Thief II complete walkthrough — General Information

Since June 2002, this “general” part of the guide become a separate web page. It has its own version number, starting with 1.0, like all the mission pages.

The walkthrough of most missions are co-authored by Michele L. Worley and Alex Fung. Michele wrote the content and I (Alex) marked it up. Michele likes to get all the loots with minimal violence, minimal evidence. This way to play the game is usually much more difficult than my brute force knock-them-all. However, I’ll frequently point out ways to get rid of AIs so that you can have a good look at the place.

Besides Michele, Dafydd ab Hugh, also assisted in the preparation and checking of many missions. He play-tested the walkthrough and added information on how to knockout people (unlike Michele, he loves to use the Blackjack) and for excursions. Dafydd ab Hugh is a science-fiction writer.

You dont know Dafydd ab Hugh? Have a look at two of his biographies at Dragon*Con and Fantasic Fiction. Look at some of the books he wrote.

Still later, Odyseeos prepared quite some material for me. We explored many interesting ideas, experimented with ways to handle various AIs, and pieced together the subplots and stories behind the mission.

The user interface is undergoing total rewrite. It is anticipated to have big changes. Please read this document from time to time to find out.

This guide is written in HTML 4.0 with dHTML, dHTML behavior, XML/XSLT, CSS, and javascript, with JPG and GIF pictures. The minimum requirement is IE5.0, although some features are only available in IE5.5. I have not yet worked out how to read the document offline.

Note that you cannot copy the guide to other sites. The Spoiler Centre has exclusive rights of this guide. This guide can only be hosted on my personal web site and The Spoiler Centre. Usually, I first update my site, and when things are stable (lots of fixes are found after pages are posted), they are updated to The Spoilder Centre.

XML is a core part of the Thief II walkthrough. The performance is much faster if you install the latest XML parsers (the one that came with IE6 is rather old by now). You may also test the presence of your XML parser here.

If you are still using an old version, get IE now!

Like Thief, Thief II has three difficult levels: Normal, Hard, and Expert. At harder levels, you have a longer list of mission objectives, and higher loot values to achieve. You usually cannot kill unarmed human in Hard Difficulty, or any human in Expert Difficulty.

At lower difficulty, you have in general more powerup items to pick up. Note also that the location of some loots are different at different difficulty levels. Finally, the number of pockets to pick may vary with difficulty level as well.

Besides pointing out where players at different Difficulty Levels will see different things, at times you need to take different paths according to the Difficulty Level at which you are playing. Choose the level at the beginning of the walkthrough (if such a selection box is present) and the walkthrough will be adjusted accordingly.

Animals

Undeads

Beasts

Robots

A few new items.

The Scouting Orb allows you to see round corners, but the catch is you have to throw the Orb at the right place. Once engaged, you can turn around 360° to see what the Orb can see. It is fun to see Garette himself from the Orb. In one of the Easter Eggs, the developers also considered using it to look at characters from a good angle. In our world, a similar device is available: the Remington Eye Ball R1.

Both Scouting Orbs and Flash Bombs are grey balls, so I often have difficulty distinguishing between them. A Scouting Orb has a thin yellow/black band around the middle, with a green translucent lens on one of the sides. A Flash Bomb has a large oval shape on both sides. The oval shape is dark grey, with a black circulr border. Near the oval is a red dot, which you can hardly miss.

You have two new potions. Instead of coming in small vials, the container looks like a baloon. Invisibility Potion (green) is the ultimate gift for thieves, turning yourself inivsible for a short time. Your visibility gem will turn completely dark, confirming you of the status. The problem is, the duration is really short (less than 10 seconds). After the time, you hear a strange noise and become visible again.

Slow-fall Potion (blue) is a new toy, for Garrett is climbing roof tops too often. After you drink it, then for a few seconds you fall slowly. If you need to drop from great heights (eg third floor), you should drink the potion in mid air, not before the jump. Also, notice that Slow-fall Potion slows down every of your motion. You fall slower, jump higher, but also run slower.

Flash Mine combines the flashing result of Flash Bombs and the triggering mode of Land Mines. While you still have the good old Gas Mine and Land Mine, you would be surprised to find that the Land Mine cannot be assigned to any keyboard keys (you can do the assignement, but it will not work).

Vine Arrows are just a new kind of Rope Arrows. The behavior is the same.

Broadhead Arrows are just like before, but now you have a new source for them. Some archers carry Broadhead Arrows in the quivers on their back, and you can pick the arrows from them. You get three Broadhead Arrows from their quiver, and these are counted as picks.

Frogbeast Egg are cute. You can toss the egg to the floor, and a Frogbeast will hatch. It will run into the nearest life form, or leap around until it finds one. Do not toss a Frogbeast Egg if you are the only target!

Incidentally, Frogbeasts can bring down human and worker bots. For human, it is counted as a knockout, not a kill. Therefore, you can use it even when the mission objective does not allow murders. Worker bots killed by Frogbeasts are not counted in the end-mission statistics at all.

