This mission unlocks after the Campaign mission “A Cultural Exchange.” It seems Pagan has sent a group of soldiers to the Himalayas in search of a secret recipe for what sounds like a souped-up healing syringe. Or so a sweet-talking Kyrati girl in sunglasses says, at least.
After you get the assignment, it’s time to meet your sherpa. Luckily, Ajay seems to pack his own snow shoes, but he needs you to tell him to bring along hunting syringes, something to kill copters, and (if you’re into stealth) a silenced sniper rifle. If you’ve already got the loadout you want, check your map and you should see a buzzer on the hill to the northwest. Head to the sherpa.
Back in the icy wilderness, you find out the recipe is—naturally—at the very top of a mountain. And Min’s men are already on the way up, so the race is on.
Visibility is poor up here, so you can use it to your advantage. Move quickly, and use quiet kills like takedowns and silenced weapons. At least, until you get to the area with the bharal and the archway.
This is where stealth gets tricky. Thanks to the undulating terrain’s peaks and valleys, enemies can come from all around. And even if you’ve popped a hunting syringe and tiptoe like a ninja, a gunfight is practically inevitable. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, considering you’re in a hurry to get up the mountain and you need to constantly collect fresh oxygen canisters.
Incidentally, if you haven’t yet grabbed a recurve bow and an SVD sniper rifle, be sure to check out the crates on the ice bridge. And absolutely loot fallen soldiers until you find a P416 assault rifle.
Once you’ve looted to your heart’s content, it’s time to get moving again. There are multiple paths through this area, but we like the zipline south and west of the ice bridge.
You’ll encounter more troops on the other side, as well as a helicopter. You know what to do.
Continue on. The level here is basically a canyon run, but the paths still twist around, so keep your head on a swivel, watch for the flamer, and don’t descend into the crevice between the two cliffs until you have no other choice. It can turn into a real kill chute.
Got that hunting syringe? It’s essential to avoiding an ambush or three.
It’ll take awhile to shoot your way through the rest of the canyon, but you’ll eventually find yourself walking along a ledge that leads to a very long gap.
You have to drop down, but watch out for two snow leopards who lurk around here.
Once they’re down (or you’ve gone north and west to reach the grapple), you’ll climb a slope to a narrow ice bridge. This is right about where you’ll be ambushed by a copter. You can take it out now if you like, but it’s safer to run all the way across first, so you don’t accidentally slip off the edge of the bridge.
Once the copter is down, just follow the narrow trail up to the top of the mountain, one last grapple, and the frozen prize.
