The basics you need to know to have fun

To start with, your ammo and suppressor durability will be pretty low- Just a handful of shots each. Even as you get more of each through researching, and later, gunsmithing, you will quickly run out. What are you to do? Use a handful of tools for the first six guys you can shoot, and then the next four you can use your throwable or deployable tools on?

No! Just open your IDroid and order a resupply drop, picking up new ammo, suppressors, and most crucially: Fulton balloons.

Yes, it costs GMP, but it doesn't cost much if you're packing light on equipment. You're still coming out in the black no matter what. Items that you bring back or don't have restocked are basically refunded, so while it gives you a cost, it'll be mitigated overall for what you didn't use up.

You can absolutely get by with nothing but what you scavenge up. But discarding 90% of the games tools is a lot less fun then getting to enjoy your tactical espionage action. The game wouldn't make you research so much stuff if it didn't want you to use it in the field!

This is a good way to save GMP in general, too. Only equip in your loadout things you expect to use pretty much every mission without fail. If you only use it sometimes? Don't bring it, and when you need it, deploy whatever item you need as a single drop. You get a slight GMP extra cost for the mid-mission delivery, but it's way less then carrying expensive stuff every time you deploy to free roam.

You can't get resupplies in FOB missions, but anywhere else? If you need it, drop it. At higher trust levels with Quiet, she'll even sometimes drop it for you. (Not always in a place that's viable, or possible to get to, but she tries.)

You weren't gonna stop looting just because you ran out of balloons to ship them home, were you? Just drop more balloons and strip the place to the ground if you want to!

And as long as there's only a couple guys left... If you run out of suppressor, a gunshot will make people look around to your location, but they won't necessarily see you right away if you move around and don't fire from somewhere they can IMMEDIATELY turn to see you. If you just need to take one one or two more guys before you can reach your ammo resupply... You might be able to pull it off.

Oh, and keep an eye on your fulton distance. As I recall, enemies can hear a fulton extraction from around 30m away (And if they hear it, they'll grow suspicious- And might even see it rocket away if they're looking in the right direction. Past 30m and you're fine. Enemies who are conscious may scream louder when they're sent flying, I'm not sure.

Kojima is an odd duck- Someone who is ardently anti-war, but who still really loves miltiary hardware for being cool, even if he strongly disapproves of what it's actually used for. So, it's quite typical for his games that non-lethal is the encouraged option.

And yeah! Non lethal is very viable. But lethal is still a very viable option, too. Don't let the morality of the situation hold you back too much. Miller even tells you as much outright: "If that involves wetwork... So be it."

Some day, eventually, you will have the skills, and more importantly, the upgrades, to get through without killing anyone, without being detected. And the game will reward you for that, with bonuses for perfect stealth.

But if you happen to need to shoot someone to keep them from waking up and sending the whole base on alert, because you're just not that fast, then do so. The game will not demonize you for it unless you go really, really, REALLY far- as long as you only happen to take out whoever's in your way, one way or another, and don't go out of your way to do a (nuclear) genocide on everyone present, you'll still have a rising heroism score in the end.

Besides, lethal tools still have some useful options, like breaking lightbulbs and glass, or maybe turning people around to investigate a silenced shot. (Although maybe that's just for tranquilizers? I haven't checked yet. Once I'm done editing this guide...) You can also shoot them in the head with a lethal weapon to knock their helmet off, then nail them in the newly exposed face with a nonlethal weapon, ideally a tranq, for a quick nonlethal KO. You're gonna have to be quick on the draw, but you'll get there.

Also? Lethal can be nonlethal! Sort of. You may have noticed you have a medical group you can level up with dudes with the appropriate skill. What does leveling that up do? What's it for? Well, this, mostly.

You can shoot a guy in the leg and have him go down, rolling around on the ground in pain, incapacitated. (Some badasses will be on the ground, struggling, but still pull their pistol and try to shoot you while they're bleeding out. Respect! Still, kick them while they're down to knock them out.)

Go ahead and fulton extract them. When they're partially wounded (as opposed to the mission target 'too fragile to fulton extract), you have a percentage chance of failure where you'll lose them. And ranking up your medical team will increase your odds.

Sure, having a chance to not kill them is obviously worse then having a 100% chance to not kill them with nonlethal weapons- But it's so much easier to get them out of your way with guns that are better at knocking them down, so don't be afraid to take the easy option if they're a bonus, and not someone you absolutely need to have.

As mentioned, you don't have to kill an enemy with a headshot to down them. If they fall down for long enough to be fulton'd out, that's good enough.

But you also don't need to worry about headshots with Tranq wepaons, either. Yes, headshot tranqs are often the best option, but they're not necessary. They're not even ALWAYS the best option.

