really cunning, you can exploit another bug in the Dark Engine and pass through the window without breaking it. If you come up to a window that is around waist height, you will often be able to mantle onto the window sill, even if there seems very little room on your side. Once up on the sill, you can lean forward and find yourself magically on the other side. It's not just the two windows above the Northern entrance that let you do this, the unbreakable window in the far North corner can also be circumvented with this technique of "window transmigration". The Southern entrance gives you a wider choice of ingress and lets you play a small bit of havoc with the continuity between this mission and the next. If you distract the guard in front of the ground floor entrance, you can open the doors and use them to mantle up to the courtyard. There are two guards here but you can distract them with noisemaker arrows and, if you shoot a noisemaker into one of the doors, you can even make them leave the courtyard entirely.

The courtyard doors and the entrance to the top floor

Another way is to kill the guard on the ground with two frogbeasts and then bash the door open with your sword. The courtyard guards often don't even notice the exploding frogs, but they will come running when they hear the door being struck. Once they have left, you can enter the top floor of the storeroom which leads back down to the ground floor or across into the ballroom - be careful though as the courtyard guards may be coming back up the steps! You can also enter Gervaisius' bar and go from there. You can break the glass on the barroom windows and go in that way, but this causes a great deal of noise, something you want to avoid in any mission and most especially in this one.

From the courtyard, the resourceful thief will be able to bypass two thirds of the mission and make their way directly to the top floor, without having to bother with the secret passageway - though you will still need to open it to complete all your objectives and thus finish the mission. The platform rising from the courtyard is wooden and readily takes a vine arrow. You will need to be careful climbing up as there is a Watchful Eye and a turret guarding the entrance here. Fortunately, the doors to the top floor have been thoughtfully left unlocked and you can go straight in - hopefully before the turret blows too many holes in you. Now that you are on the third floor, you no longer need to find the cuckoo which repairs the clock next to the library and which also controls the secret passage between the second and third floors. If you want, you can grab it and keep it as a memento and then marvel how, in the next mission, Masks, the clock has been repaired when you still have the part. The door to the secret passage closes after one minute if you open it by repairing the clock with the cuckoo. But when you open the passage from the top floor - and without repairing the clock - it will stay open forever. The script which controls the closing of the secret door is linked to the clock, and when the clock remains broken (i.e., not keeping time) it will never send the 'close' signal to the door. If you do repair the clock, you can still convince the secret door to remain open. All you need to do is simply flip the switch (located next to the door, inside the passage) and then stand in front of the door so that it can't move. Unlike some doors, this one doesn't have enough grunt to push you out of the way, so you can convince it that it's shut when it is, in fact, open. With Karras' intense interest in obtaining some servant masks and a cultivator, he has lavished Lord Gervaisius with a wealth of gifts. Primary amongst these is a horde of security devices. With all the secret passages honeycombing the mansion you can easily avoid these, but for piece of mind there are controls where you can turn all of them off.

Left: all cameras and turrets turned on Right: all cameras and turrets turned off

The control panels are very simple affairs. The top row of switches control the Watchful Eyes and the bottom row controls the turrets. The tiny switch in the middle simply turns the light above the control panel off and on. Be careful when you play with the control panels, one turret is switched on by default (but I'm not going to tell you which one) and if you didn't check the switch settings carefully and don't keep your eyes open, you could be in for a nasty shock when you casually walk past it thinking you're safe. If you enter the mansion in one of the normal ways, you will need to find the tiny cuckoo mentioned above. On Expert difficulty, it is located in a toolbox in the ballroom. When you start the mission, the ballroom is conveniently empty and the cuckoo is easy to grab. But if you visit the ground floor foyer before you visit the ballroom, you will make things a lot harder for yourself.

Hobart and Porter sitting in a tree...

Forewoman Hobart and Sergeant Porter have a conversation in the foyer about the lost cuckoo and, after it is over, Hobart goes and patrols the ballroom. By visiting the ballroom first, you avoid the needless complication of having to dodge her while trying to grab the cuckoo. If you enjoy hunting for those hard-to-see coins, you will love this mission. Almost all the loot is in the form of these scattered coins and, in the darkness of most of the rooms, they are very hard to see. This brings us to a point which can never be stressed often enough in Thief - look everywhere; look twice. Once you have completed all your objectives, you need to leave the mansion. In the unpatched version, you had to make your way through the front doors, past Sgt Porter. With the patch, you can also make your way out via the windows on the middle and top floors. You don't even need to jump down to the ground, just break the window (or use the window transmigration technique described above) and mantle into the now-empty sill and the mission will consider you to be outside.

Strange things are afoot:

Where to start! This mission was shipped in an incomplete state and consequently, many strange things can be found without effort. Even with the patch, many things went overlooked. To make things easier, each floor of the mansion will, with the exception of the items directly below, be dealt with separately. All the guards in this mission look pretty much the same - they're swordsmen and wear green tunics. As you were never meant to interact with them, some liberties were taken: if you pick one of their bodies up, it will appear as though you are carrying a guard wearing a purple tunic.

The Amazing technicolour swordsmen

There are many fireplaces in this mission, in all of the major rooms in fact. Given this, it is surprising that only two of them are not qualified to be described as strange. The fireplace in the library and the one in the room East of the chapel are the only ones in the mission which are correctly aligned.

Casing the Joint Shock: Not-unusual fireplaces!

In fact, it may be argued that because there are only two correctly aligned fireplaces out of a dozen or so incorrectly aligned ones, that the normal ones should be described as unusual, due to being so outnumbered and thus not normal for the mission.

Some of the room brushes (what the game uses to define how sound travels) aren't properly aligned either. From the balcony above the SouthWest end of the mansion, you cannot hear anything taking place out in the garden area, and vice versa. It is very strange to stand just outside the patio, on top of the section above the Southwestern doors, and see a frogbeast exploding only a few feet away and not hear anything. The windows at the NorthWest are the same.

The Ground Floor

If you enter the mansion via the secret passage in the garden, you will find yourself in a Hammerite chapel which has been converted over for Mechanist use. But, for once not displaying their usual efficiency, the Mechanists overlooked a very significant item during their renovations - the altar. It still has the sigil of the Hammerite order on it. Opening into the chapel is a small room with what looks like a magic-healing/holy water font. It has the same glow, yet cannot be frobbed (read: used) and doesn't restore health or make your water arrows holy.

The closest you get to seeing Hammerites and Mechanists together until the next mission

In the ground floor stairwell, just North of the foyer, is one of the many secrets in the mission. Although there is nothing inside the secret room in this mission (there is a gemstone in there in Masks) a closer look at the tiny switch which opens the doors shows it is one of the many, many items in this mission that hovers in midair. In the foyer itself there are more things to be seen. The railings of the mezzanine balcony don't quite meet up with the support beam in several places and the large chandelier floats just below the ceiling.

The railings of the small courtyard outside the ballroom have a few misaligned railings as well, but the most notably strange feature to be seen in that part of the mission is the weird 'optical illusion' of some of the railings where they join with the vertical supports. Leaning one way and then the other makes the railings move while staying still.

Optical illusion outside the ballroom

The Middle Floor

From here on in, there are so many bizarre sights to be seen that they will be listed in point form for the sake of simplicity. The office in the NorthEast corner has two floating chairs as well as one of the ubiquitous fireplaces with no back. The secret passage along the North side of the mansion has a pipe which ends in midair, unconnected to anything. The trophy room has a bung fireplace and a chest with a noisemaker arrow inside that is already partly open. The room West of the trophy room, with the security panel in it, has two sunken couches. The secret switch in the NorthEast corner, next to the turret, is just sitting there, unconnected to anything. The small room along the North corridor, which gives access to the ballroom, has a light facing backwards. The railings around the West balcony in the ballroom are missing several sections.

Floating, Sunken, Backwards and Gone - attorneys at law

In the North West room, next to the stairwell is a chest which is half open. If you break the windows at the end of the North corridor, you can only hear the noise they make if you are standing in the corridor. If you are outside when you break them, they are silent. This is because of the misaligned room brushes mentioned at the start of this section. The secret passage from the bar to the library, along the South of the mansion, has a curved pipe hanging from the roof but is not attached to it in any way. The room next to the library has a trunk which is facing backwards.

Things get weirder the closer you get to the library

The office in the Southeast corner has a fireplace with no back. In the NorthWest corner of the dining room are two coins floating in the air as if the table they had been sitting on had been pulled out from under them.

 Even when there is a sheet of glass between the player and the coins, they can still be picked up. Garrett, it seems, has the ability to reach through glass - he really is a master thief!

The small coins are hard enough to find without them floating in midair

The Library is the strangest place in a very strange mission and also the spookiest. If you approach the guardroom next to the library you will hear one of the guards talking to a very distressed Philemon Abernathy, the new librarian. The poor man was filing away Lord Gervaisius' correspondence (the focus of the optional objective in this mission) when he looked away for a moment to find that they have vanished - along with the entire 'M' stacks. If you go and look on the top floor of the library you will see that he's telling the truth, the bookshelves go from 'L' to 'N'.

