Overview
Think of it as the rookie’s FAQ to Gunpoint… Answering the questions you’re afraid to ask!
Introduction
Welcome to the “Bloody Obvious Guide” to Gunpoint, where all the “dumb questions” are answered, because there is no such thing as a dumb question. Here we’ll answer how to solve each level (without help from walkthrus), how to deal with guards, and finally, how to score those A+ ratings.
This is a work in progress, folks. It’s bound to be incomplete. So, go easy on the comments please. 🙂
Getting Inside
Ideally, you should accomplish your mission without ANYONE noticing you. Unconscious guards are fine, as long as they never even knew you were there.
For the first few cases you’ll have the front door left open, but later the front doors will be closed and you’ll have to figure out a way to get inside by rewiring something so the door will open.
Beware of buildings with a big window open toward the front of the buidling (where you start from). If a guard patrols there he’ll likely shoot you without you ever having moved a pixel! Instead, move up to the door ASAP. (But not right up against the door, as an opening door will slap you silly too).
Usually, the front door can be directly wired to a trigger that is available from the inside, often a motion detector or a sound detector. That’ll open the door and get you inside.
Once you’re inside, and you’re free from detection for a while, study the map.
Finding the Objectives
There are usually a primary objective as well as one or more secondary objectives.
The primary objective is probably the computer you need to hack, while secondary objectives are laptops you can copy/hack.
Locate them on the map, then work your way backwards. What leads to that? If it’s a door, what color circuit is it on? Don’t worry if you can’t reach it and thus can’t see the color. Hover the mouse over the object will reveal its circuit “symbol”.
Square
Triangle
Star
Circle
Diamond
And find matching objects. Once you’ve attached the wirehack to the access point you can see the entire circuit.
The “wirehack” access points are enabling points and thus you need to figure out how to get to them.
Study the stairway and the elevator. Who patrols the stairway? Who patrols the elevator?
A moving guard can be used to trigger something, usually to open a door by crosslink the motion detector to the door you want opened.
Work your way backwards from that, and you’ll eventually arrive at your location.
Dealing With Guards
There are TWO ways (well, technically three) to deal with guards:
Bypass, or knock out (optionally, terminate)
Bypass (i.e. Stealth)
If the lights are out, you can jump to the ceiling and “hand-walk” past the guard, and drop behind him and go in the other direction. That probably doesn’t work when the lights are on because the view cone extends above and below the horizontal while the light is on, but you’re welcome to try.
You can hide in the elevator. As long as you don’t exit the elevator, guards can walk right past you and they won’t see you. It’s very useful when you need to sneak in, Wirehack an access point, and get out.
A lot of this requires the guards to be moving / patrolling, so you’ll probably have to crosslink the light he’s under and turn it off. He’ll patrol if he tries to turn the lights back on and can’t.
If there are no light switches for that floor, then you have to simply sneak past him. This usually involves sending him on patrols, then handwalk directly above him to avoid his view cone. Then drop down behind him to do your job, then go back up.
Anothre way to get the guard out of the way is to lock him in a room (disconnect the palm reader connected to the door). Once the door’s closed he can’t interfere with your plans.
Knock Out (or terminate)
Regular guards can usually be incapacitated by an opening door. Wire the door to a switch or motion detector or camera and do the honors yourself.
Another way is to incapacitate a guard is to wire an electrical outlet to a switch that you can activate yourself. Then hit him as he walks by the outlet.
The prankspasm tool extends the reach of the outlet to any other Crosslink controllable object, such as handprint reader, switch, etc. However, it costs 1 battery, and those aren’t cheap. However, they do let you shock unsuspecting guards more easily, as they may not walk past an outlet.
If you got the doorcrusher enhancement, you can always crash a door into the guard. But that’s very loud and thus not very stealthy and may ruin your ninja score. 🙂
If you’re the violent type you can always tackle the guy with a jump then punch him out. However, this hurts your stealth score.
Same with using the doorcrusher on a guard next to door. It hurts your stealth score.
You *can* tackle someone through a window or a glass floor and crush him on the floor below. This of course, hurts your peace score, and if you didn’t use the silencer, your stealth score.
There’s also the option of shooting a guard, if you bought a pistol. However, there are special consequences doing things that way.
