How long did it take you to discover that you could one-hit KO with the blackjack?

Cigam on 3/2/2022 at 15:40

This has been prompted by a Thief Deadly Shadows Let's Play that I am watching, by Noveria. In one episode she says that she made it far into the first game before discovering that you could one-hit knock out unaware enemies with the blackjack.

Because it was not covered in the tutorial I also initially had no idea until towards the end of Bafford. Before then, on my first playthrough I had been shooting guards in the back with broadheads from a short distance behind, to stealth-neutralise them.

But Noveria's comment that she was far into the game before realising that you can blackjack KO made me wonder how long it took others to twig?

(and it should really have been covered in A Keeper's Training)

Starker on 3/2/2022 at 17:43

I don't remember when exactly I figured it out, but I do remember hack and slashing my way through at first. I think it must have happened by accident when I playing the demo mission on a PC Gamer demo disc over and over again.

For people who started with T2, the second interaction with an NPC on normal is blackjacking them.

Overlord Nexus on 3/2/2022 at 22:11

The drunk guy guarding the well outside Lord Bafford's. I remember picking his pocket and then thinking, "I wonder what happens if I hit him with the club". And down he went.

downwinder on 3/2/2022 at 23:10

more impressive was being able to learn to lean forward and use blackjack

Azaran on 4/2/2022 at 01:22

When I figured out you can blackjack alert enemies who saw you, in darkness from behind

downwinder on 4/2/2022 at 01:29

nice call azaran i forgot to put that,but i do that all the time lol,have a empty dark area, alert a guard to that area run behind him and whack even with highest alert

and to be honest flying blackjacks score is lame in my view=zero skill to jump before hitting a.i.

ZylonBane on 4/2/2022 at 01:51

The only way I can imagine having to discover what the blackjack does is if you'd never heard of a blackjack before. Knocking people out is literally what they're for. This would be like having to "discover" that keys open locks or that swords go ouchie.

As if that wasn't enough, in the (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHWYCfuPQHM) trailer they actually show the blackjack being used to knock people out, multiple times!

Cigam on 4/2/2022 at 04:12

People might not take cinematic videos as necessarily representative of in-game mechanics. In one of them Garrett is semi-transparent, but that's dramatic lisence and all that. Or at least, I have yet to discover the in'game turn transparent key.

And yes clubs bash people and swords slash people, and in real-life that might knock out and kill someone instantly. That doesn't necessarily mean that this specific game you are playing has a mechanic implemented where a single hit or stab to an unaware enemy is an insta-kill or KO.

Never mind what would happen in real-life, in most games the most you might expect from a sneak attack is an extra damage bonus, and a lot of games, especially back then wouldn't even have had that mechanic implemented. For them damage is damage, regardless of enemy awareness.

If I expected game weapons to work like real-life I'd just shoot an enemy once then expect them to drop. And if shot or stabbed myself, I would expect it to take more than eating a few deer legs or apples to heal me back up :)

Starker on 4/2/2022 at 06:22

Things were different back then. Games simply weren't doing things like this. And the internet itself wasn't as ubiquitous in people's lives as it is today, so a lot of people wouldn't even have seen the trailer.

Also, blackjacks aren't nearly as famous as swords or keys for what they do, so you can't really take it as a given that everybody knows they are meant to knock people out or that they would work in the game the same way. Not that they really work that way in real life -- it's actually not that easy to knock someone out for a long time without killing them. That's like expecting your fists in Doom to knock the monsters out non-lethally because you see people being hit unconscious in movies in one punch.

Stefan_Key on 4/2/2022 at 13:13

I figured it out on my 2nd playthrough with Thief The Dark Project.

My 1st playthrough was made of sword and broadheads (=assassin+sniper :cheeky:), normal difficulty, as I was a total beginner.

And then I found it amusing to KO those taffers in different ways.

Back then, I wasn't connected to the internet and had to discover all by myself. It was in the early 2001.