Food! In T2, you sometimes gain health from eating normal foodstuff (apple, cheese, etc). However, the effect is random (1/4 chance), and does not always heal.

As for old items, the Land Mines are a bit annoying. The associated key stops functionning whenever you have Flash Mines in your inventory (the key will switch to Flash Mines instead of Land Mines). Association works for Flash Mines and Gas Mines, but not the regular Land Mines.

An interesting old item is your Compass. You can rely it to point somewhat to the North, but like real compasses, it does not point exactly to the North! Odyseeos discovered that when you are facing due North, the compass needle will be pointing about 12 degrees East of North — in other words, the needle is twisted clockwise by about 12 degrees. In technical terms, the variation is 12 degrees East, meaning the the Magnetic North (direction to which compass needles point) is 12 degrees to the East of the True North (direction to whcih longitudes are pointing). It is about the correct value for Eastern Europe, where the Thief saga takes place. Read more about Magnetic North versus True North at About.com and this Geocities site.

Similar to TDP/TG, very often you see only one item; but when you pick it up, your inventory receives multiple copies of them. In the guide, such items will be described using terms like the followings:

• A bundle of 3 Broadhead Arrows
• A crystal of 2 Water Arrows
• A conglomerate of 10 Flares

Since T2 has a few new inventory items, some of the key bindings are changed. Reviewed it before starting the game.

The “creep” key will let you move very slowly (slower than walk). The zoom in/out keys let you use the zoom lens of the mechanical eye, but it is not available if your active weapon is an arrow.

In T2, there is a new night sky. If you choose the new sky (from video options, “Sky Detail: High”), you can see a high resoluation, realistic sky. Well depending on your video card. My Geforce shows the moon and cloud, but not the stars. I heard that TNT shows the moon and the stars, but not the cloud. Anyway, it is better than the ”old sky“, which looks like a kindergarten drawing.

T2 now supports up to 1280x1024, but the maximum texture depth is still 16 bits (good enough for the dark environments) You should also turn on fogging and weather if that doesn’t slow down your game.

Incidentally, the stars are actual star patterns of the night sky. But they never moves, so you see the same stars in every nigh mission. The moon is an accurate picture of the moon, but if you check your compass, you find out that it is oriented incorrectly. Anyway, they are just pictures in the sky. There is also a moving cloud cover under the starry sky. Whether you see all of them (moon, star and cloud) depends on your graphics card. My Geforce 2 shows moon and cloud without the stars. I heard that TNT shows moon and star without the clouds.

An option I have been looking forward to when I was playing Thief Gold: “attach ladders”. When set to “jump”, the game behaves as in Thief Gold. You need to jump to grab on to a ladder. When set to “touch”, you hold on the ladder as soon as you touch it. Just look up and you have started climbing (if you continue to press the forward key). The drawback is, you can easily got stick to ladders when moving near them. For some ladders, you need to jump to disengage from them, often making loud noises.

An important option is “auto equip”. Remember to turn it to “yes”. When it is active, the item you pick up will be activated. If it is an inventory item, it will appear on the bottom right hand side of the screen, like in T1. If you turned the option off, you would never know what you picked up (especially when you open a Foot Locker). Unfortunately, turning it on has its drawbacks. Suppose you are carrying your Blackjack following an archer. If you pick his arrows, then your weapon switches to Broadhead Arrows automatically. Then you need to quickly swap weapons and raise your arm a second time.

Before soon, you would find out that the game is more often than not wrong about the mission statistics. It is counting your achievements correctly, but the maximum values in many missions are wrong.

Since many missions behave differently under different Difficulty Levels, the values of the maximum loot count, pick count and secrets count are not computed until you start the mission. The game engine has a few incorrect believes about the mission files, and made some consistent errors in counting things. In some missions, I will try to explain the discrepany if I can guess what the systematic errors involved are. For many missions, it is completely beyond me. Therefore, dont be frustrated when you cannot reach the maximum displayed at the debriefing screen. Instead you should rely on the maximum values of the statistics shown by my walkthrough.

Reader Alastair Gebbie has an unhappy incident with Thief II game guides. He bought a book called “Thief II: Primas Official Strategy Guide” from Prima Games. It has the logo of Eidos and Looking Glass, and is called Official Guide. On the front cover the book says “loot locations revealed” leading him to believe it was a complete loot walkthrough. On the back cover it also says “all mission secretes revealed”.

To his utter disappointment, not all loots are listed, and he found secrets not mentioned in the guide. When I go to Prima Games online, I found that they say “Information on getting all the necessary loot”. I suppose “necessary” means the book only list enough loots for you to fulfil the mission objectives. And for the secrets, it says “Secrets for every mission”, no more mentioning of “all”. I haven’t seen the book myself, but from what we can see and learn, it obviously is not a guide comparable to the depth of my walkthrough. So beware when spending money on game guides.