It makes the most sense to talk about stealth first. Though never required in the game, stealth is considered by many players to be a more appropriate choice for Jensen. We won’t say that it’s canon or anything like that, but raw combat and lethal play isn’t stressed by the story or the character. Plus, there are substantial XP bonuses for playing with stealth. Once you’ve mastered that, it’s fun to go back and rampage through places you’ve been without worrying about alarms and such.
Stay Quiet
The first rule of stealth is to be quiet and remain unseen. Jensen minimizes his noise by crouching and moving slower. Use this as an energy-free way to avoid detection. Even regular walking gets your enemies to turn toward you at the last minute; they’ll be easy to silence with a Takedown, but you still get spotted and can lose some of your bonuses.
So crouch, move behind people, and get to places that aren’t being watched. That’s half of the stealth game right there! Once you know where people are patrolling and watching, it’s much easier to sneak around.
If you see a yellow bar start to fill around your reticle, then back up. You’re about to be spotted, so retreat to a safe spot and allow the bar to empty. Take cover to avoid many observers unless they’re right on top of you. From cover, look around to see which guards are watching your area. Plot a course of movement from there so that you can go from one safe spot to the next until you’re clear of the enemies.
Finding Alternative Routes
Many of the most tricky chokepoints, guard posts, and watched areas can be avoided. You rarely have to sneak past a dozen people. When you find spots with that many targets, it’s a sign that you should hold back and figure out an alternative method of sneaking forward.
Vents open into ductwork throughout the gameworld. Open these vents and crawl into the ducts to bypass hundreds of encounters. You can’t be heard crawling through the ducts, so you only get in trouble if you fire a weapon or are seen entering/exiting them.
Find routes that break line of sight, go behind barriers, enter rooms that aren’t occupied, and so forth. Some augmentations (Leg Silencers, Glass-Shield Cloaking) offer abilities to make stealth much easier, but they’re never required. Good stealth work is a matter of practice and patience first, and good augs a distant second.
Eliminate Enemies When They’re Isolated
Just because you’re sneaking around doesn’t mean that you have to avoid confrontations. You can still get the maximum bonuses (and Trophies) for stealth while taking out targets. There are several tools for doing this. The best ones are the Tranquilizer Rifle, Stun Guns, and Non-Lethal Takedowns. These options are all quiet, safe for you and your victims, and award bonus experience for each person you take down.
There are two really good reasons to defeat targets even during stealth runs. First, the XP really adds up over time. Second, every person you knock out is one fewer guard to worry about when you’re creeping through an area. If you knock out everyone, you get the run of the place and no one will have seen you or started an alert!
This takes more time to pull off compared to shooting everyone in sight, but you reach levels faster anyway and get to feel really cool in the process.
To avoid detection while eliminating guards, hide and see which enemies are isolated in a given region. If they’re close to an unguarded area or aren’t being watched by anyone else, you can usually sneak up and use a Non-Lethal Takedown. There… instant XP, and the enemy is out of the fight!
But say that guard is being watched by a more distant enemy. You’d likely be seen if you went to take them down. Instead, lure the first guard to somewhere that is safe for you. Make noise from your safe spot. Jump up and down if you can’t be seen doing this, shoot a silenced weapon (they still make some noise), or run around. This makes the nearest guard suspicious and prompts him to come and check things out. Get into cover when the enemy turns yellow, wait for him around a corner, and use your Takedown as soon as he’s in range for the prompt to appear.
If necessary, drag the body away to a place where nobody patrols. Guards call for an alarm when they find dead or unconscious people in their area.
You can throw objects to achieve the same luring effect. When the opponent is really far away, a visual distraction works better. Leave cover and let them sort of see you. Allow their yellow bar to fill and then hide. As long as their second bar doesn’t fill, it won’t count as seeing you. Thus, Ghost is still preserved and you can get your full bonuses.
Regardless of the method, you just need to draw off the guard and get them somewhere isolated.
