Thief 2/any % normal ILs
From SDA Knowledge Base
Any% Normal Individual Level Runs Guide
By JakePlissken et al.
Contents
Introduction
This guide seeks to provide up-to-date routes and tactics to help players learn and compete for IL records. We will outline the strategy for each run by discussing necessary or recommended purchases, providing a step-by-step guide for the fastest strategies, and finally providing a synopsis of the run and a summary on which aspects to practice to achieve record times.
There are two predominant paradigms for IL records: money runs, and "single-segment safe" IL's. The latter uses money carried over from the previous mission, usually the maximum loot available, to purchase extra supplies to make the route faster and more consistent or safe. "Single-segment safe" IL runs use only the money that you would normally have after completing the previous mission in a single-segment any% full game run, which is often 0, as only 5 of 15 missions have loot requirements on normal difficulty. "Single-segment safe" runs are more beneficial as practice than for achieving record times, so for the purposes of this guide we will only focus on money runs. There is a third, much more rare playstyle known as Low%, where no purchases are made at all and players collect the minimum amount of loot required to complete the mission. This is an older challenge run that is no longer commonly seen.
If you are new to Thief speedrunning, it would be beneficial for you to review the SDA Game Mechanics and Glitches page to learn about general movement and how to perform the various glitches that will be referenced in this guide.
TIMING: Thief 2 IL's are timed by in-game time, which is measured in full seconds. The timer rounds down; for example, a 2:05.97 will be displayed as a 2:05. The timer is exceptionally accurate, demonstrated by frame-counting many runs, and the timer has always proven to be accurate. There exist several rumors of circumstances in which the timer is inaccurate, but most of these can be traced to save/load indiscretions, and so far no definitive proof has been put forward. Likewise, saving and loading invalidates the in-game timer, because on loading the timer reverts to the time of the original save, meaning the additional game time is not added to the final game time. Hence, all IL runs must be completed in a single segment, with no saves or loads of any kind. There is some debate regarding how Sabotage at Soulforge should be timed, since it is significantly faster in real time with one save/load than with a single segment, but currently single-segment runs are standardized.
Running Interference
As the level loads, spam your strafe keys to make sure you get moving as soon as the level loads. This is not as critical in other levels, as most levels place Garrett slightly above the ground and allow him to fall into place; on Running Interference however, Garrett begins in contact with the ground and thus getting a fast start by spamming is possible.
Do not blow the birdcall at this point. Head inside the mansion to the Butler's Quarters. If you play with item auto-equip enabled, you want to grab the key that is resting on the wall near the door and immediately open the locked door on the left. If you do not use auto-equip, grab the key on the table with the coins instead to give yourself time to equip it and open the door.
The tricky part about optimizing this run is developing a pattern of AI manipulation that works for you, in such a way that Jenivere is less likely to get blocked by the guards as she runs through the narrow hallways. My method of choice is relatively uncommon; grab both keys in the Butler's Quarters, and drop one of them by the first door on your right. The guards hear the noise and open that door; then tap the torch with my blackjack, and continue onwards. It seems to work most of the time. Knock out the obvious guard in your way. You also want to throw a box here to first alert the guard who is standing in the alcove. If he is alerted by the box, he's actually less likely to third alert and start chasing you when you run by than if he were unalerted, and he will second alert instead. This also gives him a favorable position for Jenivere to get past.
Next is alerting Jenivere and you can do this in one of two ways: either with a key which is faster but takes some practice, or with the blackjack, which is slower but simpler. To use the key, approach Jenivere's door while straferunning and when you get close, drop the key. It will inherit some of your momentum and hopefully hit the door. If it doesn't, it can still alert her if it hits the ground right in front of the door. This takes practice to get the angle and the timing right, but since you travel less distance it is the best way to get a fast time.
A newer, faster, and more ersatz method is to retain both keys in your inventory, and drop them both in quick succession while moving your mouse downward so that the keys impact each other, thus making the noise necessary to alert Jenivere. This takes a significant amount of practice and binding the "drop item" command to your mousewheel can allow you to drop the keys quicker. With this method, you do not need to get close to the door; you can drop the keys half way through the hallway and turn back immediately. This method saves up to two seconds and is the current world record method.
I would recommend you use the blackjack instead if you are just starting out running Thief 2. There are two ways to do this consistently. One is to hit the top-left corner of the door either with a swing or with a block-tap (performed by blocking when close enough to the door). The other is to stand with your back to the door, look straight down, and swing. You will hear a more distant, quieter "clang". This is actually the sound of your blackjack hitting the opposite side of the door due to the blackjack's unusual hitbox. Both methods are fairly consistent ways of freeing Jenivere. You can also try leaning forward to squeeze out just a little bit more time.
