Thief II: The Metal Age -- Life of the Party

The front entrance foyer has its own roof that the statue is standing on. Dropping down from the fourth floor ledge to the third floor ledge is no problem but getting down onto the entranceway roof and then to the cobblestones just outside the front door seemed, at first, to be unlikely. The fall from the third floor ledge was at least a 16 point damage taken drop and the fall from this roof to the cobblestones a 20 point damage taken drop. From the fourth floor ledge, I tried quite a while to stack some boxes on the roof for Garrett to drop onto. They always broke when dropped directly onto the roof. By bouncing them off the third floor ledge I managed without breaking any. The bounce sent them out into the centre of the roof which was too far away for Garrett to jump to from the third floor ledge. The problem is that once Garrett drops down to the third floor ledge he cannot backtrack. He must proceed down onto the roof then. The "flying buttress" blocks movement on the third floor ledge I could never navigate. Garrett just doesn't jump very well off of an angled surface. I tried all manner of boxes, potion vials, and moss without luck. I even dragged all the bottles, goblets, plates, etc. available in Angelwatch to see if I could build a rubbish "heap" to drop down onto but most of these are insubstantial or two dimensional and didn't help. The statue itself is an apparition and doesn't support Garrett. In the end dropping the potion vials so they stood vertically in a bunch and then dropping a box into them so the box sits corner point up worked. Even then it took tons of trials to get Garrett to land on the point of the box and slide off with no damage. I won't be attempting any Ironman version here! In fact, although I didn't keep any actual numbers, my impression is that only 1 in 10 drops resulted in any sort of reduction in damage taken so Garrett survived and probably around 50 drops until one of these kinder drops resulted in no damage taken. As a bonus, the box I dropped onto here did not break in the final, no damage, fall. Most of the roof is noiseless.

The drop from the roof to the cobblestones, although more damaging, I was able to navigate with a lot fewer attempts. In the end, I'd slide over the beveled edge of the roof and drop the box in front of me while looking down and falling. At least half of these drops Garrett survived and probably it only took 15 or 20 until I had a damage free drop. The entranceway corner showing in this second screenshot is noiseless.

It turns out the cobblestones around the front door are exempt from the "Stay to the rooftops" objective so Garrett doesn't die on this "street" like elsewhere in the mission. Don't stray too far east away from the doors, though, or Garret will die. Now, the front doors are locked as anyone who has checked them out knows. There's even a scripted audio explaining this which triggers when the doors are frobbed. Most doors can be opened by whacking them with the sword a few times. This works here too except the guard standing just inside the doors alerts at the noise. I had noticed that except right around the doors there was no sound. I wondered if the guard mightn't hear if the doors could be smacked while standing on these silent spots. Alas, Garrett can't reach the doors with his sword from here. Fortunately, I had figured all this out before by opening the doors from the inside so I had brought the hammer from the chest in the second floor barracks along. Throwing this hammer at the doors while standing on the silent cobblestones doesn't alert the guard! Does it make a sound? I couldn't hear anything!

Grabbing the loot and Snudging the guard up against the far wall to the right so Garret can sneak back into Angelwatch past him is anticlimactic compared to the dropping. Turns out, while Snudging the guard, the first sounds of the patrolling large bot returning leave just enough time to scurry back to the darkness of the doorway to wait for the bot to turn and start back toward the main first floor room. Take care when Snudging the guard you don't push him into the couch. The AI's lower legs are insubstantial and don't clip the seating portion of the couch. It was difficult to get him back out again to get him around the far armrest side where he needs to be so he can't see you escape. Even there he mumbles about something being amiss. Another detail I've observed when Snudging. If you leave an AI Snudged facing up against a wall, over time it will rotate counter-clockwise. The first time I Snudged Lady Louisa she had rotated and was again looking directly at the window I had to pass through when I returned from Angelwatch! So, make sure you get the loot so you don't need to return here later when this guard may have turned facing into the room. Or perhaps Snudge him into the left corner.