The 'M' stacks made to vanish by changing the letter on the side of the shelf. David Copperfield it ain't.

The library is also haunted by a very nasty apparition and it was he who stole the correspondence and played around with the labels on the bookshelves. If you read all four of the hidden messages between the previous librarian and his lover - who happened to be the wife of his assistant - and find where the lovers are hidden, the apparition will vanish in the traditional puff of smoke, the 'M' stacks will reappear and the correspondence will be returned. If you pick up the correspondence but don't read them, they will be still there for you to play with in the next mission. The ghosts, however, will not. The apparition is a very ghostly figure and you can walk right through him if you want. However, he can also do the same. As he has no problem passing through solid matter he can often end up stuck inside a wall or wander right out of the mission entirely.

Walking through walls and more floaters

The secret passage which leads from the library is controlled by a tiny switch right next to the door. Close examination of the switch will show that when the door is open it will all but vanish. The switch is also one of the hordes of object that isn't attached to anything, but instead floats in midair.

The Top Floor

In the guard post next to the secret stairwell, there are two chairs merged together. In the secret passage between the guardroom and the foyer, there is a torch that has been pushed too far into the wall. The SouthEast exhibition room has a floating table in each corner and, on the middle pedestal, a mask impaled halfway up its stand.

Floating tables, impaled masks and sunken chairs

The South-middle display room has three floating pedestals. The SouthWest display room has three floating stands with a mask lying on its side under the centre stand.

This is just weird

The alcove with the turret and camera between the terrarium and the elevator has a wooden facing which floats a few centimetres away from the wall. The security control room has a light pushed too far into the wall and the arch over the control panels isn't grounded at the Southern end.

The suspended arch

The NorthEast display room has a floating table in each corner. The North-middle and NorthWest display rooms have round, blue chairs partially sunken into the floor in each corner and the centre pedestal in each room has a mask impaled on its stand.

Impaled mask & sunken orb

The narrow pedestals are solid enough to climb unto and walk on, but if you drop an object onto one of them, it will sink partway into the pedestal as though the top surface was as substantial as cloud. Each of the display rooms has a large brick fireplace in it that has half of itself hanging over empty air. They certainly look unusual but in the next mission, Masks, they will be seen to make perfect sense.

Normal stand (top left) and X-ray stands

Some of the stands on top of the pedestals have the unusual ability to turn anything underneath them invisible. Why it is only some of them and not others is a mystery. In the roof of the top floor foyer is a pane of unbreakable glass running from North to South. You can hit it with an arrow or your sword and it will not break or allow the weapon through. But if you climb up into the rafters, you can jump right through the glass without effort.

You can't break it, but you can jump through it

There are two rooms that open into the foyer, an office to the North and a bedroom to the South. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is Lord Gervaisius' private suite. Perhaps his lordship is some distant kin to the Trickster as his rooms make Constantine's mansion look tame.

I think my head just exploded from excessive strangeness

Under the bed in the Southern room is a small secret passage that doesn't count as a secret in this mission and is about as well hidden as an elephant in an anthill. In the office area, the desks, chair and lamp in the small mezzanine are all sunken into the ground and the room's fireplace is yet another one without a back to it.

An un-secret door and a Titanic-brand bed

The sleeping area isn't much better, it has another not-so-secret door in the East wall, under the mezzanine that is not counted as a secret and the upstairs bed is half sunken into the floor. This room also holds the strangest fireplace in the entire mission - quite a feat! Looking at it from the front, it appears as though it has somehow been made 2-dimensional, but if you look at it from the side you can see that is was installed facing completely the wrong way.

It must be hard to light a fireplace when it faces backwards

Fun with the AI:

This mission doesn't allow you to interact with the AI to any great extent, so there isn't too much to say on playing around with them, but it is just that enforced lack of interaction which gives rise to some very specific strategies. When you first enter the library you are greeted by a female ghost who can neither see nor hear you and appears to be reliving (if that word can apply to a dead person) tragic events from her past. There is also another spectre in the library and he can not only see and hear you, but also can throw mystic skulls at you and kill you. Both, however, share a common feature - insubstantiality.

Hollow ghosts

As the male apparition is hostile, you need to take care when trying for an inside view, but the lady ghost pays you no notice, even when you're pawing through her phantasmic innards. These ghosts are the unearthly remains of Lord Gervaisius' head librarian Giles and his lover Lorna. Lorna was married to a cruel husband, the assistant librarian Ashton. Ashton discovered their illicit affair, murdered them, hid them away in a secret passage in the library and then went off and took the job Giles was trying to get with Lord Holanthrus, advisor to the Baron. In short - he's a right bastard. All this is more than enough to make anyone a bit shirty and even though he's dead, Giles is no exception. He wanders the library and will attack anyone he spies there. Fortunately you can make him, and the ghostly Lorna, vanish forever by finding out what happened.

Scratch one vengeful apparition

If you read all four of the secret messages between Giles and Lorna and then find where Ashton stashed their bodies, the ghostly hauntings will cease. In the case of Lorna, this means that she no longer appears and moans about her past. With Giles, he no longer roams the library with homicidal intentions. If you solve the puzzle with Giles in sight,

you can even see him vanish in a puff of smoke - like any good ghost should do when banished. Unlike other apparitions, Giles cannot be harmed by the standard tools of the trade. Flashbombs and fire arrows have no effect on him. Even the spells of the Mechanist priestess and the cannonballs of turrets and CombatBots have no effect. Only solving the riddle of the lover's fate will get rid of him. Before you go and exorcise the library, there is one important use you can put the apparition to - killing people. It seems that being a ghost removes one's sense of loyalty and Giles is perfectly happy attacking his old workmates. In fact, he doesn't stop there, he will even attack - and destroy! - any Mechanist security devices he comes across.

Ghost Action!

In the above image, the top left section shows the flying skulls the apparition shoots at his enemies (i.e. everyone). The top right image shows him attacking a guard - I apologise about the quality of the image here, but getting a glowing ghost, the effects of his explosive skulls and a guard all in the same image, while trying not to violate the 'stay out of trouble' objective meant that it is very hard to get decent screenshots of him in action. One of the difficulties is that if you are too close to an AI when he is injured or in a state of high alert the game will blame you and end the mission in failure. As the apparition normally stays inside the library, you need to lure him out. This is easily done by making enough noise to get him to approach the doorway and then shooting a noisemaker arrow down the corridor. If you have not yet set off the

conversation between the new librarian and the guard there, then both parties will make their way to the arrow. Once they see each other, the apparition will make short work of the civilian and guard and can then be lured into the main corridor of the mansion with another arrow. Once there, he often goes on a merry rampage throughout the better part of the mansion and kills nearly everyone. This is helped by his use of exploding skulls, the noise of which attracts almost all the AIs to him for the slaughter. Sadly, the apparition is a bit buggy and often disappears or freezes up. It can take a lot of reloads to get him to behave properly. If even your best efforts with the Ghost of Giles don't empty out the mansion, you can always arrange for a few 'accidents' to take care of the rest of the household. The best way to do this is to make use of the ubiquitous security devices and their none-toobright targeting system that will try to kill you even if someone is in the way.

Turrets - not too bright

As you cannot let the AI see you in this mission, a lot of extra care is needed to get the turret to fire at you and hit an AI without him seeing you. The above screenshots were taken at very close range so that it would be easy to make out what was happening, but when you're that close it is more than likely that the mission will fail. Under normal circumstances you should be a good deal further away from the guard when the turret fires at you. In the left image above, you can (barely) see the arrow of the turret as it fires. All the turrets on the ground floor fire broadhead arrows. The middle floor turrets fire cannonballs, and the ones on the top floor fire spinning metal discs. The turrets in the corners of the corridors are best for this sot of behaviour. You can turn the turrets on and the cameras off at their control panel to avoid the alarm being sounded. Now, you can follow behind the unalerted guard as he walks blithely towards the turrets and be amused as he gets a cannonball/arrow/disc to the face.

A Climbing We Will Go:

This mission doesn't give much opportunity for climbing, and having to avoid the AI as well adds an extra complication. In all, there are only four climbs worthy of the name in the entire mission. When you start the mission, you are in Lord Gervaisius' garden. There is a tall, stone wall around this entire area and over it you can see a few buildings. To get on top of and over - this wall, you will need to grab the three crates next to the small shed and take them over to the North end of the garden.

Another crate in the wall

The noise of the crates being stacked is enough to attract the guard by the ground floor door. If you want, you can send him away before you start by using a noisemaker arrow, or even kill him with a frogbeast. It really isn't necessary though, as you can easily climb the wall before he comes close to finding you. Once up on the wall, you can walk its entire length back to where you started or jump down to the ground outside. If you walk along the ground to the North, you can see the side of the mansion and even make out a short section of corridor inside the building. The buildings outside the wall are the normal array of floating and ghost buildings. Most don't touch the ground and you are able to walk right through all of the one's which do.