A quick note on why these methods open Jenivere's door. Jenivere has a very simple AI script which only knows how to idle, read a scripted line to Basso, and escape. Since Basso's "rescue" flag hasn't been activated yet, she doesn't read her line, and proceeds to just escape because her AI is no longer idling. She has the ability to unlock the door mainly to prevent buggy interactions with the player when doing the intended route.
You should exit the mansion ahead of Jenivere. Proceed to knock out anyone who presents such an opportunity to do so, as it will limit the number of guards Jenivere can get stuck on. You do not need to leave as fast as possible; taking the time to crouch and KO a guard or two will usually save time as Jenivere will have less obstacles on her way out. Some players open the side doors on their way out, thinking the AI's might wander into them. This may be true, but it is poorly understood and need to be tested. Run towards Basso's building and blow the birdcall. Then run back towards the stairs and stand near them. When Jenivere escapes, the mission will end.
That is really all you need to know to achieve a 1:04, which is the fastest known time on the NewDark engine. However, for those interested there is some deeper theory about the timing of this mission. Using the slower blackjack method, CatharticGaming was able to achieve a 1:05on the original "OldDark" engine in 2013. In the OldDark engine, if all objectives are completed and Jenivere is knocked out, the mission ends almost immediately, whereas in the NewDark engine this glitch and other objective priority bugs were fixed, forcing the player to sit through the fade-out. On 1.07 or 1.18 OldDark it is not unreasonable to assume that a 1:03 or even 1:02 is possible using the new methods.
Shipping and Receiving
There are no items for sale that are particularly necessary to get the fastest times here, so a money run is not especially helpful. If you are having trouble with guards, you might wish to buy extra invisibility potions or health potions for the purposes of practice, but they will not help you achieve a faster time.
The first jump over the large gap is very hard if you are not straferunning. Use the ladders to climb to the roof. It is slightly faster to mantle to the top of ladders rather than climbing up and over the top. Note that sometimes you can get a "floaty" ladder grab where you are not totally on the ladder. This is hard to identify visually unless you are quite experienced with this section, but if it happens to you, it can be remedied by jumping twice to mantle. Once on the roof, try to drop down into the office in such a way that you land close to the vase. Then jump onto the table and over the wall. Take a brief moment to align yourself for the jump onto the table as it is smaller than it looks. If you jump too far to the left, you'll slide off; too far to the right, and you won't be able to jump, instead only able to mantle onto the bench by the wall.
Grab the loot from the small box on top of the mail slots and proceed to the front office where you will grab the Building A Key. Go outside and across the catwalk to the opposite wing of the building. You will need to perform a glitch known as key transmigration. Essentially, when a key is equipped and readied to unlock a door, its area of interaction is actually significantly in front of Garrett. This means you can activate the lockboxes through the wall. You will need to practice and find visual cues to help you locate the lockbox as everyone approaches the doors in a slightly different way. There's nothing I can tell you to help you line it up, although on Normal you will see different red tutorial text when you highlight the lockbox, so use that to aid you.
Grab everything on the shelves to your right (note that one bowl is just a clutter object) and drop down the elevator shaft. It is slower to hit the button and drop onto the rising elevator, but you take less damage. Normally you should just drop down (remember that you do have one healing potion). Head up into the office and grab the gem in the wall behind the banner (utilizing a glitch known as banner transmigration). You now want to exit this bay by operating the lever and heading to the right out into the courtyard. Use your invis potion here to avoid complications with the guards.
The patrolling sword guard who walks around the corner of the boxes outside of this bay is your benchmark; if he hasn't appeared around the corner yet when you approach the corner, you are on a good pace. If he has or has already rounded the corner, your run has some imperfections and you will not be on record pace. Continue to the open bay. Use the Building A Key on the lockbox to open the door, letting you exit this bay slightly faster. Grab the 3 statues on the shelves and the two loot pieces under the desk, then exit out of the door. If you didn't manage to open the door, just exit out the bay door rather than fiddling with the lock as it's not worth the time. Head around the building back towards the beginning of the level.
Grab the statue inside of the open-able crate by the crawlspace, then crouch to go under the boxes. You have one more key transmigration left, on the door to the inventor's workshop closest to you. This one is slightly harder and again you will need to establish your own visual cues. Grab the two loot pieces on the shelves and return to the inside of the box pile to end the mission. There are several ways to climb the boxes, but the best is to mantle up first, then jump to the low box without mantling, then moving inwards to finish the stage.
