Played Thief for years before discovering...

Cigam on 15/3/2017 at 11:45

Thanks, I'll give that a try next time I'm there.

Discovered yesterday that you can unlock doors by bashing them with your sword. Or at least there is one door that this works with, a door in Blackmail. You even get the unlocking sound as if you had used a key. Not yet tested it on other doors.

About Haunts, why do they have swords? They are meant to be resurrected Hammers so why wouldn't they have hammers?

I actually vaguely remember them having hammers in my first playthrough of the unpatched version of DP; then when I played a 2nd playthrough a year later, this time with Gold, they had swords and I wondered whether these swords had been patched in? Or am I just misremembering that they had hammers initially.

Also, why no Mechanist Haunts? :)

marbleman on 15/3/2017 at 11:53

Haunts have swords in TDP and TG but they have hammers in T2. Mechanist haunts are theoretically possible and are even present in some FMs. Actually, anybody can become a haunt, I think.

Yandros on 15/3/2017 at 12:26

By default you can bash down most wooden doors, unless they have been specifically set to be unbashable.

skacky on 15/3/2017 at 12:31

My guess for Haunts to have swords is because hammers are blessed symbols. But of course they use hammers in T2, so... There is a Hammerite mesh in T1/G that uses a sword too and has less armor than a regular Hammer guard.

demagogue on 15/3/2017 at 13:49

I read through the sourcecode and figured out things you'd almost never think to check (or know how to check) in game, although now I'm already forgetting them.

I think one was that sword damage is a function of your angle to the bad guy, so a shot where you're head on facing the guy hurts more than if you're facing their side and the shot still connects, which I think I'd already suspected, but it was confirmed.

DarkMax on 15/3/2017 at 15:10

Similarly to AIs, doors have hit points. Wooden doors can either be opened by bashing then with the sword or using explosives. Most metal doors can only be opened with explosives.

AntiMatter_16 on 15/3/2017 at 19:36

You can blackjack alerted guards through doors if you stand in front of the door. This is assuming the door blocks AI vision. Door with windows do not.
You can also blackjack alerted guards around corners.

Cigam on 15/3/2017 at 20:01

It seems a bit weird though that bashing a door would cause it to unlock, complete with unlocking sound, rather than it just crashing open.

So the T2 Haunts have hammers. Maybe that it why I remembered them that way and so was confused by my 2nd T1 playthrough by the swords.

DarkMax on 15/3/2017 at 21:15

My theory is that Haunts in Thief Gold use swords because they are ghosts of Hammerites from older times, which is why you find them in the Old Quarter and the Bonehoard only and probably some (if not all) of the Hammerites used to wield swords back in those years. In Thief 2 they carry hammers because you find them in not-so-forgotten places (Truart's estate crypt and the Mechanist Seminary) and that proves that those ghosts are not as old. You can spot the difference in the age of the Haunts just by looking at their outfit, too.

Cigam on 20/3/2017 at 22:29

DarkMax, could be.

In Thieves Guild a searching enemy may say something like "You better hope I find you before the guards do". What guards? Aren't they the guards? Or are these guards not actually in the mission (like the non-existent dogs, who you are also threatened with).