Ghost town

The second climb is to the roof of the Western end of the mansion. From the ground, you will need to open the door to the South entrance and mantle onto it and climb up to the balcony area outside the bar. There are two guards up here so you will need to get rid of them or distract them long enough to get around to the side of the balcony and shoot a vine arrow into the top of the wooden platform. There are a camera and turret up here, so the best way to get onto the platform's roof is to aim the arrow at the top of the vertical beam. That way, when you climb, you will be protected from the camera's view and the turret's fire.

Onto the roof

Once on the platform's roof, you need to collect the vine arrow and shoot it into the top of the mansion's roof that you can see to the North. The roof of the mansion here is made from wood and you need to adjust your aim so that the vine sticks out far enough for you to be able to grab it. You can jump down from the top of the platform and grab the vine arrow and hope you don't bounce off, or drop down to the wall surrounding the balcony and walk up to it from there. Once on the roof, you can walk around to the North and see the small balcony outside the ballroom and admire the truncated view over the mansion's wall. You cannot climb

to the front of the mansion, sadly, as the very top of the mansion touches the sky along its entire length.

Enjoying the view

One simple distraction that doesn't really qualify as a climb is to the skylight in the ballroom. If you grab a few crates and take them up into the rafters, you can stack them up and take a look through the skylight. You cannot climb onto the roof of the mansion here as the sky touches the edge of the skylight all around and it isn't very high either.

Skylight

The third climb is to the roof of the mansion at its Eastern end. From the top floor you can break the Southern window and shoot a vine arrow into the frame. There is a guard

patrolling here so you will need to remove him first or he will see you as you climb. Once at the top of the vine, you can just jump onto the small section of roof.

The front of the mansion

The front wall of the mansion is very low and only takes two crates to climb. There is a small area of cityscape here with the same floating, ghostly buildings you can find at the rear of the mansion.

With the mansion mapped and its security systems scouted, Garrett now has the information he needs to safely make his way through the building when Lord Gervaisius and his collection of rare artefacts (including the masks and cultivator Garrett and Victoria need) return from his Summer home.

Addendum:
(Muzman) That ghost is endlessly amusing (and frustrating). His stability, integrity (let's call it) seems to vary according to how many books you've read, slightly. Also, I've found that he moves around more easily if you get Hobart into the action. All my fun is after the front entrance conversation. Sending ol' transparent pants off on his merry way would usually get him stuck outside the stairs where the guards would wail on 'im for ages. I found that if, while he was indisposed elsewhere, I ran over to the ballroom mezzanine and dropped a noismaker (nb: this is not some strange euphemism for flatulence or anything else. That boy at the back stop laughing) at my feet, so Hobart immediately wanders off to find the shortest route to the spot. Then, of course, she usually finds something more interesting along the way. Every time I did this (and it's really hard not to get spotted doing this) Mr See-Thru wouldn't get stuck. Tried it several times. Don't ask me why this is so.

Anyway, since getting the most out of the ghost usually requires leading him by the hand around the place and disappearing, hoping a happy encounter develops (reminds me of Cyrano de Bergerac for some reason), the risk being that you'll get spotted and the mission is over. What's better is leaving him alone (i.e.: not dispelling him with the books) and then doing it all over again in Masks. Triple the population. No FailOnSee. And he moves around much more easily it seems, upstairs and downstairs, with much more to do. Fun!

(telliamed) I like to slip in (through the back doors) behind the guard, then "nudge" him forward until his nose is touching the far wall. I finally figured out what the deal is with transparent objects. The bug occurs on objects using a sphere model (stuff you can pick up or move around). The bounding-box model, which generally makes the object immobile, will appear properly. That's why fences can have see-through portions, but those mechanist gear keys are buggy.

(Luthien) You can walk up to them (the guards at the back doors) and pick the door right behind their backs. If you are careful enough, they do not notice you. Go to the southeast room on the top floor (it has a mask). Face the table on the east side of the room and mantle it. Garret's head ends up in the lamp above it (may work with all the other tables/lamps too). I never noticed before that it is possible to mantle into otherwise solid objects. On the top floor, in the northwest room, there is a staircase. Some of the steps are higher than the rest. Same with the secret staircase behind the cuckoo clock. On the top floor, in the northwest room, there are two windows. When you stand close to the southern window, the "outdoors" ambient effects play, but not near the northern window. On the top floor, the door frame on the inside of the security control room is incomplete. The lower half is missing and some extra wood protrudes from the frame at the top right. On the top floor, on the wooden platform outside, there is a niche with a camera and a turret. The wooden floor of one of the rooms inside partially reaches into the niche. When you come close, the game spools Garrett's comments that should be triggered by entering the store room below for the first time. With the cameras so conveniently placed, you can have a very close look at them. In fact, you can get so close that you can see right through the lens and make out another eye behind it.

Masks
Now that Gervaisius' mansion is mapped out and you know roughly what to expect, it's time to do it all again - but this time with feeling. Lord Bram Gervaisius is back from his holidays and has brought more than just his art collection with him. He's bought in more guards and several big, nasty CombatBots. In this mission, you need to find some of the precursor masks and read the correspondence between Karras and Lord G (if you haven't already). You can even go away with an artefact known as a cultivator. In the previous mission, you should have found a way to the top floor (there are at least three basic routes) so getting back up there shouldn't be too hard. Now that the art collection is in the mansion, the security has been beefed up a good deal, but you can freely interact with the AIs to your heart's content. In other words - the blackjack is back. With the mansion running at full capacity, as it were, there's more to see and do. And collect. Namely: 1 Horn (of Quintus) 1 Shovel 1 Pick 3 Keys 1 Flute 1 Deerleg 1 Bread 2 Scouting Orbs (from loadout screen) 2 Healing Potions 1 Slow-fall Potion

3 Unrolled Scrolls 2 Papyrus 5 Scrolls 3 Precursor Masks 1 Cultivator 2 Mines

Bram's Bounty

Now that everyone is back from gallivanting around the countryside, the tally of AIs has increased dramatically. The maximum number of AIs you can now collect: 24 Green Sword Guards (one is in a sitting position) 1 Purple Archer 7 Red Archers 1 Mechanist Priestess (Forewoman Hobart) 1 Mechanist Priest 3 Slaves 4 Male Civilians 1 Female Civilian 1 Giles (murdered lover) 1 Lorna (murdered lover) 1 Hammerite (Father Norral) 5 CombatBots

Family Reunion. Goodnight, John-Boy.

General Gameplay:
You start this mission in the same place as Casing, outside the rear of the mansion and needing to get inside. As before, there is more than one way to get in: You can be boring and duck in the main doors. (see the Guide for Casing the Joint for more details). You can climb onto either set of main doors and go in via the windows at the North of the mansion or make your way across the patio at the South end of the mansion and enter via the bar or the storeroom. (see the Guide for Casing the Joint for more details). From the patio, you can shoot a rope arrow into the wooden platform and climb up to the top floor. Be careful of the security camera and turret though! (see the Guide for Casing the Joint for more details). You can climb across the roof and drop down onto the balcony outside the ballroom and pick the locked doors there. (see the Guide for Casing the Joint for more details). You can take advantage of a bug in the Dark Engine and go through a barred window.

Garrett Houdini

Go to the barred window in the North corner of the garden and step up to it. The glass is unbreakable, but if you mantle onto the window ledge you will find that you go right through the window as you pull yourself up. You may need to lean forward as well once you're on the sill to make sure you pass through the window. This mission sees the second appearance of the Hammers in the game, with Father Norral visiting one of the servants of the mansion. There was supposed to be a conversation that played when you entered the storeroom where the two meet, but it is broken. According to various people who are closely familiar with Dromed (the editor for the game) this is because the conversation was linked to the book of Hammer texts in the storeroom on the other side of the mansion rather than the room where the Hammerite and servant are. As such, you cannot trigger it in the game.

The Hammers: psychotic fanatics and caring spiritual guides.

The conversation is still in the SND.CRF file and you can hunt it down and listen to it yourself if you want. You will need the following files: In the folder, Servant1\English: sv11301a.wav, sv11301c.wav, sv11301e.wav, sv11301g.wav In the folder, Hammer\English: hm11301b.wav, hm11301d.wav, hm1130f.wav, hm11301h.wav The conversation goes as follows: Servant: Father Norral, what's wrong? Hammerite: Ah my son, I have not seen thee for a moon's passage or more. Where hast thou been? Servant: I've been on errands for lord Gervaisius and just returned this night. It's good fortune to be back in the city after so long. Hammerite: Yet I fear I have not but bad news for thee. Much hath changed. Lord Gervaisius hath fallen to the influence of heresy! A false priest, a Mechanist, now keeps my temple! He hath even removed the Builder's shrine! Servant: But why? What can my lord see in these heretics? Hammerite: Their high priest professes to be a saviour. Fickle, foolish nobles to be so seduced by mere baubles. Now they hang false icons in our halls, and speak not but false prayers there. I even heard that creatures not of the builder roam the upstairs halls! AAAHHH! 'Tis a sorrowful time indeed! Servant: Surely we will return to the old ways? Hammerite: If there be a path to return by, I see it not. They who lead the city are blind to the folly of their ways. There are changes only for the worst these days.