This level is all about execution and the difference between a 1:47 and a 1:54 or 1:55 can come down to something as simple as having fast key transmigrations and optimal movement. It's tricky and one of the most optimized stages in the game, so expect to practice quite a bit before you start cracking the 1:50 barrier.
Framed
Since you have at least 500 gold from the previous stage, you can afford a Slowfall potion. Buy it, as it enables several skips at the beginning of the stage. If you are doing the rooftop route, you will need to buy an extra Scouting Orb as well. Nothing else is really required, as you are given a very generous 2 Invisibility potions to start.
There are 3 approaches to the beginning of this mission.
Primary route: Run towards the front gates (you will see the Watchers and turrets). As soon as the Watcher sees you, pop an Invisibility potion. You will need to mantle on top of one of the lights on the front gate which have very small hitboxes. The only way to reach them is with a Slowfall jump. I like to stand on the elevated section on the side of the bridge right in the middle on the crest and slightly to the right (you can see a seam where the crest is, stand on that). Then you must begin running diagonally for a split second, pop the slowfall potion and jump, in that precise order. Center the light on the middle of your screen. If you are lucky, you will grab it and mantle on top of the gate, and can continue the mission. This is extremely tricky to learn, and heavily dependent on developing good muscle memory, but once you master it you will be able to do it fairly consistently.
Rooftop "Expert" route: This is a very old method which is still the best solution for an Expert speedrun, since you do not start with an invisibility potion. It's only a few seconds slower than the primary route. Buy an extra Scouting Orb and Slowfall as described, then run over to the wall-fence. Elevator up onto the top of the wall using the Scouting Orb (as described in the Game Mechanics and Glitches link above) and then jump onto the series of roofs until you reach the one closest to the police station walls. Slowfall jump (drink the potion and immediately jump while straferunning) to reach the outer wall. If you land just short, you're screwed because you will be stuck on an invisible ledge and have to reset. Proceed to the front of the police station.
Ancient "Intended" route: This route is barely worth mentioning but for completeness, here it is. Pick the lock into the pump room, enter the sewers, and swim to the circular room. Look up and you will see the exit of the well. Rope arrow up into the courtyard and go through the double doors. You will find yourself behind the gate. This route is about a minute slower than the others.
Assuming you did one of the faster routes, you will need to trip the lever through the gate to enter the police station, which is as simple as clicking on it. You can optionally do a gate boost glitch here, also in the guide. Head through the double doors to the left. Open the door at the end of the hallway, you will be going through it on your way out. Head up the stairs and pop your invisibility potion. Turn right. You need to grab 3 items in this hallway. You need to grab the handkerchief in the first room on the right, then pickpocket the yellow key off the belt of the guard, then grab the vault key in the first door on the left. The patrolling guard is another benchmark; a fast run will be able to get the handkerchief and pickpocket and enter the left room before he blocks you from entering. Then continue down the hallway and use the yellow key to open the door to the spiral staircase.
At the top, you can jump over the desk to the metal door which you must also open with the yellow key. Enter 4026 into the keypad and equip the vault key; use this to open the vault door. Drop the handkerchief and grab the strongbox. Continue back down, jumping over the desk again. Return the strongbox to the room where you found the handkerchief and return back downstairs to the door you opened earlier, and sprint out to the front door. You need not open the door, simply pressing up against it is enough to trigger the end of the level.
Ambush
This level relies heavily on memorizing the correct path through the city, and the easiest way to do that is to watch any of the myriad videos of runs available online. Ambush, along with Running Interference, has one of the longest histories as a time trial level in Thief 2 and besides a minor find in 2017 the route has not changed since 2006. The route is very optimized, and is identical for all three difficulties.
From where Garrett starts, you can turn right 90 degrees and immediately mantle onto the street. Continue forward to the two female NPC's and mantle on top of the elevated garden. On New Dark you can mantle straight onto the garden from the ground level; on Old Dark it may help to jump on top of one of the boxes first, although it is still possible to mantle straight from the street.
On Hard or Expert difficulty, where health management is more vital, you can either enter the door on top of the garden and exit out the window of that building for less of a fall, or you can jump from the garden onto one of the guards' heads, which will break your fall and result in no damage. This guard is not present on Normal.
The fastest way to traverse the market is to jump across the fountain. If your timing is perfect you can jump straight onto the fountain without needing to mantle. It's also possible to take it safe and jump early, intending to mantle; this method is slower but the timing is far less demanding. Naturally, this method is much more reliable in New Dark. If you are unlucky, you will land precisely on the edge of the fountain where you can neither mantle nor make it onto the fountain itself. Decide which method works for you to avoid this situation.
