Stefan B. on 11/8/2025 at 13:02

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When I restarted with Fan Missions recently, I also wanted to not miss out on any "hidden gems", but at the same time not wade through, as Aemanyl said, a lot of frustrating experiences. Time is too precious for me, and I guess that holds true for many other people, especially newcomers.
There might be a few ones who want to play them all, and I understand the thread creator is one of them, but it's not a wise choice if quality time is of concern.

To tackle that, I used a list thankfully provided by Konrad / Marzec of Thiefguild with mission ratings from his site and integrated it into the wonderful AngelLoader, writing the (bayesian adjusted) rating into the comment section for easy sorting.

With that, one can easily decide what the preferred "cut-off" community rating is and go from there. My experience shows that everything under adjusted rating of 6 is not worth my time for the most part, while 8+ almost guarantees a high quality mission. Everything in between depends on the setting / type, personal choice etc.
Or you could say "out of the 1400 missions, I want to play the best 200." You might miss out on 10-20 you would have enjoyed, but at the same time you spare yourself hundreds of frustrating experiences. It's a trade off worth making for most people.

Since this is a patchwork solution, I did not bother uploading it to Github, but if someone is interested, I could share the FMData.ini. FM paths would have to be adjusted of course, as well as the full archive downloaded from this thread: (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152910)

One of my Thief-Dreams is that AngelLoader one day integrates the Thiefguild data natively. The biggest technical hurdle is likely the mis-match of mission naming between both, but with the help of AI that can be done, one-time or even real-time.

downwinder on 11/8/2025 at 14:40

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i am talking about people who got time, if you short on time for fan missions, then this post is not for you, after i did all maps, i wished i wrote down all the things i enjoyed the most for each mission, as there was so much unique stuff in so many missions, not all fan missions take as long as the most popular ones, also people can experience authors like "jis", "dront", i love those very hard and challenging fan mission

and darkmax you make fan mission you should be way above posting on my boards, get back on dromed and make more missions, if you dropped a new mission i would be playing it and probably never made this post

bjack on 11/8/2025 at 22:03

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I would recommend new players start off with the highly rated FMs first, then move on to lesser known and/or lesser rated FMs. However, if a straight A to Z timeline is important to you, then go in order from T1, TG, T2, T2X, etc. I started with T2, went to T2X, lots of T2 FMs, then TG, and then T1/G FMs. In my mind, the earlier games are prequels to T2, so playing in any sort of "time order" doesn't really matter to me. That makes me sort of an apostate I guess.

Not every FM is worth playing, but most are worth ay least a try. When in doubt, read the thread(s) on the FM, the overviews, and see if there is a walkthrough and lootlist, or a "let's play" . If you cannot find much information about the FM, or the walkthrough/lootlist is dismissive in tone, beware! If a readable/walkthrough/hint says the map is confused and difficult to navigate, take that to heart.

If I start playing an FM and I don't like it, I just stop playing and move on. I keep the saves and may or may not go back and try again. Lord Alans Factory was one such FM. I hated that FM at first, even while playing on easy. Tried it again 5 years later and enjoyed it on expert. I used to hate undead type FMs. No sweat today. The point is move on if an FM rubs you the wrong way, but keep it around just in case you change your mind. Or not. :joke: