The Black Cat on 6/12/2018 at 01:14
I wonder if Downwinder noticed the sword planted in the intruder painting?
DarkMax on 6/12/2018 at 03:46
Classic Melan mission. Huge city with each building having their own mysteries, secrets and shady characters. The writing is just as good as always, not to mention the number of ways of getting around plus the well placed ambient sounds (which has always been a highlight in the author's FMs). I loved each second of it! Especially the thing :p
Calibrator on 6/12/2018 at 15:41
I can only second this: A terrific mission - as was expected from Melan! ;)
As a matter of fact I have found a new home in this district after about eight(!) hours.
The old tennant decided to move out after some encouragement, but the rotten taffer hid the housekey very well...
Tomorrow I will move my furniture from Keywell to here and hunt for the missing loot.
The remaining 5% will secure the next month, I guess.
Zaratul on 6/12/2018 at 18:57
Im stuck with that golden plate objective, what am i supose to do? I dont have a golden plate, where can i find it?
skacky on 6/12/2018 at 19:06
Zaratul: Check the outside of the Master Forger's house more carefully.
Galaer on 7/12/2018 at 20:57
Finally beat this super long mission. It took me roughly 4,5 hours which translate to 2 days of exploring this city. I really like attention to detail about story. And atmosphere is great. I really liked that the city gets more alive after Grandmauden objective. But there are some things that really annoyed me:
1. Bugs: few times happened that after taking crate I was unable to drop it, reloading helped. But there was another bug which made me unable to use my weapons. Without realizing this I quicksaved the game and this screwed my quicksave and forced to return to hard save. Luckily I needed to repeat just 10 min of gameplay. But from that moment I had in mind to not repeat my mistake and I was using blackjack before saving. This is one thing that really destroyed my fun with this mission.
2. Hiding progress by really awkward secrets. Finding Rose Garden took me 3,5 hours. And the reason for that isn't just because this mission is a maze with many many options. No, the biggest problem for me is that mission force me to find really awkward secrets to progress. Finding progress sure is satisfying, but search for it is... dreadful feeling.
First one is skull riddle. My first thoughts were - this is definitely for secret bonus loot. I didn't notice lock until much later, so I had no idea where to use item from riddle. On top of that this item is accessible via rope arrow. For Lava God sake there is so many places accessible via rope arrow. Finding about this secret room being progress path was really shocking.
Second one was near Hightowne Archive. Path to Rose Garden is blocked by gate. Behind it is lever. So close and yet so far. I don't see any paths around. This makes me cry. That's how I end first day of my playthrough. Total despair. Next day I found green bush above my head. I didn't thought that this will work or is this something more than little bonus. It happened to be progress path. Thanks to that I managed to find new part of the city and unlock... return path to the rest of the city. Thoughts at this moment: "WHERE SHOULD I GO?! WHERE SHOULD I GO?!! WHERE IN THE WORLD SHOULD I GO?!!!!!!!!". Finally found the path, by searching for it was really devastating.
I think author just went too far with this annoying part of exploration.
3. Loot. It's true there is a lot of loot in this mission. But it's value is very small. Watching how slow it raise is scary. At the end at Grandmauden I was seriously panicking that I will be forced to explore this huge maze again. Luckily I barely get enough loot.
skacky on 7/12/2018 at 22:04
The engraved skull is not necessary to progress. It's a nice shortcut but you can get to the other side without it.
Galaer on 7/12/2018 at 22:23
Quote Posted by skacky
The
engraved skull is not necessary to progress. It's a nice shortcut but you can get to the other side without it.
Are you kidding me? If there is another path, then it's even better hidden than this shortcut that I barely found.
skacky on 7/12/2018 at 22:37
There are two ways to go to Rose Garden:
- Going through Al-Asri's by circling around Mortesaigues' (Al-Asri is the red brick manor with the cupolas).
- Climbing all the way to the top of Cistern Court and hopping over a pink-tiled roof to the west.
Melan on 8/12/2018 at 06:08
Quote Posted by Galaer
Second one was near Hightowne Archive. Path to Rose Garden is blocked by gate. Behind it is lever. So close and yet so far. I don't see any paths around. This makes me cry. That's how I end first day of my playthrough. Total despair. Next day I found green bush above my head. I didn't thought that this will work or is this something more than little bonus. It happened to be progress path. Thanks to that I managed to find new part of the city and unlock... return path to the rest of the city. Thoughts at this moment: "WHERE SHOULD I GO?! WHERE SHOULD I GO?!! WHERE IN THE WORLD SHOULD I GO?!!!!!!!!". Finally found the path, by searching for it was really devastating.Well, sorry to read you had an unpleasant experience. On the other hand, you actually did something that's entirely original and completely unintended, and something which none of the testers (a small army of dedicated Thief veterans, most of whom have made their own missions, too) have found. At first, I didn't even understand what you were talking about.
Roping up next to that potted tree is NOT any of the intended ways in. It is a brand new discovery that's completely legitimate, but well outside the box. Actually, even gaining access to that city section
with the skull is a side-effect of a fairly obscure side-mission -
it should mostly be gated off from you until you have visited Rose Garden.I am genuinely impressed.