Tranqs, if they land, will eventually work. Doesn't matter where they hit, as long as it doesn't bounce off armor. You'll learn to distinguish the sound of a landed hit to a deflected hit- The audio cues are distinct. A headshot will put them to sleep eventually. A shot to the chest may put them to sleep after a ten second delay. To the foot might be ten or fifteen seconds, don't recall.

However, Tranq effectiveness is somewhat tied to the heartrate of the victim. What does that mean for you? It means that if you have someone who's going to fall over when their tranquilizer takes effect, them being surprised is going to make that timer dramatically shorten.

You may want to take advantage of this. Lets say there are three guys who are all standing next to each other. You can't just headshot all three of them in a row- They're all watching each other, and your dinky little W. Su has a slow fire rate.

So- Shoot them all in the leg or torso and wait. They'll probably react- But they'll swat at themselves, thinking it's just a mosquito. Once you hit the first guy, you've got a time window to hit as many others as you want- And when people start falling over one after the other in sync, anyone who sees them fall over will be alarmed, have a sudden heart rate spike, and will fall unconscious themselves a few seconds later. You can also alarm them other ways- Throw a magazine, shoot the environment behind them, have them catch a glimpse of you and move to get a better look... Just learn how fast it'll take effect and try to work around that timing. If they're facing you, toss a magazine behind them from behind a corner. They'll only turn around for a few seconds, but that's more then enough time to get a couple of them tagged to fall over in a few seconds.

Sure, it might take a while for the first one to go down... But that just means you have a while to ensure every guard in sight has a little white ! to confirm the hit.

Remember: Tranqs are a one shot temporary KO that lasts a while no matter where you hit them. And having multiple people all fall over more or less at the same time can be way better then having them instantly fall over one at a time, only to have them stumble over each other and sound the alarm.

And you can always shoot them multiple times to speed it up, too, if they've got a helmet that foils headshots. One shot to the chest, and they'll fall over in about fifteen seconds. Two shots to the chest, and they'll fall over in about three. Don't forget you can just have more suppressors and ammo mailed directly to you from the sky, if that's what it takes.

These are free money. Well, they convert carrots into GMP, but you know what I mean. And, more importantly, each one placed increases your Heroism for free at the start and end of any mission/chopper extraction. As Heroism increases the quality of your recruits, how much you have directly influences how fast mother base grows and upgrades. This is basically powerleveling.

How these work is a little unclear, so! Here you go:

You can place up to 8 total, regardless of how many resupplies you call in. They will capture an animal when you extract from a mission in a helicoptor, start a mission from free roam, things like that.

They WILL NOT WORK if you open the menu and hit 'Return To ACC', since that's technically just loading a save.

Where you place the cages affects what kind of animal they catch, but they have a 100% catch rate. You will never see them catch anything; they just work automatically out of sight whenever you do a mission transition, start or finish.

Since you get paid in heroism and GMP for every one you place, there is genuinely no reason not to plant down a bunch on top of whatever else you're doing in a mission, unless you run out of Black Carrot. And if you run out of carrots... So what? They are only used for cages, so you used them in the best possible way. And you can always find more, they're pretty common.

Put down up to 8 of these every mission, and you get free heroism and GMP. It's a no brainer.

Oh, and maybe don't bother upgrading them? The main benefit seems you get to find different kinds of animals, sometimes, but for the most part it just increases the amount you can carry from 4 to 8. You can only PLACE eight, though, and odds are you're gonna resupply for suppressors anyway, so... Yeah, stick with level 1 if you want GMP, and not a fuller animal collection.

FOBs are your main source of renewable income. You can beat the game without doing them- But it will be a worse experience for it. You will eventually be in the red if you don't, after some especially expensive research lategame. And using those helicopter engine upgrades adds up real, real fast.

It's also the only real way to get resources in the amounts you need to upgrade your platforms. Back in the day, you used to be able to farm containers for it. But eventually, they slashed the amount you get from containers to a pitiful quantity. Good enough for deploying weapons and gear, not nearly enough to upgrade with. FOBs are your only real option, now.

You will have to raid other player's bases for materials and money, but that's okay: It doesn't really hurt them. And occasionally (mostly back in the day, but it could theoretically happen now!) they'll raid you back.

And it won't really hurt you.

There are some funny FOB-mission-only items you can research and deploy with the FOB events, that cost absurd amounts of Online Resources to use, but for the most part? Online Resources are like, a bonus multiplier applied to the resources you actually have and spend. It's funny-money, it's basically an inflated income value that you don't actually use for all that much.

And because you don't use it for all that much, if you steal it for other people, or have it stolen, it's no big deal. You secure resources for the actual solo game, and the game casually throws in like ten times that much in Online Resources used mostly for Online Content. It's a bonus; nobody is actually taking resources from your single player game.

This isn't clear, of course, by design. Because they wanted to inspire you to hunt down people stealing from you! Why would they let you know it's just a trick to give you encouragement?