Speaking of changes, one of the changes to the mansion since the last mission is that several of the secret passages have been altered, mainly on the top floor. Some passages that were open last time now have doors covering them up and you need to find the secret switch for them. Others, that had doors you could open directly and didn't even count as secrets last time, now require a switch and will give you a 'Found Secret' message. There is even one, in the security control room on the top floor that couldn't be opened last time, but now a switch has been installed to open it.

The exhibition rooms on the top floor have had a nasty addition made to them - poison gas traps that activate if you step on the carpet. A cunning thief can get around this by either of two basic methods. 1) You can climb into the rafters and use a vine arrow to shimmy down to the masks. 2) Use the locked control panels to turn off the traps. In the top floor foyer are three alcoves, each with three lights, a switch and a lock in them. You need to pick the lock before you can pull the switch. You can only pull one switch at a time and when you do, you'll see that it turns off one of the three lights - the red, the green, or the purple. The purple light is supposed to be blue, but I guess the Dark Engine didn't allow the designers to do that.

You light up my life

Each colour light controls the trap in the rooms with the same colour walls. Thus if you flip a switch and the red light goes off, then the traps in the rooms with the red wallpaper will be turned off and you can safely walk on the floors without getting gassed. The above map shows the colours of the rooms and the locations of the switches, colour-coded to show the traps they deactivate.

The practice of transmigrating windows was mentioned at the start of this section and one location was given where you can practice this arcane skill. There are also another

four locations where you can make Garrett pass through the solid matter of a window without breaking it. 1) The windows above the front doors of the mansion. If you mantle onto the front doors from the outside, you can jump across to the lamp on the wall and then mantle onto the outside windowsill and find yourself back inside the mansion. Not much use really, but fun. 2) The windows above the North entrance at the rear of the mansion. It is an easy matter to break the glass with your blackjack and jump in, but transmigrating windows allows you a stealthy entrance to the second floor. 3) The windows in the room where the Cultivator is on display. These windows are on the top floor and if you transmigrate them you will find yourself occupying a tiny patch of windowsill with no way back inside and no way down. 4) The windows of the top floor foyer. From the courtyard at the front of the mansion you can, with the rope arrows you start the mission with, climb straight up to the small ledge outside the top floor foyer. Once on the ledge, you can mantle through the window. This will be covered in more detail in the Climbing section.

Through the Looking Glass

Finally, because it can never be said often enough in this game, where the designers took great pleasure in hiding things away - Look everywhere, look twice.

Hidden treasure

It is very easy to miss things in the dark. And when the item is hidden in a very out of the way place, it takes a dedicated, professional taffer to grab everything they can.

Strange Things are Afoot:

The architecture of Masks is a lot more polished than what was seen in Casing, but there is still a wealth of strange things lurking about. Many of the unusual items from the previous mission have been fixed, but some are still around and there are any number of new ones that have cropped up. The first cab off the ranks concerns the continuity between Casing and Masks. In Casing there was an optional objective you could fulfil concerning the correspondence between Karras and Lord Gervaisius. In Masks, that objective isn't optional and you must somehow complete it. If you found the correspondence in Casings and read them (or even if you didn't), they will still be available when you start Masks. Even if you read the letter from Ashton the assistant librarian in the previous mission, Garrett will once more call him a bastard when he reads the letter again. You can get around the necessity of reading the letters at all by going straight to the exhibition room on the top floor and stepping up to the cultivator. Garrett will say, "A cultivator! That must be what Karras is writing to Gervaisius about." The objective, 'Discover the contents of the letter from Karras for Gervaisius' will be ticked off. However, if you then go to the library and read the letters, Garrett still say the same things as before even though he now knows about the cultivator. Another way to mess with the continuity of the game is to not read the letters and to go near, but not pick up the cultivator. This way, the objective to find out about the letter will be ticked off, but the 'pick up a cultivator' one doesn't appear and you can safely

finish the mission without taking it with you. Then, in the cutscene shown when you complete the mission, you will see the cultivator you didn't take with you being displayed by Victoria. As with Casing, there is so much to get through in this mission that we'll go floor by floor.

Outside the Mansion:

If you have fog turned on in this mission, you'll notice right away that it acts rather oddly. It does a variety of strange things to the architecture of the mansion, the buildings outside the wall and any objects hidden in its depths - all depending upon where you stand. If you stand in the right spot, you can even see where the blocks of fog begin and end. Sometimes all it takes is leaning forward or turning slightly to observe dramatic changes in the way a scene looks. The secret passage that leads into the chapel becomes very obvious when there's fog around. For some reason, the secret door doesn't get occluded to the same degree as the surrounding walls and really stands out. Similarly, so do the moss arrows on the grass and the plants in the garden, but you need to be looking at them from just the right angle for them to become easily visible.

Not so secret door

Standing upon the patio outside the bar, you can see more displays of weird fog. Look carefully and you can make out how the fog was laid down in blocks and doesn't quite cover the whole area. The buildings outside the wall show more unusual properties.

Sometimes they are covered in fog, sometimes they are in the clear. It all depends on where you stand.

I can see clearly now, the fog has gone

There are just too many instances of fog acting strange in the mission to detail them all, but even a casual glance around in the game will show you some that have gone amiss. It's raining in this mission, but as soon as you step onto the patio outside the bar, the rain stops. You're still in the open, but the game considers you to be inside. Balcony railings are another good source of the unusual. They have the strange ability to move without changing position - like an optical illusion. Stand in front of them and lean sideways and you will see the position of the railings change. Lean to the left and the railing on the right will appear to be at the front. Lean the other way and they other railing moves to the fore.

These balcony railings would even make Escher

need to have a lie down

In Casing, breaking the windows at the North end of the mansion would reveal a bug to you. When you smash them from the outside you will hear no noise of breaking glass. But, if you break them from the inside, they will act normally. This hasn't changed in Masks, the sound is still screwy.

Inside the Mansion:

There are a few unusual things that reoccur throughout the inside of the mansion again and again. Because they are so common, rather than list them individually, they will be listed as general types. Doorway Textures: If you look on the ground in doorways or under archways, you will often see that the textures used do not match the textures on either side of the door/arch. Often, the textures will be of a different size or colour. Misaligned Fireplaces: As with Casing, just about every fireplace in the mission has something wrong with it. It may be facing backwards or be too close or too far away from the wall. Indoor Fog: Most prominent on the ground floor, fog can be seen indoors in several locations throughout the Western end of the mansion. As you enter the mansion, the fog appears to be inside the main corridors, but vanishes as you move further inside. Stretched Textures on Secret Passages: If you look at the door of a secret passage sideon you will see that in many cases there isn't a proper texture there. Instead, the texture has been stretched out to bridge the gap between the front and back sides of the door.

Vines growing through the walls and stretched textures on secret doors

Strange Shadows: On some of the wooden windowsills of the guardposts, the shadows are hugely stretched out and very thin and don't match the light sources at all.

The Ground Floor:

The chapel in the South corridor has a few hidden treasures for us. Despite now being a Mechanist domain, the Hammer sigil remains on the altar, unchanged from its days under Father Norral. If you jump on the pews, they sound like they're made out of stone rather than wood. Finally, if you stand next to the picture of Karras and turn to face the windows you may observe the vines outside suddenly appear to be growing through the window. The room next to the chapel has a block of fog covering half of it. There are two smaller rooms inside this one; in one is a Mechanist priest and a Slave, in the other may be found a chest that's not only facing the wrong way, it's also partially pre-opened. In the office in the South corridor, the one with the gardening implements, there is a table right next to the door that floats.

The fog comes indoors. I hope it remembered to wipe its feet

Still in the South corridor, go to Forewoman Hobart's bedroon/workshop and you will find a mine floating above the workbench and a backwards facing, partially preopened chest in one of the curtained alcoves.

In the stairwell in the NorthEast corner of the ground floor, there is a secret room under the stairs. In the previous mission, the room was empty, but in this one there is a chest at the far end that is floating slightly above the ground. In the area between the small guardpost and the barracks in the NorthEast corner you will occasionally come across a guard standing frozen - and snoring! - in the corridor. At the start of the mission, this guard is asleep in his bunk in the barracks. But if you reload the game several times, he will start patrolling without going through all the effort of waking up first. Once he begins patrolling, he will often suddenly realise that he is, in fact, still asleep and freeze up. Under normal circumstances, the guard was supposed to wake up and then begin patrolling - as can be seen if you wake him up while he is still in his bunk. Sometimes he will stand up on top of his bunk rather than on the ground, in which case he will just stand there unless you do something to make him move. In the hallway outside the stairwell in the NorthWestern end of the mansion you will see more fog in the corridor. There is a barred window here and if you walk right up to it and then strafe left until you are in front of the wall, you can hit the wall with your blackjack and it will sound as though you hit the window instead. If you visit the bathroom in the North corridor you will notice a few changes have been made to it. In Casing, the bath and sink had no water in them but you could hear water sloshing around. This has been fixed in Masks. A trip to the kitchen reveals both a floating deer leg and rolling pin. The ballroom, despite its size, is free from peculiarities - except for one painting that hangs away from the wall.

