jiansonz on 21/12/2018 at 23:51

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Fabulous mission, I enjoyed over 8 hours of Thiefy bliss. Had no problem with loot objective, cleared the required amount way before I was even thinking of trying to progress the main story. Finished with 75 from the maximum.


I can add a tip for finding loot: there are plenty of rather cleverly hidden pieces in the spooky part of Rose Garden.


What I really like is that, at first, everywhere you look, you see a structure that might have a piece of loot, or a power-up, or a readable, or a way forward. But also that the vast majority of those things that might be interesting actually aren't. :p
This means you won't get jaded with constant rewards, and you can't know which of all those things that are actually interesting. I felt like a Taffer (both in a good way that I managed to reach places and in a 'facepalm' way that they actually didn't lead to anything) several times. Examples:
* The balcony with the large chair overlooking the gallows. Very tempting door there - unfrobbable!
* Warehouse doors above Rose Garden's garden.

Anyone else:
- suffering the first death/reload after plunging down the wine dealer's toilet?
- suffering the second reload after roping down the wine dealer's toilet, only to find that it doesn't lead anywhere and you can't reach the rope?
- getting blown to bits for climbing the hedge maze BEFORE reading the warning about it?

I happened to spoil myself with this thread, reading about those X-es before triggering the event. Not sure if I would have ever managed otherwise.

I was absolutely positive that Pud's tip meant that I should go to Rose Garden's basement, douse the lights and hit the 'head' on the wall down there with a moss arrow, and that this should open the metal door there. It didn't, so I reloaded to save my arrows. Then I practically tripped over the key a short while later...
Then it took me a long time to find the lock for that key. I tried it on the Archives door first.

It also took me suprisingly and annoyingly many tries to find a way to get back from that little balcony without taking some major damage...

I found the 'key skull' very early, and the plaque and the metal door were also found early. But it wasn't until a while after I read in this thread that I saw that the metal door has a frobbable receptacle next to it...

I loved the sword decoration in the form of tiny blue loot gems! Creative and beautiful.


Now to a bunch of questions:

- Where did Oswin hide the crystals? Not sure if I've found them...

- Are we to assume that the doctor's aquaintance (the master chef) was killed in that skull "Maw" place?

- What's with the '383' symbol? (The first '3' is inverted). I found it on at least one wall, and also in the roof opening of Rose Garden's gazebo (but only if you look from below (?!), not from above).

- Are any of these places and things NOT a red herring, i.e. can you enter or find or do something about/with them?:
* Wine dealer's lowest part of basement, walled-up doorway
* Similar walled-up doorway in inner room of (what I presume is) a pawn shop. It has a Keeper keyhole symbol next to it.
* That metal door in Rose Garden's basement
* What looks like a boiler room a short ways east of Biggest Cucumber
* Inner part (behind bars) of workshop where you can reach through opening and grab two nuggets
* Grandmauden's library: small bookshelf with a padlock
* Grandmauden's statue room, wooden lid with padlock by rafters
* Roofed yellow-bricked walkway you walk under on Forger's Walk
* Secret room in Pud's apartment. The corner pillars look interesting. Three different symbols (triangle, square and hexagon) and the fourth has a statue.
* Three statues, two of them holding sword and hammer
* In condemned apartment, can you get behind the (insubstantial) bars?
* Firewatch, inner room and stairway behind gate
* Passages up or down in executioner's place
* Mr. Weir's place, stairs behind gate

HavvicGames on 22/12/2018 at 16:48

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Found the dopefish on my 2nd playthrough. I actually found it super early but I didn't have the mysterious key yet. Great job with the mission, I loved it!

vfig on 23/12/2018 at 13:17

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Finally have time to write out my impressions with a few more words:

I had a very rocky start and a lot of ups and downs with this mission. I had explored the wine cellar and apartments above first thing, but didn't see the vent above the toilet cistern. So then I searched the starting courtyard for a way out, including climbing up to the throne-balcony in vain hope. Went round it all about three times in total before finally seeking help. It was really frustrating to be stuck in a tiny starting area with the only way forward being so hidden. And then mantling onto the toilet in order to jump+mantle onto the cistern, the mantle took me over the edge and I fell in and died in the toilet for the third time (lol). But this all kinda killed my mood, so after getting through the ducts, I saved and left the mission for the next day.

Once out in the city it became a lot more fun. Lots of places to explore and things of interest to see. Getting around the city was still very difficult. Apart from a few landmarks, the map was of very little use. It was hard to read as it's got very sharp pixels, like it was scaled down without interpolation or something. But with all the city areas gated off from each other, I very quickly had to abandon trying to get anywhere in particular and instead just follow my nose and see where I ended up. And somehow (via a slightly cheaty strafe-jump to Al-Asri's tower) I stumbled across Rose Garden very early on anyhow. Naturally I climbed on top of the hedges rather than try the maze, and was pretty unamused by dying to near-invisible mines. Had to turn gamma to max to see them. I appreciated the joke when finding the list of rules afterwards, but it would have been funnier without instadeath. But I quicksave a lot, so I guess I didn't lost much progress.

