Overview
If you’re new or confused about something, you might be able to find help here. Here’s some tricks and tips to help you git gud. Some might be common sense, but I’ve likely put them their since I’ve seen someone confused about it before. No mods, fan missions and no spoilers relating to the games plot, so you’res safe.
Game Basics & Misc.
Note: This game is 100% playable with a controller and plays as well as the game on Xbox (except without vibration, and in my opinion, a much better control scheme) if done correctly. It’s also a pretty painless procedure and requires no third-party programs besides the highly recommended fan-made patch, Sneaky Upgrade. Here’s how: [link]
1.Difficulty doesn’t just effect loot and special loot requirement but also enemy AI acuity.
2. You make noise when taking damage.
3. Shadows are your best weapon. Utilise them at all opportunities to remain undetected.
4. Sound is important. Floor types will change how loud you are when running.
5. Killing things makes a lot of noise.
6. Dropping items from a smaller height or on carpet will make less noise than from a higher height. Throwing them is much noisier.
7. Crates and boxes can be destroyed by smashing continuously with your dagger.
8. Watch out for sparkling objects in the environment. This is valuable loot.
9. There are no possible ways of taking out electrical lights.
Equipment
1. Moss arrows silence your footsteps and landing. They work instantly.
2. Flashbombs blind and disorient your enemies for a good few seconds. They don’t blind you. You can carry a max of 20 flashbombs.
3. Moss arrows can be used as an alternate to the flashbombs if you shoot an opponent in the face. This causes them to choke, giving you valuable time to run away. You can have a maximum of 20 moss arrows.
4. The blackjack allows you to silently, non-lethally knock out an enemy from behind when your opponent is unaware. Unlike the other games, you can’t knock out an enemy from the front of them or when they’re aware of you, only when the blackjack is raised.
5. Broadhead arrows are lethal arrows. They are loud and will kill an unaware enemy in one hit to the head. You can carry 30 broadhead arrows.
6. Water arrows can douse torches. You can carry a maximum of 25 water arrows.
7. Water arrows can be used to clean up blood.
8. Fire arrows are basically stronger broadhead arrows. You can carry 15 fire arrows.
9. Oil can be used to make your enemies fall over. They’re especially useful over water, railings or stairs.
10. Fire arrows can be used to light up oil slicks making them more deadly.
11. Gas arrows knock out enemies instantly and are silent. You can carry a max of 5 gas arrows.
12. Gas bombs have the same effect as gas arrows but have a larger radius. You can carry a max of 5 gas bombs.
13. The blackjack does very minor damage when used on an aware enemy and can kill them.
14. The dagger works exactly the same as the blackjack except is lethal and causes a lot of noise when your enemy dies. It also does a lot more damage on an aware enemy than the blackjack but is not a one hit kill.
15. The blackjack does not work on undead.
16. Water arrows can be used on moss to expand the radius of the moss.
17. Water arrows can be used to temporarily disable electrical shields.
18. An easy way of getting max water arrows at the beginning of the game is by grabbing the infinitely respawning water arrows before dousing the torch as required on the tutorial level.
19. The moss arrow choking tactic does not work on the undead.
20. Moss arrows can be used on Pagan cornerstones to further your favour towards them.
21. Unlike in the previous games, simply equipping the fire arrow does not make you visible, it’s only when you have pulled your arrow that you are lit up.
22. The fire arrow can be used to light torches.
23. The fire arrow makes a lot of noise.
24. Gas arrows can douse torches.
25. Noisemaker arrows can be used to distract and lead an enemy to the arrow’s destination. You can carry a max of 5 noisemaker arrows.
26. You can retrieve the noisemaker arrow before it goes silent.
27. The flashbomb can kill an undead enemy in 1 hit if unaware of your presence, or multiple if aware.
28. Explosive mines are loud, deadly mines that detonate within close contact. They can also be retrieved after placement. You can carry a max of 5.