Floaters - the S&U mainstay

The Middle Floor:

In the bedroom at the far East end of the Northern corridor is a floating book on top of a small table. The bed in this room has a noble asleep on it and is actually a large, solid block. The top half of the bed, despite looking like thin air, is actually a transparent block. This makes it harder than usual to silence the noble if he wakes up - you can't blackjack him, shoot him or stab him while standing next to the bed; you'll just hit the bed block. The noble won't leave the bed no matter what you do. Once he wakes up, he is trapped inside the block and cannot move in any direction. The only way you have to get him is to climb onto the top of the bed block and blackjack him while crouching. If you want to pick him up and carry him off, you'll have to hope that part of him extends outside of the block, or else you won't be able to grab him.

Floating books and a bed block

In the security control room between the bedroom mentioned above and the trophy room, there is a banner that floats a short distance from the wall. In the trophy room is a floating banner above the Horn of Quintus and another backwards-facing chest. There is a switch to a secret door hanging behind another banner and, if you look carefully, you can just see it poking through. If you cut the banner down, the switch remains hidden - as though it was still behind the banner. You need to look side on to the wall to actually see the switch. When you do this, you can see parts of the furniture become invisible.

A secret switch that's determined to stay hidden

The dining room in the North corridor has a banner that hangs partway through a couch. If you cut the banner down, the part of the couch that was previously hidden behind the banner turns invisible. It looks as though a chunk has been cut out of it. In the North corner office there are chairs floating both in front of and behind the desk, a book floating next to the safe and - something that has caught out many players - the safe itself is unlocked. Many players have tried their lockpicks on the safe door, seen that they cannot pick it and then searched the mansion for hours in a futile endeavour to find the key that unlocks the safe, not realising that it is already unlocked and just waiting for them to open it. In the small hallway between the North corridor and the elevator, there is a seated guard who is very Strange. For one thing, he is seated partway inside the chair, rather than on it. If you stand in his line of sight and alert him, he will stand up, but if you make him alerted while out of his line of site (behind a wall, for instance) he will freeze up while still seated. Even if you do get him to stand, more often than not, he will end up stuck inside the chair. If you knock him out (whether he's sitting or standing) and pick him up, he will always appear in the seated position when you put him back down.

Strange seating - sunken flute and frozen guard

The secret passage behind the Northern rooms has a pipe that ends in midair, leading nowhere. Hope it isn't a sewerage pipe! The foyer has several misaligned railings, as well as some that have the same optical illusion effect that the ballroom balcony railings show. The chandelier also floats in mid air and is not connected to the roof. In the guard room in front of the library is another guard who gets stuck in his chair more often than not. But with a bit of encouragement he will, unlike the one who sits down, be able to make his way out of it on occasion. In the corner of the hallway outside the guardroom mentioned above is a hollow section of roof. The hollow section extends all the way to the library. The library has a door leading to the secret passage that runs down the South side of the mansion. The switch for this door has changed sides from the last mission, but is still floating. The secret passage that leads to the top floor has very uneven stairs. The secret passage that leads along the South side of the mansion has a U-shaped pipe that is another floater. The Easternmost room in the South corridor has two backwards facing trunks in two of its alcoves. The trunk in the third alcove faces the correct direction. In the conservatory there is a small flute stuck inside the seat of a chair. In the bar there is a thick chunk of wall that sticks out for no apparent reason. On the balcony outside the bar are a wide variety of bizarre fog effects that can be seen from various positions and angles.

Unusual architecture - bulging walls and holy ceilings

The Top Floor:

In the large security control room in the NorthEast corner of the mansion, the arch over the control panels still doesn't quite reach to the ground on one side. The frame of the Watcher alcove next to the large control room is another one of the ubiquitous floating objects. In the foyer, the alarm button doesn't work. It's a fake. The armoured glass in the roof of the foyer can still be jumped through if you climb up into the rafters.

Floating frame and a bogus button

In the Southern study (Lord G's private suite), the fireplace is too far away from the wall. There is a floating torch and, in the mezzanine area by the bed, a sunken chest on display. The secret room also has a chest in it that faces the wrong way. In the Northern study (Lord G's private office) the fireplace is too far away from the wall. There is a floating torch and, in the mezzanine area, the lamp, chair and desks are all sunken into the floor.

Lord G must have bought his furniture from Not Quite Right

The exhibition rooms, with the exception of the large room at the end of the Northern corridor, all have carpet traps that release poison gas. All the pedestals are at the same height as the carpet (unlike Casing where most floated up in the air). If you turn the traps off and stand on the carpet you will see that the pedestals don't actually extend right down to the ground, but float above it - something that is normally hidden by the carpet. In the exhibition room at the East end of the South corridor, the tables in the corners float. In the exhibition rooms in the middle and Western end of the North corridor, the blue chairs are not correctly floored. In the middle room they balance on one leg when the carpet is lowered and in the Western room they are sunken into the floor.

The top floor is still a veritable font of the unusual

In the large exhibition room at the end of the North corridor, there is a floating torch on the NorthEastern pillar. You can also mantle through the barred windows, as was mentioned above, and get trapped outside the mansion with no way back inside or down.

Fun with the AI:

This is one of only two mission in which the Hammerites make a personal appearance, and the only one with both them and Mechanists. Given their antipathy to each other, it would not be unreasonable to assume that, when brought together, they would fight. Getting the AI into fights is one of the most evilly enjoyable things you can do in the game, but sadly, these devotees of the Builder cannot be drawn into violence with each other. Fortunately, the Library Ghost is still just as homicidal as he was in the last mission and is always willing to lend a hand to destroy every AI he comes across (see the Having Fun with the AI section for Casing the Joint for tips on how to get the ghost to do your dirty work for you).

Getting friendly with the heretics

If there is one thing this mission has in abundance, it's those pesky turrets. Every floor has at least four of them and, as you climb higher in the mansion, they get progressively nastier. From arrows on the ground floor, to cannonballs on the middle floor and finally, spinning circular blades on the top floor. Fortunately, they can all be rendered harmless with the flick of the correct switch. After you've made them safe by deactivating their Watchful Eye companions, you're left with 14 turrets cluttering up the place. The only thing to do then is to move them out of the way with a good hard push. Every turret in this mission can be pushed out of its alcove

and onto the ground. Some take a bit off effort as they have to be pushed over the small sill of their alcove, but it can be done.

Mobile turrets

It's slow going, but you can push the turrets along corridors and down stairs. They're pretty tough and can even handle being shoved off the wooden platform on the top floor onto the stone patio outside the bar.

Turret reunion

Once the turrets are out of the way, you can turn the Watchful Eyes back on and, as long as you don't wander past the massed ranks of the turrets while the Eyes are sounding the alarm, you can ignore them completely. Without the turrets to give them backup, they're harmless.

Who YOU lookin' at?

Even though you can't make the AIs, with the exception of the Library Ghost, fight in this mission, there is still another method you can use to get them to kill themselves and each other - lure them to their deaths in the traps on the top floor.

Curiosity killed the cat

The carpet traps on the top floor are very useful in removing the patrolling guards. You can climb up into the rafters and shoot a noisemaker arrow (or just a few broadheads) while inside a room and any patrolling guards will come in to see what all the fuss is you will have to unlock the door for them first. As soon as they step on the trap it will go off and suffocate them. The CombatBots, however, are not harmed by the gas.

A Climbing We Will Go:

The architecture in this mission is the same as in Casing the Joint. As such, you can still get onto the roof at the rear of the mansion as well as easily climb over the walls at its front and rear (and enjoy the peculiar ghost buildings there). Because of this, rather than repeat the climbing section for those locations, please refer to the Guide for Casing the Joint. One small change to the view you get outside the walls in this mission is a small goodie next to one of the windows at the front of the mansion. Once over the front wall, look at the Northernmost window of the top floor and you will see a small, rectangular object floating in the air next to it. This object is actually part of the wall, but has a section of sky texture between it and the rest of the wall. There is, however, one spot in this mission you can climb that you couldn't in Casing and it's solely due to the different equipment loadout you get. In Casing you only had one vine arrow, in Masks you get three. These vine arrows allow you to cut straight to the top floor of the mansion, bypassing the middle floor entirely if you want. At the front of the mansion are quite a few fake windows. You can't go through these windows, but they have handy wooden frames that will take a vine arrow nicely. It takes a good aim to get the arrows in just the right spot but, by using two of them, you can make your way to the small ledge outside the foyer on the top floor.

Shortcut to the top floor.

