Thief 2/Game Mechanics and Glitches

If a trick applies to only some versions of the game, note which ones that is.

General

• Straferunning: just like in Doom, straferunning is faster than normal running. Also works under water.
• Key/wall glitch: if there's a lock on the other side of the wall (like in mission 2, the orange and red doors), you can unlock it through the wall
• Wall/window grab: it is sometimes possible to grab items/push buttons/pull levers through the wall. I haven't found a good spot to use it yet. It is also possible to attack someone with your sword through a thin wall.
• Crate stacking: stack crates to get somewhere you couldn't get before. You won't run any slower with a crate in your arms, so you can lug it around wherever you go until you reach an obstacle. You can't have your weapon equipped while carrying stuff though.
• Slowfall potions: they'll let you fall slower, but they also slow you down on the ground. If you're worried about the damage when making several long falls (without slowfall potions), put those healing potions to use. You can jump higher than normal using a slowfall potion. If you're airborne while you quaff one, you will keep up your velocity.
• Speed potions: they'll let you run at twice the speed for about 9 seconds. So if you take 10 seconds to get one, you're wasting time.
• Soft drop: if you drop down from a ledge while crouched, you won't make any noise. This even works on tile and metal. The exception is when you take damage, Garett will say *humpf*.
• Glass breaking: pretty obvious, but you can break glass with your weapons or by jumping onto it (like in mission 2 on the roof).
• Door blocking: you can block doors from closing by placing an object next to it. This comes in handy in a mission in Thief 1, I don't know if it is usable in Thief 2.
• You run slower with your sword equipped.
• Frogbeasting/bodyboarding: You can break your fall by jumping onto people, bots, monsters and bodies. When frogbeast eggs are available, you can use them to spawn a frog directly beneath you that will break your fall. Be careful though, you can still take some damage.
• Elevatoring: you can climb up by dropping flares or scouting orbs on top of your head. If you don't have any flares left when dropping a flare, it will fall right through you, so you need at least two. Same goes for orbs.
• Forcing open a door: there are several ways to force open a locked wooden door: four overhead swings or 10 slashes with your sword, 2 fire arrows, 2 frogbeasts, 1 mine or 1 well-placed cannon ball will all work. Some doors with a metal texture are actually wooden doors, examples of this are the front door of Angelwatch and the door to the office in the basecamp in Kidnap. Metal doors will open up using mines or fire arrows, but frogs don't work. This works in the Sold Out version of the game, there are other versions in which it doesn't work.

Guards

• You can run faster than they can, especially when you're straferunning.
• The behaviour of guards isn't affected by items. For example: throw a burning flare in their face, they don't notice. Block their way with crates, they don't adjust their path or come up with a solution.
• Guards can't open a locked door if they haven't got the key for it.
• Guards have to be really close to sense you presence when your fully invisible, and they also have to be really close to hit you with their sword/hammer/mace.
• Guards don't climb ladders, jump, climb objects or fall down in order to chase you.
• Guards can't be pickpocketed when they're alert of your presence (chasing you or searching for you).
• Unlike civilians, guards can't be knocked out with the blackjack if they're aware of you. (In 1.07 they can, just get behind them first)
• To kill a guard fast: throw 2 frogbeast eggs in his face or do an overhead swing and two sideswings in quick succession.
• Turn on auto body search to quickly grab the key off a corpse, no chance of accidentally picking up the corpse. Might wanna turn this off on Kidnap.
• Even while you're carrying someone, guards can't keep up with you. Take advantage of this in Kidnap.

The Mechanist Children

• Mechbeasts and watchers are temporarily blinded by a flash bomb.
• Combat bots can be distracted with noisemaker arrows (or other sources of sound).
• Combat bots can be destroyed with a single fire arrow if they're unaware of you, though not consistently. They can also be destroyed with two frogbeasts while unalerted, though I prefer to throw three.
• Combat bots lead their target; spider bots and sentries do not.
• Sentries can see farther than watchers.
• Watchers can't see what's underneath them. Sentries also have a blind spot, roughly the 90 degrees behind them.

Mission-specific (but not category-specific) notes:

Running Interference

You can blow the birdcall as soon as you start the mission. Don't do it too quickly or it will take about 20 seconds for Basso to go. Instead, use it when Basso has walked into place and leans back, he will then run off immediately.