At the next forking path you can run around the building to the right or climb the ladder to the left; climbing the ladder is faster. Unfortunately there is no consistent way to prevent fall damage here.
When making your way across the water ways, using jumps to straighten your path through the level is faster than running along the bridges. You can pickpocket a guard patrol here for an extra health potion if you need it. The precise patrol path of these guards is pseudorandom. On an optimal run, you will have to pass them right as they enter an alleyway at a left turn. Sometimes you can get by them on the left, which is ideal; if their patrol path strays too close to the left corner, you'll have to pass them on the right.
As you approach Garrett's apartment you will want to enter the building across the street and jump to Garrett's apartment window. The door to this building opens towards you so activate it as soon as possible. Head all the way up the spiral staircase and through the door at the top. You do not need to be strafe-running to make the jump to Garrett's windowsill, but it helps. While in mid-air, try to open the windows so you don't waste time fiddling with them on the windowsill.
Garrett's apartment has very intrusive geometry and the only way to become fast at moving through it is to practice. Upon entering, head to his closet and frob the left-most coat hanger to open the stash. The secret door does not need to be fully open to grab the items behind it, so you will want to memorize the location of each item so you don't have to wait for the door to open. You need to grab the Shalebridge key for the objective (even though you will not use it), and the speed potion.
Exiting Garrett's apartment can be tricky due to the very large bed hitbox; just try and find a movement pattern that is fast and feels natural. Now you have two options to reach the end level trigger, both involving out-of-bounds tricks.
The classic method is to drop down from Garret's window and head east until you get to the waterway. Turn around, and on your right there should be a window texture on a building next to some stone battlements. The frame of this window is wood; use a rope arrow to climb up to this window, then jump to and mantle upon the battlements. You are now out of bounds.
The newer method involves retrieving the slowfall potion from the stash as well, and jumping back onto the windowsill of the adjacent apartment building, instead of dropping down. Run to the edge of the windowsill, then use the slowfall potion to jump across the street to the roof of the building and then walking over to the battlements. Slowfall jumping is an art in and of itself and requires separate treatment elsewhere.
Both methods get you to the same place - out of bounds on top of the battlements. Drop down and continue heading east. You will eventually reach a wooden section of wall next to a building with a red sloped roof. Use another rope arrow to get on top of the wooden pillar, then mantle on top of the red sloped roof. While standing on this roof, you will slowly slip off. Thus, you need to drink your speed potion to help counteract the slide, and continue along the roofs. You will eventually drop into the Shalebridge area from completely the opposite of the intended direction, completing the mission.
A note of caution: If you are able to end the mission while still out of bounds, it is because you have installed the Complete Resource Fix Pack 1.1e, included as an optional install in most Tafferpatcher versions. Complete Resource Fix Pack 1.1e is explicitly BANNED because of its demonstrated illicit changes to the levels, and thus runs including this exit are not considered valid.
Eavesdropping
The three speed potions, three health potions, four flash bombs, and the single invisibility potion will make this mission (slightly) more tolerable during a money run.
Immediately drink a speed potion. Run forward and turn left, then right, and enter the door straight ahead at the end of the corridor. Turn left again, remembering to grab the purse on one of the chairs lining the right side of the hallway, and you will find one of the eavesdropping doors in a little alcove in the corner. If you moved quickly, a guard will also come through the door in the other corner of the room, and you can get to the shadows quickly enough to kill him with a broadhead. Cribby's method is to wait until this guard opens the door to the Acolytes' Quarters so that in the event of an Acolyte's key, this door remains open.
Some notes on the mechanics of the conversation. The entire unskippable section, from the bells to the reveal of the correct key location, is approximately 5 minutes 44 seconds long, but it varies based on which key you get (the last unskippable sound files revealing the key locations vary in length). Of note is that the French translation of the game is 19 seconds faster, however no consensus has been reached as to whether or not it is allowed in speedruns (thanks to SuicideMachine for measuring both versions). This section is surprisingly well-programmed. A box made of fail lines, roughly the size of the framing of the alcove which you stand in, limits your travel outside for the duration of the conversation. Crossing any of these lines is an instant mission failure. Many other randomly placed fail lines exist in the level as well, limiting your potential travels even more. There exists a similarly sized fail line box at the other, less convenient door. The game checks at various times whether or not the player is inside the box. If after any check the player is not inside the box, the mission instantly fails because you "missed" part of the conversation. It is known that one of the checks is run whenever a new sound file plays, but there are also additional checks as it appears impossible to stray too far from the box. Checking the objective screen will reveal whether or not a player has failed.