Shoot one arrow into the sill of the window above the ledge so that the vine dangles down past the ledge and the other into the window next to it, but at a lower point. If you've done it right, you will be able to jump up and grab the lower vine and then jump

across to the other one. Then all you need to do is climb up it and step off onto the ledge outside the top floor foyer. If you can't quite reach the lower vine, try standing on top of a few scrolls and potions. They should easily make up any deficit in height and allow you to grab hold of the vine. Once up on the small ledge you can either smash the window and climb through it or use the window transmigration method.

With a cultivator in hand and a handful of masks, Garrett and Victoria are finally able to penetrate Karras' scheme to destroy all life. In the battle to stop him, Victoria meets her end. Garrett, angered by Karras' plans and enraged by the death of Victoria, now sets out to finish this once and for all. Next mission: Sabotage at Soulforge.

Addendum:
(tomi1kenobi) Have to give a shot on this, especially with those goddamn turrets. Now if only you could fool them to shoot the guards. (Muzman) I must recommend again that everyone to try leaving the ghost alone in Casing so that he appears in Masks. There's three times as much mayhem to be had and he's much easier to lead around since there's no fail-on-see in effect with the other guards. He also seems to move around much more easily and gets stuck less. (MHK) But there IS a way to get the AIs to fight in this mission, and you even mentioned it in the guide for the previous mission. Just leave the ghost of Giles intact in Casing (don't dispel him with the books) and he'll be back and ready to party in Masks. Sure you have to forego a few coins in the library, but there are a lot more AIs to sic him on in Masks (Azal) You can get the turrets to shoot the guard quite easily, see the Guide for Casing the Joint for details.

Sabotage at Soulforge
Victoria is dead, sacrificing herself so that Karras' plans to destroy the world might be stopped. Garrett, having come too late to save her, must now navigate the huge open spaces and lethal traps of Soulforge cathedral and somehow find a way to make the Servants return there before Karras unleashes their deadly cargo of rust gas and wipes out all life. Sabotage at Soulforge is the climax of the game, and its size and complexity reflect this. Soulforge cathedral is the size of a small town and, like a town, has its own population. Not a population of people mind you, but one of Mechanist creations. Wandering the lonely halls are a horde of the Children of Karras and a dozen Mechanists who have been turned into zombie-like slaves via the Precursor masks. It is a lifeless and soulless place (no pun intended), but beautiful in a Spartan way. Every room contains some new wonder, some new challenge and Garrett must weave his way through them all if he is to stop Karras. Seeing as the Mechanists are known for their industrious activities and that Soulforge is the home of their order, it is not surprising that you can collect absolutely ludicrous amounts of stuff. This is the first mission where it has been necessary to break up the images of the collection into three separate images to prevent the Dark Engine from falling over and turning them invisible. You can find: 1 Brass Key 1 Silver Key 1 Flash Mine 1 Gas Mine 1 Mine 1 Healing potion 1 Invisibility Potion 1 Slowfall Potion 1 Regulating Round Blueprints

1 Scouting Orb Blueprints 1 Guiding Beacon Blueprints 1 Flare Blueprints 1 Mechanist Mace 1 Mine Blueprints 1 Papyrus 2 Explosive Charges 2 Scouting Orbs 2 Signal Bolts 4 Flux Spheroids 6 Flare Mix 10 Gauges 11 Flares 12 Iron Chassis 13 Bantam Nodes 13 Quicklime Mix 15 Acidic Mix 16 Steel Plates 17 Spring Wiring

The Soulforge super swag #1

The Soulforge super swag #2

The Soulforge super swag #3

In fact, due to certain unique aspects of this mission, the amount of assorted stuff you can collect is effectively infinite, but this will be covered in more detail in the Gameplay section.

Do you have the 'rock's to survive Soulforge?

With the Mechanist faithful sent away to the Eastport seminary, only Karras' Children roam the great halls. Some of the Mechanists did stay behind, but not of their own free will. Karras had turned them into pitiful Slaves using the masks garnered from the ruins of the Precursors civilization. Look carefully and you will be able to find:

1 Golden Child 7 WorkerBots 9 SpiderBots 11 Mechanist Slaves 40 CombatBots* And, of course, 1 Father Karras * The screenshot below actually shows 42 CombatBot boilers. There are two boilers lying around at the start of the mission.

Soul Survivor

Sadly, two of the AIs couldn't make it for the group photo. The small Golden Child and Father Karras both said they had to stay home and wash their hair.

Come out and plaaaaaay

General Gameplay:
The first thing most players want to do when they find themselves wandering around Soulforge is to visit Karras in his impenetrable chamber to say hello (take the elevator at position 'K' shown in the map in the Strange section for this mission). However, many are somewhat hesitant to do this in fear of failing the objective, "Don't let Karras find out what you are up to, or he won't trigger the Servants". Luckily, this is a very unique objective in that it is impossible to fail. You can try as hard as you might, but nothing will cause that objective to fail.

Karras was never any good at playing charades

Even taking the Guiding Beacon and a Stage 3 Piece* and putting them on his windowsill won't make him realise what you're up to. With this weight off the player's back, they are free to express themselves however they want. *Despite there being enough material to manufacture two Guiding Beacons, the game will only let you build one.

This mission has only three objectives. We've already examined that you can ignore one, but what about the other two? One of the other objectives states, "When the rest of your goals are accomplished, get outside before Karras seals up the cathedral and detonates the servants." This doesn't mean that you need to rush to get out. You can take as much time as you wish as the servants only arrive in the cutscene and not during gameplay. So, that's two objectives you can safely ignore. The third? It states, "Sabotage Karras's plan by using the Guiding Beacon to draw the Servants to the Mechanist cathedral. First you must learn how to use the Guiding Beacon." You cannot ignore this one. Even if you make a Beacon and switch over every signal tower, the mission will not end. You need to read the correspondence between Father Karras and Brother Kelsus. Soulforge has some stunning architecture, so why not take a break from saving the world every now and then and just marvel at its beauty.

Oooooh, pretty

Many of the bays and rooms are huge and have grand pillars and arches. Stepping back occasionally and enjoying the eye candy lets you have a breather from what is a very demanding mission.

Speaking of refreshing yourself, there's a healing fountain near the Northern Apse where you can take care of any damage received during the mission.

Restore yourself

The fountain will heal up to 4 health points at a time, but you can only use it once every three minutes. Nethertheless, it should be more than enough to keep Garrett alive, despite all the nasties wanting to take a piece out of him.

In the cutscene before this mission we witnessed the fall of Victoria. If you climb up onto any of the handy machines in Bay A, where you start the mission, you will be able to take a look at all that remains of her. It may seem cruel, but one cannot help thinking how much her remains look like a giant cabbage.

One giant cabbage plus one large deep fryer. You do the maths.

In several places in the mission are handy objects for you to climb onto if the fancy takes you. Some of these items can be dangerous. The large cauldron shown in the above image contains molten metal. As you might expect, standing on top of it leaves Garrett up to his ankles in what is basically lava, and it will slowly kill him. There are several machines scattered around the mission that have long, spinning gear thingies (see image below). When the thingies are spinning slowly you can climb onto, and stand on, the object safely. But when it is spinning quickly, if you climb onto it, you will die almost instantly.

Beware the spinny thingies!And the entrance of the boulder-O-matic

Given that Soulforge is the steel heart of the Mechanist order, it isn't surprising to find a wide variety of machines working away doing unfathomable things. Some of these machines seem to be dedicated to recycling (whoever would have thought that mindless fanaticism and conservation could go hand in hand? Certainly not PETA or Greenpeace). In Bay E there is a large pit of lava that an endless series of rubble falls into via a small tube. The tube is too small to fit into, but if you look closely you will noticed that the inside of the tube is lined with the same non-slip surface first seen in the underwater sections of Kidnap. These surfaces will take a vine arrow and if you shoot it at the right angle (see above image), you will be able to climb up to the tube and block the boulders from coming out.

When an object in the Thief series is in motion you can't grab it. Only when it is at rest will you be able to pick it up. When the boulders on their conveyor belt come to a stop, you can pick them up. With a bit of patience, you can amass an insanely large pile of them.

Soulforge's infinite junk

The above image shows a full hundred boulders and fifty each of the sword hilts, spikes and doorknobs (from the room described below). In one of the rooms in the latter half of the mission (go through the huge room with the giant flame that comes out of the ground every few seconds) are two more conveyor belts with an endless stream of junk passing along them into a pool of lava. If you jump onto the lower section of the conveyor, crouch and walk up to the higher half of the belt, you can block these pieces of junk long enough to be able to pick them up. Doing this allows you to collect infinite numbers of door handles, sword hilts and metal spikes (see image above). When you have too many items gathered together at one place, the Dark Engine that powers the game will hiccough and turn some of them invisible. It can only handle displaying so many polygons at one time and will 'vanish' whatever it can to reduce that load when stressed.

