[dafydd]

FM: Raid on Washout Central
File: washout1-1.zip

Play mode: Ghost (success)
Perfect Thief (failed, by a long shot)
Time: 3:18
Loot: 1864 of 2704 (1269 required)
Pockets picked: 7 of 10
Backstabs: 0 Knockouts: 0
Kills: 0 Damage dealt: 0
Bodies discovered by enemies: 0
Secrets: 1 of 1

Comments:

Note: After finishing this mission, I foolishly started playing another before writing this ghost report -- so my memory is already a bit foggy about the particulars of this one... sorry!

This mission isn't hard to ghost, but you have to do things in the right order, or you're hosed.

The mission doesn't star Garrett but Ryalla instead, which I find odd; she doesn't seem to have any particular differences in her abilities. She screams "hep!" whenever she mantles and snarls like a cat in heat when she dies. I find her rather annoying, actually....

I grabbed everything in the house (secret room upstairs) and exited by the back door, since the front door was watched. I followed a patrolling guard, finding an open park-like area (before getting to the Aquaduct park, opened by the key picked off the guard I was following). There is a white building with a climbable vine here; it's part of the post office/bank complex, and I would return later -- but I knew from previous taffing around that now was not the time.

The first thing was to find Jakku; he had some "information" to give me, and he was hanging out at the inn. The map is pretty poor, but it's good enough to give you vague directions; I knew I had to head due west from the Aquaduct park. There are a few patrolling guards, but several of them have lanterns. I eventually found a courtyard with a lantern guy who stands at one entrance, looking about (he looks like he's searching, but it's just how he's programmed to patrol). To the right of lantern guy was a ladder leading up to a metal catwalk, which I followed to a flat roof I could hop down on. On the left side of the flat roof was a ladder leading down to the inn.

At first, I was sneaking around inside the inn; then I realized I had every right to be there -- it wasn't the street -- so I hunted around, finding a coin in a laundry bin. I returned to the entrance and entered the bar, where two people had a nasty, little conversation about how they were going to use the servant that Karras sent them.

Heading deeper into the bar, a drunk abruptly detached himself and headed out, bottle in each hand and one tucked in his belt. The new-objective chime sent me to that screen, where I was informed that "him there with the bottles" was Jakku, and I should follow him.

I followed, but he was aware of me behind him all the way, no matter how much darkness I was in, so I could never pick the bottle (I got it later from his corpse). I stayed back a ways, waiting for him to be ambushed, as I expected he would.

At one point, two thieves surrounded Jakku and slew him. They stayed alerted for a while, so I hid out. Meanwhile, the ever-helpful chime again informed me of a change in plans; the objective screen now had a red X through the "follow him" objective, and I was instructed to get Jakku's key from one of the thieves.

Eventually, one of them detached himself and headed in my direction; since he had the key, I followed. I tried a couple of times to pick the key, but I kept getting busted; so I followed him until he began walking back and forth from one plaza to another. I waited in the shadows for a couple of minutes while he calmed down; then I picked the key and backtracked to Jakku's body.

I removed the belt bottle (the only one left) and stood there like an idiot, trying to figure out how I was going to find Jakku's house... then I noticed the crumbled piece of paper next to the body. It turned out to be a map (ta-dah!) I followed it to the house and raided the joint, grabbing some loot, a bunch of moss arrows from a spider pit, and a key to Jakku's strongbox in the post office/bank -- along with a new objective to raid said strongbox. I also picked up a map of the post office, which came in handy.

But I still wasn't ready to go there; I knew from experience that I needed to raid one more strongbox in there, for which I needed the key: Lord Percival's.

I headed towards his house... but since the "Sewerage Control" (where one obtains the Sewer Manhole and Water Maintenance keys) was on the way, I stopped off there. Facing the Hammerite temple (with the stationary Hammerite guard), the Sewerage Control is on the left, just before passing through the arch to the temple.

I picked the door, went through a corridor and into the main room, where the two guards had a conversation. While they were talking, I cut left immediately along the near side of the pumping machinery and out the other door. this led to a shed with a pickable lock; inside this shed was a cupboard with the two keys inside.

I exited through the manhole right nearby (waiting for the guard who patrols out of the Sewerage Control building and right alongside the shed) and headed basically west, prairie-dogging up each manhole until I found one near a patrolling thief... possibly the other thief from the mugging of Jakku, but I'm not sure. He patrolled in front of Lord Percival's house -- for some reason, all of Lord Percival's guards are thiefsies.

The door is unlocked; I would guess Percy was being robbed, except one of the thieves keeps wandering into the casino in plain view of two nobles. I reckon they're just thief-shaped guards. I snuck behind him -- I think everywhere else in the house except for one other casino room is unfrobbable -- into the casino, lifted what I could find, then when the thief-guard left, I opened the office door... and drew an alert.

I had to find a dark spot and sit there for a couple of minutes after the conversation the two gamblers have. Maybe my footsteps first-alerted the pair inside the office? In any event, after waiting two minutes, then standing far away from the door and leaning to just barely be able to frob it, I was able to open it without the guy inside alerting (the girl never went searching). I crept quietly in, stupidly closed the door, and inched through to the jacuzzi room.

I had already noticed the button on the ceiling above the hot tub before I read about it on TtLG. Supposedly, you can also call the elevator down by using the combination you'll eventually find in the post office... but this requires two visits there: the first to get the combo, the second to return with Percival's lockbox key. So I just shot the button with a moss arrow.

