Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Welcome to the walkthrough for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Like most games in the series, expect a long completion time but a lot of fun in doing so. This game is more gameplay-oriented as opposed to the rest of the series having a higher focus on story, making for a lot of interesting mechanics. The Phantom Pain is technically a sequel to Ground Zeroes, but is more importantly a sequel to Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. If you're interested in the story and don't want to play anything out of order, you should consider playing that first.

Since there's so much stuff to do in the game, the walkthrough is structured to encourage playing through the game's Main Ops (missions) three times. You'll already have to do them three times for completion, but doing them back-to-back instead of intertwined serves a few purposes. First, you'll complete a mission, then you'll need an S Rank on it and will have to complete the various Mission Tasks attached to that mission. Going through the story first at a slower pace without worrying about the two latter objectives until later will help you familiarize yourself with the game and grants lots of time for weapon and item development, which will in turn make the S Ranks and Mission Tasks far easier to accomplish. You can always go ahead and finish a mission's other objectives whenever you think you're ready, but the walkthrough will assume that you're going in after you've finished all of the Main Ops at least once beforehand.

There are no achievements tied to multiplayer, but feel free to check out the mode if you like.

Finally, there are lots of DLC items available for the single-player experience to enhance gameplay. None of them are game-changers, and none are necessary for completion, but they can be pretty handy/useful. You're also able to unlock a few items for development by completing certain tasks in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes by connecting the game's progress to that of The Phantom Pain. These items are also non-essential, but are a great nod to the series for those who have been invested in it since its early roots.

Most tips one can learn about the game are made known throughout the story pages, the Mother Base page, and the combat/etc tips page, all of which you only really need to look at after Main Ops 03.

There are lots of different weapons and equipment to develop, and some are more important than others, but you should eventually try to develop as much of everything as you can once you can spare the resources. Several other highly suggested tips will appear in the walkthrough when they become relevant.

You can change control schemes in the options when you pause the game. These are very slight, and you'll likely find the original control scheme (Action Type) to be better than the Shooter Type. You should also turn subtitles on if they aren't already. This is not only good for understanding what people are saying if you're in a loud room, but it also picks up people who are talking from a far distance to let you know that you aren't alone.

If you have Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, you should play that before playing The Phantom Pain to not only understand the story, but to familiarize yourself with the gameplay. Ground Zeroes is a demo of sorts with its own achievement list.

On this page, you'll find information on how to run Mother Base. Some information on the page is only useful later in the game, but none of it is anything of a real spoiler.

Mother Base

On Mother Base itself, there's not a whole lot to do. You can take a shower near the landing pad on the central platform (or elsewhere) to get a slight bonus to your health and reflex time, which lasts for five in-game days, or you could scour the base for some loose diamonds. These are few and far between, so they're not very important, especially when you start raking in the cash.

You generally want to return to Mother Base to take showers to clean yourself off/get the bonus and to raise staff morale. All you have to do to raise morale is get close to staff members walking around, but you can also perform a loud knock with your bionic arm once it's upgraded to reach a wider area.

Customization

In the customization tab, you can change your Mother Base logo, as well as its color scheme. You can also rearrange the guy's face that you made in Main Ops 00 if you really feel like it. With the emblem being the most diverse of this set, you should know that you can unlock emblem parts by earning S Ranks and finishing all Mission Tasks in the majority of the Main Ops. Words are generally unlocked by capturing outposts in Afghanistan and Africa. Some other specific emblem parts are unlocked in other ways, like saving the animals, earning codenames for the first time, and finishing Side Ops.

Development

The development tab is where you'll create new weapons and items for yourself, your buddies, and your helicopter. The vast majority of the items are weapons and items for yourself, and more information on development in general can be found on the next page in the walkthrough. DLC items and items unlocked from Ground Zeroes aren't incredibly important, but are still pretty cool for fans of the series.

Buddy items and helicopter upgrades, as well as some of the more advanced weapons and items, should be treated as luxury items in the early game until you have enough GMP and resources to afford them without it being a massive cost.

• Enhancement

  Develop 50 or more development items.

  
  

• Reinforcement

  Develop 100 or more development items.

  
  

• Locked and Loaded

  Develop 300 or more development items.

  
  

Resources

10% or so of your materials and GMP are available offline, with the vast majority being available only online. This essentially makes the game online-only as having 10% is never going to be satisfactory. This won't be much of an issue if you have a solid connection, but sometimes the servers go down for maintenance.

The standard resources are used for developing platforms, making new items, and a few other things. I personally never had enough fuel, but you may find yourself in a different situation. Don't bother looking for resources out in the field; FOB infiltrations (see bottom of page) will allow you to rake in resources like nobody's business. Plants are used for developing a few specific things as well, but the other items and vehicles may be required for some Dispatch Missions (see bottom of page) or can be used to increase FOB security.