Rooms with multiple guards are always tougher for the first or second Takedown. The more enemies that you drop, the easier it is to find holes in the defenses. Thus, you can sneak up on more foes and quickly silence them rather than having to draw each one back to a safer spot.
The Tranquilizer Rifle gives you a rare ability to take targets down at very long range, but be careful doing this. Other guards still freak out if their buddies collapse. So you can’t tranquilize people in the middle of a group and think that it’s all going to be okay. Whether you’re seen or not, this risks an alert being triggered. That makes your life much harder, and easier for guards to act erratically and spot you; plus, it ruins your Smooth Operator bonus.
The Tranquilizer Rifle is best used for hard-to-reach enemies on higher ledges. They won’t usually have allies close by, so line up a headshot, tranq them, and leave cover once your enemy falls asleep.
Prevent Alarms from Triggering
There are many ways to trigger alerts, and all of them are bad for stealth players. Here’s a list of things to avoid:
- Being seen in a restricted zone
- Firing a non-silenced weapon
- Causing an explosion
- Wounding a target
- Killing an enemy slowly
Through hacking, you can disable the alarm panels in an area and throw your victims for a loop because they won’t be able to cause a regional alert even if they see serious activity. However, this is still a poor way to proceed. If you maintain proper stealth discipline, your enemies won’t even think to use alarm panels.
The best way to really avoid alarms is to prevent enemies from even realizing that there are serious problems. Never leave bodies in central areas. Never fire non-silenced weaponry. Don’t use explosives. If you’re willing to reload, try to explore an area during an initial run to see where everyone is located. Then, reload and try a genuine attempt at the mission with the area’s layout already in mind.
Though you lose Ghost if you’re seen, you can still save Smooth Operator. Make sure that you have enough energy for at least a single Takedown at all times, and use that to quickly and quietly silence anyone who sees you. Sprint over toward startled guards and knock them out before they can fire a weapon or run to an alarm panel.
Suggested Augmentations and Equipment
The proper distribution of augmentations make it much easier to succeed as a stealth player. As we’ve said, they’re not required, but they give you much more room to slip up without having to restart a section.
Very Important Augmentations (Get Them ASAP)
- Cybernetic Arm Prosthesis (for Optimized Musculature and Punch Through Wall)
- Cybernetic Leg Prosthesis (for Klipspringer Jump Mod)
- Glass-Shield Cloaking
- Hacking Capture (At least level 3)
- Remote Hacking
- Sarif Series 8 Energy Converter (Peak Recharge Rate is very useful)
These augs leave you almost defenseless in heavy combat, but you aren’t going to engage in any of that when you play with this lineup. Instead, you’re able to reach every hidden route and side area in the game. You can jump anywhere, go invisible, hack into computers, and avoid any ambush once you become proficient at using your arsenal of subtle abilities.
Good Augmentations (Mid- or Late-Game Purchases)
- Hacking Stealth (Convenient)
- Icarus Landing System (Avoids accidents)
- Implanted Rebreather (Makes a couple of areas more accessible)
- Quicksilver Reflex Booster (You don’t have to wait for conversations to end to Takedown enemies)
- Smart Vision (Helps to see patrollers through walls)
- Tesla (For Non-Lethal Takedowns against Exo Suits)
- Wayfinder Radar System (Makes it easier to avoid patrollers)
- The remainder of the lineup gives you quality of life improvements. It’s much easier to see enemies on your radar and to avoid their patrols. And, you get a couple more tools for moving through gas hazards and surviving big falls. It’s all good stuff.
This is very doable because you sacrifice so many points that would have gone into weapons mods and survivability. These just aren’t needed for a pure stealth character. If you are spotted, you’re likely going to reload anyway because you don’t want to lose your Ghost/Smooth Operator bonuses. On top of that, you can’t afford to let people spot you if you’re playing on the highest difficulty because dying gets your save file deleted. Thus, it’s all the more important to focus on pure, unbroken stealth.
Carry a Tranquilizer Rifle, a full spread of computer software for Hacking, and tons of Biocells. This lineup isn’t very hard on your inventory space.