SERIOUSLY, WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS? (minor spoilers)

[Lucky]

Okay, so I love Thief. Can't get enough of it. I just reached the part where you fight the Thief-Taker General. Now, I play passively, so I'm choosing to escape over fighting him. But first I want to steal the collectible item off of him as an added insult. HOWEVER. The second you get close to him, even if you're in shadow and sneaking and crouching and he's looking IN THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, he will always turn around straight away and one-shot you with his awesome wrist-mounted crossbow. The point I'm getting at is that it would appear that the only way to steal from him is to kill or at least fight him first. And, seeing how this is a game about being a THIEF, and I've played through the rest of this game up to this point without getting into a single fight, I am very dissapointed.

[Pelerin]

Hmm, that is a bit unfortunate - perhaps you should wait and see if anyone knows of a solution. It would be a shame to compromise your play-style this late in the game.

Sorry I can't actually help, lol.

[‒| Kim |‒]

Originally posted by LuckyMr13:

Okay, so I love Thief. Can't get enough of it. I just reached the part where you fight the Thief-Taker General. Now, I play passively, so I'm choosing to escape over fighting him. But first I want to steal the collectible item off of him as an added insult. HOWEVER. The second you get close to him, even if you're in shadow and sneaking and crouching and he's looking IN THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, he will always turn around straight away and one-shot you with his awesome wrist-mounted crossbow. The point I'm getting at is that it would appear that the only way to steal from him is to kill or at least fight him first. And, seeing how this is a game about being a THIEF, and I've played through the rest of this game up to this point without getting into a single fight, I am very dissapointed.

Yeah Eidos Montreal, when they first came out with with Deus Ex: Human Revolution got notorious criticism for the "boss fights". I'll give them slight credit for the final boss fight (If you can call it that) in the whole staying stealth thing. But the Thief-Taker General fight was kind of errr... signature mark of Eidos doing its business again. Ewww.

http://kotaku.com/5841910/those-horribad-deus-ex-human-revolution-boss-battles-were-outsourced

Hell, there was even more satisfying escapades in The Dark Project stealthing Constantine and stealthing "The Hag" with the various parts in each section in the Deadly Shadows while stealing the objects from the holy waypoints. Suppose the final stealthing in Thief (4) is all right. But the general bit kind of breaks and falls into lacklustre. Kind of works, just doesn't work that well as it could of.

[banditz]

I played this mission, I may not understand, but you must steal the ring from a safe (I think it is ch.02) and the baron kicks the door in and you get a cut scene, then you make your escape, maybe you are at the wrong position? (IDK)

[DarkRaven]

I suspect that if you slow crouch and insta-pickpocket you -might- be able to do it or maybe the leather oil upgrade would help, but other than that, I don't know. He behaves like a gloomwalker in that regard. It's lame, regardless.

[Lucky]

Originally posted by banditz:

I played this mission, I may not understand, but you must steal the ring from a safe (I think it is ch.02) and the baron kicks the door in and you get a cut scene, then you make your escape, maybe you are at the wrong position? (IDK)

No, I'm talking about the mini-boss battle in Chapter 7.

[WarLust]

Perhaps Leather Oil with Spectral Aspect would allow this. I'll let you know if it does. I'm doing a Master-Custom ghost run and plan to get that trinket this time, but I'm just on Ch. 4.

[ERROR]

Have you tried the choke arrow or the flash bomb? You might be able to steal the collectible that way, however you might fail the undetected challenge, but you can progress without killing him, while still getting the collectible.

The only real way you could sneak behind him unnoticed, is to slowly crouch (using ctrl), but since his AI is so unpredictable, it's something close to impossible. Try distracting him into the shadow.

[Furnace Inferno]

I've just got to this point on my master-custom game with no upgrades, no knockouts, no alerts, only special arrows and it is simply impossible to loot him, it has really pissed me off actually. The fact they have put a collectible on him and then made it impossible for a stealth player to loot him is absolute BS!

I tried shooting him in the face with a fire arrow to stun him and throwing a smoke bomb and it simply doesn't work because he recovers just as you finish looting and then spins on a dime because you are in his auto-detect radius so I instantly fail.

I also tried just taking him out but even starting with a stealth attack from behind cutting his health in 1/2, the 8 fire arrows I have still aren't enough to kill him even with 8 headhshots he has a tiny bit of health left and stunning him and hitting again gets auto-countered from behind and does no damage from in front. I suspect even if I managed to take all his health I would get a mission fail for a knockout even if I didn't finish him off!

Total and utter CRAP!!

[ArdentSlacker]

I... shot him in the ear with one of the armor piercing arrows, from an upgraded bow. That put him in the "finish him" state. At that point, I think he'd just had the fight knocked out of him. His pockets could still be picked, so I think he wasn't considered "killed".

[Cucu]

Throw a bottle to distract him. You will have enough time to pickpocket one thing from him and swoop backward. Probably incredibly hard if you have the "slower movement" custom difficulty option on.

[Furnace Inferno]

The only way I could do it was shooting him twice with a fire arrow in the face to get him in his most stunned stat, steal the collectible and then do a knockout attack, which sends him back into a stunned stat giving me just enough time to swoop away without being spotted, despite him looking right at me in the knockout block animation!

Anything else and he just turned around straight away, either that or make sure you take all 10 fire arrows into that fight so that you can get him to submit but again I'm not sure if that counts as a knockout on custom difficulties.

[Noisome Possum]

I just got to this one mysely and finally just gave up on the collectable. It was still incredibly hard since I never bought any upgrades to make lockpicking easier. It's basically just down to luck whether or not he catches you picking the lock.

[*John Vastle the Evil]

Aye, that part sucked. Definitely blows that it's borderline impossible to go full ghost and get all the loot in some levels.

I used a choke arrow while he was close to the shadows so I had time to escpae.

[zosete]

I don't know if it works on master, but on standard a choke arrow would stop him enough to pouch one bag without focus upgrades. I was able to choke/pickpocket x3 almost in the same move. Don't know if you can't do it without counting for detection -choke doesn't count with guards IIRC-, but I guess this boss fight wasn't scripted at all for a ghost player.

[Wild Salmon]

I know what you mean... I would change a few things about this game actually. If I could, I would make it that:

1. TTG doesn't instadetect you
2. Lone birds/dogs don't ruin your stealth run
3. Civilians can ruin your stealth run if they detect you
4. Oil lamps can be knocked over with your blackjack
5. Rope arrows are climbable as soon as they have dropped - rather than having to wait until the animation has fully finished or plunging to your death.