After the end of Chapter 1, you'll be able to develop nukes to act as a deterrence against other nukes in the world. You can do this by looking at your resources. One nuke costs 75,000 Fuel and 50,000 Minor Metal, as well as 750,000 GMP. Creating one and dismantling one both give you achievements.

• Prosperity

  Earn a total of 10,000,000 GMP or more.

  
  

• Deterrence

  Develop a nuclear weapon.

  
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• Disarmament

  Dispose of a nuclear weapon.

  
  

Staff Management

Managing staff is incredibly easy. You can see everyone's skill levels and skills, some of which aren't as special as others. One skill you should generally try to get rid of is any variant of Troublemaker, as this incapacitates other soldiers and sends them to the sickbay to recover. The Boaster skill merely improves their rankings when viewed with the Int-Scope; if someone on your team has this skill, then the reading from the iDroid list is legitimate.

Staff from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes isn't that important, but you do get to have Hideo Kojima, who is good at his job. DLC staff aren't too important either, like most Ground Zeroes staff.

Setting a staff member to Direct Contract will prevent them from leaving or being killed, save for FOB infiltrations against you from other players, which is going to be pretty unlikely these days.

• Platoon

  Increase Mother Base staff to 50 or more personnel.

  
  

• Battalion

  Increase Mother Base staff to 250 or more personnel.

  
  

Base Facilities

Waiting Room: If your existing platforms are full at the moment, excess staff are designated to wait here for you to sort through them.

Command Platform: This is usually where you land when you touch down from the ACC. A shower is close by for you to use, and posters of Paz, the Idol of Peace can be found nearby as well.

Combat Unit Platform: The Combat Unit makes regular GMP every once in a while, and teams can be sent on Dispatch Missions to earn more GMP and other resources. You can also use anyone in the Combat Unit to play almost any Main Ops mission, which you should do at least once.

R&D Platform: The R&D Team is responsible for developing new weapons, items, and equipment. You'll want to have these guys powered up so you can be powered up. A lot of important items can only be developed once your team has certain skills and blueprints, so be sure to look out for those when you can.

Base Development Platform: This is one of your most important units in the early game and continues to be very important throughout your entirety in the shoes of Big Boss. By creating new platforms, you'll be able to increase the maximum amount of staff you have in all units of Mother Base, which is always a good thing. Base development costs resources, but fortunately this very platform creates and refines its own resources, albeit at a very slow rate early on. Developing more platforms requires real time, which must be spent in-game; leaving the game with a two hour wait time to develop a platform will not result in it finishing after even a week after you leave.

Support Platform: You can receive varying types of support throughout missions. The most important and frequent support is supply drops, which you can call in to refill ammo/Fulton devices as well as entire weapons. Along with supply drops are direct helicopter intervention in a mission, most of which tampers with your maximum ranking, so don't get used to using those. The speed and effectiveness of support increases with this team.

Intel Platform: The Intel Team provides reports on things like the weather, plants, enemy fields of movement, and other information. The enemy fields of movement reports are great to have, as you'll be able to tell approximately how many enemies in an area remain unmarked if you look at your iDroid.

Medical Platform: The Medical Team is a supplement to all of Mother Base. If anyone gets sick or injured, they'll recover in the sickbay, and their recovery speed depends on the talents of the Medical Team.

Sickbay & Brig: The sickbay is where staff members who have developed PTSD or have been injured are sent so they can recover. The level of the Medical Unit affects how long they spend in the sickbay. Some newly extracted soldiers may end up in the brig if they're not immediately ready to join Diamond Dogs, and sometimes staff members will cause a ruckus, so they'll be sent in there as well.

Animal Conservation Platform: An entirely different series of platforms built by another entity to house the animals you've rescued out of Afghanistan and Africa. You can visit here whenever you feel like it after you're able to, and you'll be able to grab some plants here for Mother Base every once in a while.

• Apprentice

  Complete a mission using a Combat Unit staff member.

  
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• Army

  Raise all Teams/Units to level 50.

  
  

• Architect

  Construct all available platforms for Mother Base.

  
  

Dispatch Missions

After finishing about eight Main Ops aside from the prologue, the combat unit will be created and you'll be able to send staff from this unit on dispatch missions. These are a large source of income and can provide great rewards upon completing them. Some require vehicles and other things to start, so make sure you don't sell any vehicles you extract.

• Deployment

  Complete all key Dispatch Missions.