Shipping ... and Receiving

You have to get to the office even if you already have the required loot. Most of the orange locks in building A can be opened from the other side of the wall. When a tutorial pops up telling you to use your lock picks you know you've highlighted the lock. In Gilver's office, you can grab the diamond without slashing down the banner.

Framed

You don't have to go to the hall of records to get the code. It's always 4026. Also, if you 'elevator' yourself up the buildings at the start, you can get up onto the wall. The switch to the gate (with the two archers next to it) can be reached from the outside. When exiting the police station you don't have to open the gate; standing next to it is enough to complete the objective.

Ambush!

You have to get the gate key even if you have already passed the gate by going OOB.

Eavesdropping

You have to overhear the conversation even if you already have the required loot and made a wax impression of the key. You cannot run away from the door and the key location will be different every time, unless you use a savegame.

First City Bank and Trust

You don't have to go to the hall of records to get the vault number, even though your objectives say so. It's always 11. If you get stuck on the window leading to the basement, it's probably because the handle is blocking you. Hug the window frame to pass it. If that doesn't work, try closing and opening the window. The window is actually made of wood, so you can force it open. In the unpatched version you can force open the vault door with explosives, it will go right through the metal bar.

Blackmail

The watchers at the start are attached to wooden beams.

Trace the Courier

Lt. Mosley and the pagan will stand in one place frome time to time to check if they're being followed. Usually Mosley only does this once in the beginning, you can avoid this by exposing yourself a little bit, she will then skip this. You can't get too far away from the letter, but when you have it in your inventory you can run around the whole map without failing the objective, at least until the pagan notices that the letter is missing.

Life of the Party

You don't have to activate the voice machine in Karras' office. One of the guards guarding the fort (with the merlons) has a red key that you can use to open the room with the scripture. You can climb onto the bank's roof from the east side and make your way south from there. When you've reached the end of the roof you need to crouch in order to get any further, there's an invisible ceiling.

Casing the Joint

When you blind an unalerted guard or servant with a flash bomb, it doesn't count as a 'confrontation'.

Casing the Joint and Masks

You can exit the mansion by breaking a window. When you're on the east side of the second floor, positioning Garett just on the outside of the window frame counts as 'exited'. You can climb into the mansion through some of the windows with unbreakable glass (with the metal grates), your position has to be just right and you'll go right through.

Sabotage at Soulforge

You have to read the correspondence from Karras to brother Kelsus, even if you put the guiding beacon in place and all of the signal towers are using signal B.

Side notes

• In Thief 1, you accelerate after every bunnyjump. In Thief 2, you can keep up your velocity (speed potions) by bunnyhopping and you can increase it a little bit by hopping on a sloped surface (going downhill).
• The levels are different depending on the version you have. In principle any version that's the fastest can be accepted. Currently (April/'14) all the recent runs have been on 1.18. There are some glitches present on 1.07 that might help bring down the times even further. v.1.00 hasn't been explored at all.
• Fraps doesn't capture the menu screens because they are rendered with DirectDraw (it does record the audio in the menus). This isn't really necessary because you can see in-game what difficulty the level is by counting the health shields, but it does make determining the time more difficult, as the final time is displayed in the stats screen after the mission. So unless you use a recorder that can properly record DirectDraw (like this one), you have to time it manually.
• If you use ZD Soft Game Recorder to capture, be sure to use a custom video size, or else it will default to 320x240 (or 640x480 if you capture at full screen size). This is because the menu size is 640x480. Of course this doesn't matter if you also use 640x480 in-game.
• On modern hardware, the Dark Engine might look like ass. There is a utility to fix this, ddfix. I'm not sure if it will be allowed though, as it modifies certain game files. AFAIK, gameplay is unaffected. This utility also fixes problems with multiple cores and hyperthreading. (not sure about this one currently)
• There is also a utility that lets you play Dark Engine games (like Thief) in widescreen. Again, I'm not sure if it will be allowed as it modifies certain game files and also isn't mandatory for recording. You can get it here. If you use it in combination with ddfix, be sure to install ddfix first. (probably not allowed at all, affects gameplay in a sense)
• Fogging may look ugly on newer graphic cards, fortunately it can be turned off. If it looks good, you still want to turn it off on Life of the Party because it's broken in that mission.
• When hardware acceleration for audio is enabled, only the ambient sound is captured. Turn it off while recording.