All attempts to bypass, shorten, or otherwise skip this waiting period have failed. It's even possible to embed oneself in the ceiling and move Garret's torso hitbox into the eavesdropping box, but leaving either of the designated boxes is an instant fail. This particular section is so well programmed that is appears impossible to skip with currently-existing knowledge of the game.
Thus the only recourse is to entertain oneself until the "cutscene" is over. If being forced to wait almost 6 minutes was not enough, what follows is one of the only truly random elements of the game. When the level loads, the game pulls a value from the computer's system time to determine which key will be the Safe Deposit box key (in other words, the correct key is decided when the level loads, and cannot be manipulated by saving/loading - only be restarting the entire level). There are 9 possible key locations on Normal: Factory, Acolytes' Quarters, Guards' Quarters, the pulpit in the Church, the closet near the pulpit the Church, the shed atop the Acolytes' Quarters, the office on the second floor of the church, West Tower, and East Tower, listed here from best to worst in terms of speed. You must retrieve the key from the given location, bring it down to the factory, use it on the wax block, and use the nearby putty knife to cut the wax impression from the block before returning the key to its original location, while also obtaining the requisite 800 loot. Note that after the "key reveal" voice line plays, you are free to leave, even though Karras speaks a few additional lines, but be careful not to leave too early. Many runs have been lost by overzealous players leaving the box mere frames before the end of the voice line, resulting in a failure.
While individual variations exist for each key location, the only viable keys for IL's are the first two - Acolytes' Quarters and Factory, with Factory being ideal. Acolytes' Quarters is approximately 6-8 seconds slower than a Factory key. For these keys, immediately grab the key and head to the wax, using your invisibility potion and KO'ing one of the guards in the basement. If they follow you to the wax, there's a good chance they will block you in and kill you. Then return the key and get onto the loot route. Returning the key is usually just a matter of dropping the key in the same room you found it, although it is possible for the key to bounce or slide out of the trigger area and un-check the objective, which can be quite disappointing if you reach the end of the level only to find the key was misplaced.
A general and reliable loot route which works for most keys is as follows. After returning the key, exit outside from the back of the room with your eavesdropping door, and climb up to the roof. Grab the loot inside the shed, then head inside the chapel. Grab the statue on the bookshelf, then enter the office. Grab the loot on the table, then climb the ladder just enough to turn around and frob the chest on the floor above. Drop from the ladder, and exit the office through the opposite door you entered. Grab another statue on a bookshelf, then jump through the narrow gap down to the chapel floor. Grab the candlesticks and loot on the pulpit, as well as the crown between the pews. Then head into the west tower. Grab the loot bag on the table, and the candlestick at the top of the ladder. You should have 810/800 loot, so jump off the balcony back to the front entrance to the chapel grounds and exit.
Achieving a world record time on this stage requires clever use of speed and invisibility potions to maximize time spent at maximum speed, and almost certainly requires a factory key, which means waiting through the conversation as many times as it takes to get the correct key at 1/9 odds, and being mentally prepared to perfectly execute the loot route after much tedium. Good luck if you wish to attempt it.
First City Bank and Trust
There are no necessary purchases for this mission, but one option which is single-segment safe is to buy two health potions and an extra flash bomb. For money runs, extra mines are a good buy.
First mine+fire arrow to blast the door to your left open. Continue straight ahead and through the marble room. You can try and knock out the purple guard but it doesn't always work. Drop mines in an attempt to disable the mechbeast. Continue down into the basement. If you watch a few IL's you can see what we call "box strats", pioneered by SocratesJohnson. The tall boxes are hard to traverse in general, but there are ways to make them more convenient. Press up against them to mantle; straferun to cross the gap between them whilst throwing the box. If you cross the gap running straight you will almost surely fall.
Follow the side passages to the left to exit near the end of the tunnels. Continue forward until you reach the puzzle machine with a Watcher out front. Hit the lever and stand under the Watcher. Wait until there is only one vertical bar visible on the gate, then enter and open up the puzzle. The fastest combination is middle-left, middle-right, bottom right. If you are ever in doubt, just remember the "four corners" solution - just hit all four corners and the puzzle will complete. Backtrack all the way back to the marble room. You can take the side passages again if you are fast; if your run is slow up to this point, you may get blocked by one of the small mechbeasts. If you somehow get blocked on the entrance to the side passages, don't take them, as there will be another mechbeast who will also block your exit. Just take the wider route out.
Now enter the vault. Hug the right side of the room, or else the vault door will push you out of the way. Trigger the elevator and climb on top of the elevator button box. When the elevator is low enough, press the up button and jump onto the elevator; you may get stuck in the elevator if you press and jump too early and may even take damage. Jump across the corners of the second floor and climb up to the top floor. Head over to vault 11; you can grab the recording through the door, no need to use the key. Drop all the way down to the first floor, using health potions as necessary.