  
  

Buddies

D-Horse: You start the game off with D-Horse, which is just a regular horse. You can raise your bond with D-Horse by riding it around, and that's about it. Once you've gotten a strong enough bond going, you can command it to poop literally anywhere. This can actually make vehicles swerve off the road if they run over it.

• Trusty Steed

  Raise bond with D-Horse to the maximum.

  
  

D-Dog: After Main Ops 03 or so, you'll have a good chance of coming across a small puppy in the wilds of Afghanistan. Fulton it to Mother Base and visit after each Main Ops from that point onwards to see the little pup grow up into a proper dog, which you can take with you on missions. His abilities range depending on which equipment you gear him up in, but he's incredibly useful for marking enemies and other objects.

• Man's Best Friend

  Raise bond with D-Dog to the maximum.

  
  

Quiet: Quiet becomes available for deployment after a fair amount of time once you finish Main Ops 11. She can provide great sniper fire, of course, and can mark enemies like D-Dog can, but seemingly isn't as good at doing so. By raising your bond with her, you'll be able to develop more weapons for her to use, which will result in her capabilities changing.

• War Buddy

  Raise bond with Quiet to the maximum.

  
  

D-Walker: A scientist will develop a Walker Gear for your own use after Main Ops 14. Being a robot, it doesn't have a bond meter to build. All of it's functions depend on what you develop for it.

FOBs & Infiltration

Building your own FOBs is the best way to increase the potential of Diamond Dogs and obtain resources. You can build several of these using MB Coins, which you can get by either daily bonus or by microtransaction. If you don't have any MB Coins, only buy a second FOB, because the price will go up after that. The first costs between 500MB-600MB, but the second is from 1000MB-12000MB. Two is plenty anyway.

Infiltrating others' FOBs provides lots of resources and high-ranking soldiers. If you don't feel like doing missions, spend some time raiding FOBs and collect as much stuff as you can.

• Intruder

  Play an "Infiltration" FOB mission.

  
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All over both Afghanistan and Africa are 47 different species of wild animals, all of which you will need to hunt down and bring back to Mother Base alive. Some of them will physically be in the field, like bears and zebras, but a lot of them can only be obtained by placing animal cages on the ground and returning to base. The easiest way to place capture cages down is to crouch and mash the place button, and you can also place all of your cages in the exact same spot. Bait bottles are not necessary.

Here is a list of all of the animals in the game. If an animal is "in the field", that means that you can shoot it with a tranquilizer and that the animal exists physically. Maps show where the animals can be found, but the maps may not show all available locations; a location will not appear on your encyclopedia map unless you find the animal there yourself, so the maps have shown where I myself have found them. The provided maps below have been made as full and complete as possible with the known information about where to find them at this time. Some notes for certain animals may appear under the maps as picture captions.

Animal	Rarity	Location	How to Obtain	Map
Gerbil	Common	Both	Cage
Long-eared Hedgehog	Uncommon	Afghanistan	Field/Cage
Four-toed Hedgehog	Uncommon	Africa	Field/Cage
Afghan Pika	Rare	Afghanistan	Cage
Common Raven	Common	Both	Field/Cage
Trumpeter Hornbill	Common	Africa	Cage
Black Stork	Rare	Both	Cage	Also found around Lufwa Valley in Africa
Oriental Stork	Common	Afghanistan	Field	Must be obtained in Main Ops 11
Jehuty	Ultra Rare	Africa	Field	Side Ops 049
Griffon Vulture	Common	Afghanistan	Field
Lappet-faced Vulture	Common	Africa	Field	Confirmed spawn in Main Ops 13/44
Martial Eagle	Rare	Africa	Field/Cage	Place cage in trash pile by cliffs north of Munoko ya Nioka Station; confirmed field spawn in Main Ops 24
Karakul Sheep	Common	Afghanistan	Field	Also north and south of Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost
Cashmere Goat	Common	Afghanistan	Field	Also around the Aabe Shifap Ruins; Side Ops 047
Nubian	Common	Africa	Field
Boer Goat	Common	Africa	Field
Wild Ass	Common	Both	Field
Grant's Zebra	Common	Africa	Field
Okapi	Super Rare	Africa	Field
Gray Wolf	Common	Afghanistan	Field	Also south of Afghanistan Central Base Camp and south of OKB Zero
African Wild Dog	Rare	Africa	Field
Side-striped Jackal	Common	Africa	Field
Anubis	Super Rare	Africa	Field	Side Ops 050
Brown Bear	Rare	Afghanistan	Field
Himalayan Brown Bear	Super Rare	Afghanistan	Field	Side Ops 048
Deathstalker	Common	Afghanistan	Cage	Best found by placing cages at LZ east of Wialo Village
Emperor Scorpion	Common	Africa	Cage
Oriental Ratsnake	Uncommon	Afghanistan	Cage
Black Mamba	Uncommon	Africa	Cage
Tsuchinoko	Ultra Rare	Africa	Cage
Rainbow Agama	Uncommon	Africa	Cage
Namaqua Chameleon	Rare	Africa	Cage
Leopard Gecko	Common	Afghanistan	Cage
African Fat-tailed Gecko	Common	Africa	Cage
African Bullfrog	Rare	Africa	Cage	Place cage in water
Russian Tortoise	Uncommon	Afghanistan	Cage	Place in sand dunes; see Sand Cat map below
Leopard Tortoise	Uncommon	Africa	Cage	Place cages north of the LZ south of Masa Village on the cliffsides near the waterfall
Bechstein's Bat	Common	Afghanistan	Cage
Rock Hyrax	Rare	Africa	Cage	Place cages on rocks
Tree Pangolin	Super Rare	Africa	Cage	Place cages at LZ; quick way to earn GMP
Sand Cat	Rare	Afghanistan	Cage	Place in sand dunes
Caracal	Super Rare	Afghanistan	Cage	Place at LZ
African Civet	Super Rare	Africa	Cage
Marsh Mongoose	Super Rare	Africa	Cage
Red Fox	Rare	Afghanistan	Cage
Blanford's Fox	Super Rare	Afghanistan	Cage
Honey Badger	Super Rare	Both	Cage