Anyway, FOBs are the main way to get GMP income. Repeating missions gives you progressively less and less GMP for completing them, to the point that before too long, you're getting less for doing it then you're spending deploying to it with your gear. So, do FOB missions.

There is an Espionage Score that goes up as you win, acting something like rank based matchmaking. As you complete them, the kind of FOBs presented to you will change: Eventually, FOBs with no defenses will simply stop showing up, and you'll only have the option to take on places that care about their security.

So, do your best! Remember that while you get negative heroism for killing soldiers on FOB, you gain a lot for completing the mission, so it's still worth it. If you can ghost through with no reflex mode, no detection, and no kills, you get a substantial bonus- But if the FOB is too difficult for the bonus, or you're just not that good yet?

Don't worry about it. Just do what you came to do, steal staff, steal resources, reach the end of the platform for a bonus in materials or medical plants- Especially plants, only good way to get a lot of them- And leave. If you gotta shoot a few guys to get there, so be it.

Pro tip: The hardest thing for me, I noticed, is the flying drones. You can shoot them down with a silenced weapon, but they hit the ground and explode, and set off an alert.

The solution? Don't let them hit the ground. UAVs regularly fly over the ocean parts of the mid-ocean oil rig. Just shoot them down over water and they'll disappear without anyone noticing.

You can beat the game without doing any FOBs. But you will be poor in the late game for it, spending so much on research. Don't be poor. Have the resources to afford the tools that make things fun. If doing things the fun way and not the grinding slog way involves spending GMP and plants, then just grab some GMP and plants from someone's FOB! They pick up 20 wormwood, the game gives them 2000 wormword or whatever online, you take that, everyone wins.

Oh, yeah. You can also spend staff to do some sabotage of an FOB right before you run it. This can make it easier in various ways. It's often not worth sabotaging every aspet of security, and it'll cost you GMP, and eat into your earnings, assuming you win.

But sometimes? It's absolutely worth it, when you get caught out early in your FOB career, because you can't reload... But the situation's not absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥, because you spent the manpower to disable reinforcements. Know what it's worth it to you to spend to make a mission easier, and what that is depends on what you struggle with, so you'll figure it out as you get better.

I know: You're a hoarder. And that's okay.

Many people will tell you to fulton everything in sight. Those people are right, really. You don't need all that crap, but you can if you want to- And in general, while extracting resources costs money, you'll usually be able to sell what you just harvested to cover the cost of extract, plus pure profit.

The best thing to stockpile, if you see it in container form, is the silver and gold crates- Precious and semi-precious metals. You use these for some things, but when sold in bulk, you get solid to a lot of cash for it, and sometimes raw GMP is what you need.

Also, don't forget that your tools often have uses beyond their first impression would give you. Mess around, or look them up.

The thing I think you want to know, if nothing else? Decoys, when they inflate, will briefly knock out enemies with STN who are standing next to them when it rockets up and uppercuts them in the jaw. There are various kinds of non-lethal knockouts, and various sources of STN last longer then others, and tranquilizer's ZZZ will last longer in general.

But it lasts long enough to get up to them and use a longer lasting solution, whether that's choking them out, combo punching them, or knifing them in the throat while you grapple them. Whatever works for you.

Heavy Armored Enemies are a huge pain. These guys are damn near immune to regular bullets. Nonlethal rubber rounds, however, will put them down after a magazine or two, eventaually, even when regular bullets will bounce off indefinitely. And a decoy inflating in their face is an instant knockdown, enough to go over and choke him out.

Hate these guys. You want to know these ways to handle them, just in case.

I'd be remiss to not at least mention it. The cardboard box is a meme, but it's a meme for a reason: This thing has a lot of uses to it.

As you can expect, you can sit out in broad daylight with this thing over your head. As long as you aren't caught moving, people will ignore you. You'll be a lot less visible crawling or rolling around then you will be in the box- But if enemies are right up next to you, and you're too close for them to overlook you on the ground? A box will let them patrol right past- Or investigate a thrown magazine.

I'm sure you can look up compilations of all the various uses of it, but here are my highlights: It's reusable. Most items are consumed as soon as you activate them. The cardboard box can be put back into your inventory... Most of the time.

If you're prone across the ground in a box, with the folds opened, you can burst out of the front of the box, leaving it in place. You can't retrieve it after this, consuming one of your boxes, but it acts as a lure. With the right poster, soldiers can be distracted by it for much longer, but in general, if you leave it in their patrol path, they'll know this isn't supposed to be here, and they'll cautiously investigate it. They'll aim their gun at it with one hand, reaching out to open it with the other...