29. Holy water flasks can be used to kill undead either with a direct hit or by throwing them on the floor. They disappear after several seconds however. You can carry a max of 5.
30. Health potions restore health. 4-6 hitpoints depending on the difficulty. You can carry 10.
31. Your light gem indicates your level of visibility. The lighter the bright, the more visible you are. It does not indicate awareness of your presence or sound you make.
32. You can zoom in by pressing the zoom in key.
33. Climbing gloves can be bought and used to scale stone walls.
34. There are no rope arrows in this game.
Movement
1. You can run, creep, crouch and jump. Jumping and landing is the loudest, resulting in a loud thump no matter the surface (unless moss, carpet or grass). Running is loud, crouching and creeping are now silent on any material.
2. You can mantle anything up to Garrett’s head. This is silent.
3. All material is now louder when running across.
4. Tiles, metal and marble are much louder than all other surfaces when landed on or run across.
5. Moss that you can place down with the moss arrow is the polar opposite, being completely silent no matter what.
6. If you can’t hear yourself make noise, then neither can the enemy.
7. Dumping bodies makes no noise on any surface.
AI & Enemy Design
1. Your light gem is vital to understanding your visibility.
2. If enemies are already chasing you, going into a shadow in their line of sight won’t help. You’ll want to lose track of them for a bit and then start hiding in shadows again first.
3. Every type of enemy, even undead, have four main stages of detection that will be main abovious through their vocal barks. Completely unaware, may have heard something or slightly seen something but not enough to be sure, have heard or seen enough to be sure that someone is there and will then start to look, and the worst case scenario of them knowing exactly where they are and to start give chase.
4. Knocked out enemies can be awoken by other enemies if discovered. Hide them in shadows to keep that from happening.
5. AI will notice blood on the floor.
6. If enemies take enough damage, they’ll retreat and run away, potentially warning their friends.
7. Enemies are quick to run out of breath from running, so feel free to dance around them for a bit so they struggle to keep up.
8. Splashing an enemy with the water arrow won’t do anything but alert them.
9. Human enemies can be killed in one shot with the broadhead arrow to the head or chest if unaware of your presence.
10. Enemies aware of your presence before a loading screen still will be when you come back.
11. Enemies can’t cross loading screens.
Mods
1. I HIGHLY recommend downloading and installing the Fat Edition of Sneaky Upgrade. It allows the game to run flawlessly on modern systems at ultra-high resolutions and lets you optionally install multiple mods and change aspects of the game such as field of view and HUD scaling. There’s also an upgrade version which is smaller and doesn’t feature many mods. You can find it here: [link]
2. This patch is really all you need for mods. What’s included at the moment optionally are:
-The patch: Mentioned above.
-The Collective Texture Pack by John. P. A texture pack that lets you choose which new textures you want with a few minor options and looks great overall, staying true to the original art-style except grittier looking and higher resolution.
-Garrett animation tweaks which may help eleviate some issues players have with the movement in the game, but for me just ended up wrecking the animations causing tons of bugs while looking horrible. But that’s just me.
-The Minimalist Project: A mod that attempts to destroy the game by trying to mutate it into a crappy version of the previous games. It sucks. It’s glitchy, it wrecks the design of the game and it sucks. Hey, no one said this guide wouldn’t have bias.
-Thief 3 Gold: The BEST mod for the game. It removes those awful pesky loading screens in the game’s missions without messing up a single thing about the game. Love, love, love it.
-Classic briefing videos: I don’t want to bag this one too much but it attempts to turn the boring but fast briefing voice-overs into cinematics similar to the other games, except those games had cinematics of pure art done by talented artists. This wasn’t, and so doesn’t look nearly as good. A noble attempt, though.
-New fonts: A very minor one that does what it says.
What you can tweak with this patch is extensive and I won’t go over it as it’s too much to cover, but it’s all self-explanatory.