• Conservation

  Extract all wild animal species.

  
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After Main Ops 02, you'll be given a bit of freedom to explore all of Afghanistan and work on your first few Main Ops. There are lots of tips that make the game more enjoyable or easier to play that the game doesn't outright tell you, and you can learn these tactics here.

Non-Lethal Tactics

The general way to take care of enemies non-lethally is with the Wu S.Pistol, and further developments of the weapon make this easier. In the early game, your tranq pistol won't have a very high ammo capacity, but you can get over this hurdle without having to call in a supply drop every few minutes. You can hold up enemies by slowly walking behind them and pointing any weapon at them, although it's best for it to be the Wu S.Pistol just in case.

When an enemy is held up, you can interrogate them, tell them to lie down, or choke them out. You can also just tranquilize them when they're less of a moving target. When an enemy is lying down, you can also kick them to stun them, putting them to sleep without using any ammunition.

The best thing you can do to an enemy non-lethally to remove them as a threat is to extract them out of the area, but putting them to sleep and telling them to lie down while awake also have benefits. Tranquilized enemies will not get up on their feet to fight when their allies enter combat, whereas enemies on the ground do, but tranquilizers and stunned enemies will eventually wake up. If you tell an enemy to lie on the ground and he isn't found by any of his allies or jumps to their feet when put on alert, he'll just lie on the ground indefinitely; in his mind, he has no idea if you're still standing there behind him with a gun to his head. Use either tactic when it's most suitable to the situation you're in, if you don't feel like extracting enemies.

Fulton Extraction

Extracting things has a lot of benefits, obviously. In the early game, you'll want to extract as many soldiers and other items when you can to improve Mother Base and make small amounts of GMP right off the bat by selling mortars and turrets you pick up. There's an upgrade available for Fulton Devices that is only available after extracting 500 enemies, so you should really aim to accomplish this as soon as possible early on. When you're able to extract shipping containers full of materials, you can ride it back up to the chopper for a super-quick extraction out of a mission area or hotzone. To ride a cargo container, climb on it and continue to hold the extraction key/button after the icon for extraction is filled.

Weapons / Items

The majority of your development items are in this category. Some can be used only by you, your personnel, or both. It's a good idea to develop as much as you can when the development cost has become incredibly minute for you. When you first start out, keep everything to yourself and only develop what you deem to be immediately useful.

After Side Ops 107-109, your attachments that you develop alongside some weapons will be available for use on other weapons. For example, the suppressor on your tranquilizer can be transferred to a lot of other pistols to make it silent.

Tools

There are only a few tools for you to upgrade, but you'll want to get these upgrades as soon as you can. Further developing the Int-Scope will allow you to identify their abilities in certain categories for use in Mother Base, as well as any special skills they may have. The quality of detectable abilities and accuracy of skill detection increases as the Int-Scope improves.

The iDroid's upgrades are generally for convenience, as some of them only allow you to add more markers on the map. This is a luxury that you'll wish you had sometimes, so don't toss these development items aside. The first upgrade for the iDroid adds a speaker function that allows you to play tapes for soldiers to hear; some of those may be useful in certain situations, and you can get a good idea on which ones when you own them.