What happens then depends on context. If you're in the box? Well, they'll blow your cover. But you can pop out of it by aiming your gun, and if you nail them with a headshot, they won't have time to send out an alert. This is also usually close enough that you can hold them up (if you speak the language) successfully... Though enemies who resist holdups by preparing to go for their weapon will do so as usual, so if you recognize they're not playing along, just headshot them. If your gun has a flashlight, shining it in their face will stun them for a good two and a half seconds or so- Enough time to unequip your box, so you can use it again without consuming it, and then grab them in CQC to interrogate or choke out. Or both. If you aim your gun at them while they're blinded, they'll be held up.

And just wasting time is useful, if you happen to be waiting for them to fall over from a tranquilizer shot.

You can even pop back into your box and put it away, reserving it for later. You can also pop out with CQC, taking them down that way, and possibly even doing the multi-person CQC chain if there's two side by side. This will discard the box, so it can't be reused. Also, you can turn while using your binoculars to move the orientation of the box without enemies noticing, if you want it to face a certain direction, or look out the hole in the side to use your scanner without the chance of being detected from a distance.

And if it's just lying out without you in it? Well, nothing will be inside, and it's just a distraction. Unlike the magazine, this is a visual distraction, so it'll wait for enemies to come into range and see it, rather then having the limited audio range of the magazine. Or, maybe, something WILL be inside it. You could put a cardbox box over a decoy. They get into range, pry it open... And then you activate the decoy and it punches them in the face for a sudden brief knockout. Or whatever other triggered item you feel like concealing beneath it, unseen until enemies close enough to slowly remove it's disguise, by which point it's way too late for them.

And if you have a dead body and absolutely nowhere to put it, well, a box will disguise it from being seen immediately, though you'll want to take care of anyone who comes to investigate. Whether that's you crouching over the body, or you leaving it deployed across the ground.

And if all else fails? It may degrade over time in rain... But this thing is surprisingly bullet resistant. It won't eat a lot of full auto fire, but running around with a box over your head with your legs sticking out... Is silly. But it's silly in a way that will eat multiple sniper rounds, per box, and you're carrying like six of them. So who's laughing now?

Not all companions are good from the word go. But they're all good at different things.

D-Dog is never a bad choice. He costs nothing to deploy with, once unlocked, if you keep his equipment light, and you can use him to scout out a base. You won't need him once you already know where everything is and have marked it, but if you're replaying a mission, you can bring someone else.

And you can also change companions in the field, if need be, though it costs GMP.

Quiet is, obviously, one of the best options overall, and everyone knows it. She was meant to be, so certain story paths have emotional resonance. But she starts off as lethal only. And if you don't use her properly, it'll take forever to let her level up her trust so she can use nonlethal weapons.

So, use her. Accept that sometimes you have to let enemies die, and feed her a few kills. Before long, she'll be ready to go nonlethal with you.

D-Walker is a curious choice. You need a lot, a LOT, of GMP to run them. They are, in the vast majority of circumstances, too expensive to run with any regularity. But, if you have a mission where you make mad profit- Ones where you can steal vehicles comes to mind, something they are uniquely good at with the fulton catapult- They can still come out in the black. Or, if you absolutely, positively need the firepower. They're a little worse at every specialty of every other companion (Well, arguably they're better at personal mobility then D-horse, other then the sheer cost), but they can do a little bit of everything, often simultaneously.

D-Horse... Is free. You can ride them a little stealthily, but you're better served just going around the roads. And once you bring a vehicle to missions, it'll automatically fulton-recover itself when you extract, so you don't have to pay the price to constantly fulton it when you leave. But he is free!

Well, money isn't any good if you don't spend it.

When on the ground, hold the aim button, then use the sprint button to start rolling around horizontally left and right along the ground.

You would be surprised how effective it is to roll around at speed like a death-rolling alligator in broad daylight. It's a little less stealthy then crawling, but not substantially so. You can easily roll out of sight when someone has vaguely caught some hint of motion but doesn't actually see you.

You'll be doing this a lot, if you want to be both stealthy, low to the ground, and fast. Don't crawl- Roll!

You may notice that, for the vast, vast majority of missions, they take place in specific areas available in free-roam.

You can actually exploit this.

Having trouble with a mission? Visit the mission location in free roam, when there are far fewer guards around and no dire consequences for being detected, and prep the stage.

Throw a grenade or use C4 on anti-air radars, to be able to extract (or land, if you're spicy) near the area. Find all the lights, and shoot them out. Blow up the power generator. I think the power generator may respawn for the mission... But I know the lights will stay cut, which will make sneaking in much simpler if you're willing to put in the work. You won't be spotted immediately if you're in the light... But it makes you much, much more visible, and you can sneak through paths you otherwise couldn't if it's taken out.

And you could take it out in the mission, too. Though enemies will see lights that break right in front of them, a silenced gun can shoot out lights 15m from an enemy and they won't notice if they don't see it happen.