You will see a stairway to your right; take it and go through the first door you see. Flashbomb the mechbeast if he is there, and rope arrow to the roof of the dome. Climb the rope to end the mission. Since the "dome" section is technically above the roof of the bank, the game reads you as being outside and trips the end level trigger. If this fails or if you get blocked, just run out the ground level floor where you came in.
Blackmail
For money runs, buy 2 invisibility potions, 2 flash bombs, and 2 fire arrows. For any% runs, you will most likely have 0 gold available.
Blackmail has a reputation as a "run-killer" and is a very difficult and touchy mission. AI patterns can affect your time greatly in ways that appear, to be but are not truly, random. Consistency is very important.
Immediately equip a rope arrow and fire it into the wooden edge of the left tower at the front gate. Climb this gate, and hit the lever to open the front gate as you drop down to the other side (the lever is in the right tower). Enter the mansion through the double doors; it is highly recommended to hit the patrolling archer with your blackjack to either stun or KO him. Once inside the foyer, head immediately to the upper level.
Notably, the routes for the money run and the any% route are significantly different. On money runs, you have fire arrows to blow open the double doors to the second floor. Launch the arrows as you are approaching the door and climbing the stairs; do it fast enough that you don't have to stop and wait for the final arrow to blow open the door. As you enter, drop a flash bomb and hug the left edge of the door way to make your way in. You will collect the loot around the balcony on your way out.
In the any% route, you need to alert the pair of guards on the other side of the door in such a way that they will patrol into the double doors, automatically unlocking them. Due to the gear-based lock system in this level, the guards are incapable of re-locking any doors they unlock. You can do this in several ways, similar to Jenivere's door in Running Interference. You can hit the door with your blackjack or broadhead arrows. However, depending on where you hit the door, the guards will perceive the sound as coming from different areas, altering their patrol pattern. An important thing to note about Thief AI is that their patterns are not random. If you were to repeat the same set of perfectly precise actions with perfect timing, the guards would react the same way every time. But in a game as complicated as Thief, the small human errors involved - a slightly misplaced arrow shot, a slight increase in the amount of draw you used, a slight change in timing - can make their AI appear random. It is not, and as such you must determine which areas of the door cause the guards to open the door reliably for you. Some runners have found success shooting the darkened part of the left door immediately under the doorknob, but your own personal timing and movement may cause this to not work reliably for you. In any case, once you have hit the door with a suitable object, you can only hope the guards will open the door; in the meantime, collect the loot around the balcony while you wait.
Once you are through the double doors, continue left, then right. Grab the statue at the end of the hallway and head towards the casino, stopping in one of the rooms on the right to grab a vase. There are many loot paths through the casino. Grab the loot from the roulette tables, as well as the gold bottle on the bar and Benny's purse. Keep it quiet in this room, as you cannot pickpocket Benny's purse when he is alerted unless you are very lucky with your positioning.
Another pair of routes present themselves to you here. The in the modern route, you must pickpocket the female guard patrolling through the casino for her key. Then, enter the bathroom, grabbing the loot along the perimeter. Return to the casino, through the double doors near the bar, and out onto the balcony. Mantle on top of the open door and onto the sloped roof. It helps if your camera is perfectly level, not looking up or down, before you attempt this mantle. Then jump onto the third floor balcony and use the key to enter Truart's room.
In the classic route, you do not need the key from the female guard's belt. Instead, after gathering the bathroom loot, grab the silver gear from the bottom of the bathtub. Then exit the bathroom to the left, and use the silver gear to enter the passageway to the third floor. From here you can work your way to Truart's room. This route is slower, but less reliant on maintaining high speed throughout the run.
Whichever route you take, grab the key ring and the bronze gear from Truart's room. You will exit the mansion by using the bronze gear stairwell to return to the foyer. From Truart's room, there are two ways to the common room, which you must pass through to access the stairwell. The right route is a narrow passageway, and if a single NPC is in this hallway, your chances of pushing through are very low, especially with the civilian NPC. Sometimes guards can be manipulated to step backwards against the wall, allowing you to pass; the civilian will almost always back up in fright for long enough to ruin your run. This is an opportune time to use an invisibility potion if the situation allows for it. In the modern route, you must do everything earlier in the run as fast as possible to beat the civilian NPC from entering the hallway and blocking you, making the timing extremely tight. If this route is blocked or full of guards, as it often is, you will have no choice but to take the left route through the bathroom, losing a massive amount of time. From the common room, proceed to the stairwell and ready the bronze gear.
