Best Thief 2 Fan Missions
Brigitte Bjork
Life of the Party - Thief in its most quintessential form. The mission is long and feels like two missions in one with the first being getting to the location and the second the location itself. This is when the game is running in its top form, and by the time you're done you feel exhausted in a very good way.
Casing the Joint - It seems like this mission does not often appear in people's best of lists but to me is also outstanding Thief for pushing the player into hardcore objective completion. It is I believe the only mission in the entire series where you are forced to ghost it and play like a shadow. The interior design is also excellent.
Hey guys, relatively new to the community here but I've been enjoying TDM for a few years now. I'm making my way through the backlog but it seems like you beautiful geniuses never quit! There's so many missions, and many of them are exceptional. I don't have time to go through them all and searching "Best Dark Mod missions" in google shows me results from 5 to 10 years ago. A lot of good stuff has come out since then so I was wondering - what are the best missions of the last 10 years? I'll give my favorites thus far. I'm a sucker for classic mission design and visual polish keep in mind -
New missions don't "destroy" previous, but time flies and they sometimes do something new, and can be more accessible, though I may return and replay older works, older favorites. Perhaps, it would be even more interesting to see what are the best missions for newcomers, both well-designed and accessible.
Personally, I would suggest Kingsal and Moonbo are the two mission authors you must look into if you are new to TDM. They really raise the bar in terms of consistently crafting artful, innovative missions with a particular penchant for outstanding level design, storytelling, and atmosphere.
Classic missions are always great. I like the William Steele and/or Thomas Porter series as they cover a lot of city map area, and also like the old Bikerdude/Melan missions for their amazing vertical gameplay, but I'm also a sucker for the weirder sci-fi and fantasy environments, aka Swing, The Ravine, Marsh of Rahena, Illusionist's Tower, etc. These don't have a lot of backstory and don't lead you around with readables, but they will have environmental a-ha moments. And they keep the incessantly annoying ghouls and spiders to a minimum, which is always a plus.
Also most missions have so few ratings that the average is kind of random. If you're just looking for some order in which to play the missions than this is not a bad one, but it's not really worst the best and don't take the ratings too seriously.
Hello, i was quitelly follow the the dark mod missions and this forum for years. i had a lot of inspirations and pleasure sharing this time with the builders and inventors and i need to thank all of you, for the help in troubled times you provide at this site. i discovered this game in 2019 and in 2020 and 21 have a lot of time to play all (and this mean all) the missions. i just want to share my opinion in this topic. Personally i have a few mission that caught my mind, but i need to say that it is not important. The dark mod project is not a place for a contest which one is the best imho. Of course, every year may had a winner mission, but the definitelly winner is everybody who is capable to share a months long personal race of hard programming job for final upload of a new vision of this game and share it for free with the rest of the world. I know there could be few who have great ideas but few skills to run up a complete mission. And on the other hand there could be few who have all the skills but nowadays no ideas. For the past years i am really thankful all of you who can share any of these beautiful perceptions of alternative reality and wish a continuous hungry for seekness. May the builder be with you.
I respect and admire that viewpoint and maybe that attitude is what makes this community so special. But realistically most people don't have time to play every mission, let alone even 10. I think for the community to grow (and thus more missions and more support) it would be paramount to have a rating system, so people less inclined to scroll through every forum post regarding outstanding missions don't get disinterested straight out of the gate. In this respect I see this as an opportunity to include more people into the community, not exclude content creators. I see the lack of a ratings system as a barrier to entry, and it would be great to remove that.
I think often it can be difficult to find missions you want to play, regardless. For example, I often don't have time to play long missions. Many of the maps considered masterpieces here are also huge and sprawling, and would take hours to complete.
I created an account on ThiefGuild and rated all the TDM missions I finished. How do missions get added? Do you have to write a review for that? I wanted to rate In A Time of Need 2: Breaking out the Fence , but it's not on the site.
I have not made a level myself yet, but I figure getting a lower rating can really suck the motivation to do more, out of you (which maybe isn't a bad thing for the community?). If I understand correctly - they are born out of sometimes months of effort, and maybe we should be grateful for any new addition? As long as there is a Leaderboard of recommended missions accessible for new players, they can't get the wrong idea about TDM that easily?
The thirteen missions touch on every Thief standard, from haunted ruins (now featuring zombies you can decapitate and disarm, although still not kill outright) to Hammerite temples. You even get to poke around a Mechanist-run train station at one point. There's a bunch of new toys to play with as well, including an elemental gem that switches your magical arrows between two different modes. Confusion arrows are great if you don't mind some chaos, and ice arrows (an alternative to water) let you hold and then safely knock out guards. It's more Thief, with more fun gadgets.
This is one of the more impressive campaigns released in recent years, although several of its ten missions are just collections of in-game cutscenes or short narrative segments. Still, when you're given a chance to explore and start robbing the town blind, you'll have plenty to explore and pick clean. Set in the somewhat less industrial, more up-market district of Dayport, Garrett gets caught up in an old feud between two noble families. There's murder, mystery, black magic, and even a bit of mad science gone awry, including a genuinely unnerving (and potentially lethal) robot maid.
Several of the missions here see you return to the snowy streets of Dayport on different days, with guard positions shuffled and new side-plots set in motion. The architecture here is exceptionally detailed, and there's some nice differentiation between older and newer buildings within the district. Modern electrically lit structures are juxtaposed against older churches and castles, and you can see the towering industrial structures of the City proper in the distance. There's a great sense of place to it all.
If this got you excited for more retro-styled missions, check out the other entries in the 20th anniversary mapping competition. Or, if you're looking for more grandiose city-scaled larceny, take a look at...
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Those who have been following this FAQ will have received the original first six missions (Lord Bafford's Manor, Break from Cragscleft Prison, Down in the Bonehoard, Assassins, The Sword, and The Haunted Cathedral) while I was still playing my original copy. Now that I no longer have the original, all missions which come after "The Haunted Cathedral" will be done solely from the Thief Gold game. I have replayed all the previous missions, and noted any differences I spotted between the two games in the appropriate sections. However, once you hit Mission Eight ("The Mage Towers"), there will be no further notes on differences...everything will be pure Thief Gold.
There is a patch file (of sorts) available for DromED, the editor that comes with Thief Gold for making your own missions. It's a very small zip file (about 7k in total), and contains some missing Schema files. Apparently, without these two files "reload_schemas" crashes DromEd with an error about a non-existent voice.
The most expedient path means the fastest way through the mission while still keeping numbers one and three in mind. Most missions have several "sidetrek" areas, where there is nothing for you to do or to acquire. However, a lot of these areas are just plain interesting...the designers have put a lot of time, effort, and planning into some of these, and it would be a shame for you to miss it all. So I suggest that when you are using the walkthrough, if you come across a "sidetrek" area, save your game, and go and investigate it. A lot of times, it is well worth your time. (Note: The Complete Loot Walkthrough noted in the Links section contains information on these various sidetrek areas. If you are interested, I recommend visiting the webpage.)
The SAFEST method of doing something is not always the fastest way. There are some areas where there is a more risky way of doing something, but doing so is faster. Sometimes it's not just a matter of risk, but of timing as well, since a lot of the guards patrol. So if you've been wondering why you can't beat my best times no matter HOW closely you follow the walkthroughs...well, that's your answer.
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