Up in the ceiling room, I discovered that the butler did it. Stole the gems first, I mean. He "disappeared underground, literally." (Literally, "literaly.") In interpreted that as meaning into the sewers... so I grabbed the strongbox key, exited, and returned thence to head east, back towards the post office. I came to a room in the sewers with a huge, circular machine; it appeared to be a dead end, but on the other side, way deep, was a submerged tunnel. I followed it and eventually discovered an overturned boat, a dead butler, and a chest. The chest can be picked, and it contains the jewels.

I popped out next to the post office; it was patrolled by an archer (pickable arrow), a sword guard, and a combat bot. I followed them around to the main entrance; I mossed the marble, then darted forward when appropriate and picked the door in (the lazy archer lounges around in the entryway for a long time during his patrol). Inside, I found a stair, which I followed up to the vault-elevator room.

There is a watcher in that room, and it was difficult to get past its gaze up the stairs into the room without being shown a yellow card. It was mostly a matter of finding the shadow on the stairs, then for the one bright spot right at the top, standing up and waiting until the watcher was looking all the way to my left, then bolting up and to the left, into deep shadow.

My map showed a room labeled Security to the right, past the stairs, then right down a hallway... but when I got there (while the guard was patrolling down the stairs), I found the door locked and unpickable. There was no way to get through there with the watchers turned on, so I realized I had to retreat.

I recalled the other entrance, in the open park area near Ryalla's house, the window with the climbing vine. I ghosted back out and down again, out into the lobby with the mossed floor, and back to my manhole. I went down, headed south, and eventually found an exit near Aquaduct Park. From there, I found my way back to the vine.

I climbed the vine but was completely unable to mantle into the window. I could see (and hear) a guard patrolling inside there, but I couldn't see where he would go. I climbed back down, then shot a rope arrow into the wooden roof overhang over the vine-ladder. Then I climbed back up, jumped from the vine to the rope, and then climbed up until I was in darkness but high enough to see the top of the guard's head bobbing along.

When he disappeared down some stairs, I jumped into the window frame, dropped to the stairs, and crouch-ran down them, then hooked around and under.

When he went back up, I entered the rooms he had just patrolled. Inside the first room, there were two pickable doors: the one on the right leads to another office, then another (I think) with a wall safe.

Note: Be sure to close all doors behind you; if the guard sees an open door, he gets suspicious and goes in to investigate.

I picked open the save, and there I found the vault key. Might be some loot in the safe; I don't recall. There is definitely some major loot in the unlocked cupboard right next to it. I forget what was in the pickable room next to this suite, but it was something worthwhile. When finished looting the joint, I had the Security key; I knew there was some loot upstairs -- but there is also a watcher there who can't be turned off, at least not that I can see; so I left it alone.

There is also a connecting door up there that leads to the main part of the post office, where I had been earlier... but nobody has ever reported finding a key to it; you can only bash your way through. Instead, I waited under the stairs until the guard came clomping down to patrol the office areas; then I ran up right under the (very high) window, shot a rope arrow into the ceiling and climbed up, jumped to the window, reached back and grabbed my rope arrow, and then crouch-ran out the window onto the rope I'd left above the vine ladder outside. I downclimbed just enough to be out of sight -- just as the guard climbed the stairs. I got a "what was that?!" but he added "just rats, I guess," or somesuch. I was clean!

Since I didn't want to ditch the rope, I climbed up until I could frob the arrow, then rotated 180 degrees so I was looking straight out across the grassy knoll. I grabbed the arrow and dropped straight down onto the vine. I climbed down and headed to the sewer again, popping out back where I was before, near the lobby entrance. I worked my way back up to the vault-elevator room again and headed into the Security section... this time with the proper key.

This was the trickiest part: opening the Security Key door, I found another corridor; I closed and locked the door behind me and headed to the next door. I opened it and saw a watcher scanning back and forth. There was a torch in the room; but when I doused it, only the back part of the room was dark; the front was still pretty well lit.

I tried darting across, but the watcher kept catching enough of me to go yellow. So finally I was forced to use my speed potion (which I think I had from the beginning, from Ryalla's secret room) to stand and run like the Flash when the face was looking to my left. I made it across; from that position, I was able to head down the ramp to the right (right while facing the hallway I'd just come from). There was a Security station there with two switches, one to shut off the watchers, the other to deactivate the alarm. There were also two locked safes in the room: the rear one was empty, but the front contained the Vault key. I think.

On the way back up, I looted a little bit. Up top, the watcher in the vault-elevator room was off, but the guard didn't seem to notice. When he went down the stairs towards the lobby, I ran to the vault elevator, used the Vault key to get inside, and rose to the floor above, where all the safe-desposit strongboxes were. I could only open the two for which I had keys; when I got into Jakku's strongbox, it will full of scrolls: after reading each one, the objective checked off. Percival's had some gems in it.

At this point, I had everything but the loot checked off. I raided the rest of the post-office rooms, then exited back out. Began then a long and frustrating loot hunt. I stumbled across a pirate horde -- V-shaped trench full of water led under a building and finally to a room with a Jolly Roger and a pirate chest. I found a dead Burrick with a diamond collar in the sewer. I picked a few more pockets. I found a police substation with an invisibility potion I never used, plus a bunch of water arrows and moss arrows.

But there's not much more to tell. I finally got enough loot, horsed around for a while find little drips and drabs here and there, then finally headed for home.

There was one structure marked on the map I never could figure out. It was called "Mysterious Tower," right next to the watch tower on the south edge of the map. I was able to fire a rope arrow into the roof of the watch tower, then climb up until I could spin around and jump onto the flat roof from which the tower rises. There, I circumnavigated the outside of the tower but never found a way in. I still have no idea what it is or whether it's hollow -- and if so, how much loot is in there. But since I ended the game short by 840 (!), I have my suspicions.

All in all, a fun FM somewhat marred by a crappy map.

Dafydd