Open the bronze gear lock and you're back in the foyer; if you did the money run route, collect the balcony loot now and jump down; if you did the any% route, just jump down right away. Exit through the double doors back towards the beginning of the level.
Often, you will find that the front gate is closed again, despite you having opened it with the lever earlier. This loses approximately 4 seconds. The reasons for a closed gate are again related to AI patterns. The front gate guard will always see you when you climb the rope over the front gate, and the Watchers will always trigger the alarm. Since you opened the gate, the front gate guard will chase you through the open gate into the grounds. When he loses you and stops searching, he may return to his post right away, in which case he will close the front gate behind him. In short, it can be beneficial to keep this guard chasing you as long as possible, as it delays his return to his post and the closing of the gate.
Trace the Courier
Buy two speed potions and an invisibility potion for money runs; for any%, just buy the two speed potions.
Lieutenant Mosely follows a predetermined path through the level and only strays from that path when alerted. However, her AI will also skip over certain actions when alerted, and this can be used to your advantage to speed up her stroll.
First a quick recap: If an NPC is "first alerted," they will continue whatever they were doing and make a comment, before returning to their base alert level. When they are "second alerted," they will actively search for the player and taunt them, before returning to their base alert level. When NPC's are "third alerted," they have seen the player and will chase them down attempting to kill them; when they lose sight of the player, they will enter second alert status, before returning to their base alert level.
Mosely will occasionally stop and do a "searching animation," and this can be prevented by first alerting Mosely such that her time spent in first alert status overlaps with her AI's search trigger. The easiest way to do this is to shoot her with a water arrow, or land a water arrow near her. Broadheads often make a loud enough noise to second alert her and are not reliable. Noisemakers have a special effect on AI and are also not useful as they pull Mosely from her route.
On normal difficulty, Mosely only stops to search once, right before she makes a left turn at the beginning of the level. First alert her and she'll pass right through. Mosely is not the most alert NPC ever, but you want to give her a wide berth. It isn't necessary to collect any loot even in any% as there is not enough for useful purchases in Life of the Party.
As Mosely enters the marketplace she will drop the letter near a streetlight. If you are following her closely, you have one frame to grab the letter from her hand without waiting for it to reach the ground. This is because items in Thief can only be grabbed if they are not moving. When Mosely drops the letter, it is momentarily immobile before accelerating towards the ground. Having mousewheel grab helps here. Once you have the letter, being seen by Mosely is no longer a failure condition. Read the letter, drink a speed potion and across the market by way of the fountain. If you are running any%, there is an invisibility potion that can be grabbed in one of the covered market stalls near Mosely's dead drop. You do not need to drop the letter again, since you will have ended the mission well before the Pagan reaches the market.
Drink your second speed potion when the first runs out, and head to the cemetery. Since you arrived so fast, the Pagan will not have left the cemetery yet, much less reached the market, so the scripted sequence with the Mechanists will not play. However, being seen by the Pagan fails the mission. So use your invisibility potion and head to the back wall of the cemetery. Using the grave stones, mantle over the wall and head into the catacomb, and through the portal.
The original, now obsolete strategy involves shooting a noisemaker into the cemetery to distract the Pagan in lieu of an invisibility potion. The ideal location is into one of the fake catacombs in the first cemetery courtyard. Because noisemakers significantly reduce the senses of NPC's, you can sometimes slip by. The unreliability of this method caused it to be nicknamed "The Colt .45 Shot" by SocratesJohnson: "It gets them every time, but only if you put it in the right place."
Trail of Blood
Since your items from Tracing the Courier carry over to Trail of Blood, make sure to replay Tracing the Courier without using any items that would benefit your Trail of Blood run, namely Speed and Invisibility potions.
This run is pretty much a straightforward blast to the finish with one difficult trick around the midway point. Start by heading down the hill towards the river. Note that while the developers mostly removed Bunnyhopping from Thief 2, you can still get a little bit of a boost if you jump right as you land while descending a slope. This stage features liberal use of these slopes, so use this to get as many boosts as possible. Note that while getting a map is marked as an objective, it's completely optional, so ignore the map at the bottom of the river. When you reach the river, jump across and land on the slope underwater to climb up on the other side - the first ruby is next to a tree on your left. Grab it, then turn around and head towards the bridge which leads back across the river. If you were fast up to this point, the Mechanist will not quite be at the bridge yet. You can walk halfway across the bridge and mantle the left side to easily bypass him, or you can use the Onegin method of jumping straight across along the right side of the bridge and landing on a small patch of land. It's not as hard as it looks. The second ruby is inside the house on this bank of the river under the stairs. Now ascend the stairs, there's a speed potion at the top which saves time. Jump out of the window at the top, but note that you will lose about half of your health from the fall.