Special notes on enforcers
An enforcer (armored guard) is immune to tackling and/or door attacks. THey simply shrug it off but it will take them a few seconds, but again, hurts your stealth score. And they can be tackled out the window.
Enforcers are vunlerable to electrical shocks, such as regular miswired electrical outlet, but also the prankspasm enhancement.
Special notes on professionals
A professional has night-vision equipment so the trick of jumping around and hide in darkness won’t work as well, but he can be snuck-past you are careful and he is moving. Though it’s probably easier to shock him or to door slam him (from a different floor).
Special notes on using the Resolver
Resolver, the pistol with the laser sight, is intimidating. A guard (maybe enforcer too?) seeing the laser may not drawn their weapon and you can intimidate them a little. However, this doesn’t work on the Professional.
If you do shoot the gun at ANYTHING, you have 22 seconds before the police close off the subway and shoot all comers. If you have the “bullet dodge” enhancement you may have a chance to hit the cop at the subway. If you manage to do that, you get another 22 seconds to get away before another cop appears.
Think VERY carefully before using the gun. You don’t need to use it, really.
What to Crosslink
You can think of crosslink as creating a link between actions between a trigger, and the action you want.
The “triggers”
light switch (manually, by you or guard)
camera (only triggerable by you)
motion detector (by you or guard)
sound detector (by elevator arrival, usually)
The actions
Open/Close a door
Open a vault door (auto reset)
Open a trap door (that goes through the floor, auto reset)
Summon the elevator (to specific floor call button)
Turn on/off lights
Instead of the actions that normally occurs.
In general, you should unlink any palm readers, switches, doors, and such as you find them. Having a guard turning back on a door or light you have turned off can make the level unsolvable without restarting the level. If you lock a guard into a room, you certainly don’t want him getting back out by himself.
Only wire the stuff you need to happen.
Once you determined the path you will take (and it should be pretty obvious if you worked backwards from the objective), you then know how to get there by triggering some actions you want.
Open/Close a door / vault door / trap door
Open/Close a door has two purposes: to give you access to what’s beyond the door, and/or to get the guard out of the way.
Patrolling guard will patrol the entire floor he can reach, but he can’t open doors (esp. if you disconnect the palm reader). So you can close the door after he passes through and he can’t bother you any more.
Summon Elevator
Summon elevator as an action, is usually paired with sound detector trigger. When elevator arrive, it will make a big “ding” sound, thus trigger the sound detector.
Summon elevator will also cause the guard to turn, to face that. This is crucial on some missions.
Turn on/off lights
Turn off the lights in a room / on a floor to force the guard to patrol. There are variety of reasons, but generall is to force him out of the way.
A guard “patrolling” back and forth is not always bad. You can let his movement past a motion detector to open a door for you or such on some levels. Also, it’s more fun trying to sneak past him in the dark. If the guard does NOT patrol, you may have to force him by turning off his lights.
If the guard’s facing the wrong way, he’s probably next to an elevator, and if you simply go to that floor and NOT get out, he’ll turn toward the elevator, then that should give you a different way to get past him (by going to a different floor, get out, then use staircase to get behind him).
If you need to get onto a floor where the guard is watching the elevator like a hawk, and the only way in is through the elevator, you have to force him to patrol first by turning off his lights. THEN arrive and wait for him to patrol and get out behind him.
Events can be “chained”, and is directional. Look at the link, and you’ll see the “direction”. This is important.
Do not daisy-chain the lights (from one light to another light on the same room). All the lights in the same room operate together, even though they appear to be two separate lights. Just wire ONE of the lights and all lights in that room (even if it’s the entire floor, more than one light) will turn off.
How to Get The Elusive A+ Mission Rating
Each mission “fixer” (the person who gave you the mission) usually has an additional request, like “leave no witnesses” or “minimum violence”.
Usually this means going ninja (knock the guards out without them seeing you or just bypass them), make no noise (i.e. no crashing through glass without that silencer thing, using that silent fall thing instead of fall on your face)
Nabbing the bonus laptop objective also adds to your rating.
If you want to do speed-runs, you will have to know exactly what to wire and do it quickly, then run for the objective, relying on speed and agility instead of timing and clever traps/cross-linking.
Conclusion and Thanks
Thanks to Doom Zero and Slayer2046 for constructive comments.