Thief — an All Difficulty Level complete-loot walkthrough (Original Thief and Thief Gold)

This mission uses a version number (starting with 1.0) independent of the main document.

At several places, additional information is available as tool tips. Move the mouse on the words looking like these to see them.

A few places are worth visiting, but is not needed to achieve your objectives. They do not even get you any powerups, so it is up to you whether to follow them. I will describe the main route like a regular walkthrough. Then at certain points I will mark excursion routes. At these points, if you want to have a look (and you should), save your game and follow the route. Click the excursion heading in this color and style to expand the route. After the voyage, just reload the game you saved at the Excursion starting point to continue the main route (note that excursions may not bring you back to the starting point). For those who don’t bother to go (I do not understand why anybody should want to skip the excursions), just ignore the milestone and continue straight on.

There is nothing to pick (that counts toward the pick count in the mission statistic) in this mission.

The walkthrough is written to make use of the advanced features of IE4 and IE5 browsers. In several places, the tables will be shown in better shape when viewed from IE5. Otherwise, IE4 and IE5 show the same effects (but IE5 rendering much faster).

When you were a starving child in the streets, a Keeper picked you up. Now he teaches you to move and to fight. The most important thing to learn about the Keepers is they are cool and detached from the world.

Before you start, go to the OPTION screen to check all the key bindings. Find out what actions you can perform, and assign keys to suit yourself. My setting is like this:

• w/s: run forward and move back. Note that the original setting use w/s for run and walk. I think it is a waste of key space. You can always use shift key to toggle between run/walk.
• a/d: strafe left/right.
• mouse: use the mouse to look up/down and steer left/right. press left button to attack, right button to use/pick/throw.
• z/x/c: lean left/forward/right. The three lean keys are the most important things you do in Thief. The original control-shift-W sequence is plain absurd.
• f: toggle crouch. Another very important action.
• space bar: jump and mantle, something you often do.
• q/e: next/prev inventory. Since your right hand is on the mouse, you won’t be able to use [ and ] for inventory.
• `/tab: put away weapon/inventory. Two useful actions, so place them where you left hand can access.
• r: drop object. Not really useful, but dropping stuff (useless objects that you erronesously picked up) is less noisy than throwing them away. On the other hand, dropped objects fall vertically down, while thrown objects sort of fly away in a parabolic trajectory.
• v: block. Rather useless because you seldom engage in a fight.
• 1..0, F1..F12: leave them unchanged, and remember what they are. While it isn’t mentioned anywhere, F9 show your compass, F10 take a screen shot (saved as a PCX file in your Thief directory), F11 is quick save, F12 is quick load.
• "/": I prefer to use this for the compass. It is less inaccessible than F9. And you need the compass not too infrequently.
• Forget about left/right turns and look up/down commands. Use your mouse to steer directions.

Make sure you have chosen the EXPERT Difficulty, especially when you are playing Original Thief. Even if you are playing Thief Gold, I suggest Expert. The training content is identical, but you may not be able to access the Easter Egg in other difficulty levels.

You begin in the library. Look up to find your tutor arriving from the West. He leaves on the East, leaving you to another tutor in your lesson ahead. Do what the tutor says.

Note that you already have a compass with you — find it in your inventory. Assign it to a handy key.

The first lesson is about light and shadows. Move along the shadows forward. Move to various places to find out how bright the location is, so that in the future you can judge the brightness of a location without actually going there. Notice that your visibility increases when you are moving. And it reduces when you crouch down.

Try to get seen by the tutor (should not be that difficult). You will be sent (teleported) back to the beginning of this hall for a retry.

When you climb the stairs, stick to the wall on your right and run up. The tutor will not be able to see you, even though the left side seems darker. It is true for all AIs, they do not see the 180 degrees behind them.

The second lesson is on noises. Try to move on the various surface types with different speeds: run, walk, walk with pauses, run while crouching, walk while crouching, walk while crouching with pauses. Note that you make much less noise by stopping after walking every one or two steps.

Then you are introduced to weapons. Take the stuff as directed. First try to run around, and notice that you run much slower if you are carrying a Sword in your hand. Always put away (with the Put Away Key command) weapons when you need to run.

First shoot the three targets on your left (the first time I came here, I keep shooting the human-form dummy on the right, thinking it is the target). Press the left mouse button and wait for the target to zoom in. If you shoot before the zoom, you deal less damage to the target. Yet if you zoom for too long, your hands get stiff and cannot hold the bow steadily. Press the put away key to avoid shooting an arrow to nowhere.

Note that Broadhead Arrows have parabolic trajectories. The farther away the target, the higher you need to aim. You can jump inside the target area to collect your Broadhead Arrows, if you wish so (they are no longer useful after all).

Save your game now. Turn around and play Sword with the dummy. Give it a left stroke and then a right stroke. Before you give it an overhead stroke, locate a doorway on your left. Go there and find a iron gate (those made of iron bars, not an iron door) in the corridor. The guard will come from this corridor soon.

Go back to the dummy and turn so that you can see the iron gate. After you have done an overhead stroke to the dummy, the human guard will open the gate and appear. Play with him as directed. He cannot hurt you nor you him. Also, try shoot him with your Broadhead Arrows and see what the trainer would say. When the guard starts to leave, do a quick save and join an Easter Egg Excursion.

Restore your game, grab everything on the table, and let the guard leave. The trainer talks as if you can regain health by eating everything on the table. This is not true. There are plenty of foodstuffs in the missions and you can go eat them all. They have no effect on you (not until Thief 2). Except until mission 12 (Escape!), where I will talk about the special food there.

Wait a while, follow where guard has gone to find the metal gate closed. Go back to the courtyard and leave via the other door to the obstacle race.

Instead of climbing up, walk around and swim a while before you start the course. Dive into water and you see a breath bar on the lower right side of the screen. You start with a full row of air bubbles, and it gets shorter as you continue to stay under water. When it reduces to nothing, you start to lose health (the health bar is the list of shields on the lower left).

Mantle up to the other side of the river, but there is only a small patch of grass, not much to look around. Do a running jump back to the other bank and start the course at the begining by climbing the rope. I always find rope climbing difficult, so have some practice here. Try to climb it when you are standing near the rope. Try to run from a distance and jump to climb the rope. Try to stand at a mid-distance and jump to the rope…

When you are on top of the blocks, try lean left/right and forward to see things below. Try drop down to the ground. It is best to drop when crouched — it makes to least noise and takes least damage.

Make sure all your keyboard assignments are comfortable to you, and that you use do them naturally. Follow the instructions and arrive at the other end. Save your game before entering the door there.

Enter the final corridor and rush to the end. Grab the Green Vase (0;0;50) on the table. The other doors cannot be opened. Just stand there and wait for the mission to complete. With the Vase, you start the next mission with 350 credits. Without it, you start with only 300 credits.