Thief: The Dark Project

- If you're having trouble with the undead and can't figure out a reliable way to fight them, consider that they can be harmed by throwing holy symbols at them in addition to the standard fire arrows, flash bombs, and holy water. Now ask yourself, what common belonging to the Hammerites happens to be just sitting around on the ground all over the place, just waiting to be lobbed into your foes.

- Hammers, anyone?

- Thief is a first-person sneaker, not a first-person shooter.

- Many people gave up on the game without ever getting past the first level, all because they tried to play the game like a shooter. It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time Thief came out stealth-based elements in first-person games were a new concept to many gamers. Anyone used to the likes of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake defaulted to plowing through levels, taking enemies head-on. I lost count of the number of otherwise intelligent gamer friends who simple gave up on Thief, complaining, "The sword fighting is just too hard! I end up with a million guards chasing me through the level and it's impossible to kill them all!"

- Seriously, if you're constantly getting into sword fights with enemies, you're not playing the game the right way. You could technically muddle through the game on the default "normal" skill setting if you choose the "sword & plow" method of gameplay, but you won't really have much fun. On the "expert" skill setting it's almost impossible to play this way, because you're not allowed to kill human NPCs.

- You play Thief by sticking to the shadows (there's a light meter that indicates the ambient lighting of your current location), moving quietly (different surfaces create different sounds, speed is a factor), finding safe havens to evade enemy patrol routes, etc. If you want to take enemies out, sneak up on them, render them unconscious and hide their body. Enemies are intelligent enough to react if something looks out of place -- i.e., they come across a body, discover a locked door open, find an object missing, etc.

- While it's not explicitly documented, you can play System Shock 2 (which uses the same tweaked Dark Engine as Thief II) the same way.

- The skill levels don't add more enemies or give them more stamina and heightened awareness. They give you additional side missions, require you to collect more loot and ensure that you don't kill any humans. In other words, the "hard" and "expert" skill levels basically double the length of the game, open up more of the levels for you to explore and require that you generally act more thief-like. I recommend starting on "hard". The "normal" (easiest) skill level is just there as a concession to people who find stealth-like gameplay confusing.

- Yeah, there's zombies to deal with. But their AI is pretty much identical to the human enemies, meaning you can hide from them in the shadows too. Not only that, but you can kill them without penalty and there's many interesting ways you can do that. Arrows dipped in holy water. Hammerite holy symbols dipped in holy water. Overheard sword strikes while they're unaware. If you want to evade them, they're pretty slow too. Trust me, you'll miss their presence in Thief II (a small cameo appearance aside).

- Read all the scrolls and books you come across. There's lots of great world building there, as well as clues to secret caches of loot and hidden areas of the game. You sort of miss System Shock's method of voice recorded logs, but they function in much the same way. Thief II does give you voice recordings in later levels, but it's all done in a plausible way.

- If you're buying this game on eBay (or anywhere else really), make sure it's the Thief Gold edition, not the vanilla Thief: The Dark Project. The former's the most common, but be careful. You can't patch vanilla Thief into Thief Gold. Thief Gold basically adds three new missions (which are interwoven into the existing story and not tacked on as optional extras), overhauls a couple of others and generally tweaks, optimizes and removes bugs in all of them.

- The game's a complete bitch to get running on modern systems, but it's well worth it. You'll have a (slightly) easier time of it if you're running Vista and an 8x or 9x NVIDIA card (or ATI equivalent). It seems to be a lot more problematic on XP and older NVIDIA cards. The TTLG forums are full of knowledgeable people who can help solve most compatibility issues.

- There's a very active fan community that still continues to churn out exceptionally well-designed levels. You'll need a front-end GUI called Dark Loader that makes the process painless. Keep an eye out for T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age. It's a full-length sequel to Thief II that borders on Looking Glass quality in places. Also look out for The Seventh Crystal, which features the best-designed/most atmospheric mansion mission that anyone's ever created for Thief. (Plus there's a great scare moment that will require you to be peeled off the ceiling.)

- Many people on Thief's development team went on to work on System Shock 2 and BioShock. What more of an excuse do you need?

- Play at the highest levels. It adds more content and the game is more fun that way. At the highest difficulty you won't be allowed to kill any humans. That's okay though because if you have to kill anyone you are playing the game wrong. When you are playing the Haunted Cathedral and Down in the Bone-hoard always keep a couple of fire arrows spare until you see a specific use for them: Lighting a couple of torches in order to open a door. Your equipment and cash doesn't carry over between missions so don't be afraid to use the tools you are given.

- I think you should play on Hard, not Expert the first time. Expert can be very frustrating for a first timer, sometimes you just really need to kill that one guard. Hard unlocks most extra objectives, and has a quite high loot objective too, so you'll have to explore most of the map anyway.

- If you don't like zombie levels, you won't like Thief 1. I felt the same at first, but now I find the undead levels much creepier and more interesting than the usual "break into mansion" of Thief 2.

- Difficulty alters these things: Your health, Extra objectives / loot objective, Expert means you can't kill any humans, Hard means you can't kill any innocents, Enemy sight, you'll be seen and heard easier.

- That's about it I think. Contrary to what people say, I'd say combat is still a viable option in fuckup situations, as long as you let the guard escape. The best Thief stories and the biggest thrill comes when you fuck up and run around with enemies behind you, trying to lose them.