Head back across the river and up to the temple on top of the hill, pickpocketing the flare from the Mechanist along the way. Grab the slowfall potion from nearby the fallen Pagan inside the temple if you are doing the old skip method. Navigating the face to place the rubies can be tricky until you map out your precise inputs. Place the first ruby as you are mantling onto the face, then ready the second ruby. Hold forward the entire time, place the second ruby, then while still hugging the "nose" of the statue, slide over to the mouth and enter the portal.
There's another short downhill section here, which every runner does differently. There's no best way, just try to squeeze in as many boosts as possible and don't jump too far off track. At the bottom, there's an eye-plant to your left onto which you can jump to cut the corner a bit. These eye-plants have large hitboxes so you just have to learn where to run. As you follow the blood trail, you'll reach a right-hand turn alongside a river of blood (?). Grab the vine arrow here. Across the river is a pyramidal slope, and opposite of that is a ledge which leads to your goal. A significant shortcut follows which requires a speed potion, and a slowfall potion for the old method. Pop the speed potion, then jump across the river to the pyramidal slope. From either face of the structure, you can lean forward to rapidly accelerate up the slope and RUN (NOT JUMP) off the edge to reach the ledge. With the old method, you do the same but instead of leaning, you use a slowfall potion immediately prior to leaving the slope, which will allow you to reach the ledge. Perfectly executed, either method will allow you to land flat on the ledge and continue. However, most of the time, you will fall short and have to mantle up. If you are very unlucky, you will land precisely on the edge, making it impossible to land flat on the ledge and also impossible to mantle.
Once on top of the ledge, continue past the two ape-beasts. Once you enter the meadow with the trees, vine arrow up to one of the catwalks and turn left - there's yet another speed potion in here which you can skip if you brought a bunch to this point. Then turn around, and proceed left, then right, then right again at each possible junction until you approach the icicle hall. As you approach from two catwalks away, throw a few flares at the icicles. If they have enough momentum, they will melt the icicles, which is much faster than hitting them with the sword. If you have any speed potions left, you can use them and smash into the icicles, Garrett's momentum will break them as well. If any are left, jump before drawing your sword at the ideal time to inherit momentum and minimize the slow sword-walking speed, then smack the icicles you missed. There are 5 icicles, only 4 of which need to be destroyed. Hopefully you got at least 2 with flares. Now just keep right and continue down the hill to the Pagan, you do not need to read his letter.
Life of the Party
Precious Cargo
Kidnap
Casing the Joint
Buy two speed potions, two invisibility potions, and two frogbeast eggs.
All variations of this IL are based on how you get onto the second floor courtyard and then onto the third floor balcony.
The most modern version by iamquetzalcoatl involves jumping onto the edge of the fountain, and then mantling onto the wall-mounted lamp on the perimeter wall, then mantling onto the perimeter wall. Immediately drink a speed potion. A straferunning leap from the perimeter wall allows you to mantle onto the second floor courtyard. In midair, equip and draw back a vine arrow and shoot it to the third floor balcony, and climb up.
The classic method involves climbing up to the second floor courtyard via the front door. This method, a variation of which is still the standard for single-segment, is also quite tricky and requires practice. Drink a speed potion, and run towards the front door, grabbing a crate along the way. Throw the crate to the left corner of the front door structure, then jump on top of it and elevator using a scouting orb. Then mantle on top of the structure. Placing the crate, jumping on top of it while under the effects of a speed potion, and elevatoring quickly require some practice to do efficiently. Unlike the above method, the guards will be looking your way. So use an invisibility potion and ready your vine arrow. Vine arrow up to the third floor balcony. Another slower variation which saves an invisibility potion is to fire a noisemaker arrow into the far right corner instead. After the noisemaker arrow hits, the guards will be distracted, and you can vine up to the balcony.
Once on the third floor balcony, drink another speed potion and continue straight ahead. Go through the doors to the end of the long hallway. Drink another invisibility potion, then pass the patrolling guard, turn left, then right, drink another speed potion, and turn right again. At the end of this hallway is the switch to open up the secret passageway, your main objective. After you frob the switch, turn around and move through the wooden hallway into the lock-puzzle room. There is a breakable window here. Smash it with your blackjack and leap out the window, using the frogbeasts to break your fall. You can also blackjack fall cancel, which is more stylish but riskier, or just edge your way along the windowsill until the game counts you as being outside, but without falling all the way to the street, which is slightly slower. Note that the whole reason why you can't just leap out is because your landing alerts guards on the first floor, which fails the mission.
