How to brute-force a combination safe.

[ShadowDragon8685]

It's really annoying to break into an apartment and find it utterly devoid of shinies except a single combination safe to which I don't appear to have a clue, and which doesn't appear to have any clues written down in it.


So, for those of you with more time to spend doing something boring and monotonous than to spend scouring the entirety of the game hubs looking for that damn clue, here's how to brute-force the combination locks.

Set it to 000. Start incrementing the rightmost (ones) dial, until it reaches 000 again. Increment the middle column (010), then increment the rightmost dial again, until it reaches zero again. Increment the middlemost dial, until it reaches zero. Then increment the leftmost dial, and start again on the rightmost dial.

Or, basically, just keep adding one, starting from 000, until you hit 999. You'll hit it somewhere in there... Eventually. (The dials move two to a second, so five seconds to do the whole rightmost column, call it two seconds to move to the middle and back. Yeah, you're gonna be rolling tumblers for about ten minutes.)


Hopefully a guide will come along soon with the combinations, and then we can forget about brute-forcing these things.

[Aiqu]

no, no no no and no. you don't brute-force any of the safe(s). you will find the clue, eventually.

sometimes you can find letter or notes at completely random places, from on top of a wardrobe to on the desk in the house two blocks down.

sometimes one mission hints another hidden(no object marker) treasure, like the body of dead poet (not really a treasure imo) or collectibles taken from the original location.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Originally posted by Aiqu:

no, no no no and no. you don't brute-force any of the safe(s). you will find the clue, eventually.

Spend ten or twelve minutes brute-forcing it (there's literally only 1,000 possible combinations, that's not very secure at all,) or spend two hours scouring the entire game world for that one clue you missed, only to realize it was obtusely mentioned in a letter you already collected but which had no hints that it was pointing to the apartment you broke into?

That's not a hard call.

[Miz]

Brute-forcing safes in this game is just flat out wrong. It'd be like untying a knot by cutting the rope or curing a headache with a bullet to the temple. It's Thief! Be a good one, using your head and wits instead of hurr durring your way through the world.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Cutting the knot is an excellent way to get things done. And brute-forcing a lock rather than scouring the entire town is using your head.

Which is more logical: spending ten or twelve minutes cracking the safe in-situ, or wandering the town at random, poking your head into every nook and cranny, hoping that someone, somewhere which is not where the safe is, happened to write down its combination?

[Panic Fire]

Originally posted by ShadowDragon8685:

Cutting the knot is an excellent way to get things done. And brute-forcing a lock rather than scouring the entire town is using your head.

Which is more logical: spending ten or twelve minutes cracking the safe in-situ, or wandering the town at random, poking your head into every nook and cranny, hoping that someone, somewhere which is not where the safe is, happened to write down its combination?

So far theres really only 1 safe where the combination lay else where.

[leperkhaan]

I personally find it more fullfilling to find the code but I've been doing this since I played games like Hugo's House of Horrors lol

[ShadowDragon8685]

Originally posted by Panic Fire:

So far theres really only 1 safe where the combination lay else where.

I've resorted to brute-forcing two of them.

The first was in the old ironworks. The letter said to look for the old prototypes. One of the three numbers was right behind me - that cut the nmber of possible combinations by an order of magnitude.

The second was by the docks. No clues anywhere, so I resorted to just brute-forcing it. It turned out to be the one set to the year, but I'd forgotten that until I saw it.

[Planeforger]

'Course, brute-forcing locks on a 'no knockouts' run would take forever, since you'd only have a tiny window of opportunity to use a safe before a patrol swings around again.

It'd be faster on the harder difficulties to just search for the clue.