Invisible generators

Even the giant machine in the room where the Golden Child is found is susceptible to this. Take a huge pile of junk into the room and, despite its truly massive size, the machine will turn invisible. When you collect even greater numbers of junk in a mission, say two hundred boulders and a hundred each of sword hilts and doorknobs, then the Dark Engine takes even more extreme measures to avoid becoming overloaded. It will turn any water/lava in the mission invisible and will occasionally do very strange things with the surface of the water/lava. This will be covered in more detail in the Strange section of this Guide.

Scattered across the mission are several diaries and journals from the Mechanists who lived at the cathedral. Reading them will illuminate just what has been happening in the order before Garrett's arrival. In Bay C you can read the account of Friend Manus and how he was the one who gave Karras the bright idea of turning his faithful followers into Slaves. Oopsie!

This mission is unique in that it gives Garrett the chance to build a wide variety of items. Also, unlike other missions, the secrets in this mission are items that you can build rather than (with one exception) locations/objects you need to find. Given that there is so much you can build in this mission, an entire section will be dedicated to it later in this Guide.

Between Bays B and C is a darkened room where a SpiderBot patrols. If you look closely at the ceiling here you will be able to find a hidden attic with a few items secreted away. It's very difficult to see it in the gloom and only goes to reinforce the message that can never be stated often enough: In Thief always look closely, look twice.

Strange things are afoot:

Sabotage is the climax of the game and a lot of care was taken with it. But if you look closely, there are sill some strange goings on to be found. If you look in the Interface.crf file using a Zip program and hunt around in the miss16/english subdirectory you'll find two maps of Soulforge that weren't used in the game. These maps are of much higher quality than those we normally see.

The third map I made myself to help pinpoint the locations of some of the places referred to in this section and the next. It doesn't exist in the Interface.crf file but was quickly photoshopped from the existing map of the underground areas.

One item of general strangeness, which was touched upon in the Gameplay section, was how water/lava will do weird things when you have too many objects in the mission. As you increase the object count, firstly objects will start to turn invisible, then the framerate will go down, then the surface of any fluids will get screwy, then the fluids will disappear from sight entirely.

Screwy and invisible lava

In the above left image, the surface of the lava detached from the pool it was contained in and started slowly spinning around in circles before vanishing. But, be careful - even though the lava may now be invisible, it will still kill you if you jump in it. Another piece of blanket unusuality can be found with the welder's masks scattered around the mission. Every single mask floats slightly above the ground, not one sits properly. There are four large "water pumps" (well, that's what Dromed calls them) in this mission, each one has unusual properties. Three of them have bases you can step inside and one of them has an upright section you can walk through.

Walk-through pumps and floating masks

With the general strangeness out of the way, it's time to take a look at specific incidents where objects and situations are just not quite right. Outside the Cathedral: If you walk out the front doors you'll come across several large spotlights on the ground that illuminate the cathedral's walls. Look closely and you'll see that these spotlights aren't actually attached to anything and are just sitting there. Walking further around outside will take you to two very large portculli, one on either side of the cathedral, that you cannot get past. If you look at the walls along here you will see several small windows that open into the area beneath Bays B and C. These windows have no shutters and no glass. How did Karras miss these obvious windows when he was sealing the place up? Bay A: At the North end of the bay is a large angel with a rotating gear above it. Using the climbing technique of elevatoring reveals that the large gear is not solid and you can put your head inside it.

Bay E: Climb onto the top of the fusing machine and take a look at the two large, pointy electrodes. From the back you can see right through them if you look under the metal ball at their peak. The Storage Rooms: In every storage room there is at least one floating object, usually many more. Mines, poles, bits and pieces can all be found hovering slightly above the surface they're supposed to be sitting on.

Fusing Machine transparencies and floating mines

The Plans Room: This room is unusual only because it contains the one secret in the mission that doesn't involve creating something with one of the many machines scattered throughout the mission. Inside the secret room is a banner than vanishes if you cut it down. Corridors to Karras' Chamber: There are three banners in a row at the top of the elevator, the middle one being larger than the other two. Cut the middle banner down and it will go back to being the same size as the others. Furnace Room: In the room with the four patrolling Mechanist Slaves and the huge flame that periodically shoots from the floor at the centre of the room are several small pits of water. If you jump into the pools or drop something into them you will notice that the water doesn't make any splashing sounds, it is totally silent. Lava Room: (see position 1 on the maps at the start of this section) There are two Watchful eyes in this room, both are pushed too high into the ceiling. If you alert the Eastern Eye in this room it will open a metal door and release a CombatBot. If you look closely into the chamber the bot came from you will see another CombatBot in there who doesn't react to your presence.

This CombatBot is a ghost, you can walk right through it and it won't react. You cannot hit it with your sword or blackjack. The only way to destroy it is via splash damage from an explosion. Setting off a few frogbeasts or mines underneath the bot will kill it. Once dead, you can proceed to break it into pieces the same way you would with any other bot. The Room of Death: (see position 2 on the maps at the start of this section) No misaligned objects here, but this is a very strange room. Everything in it seems to be designed to be deadly. There's a lava pit, a big crusher, spinning blades than come down form the ceiling and a conveyor belt with bursts of flame. With all this, it is very surprising that the Mechanists chose this room for the location of their slippery slide.

Ghostly bots and slippery slides

The Sewers: (see position 3 on the maps at the start of this section) In the waters of the sewers beneath the underground rooms can be found several water arrows. As you get close to them you can see that they are actually floating just out of the water. The Vault: (see position 4 on the maps at the start of this section) The watchful Eye positioned to look down the corridor before you get to the large vaulted room here is pushed too far into the ceiling. In the vaulted room is a machine with two jointed metal legs that are actually ghost objects; you can stand inside them while they move around and pass through Garrett's body. Climbing up the ladder to the elevator which leads to the signal tower and looking down at the ladder from above reveals the it isn't attached to the wall, but floats a short distance from it. If you unlock the two circular metal doors and venture down into the small room underneath the Vault, you can see that one of the pipes at the East end doesn't quite reach the ceiling.

The unusual underground

The Golden Child: (see position 5 on the maps at the start of this section) This small robot child is an enigma. He cannot be killed or harmed in any way and, despite running away, doesn't actually do anything. He doesn't alert the AIs in the locked room behind him, he doesn't attack. He just runs in circles when he sees you. Sort of like a puppy when its master comes home - but without the mess on the carpet. Also, if you look at the spikes on the back of the child you can see that they are partially transparent.

The kid's back

In the huge room the Child runs into are two large spotlights on the ground. Close inspection reveals that they aren't attached to the wall, but rather sitting on the ground just like the spotlights outside the cathedral.

The Swimming Pool: (see position 6 on the maps at the start of this section) If you climb up the centre ladder into the pipes outside the door that leads to the Golden Child you will soon come to an opening that leads into a huge room. With the aid of a vine arrow you can climb onto the rafters and make your way across to the other side. Halfway across you can look down and see the secret Mechanist swimming pool. The Computer Room: (see position 7 on the maps at the start of this section) This room leads to one of the signal towers and requires you to pull two switches to open the gates barring the end of the North room. From certain angles, you can make the gates vanish.

From two grills, to one, to none

There is one final bit of strangeness to cover, but it is different from all the other items discussed so far as it can only be access by cheating *GASP* That's right, I used the forbidden word. Karras' chamber has yet to be breached in normal gameplay (but not through lack of trying), so to enter it requires the player to open up Dromed, the editor for the game. If you delete the unbreakable window in front to the chamber you will be able to enter the chamber. To do this, first make a backup of the "miss16.mis" file in your Thief folder and then open the mission in Dromed. Type find_obj 2139 in the small window in the right hand corner and hit enter. This will highlight the unbreakable window and pressing the delete button on your keyboard will remove it from the mission. Then save the mission and exit Dromed. Load the mission in the game and restart it, the unbreakable window should now be gone and you will be able to enter the chamber. The chamber is a very unusual place. As the designers never expected the player to enter it, they took quite a few liberties.

Karras' crazy chamber

Indicated by the arrows in the picture above are six small gauges on the wall of the chamber. These gauges rotate back and forth endlessly. The small levers on the wall that are in the down position don't move the first time you frob them. It takes two goes to make them move and then they won't move again. The levers in the two silver devices (beside the desk and at far right of above picture) don't move at all and you will only make a noise (as though they did move) the first time you use them. Then there is Karras himself. No matter what you do, he won't notice you. You can detonate three Sunburst devices (Thief's doomsday weapon) under his feet and he won't even blink. Sword, blackjack, frogbeast eggs, gas arrows - all weapons are useless against him. He is blind and immortal. Bugger.

What Hast Thou Built:

The machines located throughout the cathedral can all be used to create items and weapons to help you in the mission. In the Plans Room can be found several blueprints for doing just that. But these blueprints don't cover every single thing you can create, there are several omissions. These omissions constitute four of the five secrets in the level.

As this is the only mission where items you have to manufacture are counted as secrets, they will be detailed here.

Flashbomb:
Take a winchester of acidic mixture and a spool of spring wiring to Bay E and use the Fusing Machine to turn them into a flux spheroid. Drop the flux spheroid and a steel plate into the Fusing Machine to create a flashbomb.