Once inside Rose Garden, things started to get more interesting. At first I assume that since this was a rogue's kinda place, and I was supposed to meet my client here, that the NPCs would be neutral towards me. Well I learnt better very quickly! Once I got upstairs where the weirdness began I was having a great time. The invisible burrick was entertaining. Getting to the end of the noisy corridor and discovering my client wasn't there… well I didn't have a good plan for avoiding the invisible humanoid while getting out, but I managed it after a few attempts (including one attempt at exiting via a window, which didn't go so well!).

Now the new instructions… I loved that the chalk marks I'd seen around the city and the orders to withdraw guards that I'd seen became revealed as this citywide conspiracy to assassinate this guy. But at the same time, discovering that this was going to be an escort mission made me sigh. Though I figured it couldn't possibly be as bad as Keeper of the Prophecies's escort mission, and indeed it wasn't. I hadn't found firewatch yet, but figured I'd go and deal with the chalk marks I'd already seen, and explore the rest of the map (now with a good reason to explore it all!) and erase them all. I was confused by the other sigils I was seeing in places (the ones made up of multiple number signs), and also confused by finding several chalk signs (Xs with overlaid arrows) that I couldn't erase.

Eventually I'd erased all the Xs I could find, and knocked out all the AIs on the streets so that the guy would have as safe a path as possible. I also placed a few mines where the unerasable chalk Xs were, thinking hostile AIs would probably appear there. Then I went in search of firewatch, and found it without much difficulty.

Before sounding the bell, I had one more objective: to steal the cursed gem. In all my explorations I hadn't found any way to get into Humphrey's or Haskell's places. But I had found several places where I'd been able to get out of bounds and reach the rooftops (which is how I discovered the enormous, mysterious arrow very early on). The easiest and closest was by the skull-door-riddle, so I climbed up there again and got into Humphreys over the rooftops. Still not sure what the proper way in is! I had the priests note about diluted holy water and fire, but a single holy water arrow seemed to get rid of the protective field, so I figured that was it for the curse. I found out I was wrong when I tried to leave the room :D — But now that I had all other objectives done, it was time for the escort quest.

The quest itself didn't make a lot of sense to me: if my client wanted to get this guy's information, why was I escorting him to the palace instead of intercepting him myself? But the objectives were clear, so escort him to the palace it was. Getting him there after ringing the bell took me a few attempts. The first time, I decided to see if the guy was neutral towards me or not (though the "stick to the shadows" VO made me expect he wouldn't be). He saw me, took fright, and ran directly to the palace, only encountering a single enemy on the way. Then he went in the palace gates and nothing happened! No objectives changed. So I guess that by spooking him myself I'd somehow broken the scripting, and decided to start again and follow him properly this time.

The second attempt went better for a while. He walked in a roundabout route, and I followed him and intercepted a few hostile AIs (including a number of newly spawned guards, which I thought odd—weren't they supposed to be pulled back when the bell sounded?). At one point I ended up stepping on one of my own mines while ducking out of sight (lol), so I had to quickload. A little after that, the guy got stuck. I don't remember exactly where, but he walked down a street, stopped and looked around, then turned around and came back. I figured he was being smart and doubling back to see if he was being followed. Then when he got to the other end of the street (where he'd come from originally) he stopped, looked around, and turned around again. Then to the far end of the street. Then back to the near end again. Then back again. It looked like he was stuck in this pattern, so I reloaded my save at firewatch to start over once more.

This time I reread my instructions and saw the bit about the side window that I'd forgotten before. So I figured I'd just spook him and get him to run the short way, since it had kinda worked the first time. And it worked fine—this time he didn't even get spotted by the Thin Alley enemy—and when he got to the palace, I looked around for the side window and found it easily. I hadn't actually expected the palace to have an accessible interior, so I was pleased to find a new place to explore. But from there to the end of the mission didn't take long, and nothing remarkable happened.

Overall I enjoyed this mission a lot, despite the early frustrating navigation and the escort mission (which turned out much easier than I feared, even if I perhaps didn't do it as intended!). Compared to The Sound Of A Burrick In A Room (which itself is reminiscent of Disorientation in its use of rivers and general sloping layout), this was more awkward to explore, but exploring was more rewarded with interesting places and a few puzzles—where A Burrick felt more bare: lots of places to go, but most of them had nothing more interesting than loot. I had more fun out of this mission despite also having a lot more frustration.

vfig on 23/12/2018 at 21:05

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Aha! I too found it at the bottom of the steps. So that’s why the readable hinting at it didn’t make much sense to me!

Schlock on 24/12/2018 at 10:59

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I had similar thoughts to vfig's, although I didn't have as much trouble with the escort section. The Purah influence was very evident, especially in the al-Asri spires, the area just outside Rose Garden. and the Master Forger's mansion. Definitely one of my favorites from the contest so far.