Flashmine:
Go to Bay B with a winchester of both acid mixture and quicklime mixture. Run them through the Amalgamating Machine to produce flare mixture. Take the flare mixture and, adding an iron chassis, run it through the Amalgamating Machine again to make a flash mine.

Sunburst Device:
The sunburst device (aka Explosive Charge) is the doomsday weapon in the Thief universe. No other item has anywhere near its capacity for mayhem. To make one of your very own, start by taking an iron chassis and a winchester of quicklime mixture and put them through the Amalgamating Machine in Bay B. This will produce a mine bulb. Take the mine bulb and a bantam node to the Sealing Machine in Bay D. Put the bulb in the bin on the right and the node in the bin on the left. You must put the items in the correct bin or the sunburst device will not be created.

Quote Scroll:
In The Dark Project and Thief: Gold the quote scroll was just lying around to be found. In Soulforge you have to make it yourself.

Collect five steel plates and the boilers from five CombatBots (hit the corpse of a CombatBot a few times with your sword and it will fall apart) and take them to the Rolling Machine in Bay A. Drop one of the steel plates in the side of the machine and one of the boilers into the top of the machine and hit the button. Repeat this a total of five times and the quote scroll will come out the end of the machine. Read it and enjoy.

Fun with the AI:

Soulforge is crawling with Karras' metal monsters and a good knowledge of how to deal with them is invaluable in surviving this mission. Fortunately, there are many ways to rid yourself of these hindrances. Water arrows: One water arrow aimed at the firebox of the boiler will deactivate a WorkerBot. Two will deactivate the CombatBots and SpiderBots. Fire arrows: One fire arrow will kill a WorkerBot. Two will kill the CombatBots and SpiderBots. Unlike water arrows, the fire arrows do not need to hit the small boiler, but can impact anywhere. Gas arrow: One arrow into the firebox will deactivate any bot.

Squish

Elevators: The elevators are your greatest friend when it comes to getting rid of the bots. It is a very simple matter to lure a bot beneath an elevator with a noisemaker arrow and then lower the elevator onto its head. Any AI can be killed by crushing them with elevators, even Garrett if you're not careful. Blackjack: You cannot kill the bots with your sword, but the blackjack works fine in sending them to the big junkyard in the sky. If you come up behind the bot and time your hits right, it will rock back on its feet and be unable to move between blows. This allows you to kill even the spider bots without taking any damage. It requires: 9 hits to kill a WorkerBot 18 hits to kill a CombatBot 20 hits to kill a SpiderBot And: 8 hits to break apart any bot Shooting themselves: This technique only works with the CombatBots as they have nasty exploding cannonballs. If you get a CombatBot to face you so that their big cannon-arm is directly in front of a wall (in a doorway, for example) the bot will fire at you and severely injure itself when the cannonball bounces off the wall and back into it. Get them to do it again and they will be killed in the explosion.

NB: Luring the bots into lava, despite seeming a good idea, doesn't work. When an AI is conscious, it is unaffected by the deadly effects of lava (the robots won't even drown in the stuff half the time!). Only Garrett seems to take damage from stepping into the stuff. However, if you knock an AI unconscious, lava will kill it.

Extreme spa

Curiously, luring them into water doesn't seem to have any effect most of the time other than trapping them inside the confines of a small pool. If you've lured a robot into a pool it will still be able to fire at you, so take care. The above image illustrates what can happen if the bot survives its dip.

In the large Bay E you will find the Fusing Machine. The device has golden cables leading across the floor of the bay to the walls. Once you step over these cables it is as though you are behind a magical wall as the AIs will not step over it.

Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! You can't get me

It is very useful to know that the AI in Thief will not walk on or over an object. This is why you can be safe from enemies while standing on a tiny elevator - the AI views your position as unreachable and won't try to approach you. Those with ranged combat are a different matter of course as they can still shoot you.

A Climbing We Will Go:

It's not as easy as you might think to find good climbing spots in their mission. Nearly all of it is set inside Soulforge Cathedral and the few open air areas don't have much free room where you can wander the unbeaten paths. Still, there are enough to make things interesting, so here we go...

When you start this mission you are already inside the cathedral, in Bay A. There is a pair of metal doors directly South of you and you can pass through them to visit the outside. You can climb onto the gate and the Southern section of wall with the help of a few of the winchesters of chemicals lying about in the storeroom, but to get onto the roof of the cathedral requires the use of elevatoring. If you do climb onto the gate, make sure you don't fall into the small gap behind it (indicated by the arrow in the image below) and get stuck. Elevatoring is the ultimate climbing tool and makes even the most difficult of climbs possible. Click here to see Luthien's tutorial on how to perform this manuvre.

Out and About

Back inside the Cathedral, where you started, is another opportunity or two. Directly above your starting position is a ledge with some machinery on it and a great view of the whole of Bay A. The giant purple statue at the other end of the bay can also be climbed - its top section can even be walked through. Once on top of the statue, you will find that you can stick your head inside the slowly rotating gear. If you wish to visit these positions at the start of your mission, the easiest way is using the climbing technique of elevatoring. If you're in no rush, you can grab the many items lying around the mission and create a more traditional stack.

Bay Watch

The two large machines (positions 7 and 8 on the maps shown in the Strange section) can be climbed with relative ease. The one at position 7 is a simple climb if you use some of the many winchesters from the various store rooms but the large machine at position 8 requires elevatoring to reach the summit.

Mechanistic mountaineering

The remaining climbs in this mission are all found around the various signal towers. At the tower above the room with the deep lava trench (see position 1 on map) there is a building on the other side of the wall you can reach, Tip: If you're brave you can walk straight across the edge of the lava trench using the 'lean forward and run' trick and not fall into the lava. Once up at the tower, you can climb over the wall and explore the small area Outside and even climb onto the small building here.

Roof climbing on a roof

At the end of the Room of Death is another signal tower with climbing opportunities. This one also has some chimneys you can climb as well as a small section of 'ground' outside the wall.

Garrett the chimney sweep

Journeying to the large underground room with all the pillars (position 9 on the map) you can visit two signal towers. One is at the Northwest end of the room and here you can climb over the walls on two sides. Heading further down from the room with all the pillars and walking along the corridor, you will find a steel door to the North and beyond it is a sewer entrance (position 3 on the map). If you climb up the ladder on one of the walls here you can amuse yourself by taking flying leaps into the pit. A well-known bug in the game means that you can land on (and attach yourself to) a ladder and not take injury, no matter how far you have fallen. Over at the Turret room, you can amuse yourself by squishing a turret. The signal tower here has a bit of space behind two of its walls where you can let Garrett bunk off for a quiet smoke. In the small corridor outside the locked doors that lead to the Golden Child are three large, vertical pipes coming out of the ceiling. Climbing up the central one leads you to an exit overlooking the large room with the Mechanists' above-ground swimming pool. You can shoot an arrow into the small grate on the ceiling here and jump over to the girders and walk along them to the other side of the room (or take a swan dive into the pool). The doors on the mezzanine at the other side of the room leads to another signal tower where you can climb over the North wall.

And so we come to the end of the final mission. With the Guiding Beacon in place and the signal towers switched over, the Servants trek back to Soulforge cathedral and Garrett makes his exit. Karras, unaware of what has happened, triggers the pitiful wretches thinking they are still in the mansions of the city's elite. But rather than starting a chain reaction that would have destroyed all life, the necrotic mutox is confined within the cathedral and, with all the plantlife left by Victoria's sacrifice, it destroys Karras and his creations instead.

Addendum:
Luthien: I think you forgot to mention the "ghost hatch" (but perhaps I just overlooked it): In area D there is a hatch in the wall that leads to the corridors outside. It is closed initially with the mechanism to open it inside area D. But you can lean through the closed hatch from the outside, frob the mechanism and slip in. I vaguely remember a similar hatch somewhere else. It may work there too. Actually, you can lean through most of the metal hatches and doors in that mission. It's especially funny to poke your head into the bot compartments and see them sleeping (unfortunately you can not hit them with the blackjack). Some other people reported similar findings in T2. I think this works with almost all door-like constructs in T2 (hatches, sliding doors, secret doors, ...).

Azal: You can frob the small hatch leading to Bay E from outside, too.

ZylonBane: I dunno if this is sufficiently strange or unusual, but the transmission towers always looked odd to me, since the Dark Engine doesn't render their back faces, even though they should be visible. I would like to thank all those who made this website the strange and unusual place it is:

Through the Looking Glass - the greatest fansite on the web for all things Looking Glass.

Looking Glass Studios - Gone now, sadly, but their legacy lives on.

The Thief: Dark Project, Thief: Gold and Thief 2 development teams for making this site possible ;-)

Pat's Web Graphics - for letting me use a bunch of their webart.

Everyone who help me create this Guide by being the wonderful and crazy bunch they are (and doing most of my work for me in discovering all the bizarre stuff in the game).

The one-and-only Thumper, who made the original Strange and Unusual guide for Thief: the Dark Project