The Fulton Recovery Device is used to extract prisoners, enemy soldiers, and wild animals to Mother Base. When you improve the cargo capabilities, you'll be able to extract gun emplacements, mortars, and eventually vehicles, anti-air emplacements, and large shipping containers. These are debatably some of the most important upgrades in the early game. After Side Ops 050, you can develop the Fulton Wormhole, which allows for indoor extractions that cannot be interrupted.

Prosthetic Arm

The bionic arm can be upgraded after Main Ops 05, and the upgrades are different than the others for weapons and the like. Similar to tools, most of the upgrades granted to the bionic arm are stacked on top of each other, but the arm's upgrades vary in their uses. Some deal with movement speed and others improve other things. Upgrading the arm should always be a high priority due to the instant benefits you receive from doing so.

Uniforms

The sneaking suit is superior to all other suits, all the time. There's no reason to not use a sneaking suit. If you have the Tuxedo, try not to use it if you're aiming to be sneaky; that suit makes you stick out like a sore thumb.

Throwing Weapons

There are various weapons and items that are made to be thrown, like grenades and empty bullet magazines. These can be aimed and thrown, but what the game doesn't tell you is that holding the throw key/button will dramatically increase the distance at which you can throw an object. This significantly increases the capabilities these weapons have.

Heroism & Demonism

When you hit 150,000 Heroism, you'll hit gold status, and will receive some emblem parts and an achievemen for it. This also affects the quality of volunteers that join Diamond Dogs after missions. Aside from that, that's all Heroism does.

Killing people and doing bad things makes the horn on your head bigger through a Demonism point system, which is completely invisible to players. Maxing out the hidden amount of points responsible for this makes your horn huge and you're somewhat covered in a lot of blood you can't wash off until you reduce your Demonism. Developing a nuke adds 50,000 points to this score, immediately putting you at maximum horn and a full coat of blood. You'll have to do things nicely in order to reduce your Demonism again.

• Hero

  Obtain the codename "Hero."

  
  

Free Roam

The tips here are what make up the free roam pages in the walkthrough, but it's a good idea to know them here as well.

By capturing a location or guard post (neutralizing all threatening enemies), you'll earn some emblem pieces. Pieces are awarded by the number of outposts captured, not by capturing a specific outpost, so you can get the very first piece in this series from literally any place in Afghanistan. Because of this, it's very hard to keep track of which places you've captured, so be cautious if you want to get all the parts.

Several locations in both free roam areas have little orange metal plates that work as shipping areas, which are called delivery points. By collecting the shipping manifests from at least two delivery points, you can fast travel between them without having to use your chopper by sitting on one while in a cardboard box. These manifests are small pieces of paper taped to poles on these delivery points.

Lots of other places have giant radars that, when destroyed, open up a new landing zone for your chopper. It's always good to have as many of these available as possible, although sometimes it's not a good idea to use one. If you're trying to land or be extracted from a fully populated base, it may not be a good idea to send the chopper there.

Miscellaneous

Mashing the key/button to unlock a door unlocks it faster. It seems being impatient pays off sometimes. Shooting most lights will destroy them, and they'll stay destroyed after a checkpoint reload, so it's a good idea to shoot them out on more difficult sneaking missions.

There are lots of collectibles throughout the game that are earned for completing a variety of objectives. The important collectibles can be sorted down to music tapes, blueprints, key items, posters, and memento photos. All of these serve a purpose, so you should aim to collect as many as you can. Some are tied to achievements, but those that aren't are still useful to have around. Intel tapes are covered here as well, since those are also somewhat of a collectible. Key Items can be spoiler-y, so avoid looking at them if you wish to avoid spoilers.

Intel Tapes

Most intel tapes are earned by completing Main Ops and serve to expand on the story that otherwise cannot be shown properly through cutscenes. This is sort of a replacement for the series' iconic codec calls, as there are no ways to have codec calls in 1984 the way that those in the 2000's are able to have. Some intel tapes are marked yellow, which means that the game will ask you to listen to them in order to advance the story. You should really listen to all of the tapes anyway, regardless of their marking.

Music Tapes

Music tapes can be found out in the open and can be played in Snake's ear like a radio would. These can be found playing in various locations all around the two main maps, so if you're looking for a specific song then you'll have to hunt it down. Music Tape 1 covers most non-familiar tracks, whereas Music Tape 2 has all the jams from that era.

Blueprints

Like music tapes, there are blueprints scattered all around Afghanistan and Africa that allow you to build specific weapons and items. You'll want to collect all of these to improve your arsenal, gear, and Mother Base in general, regardless of whether you use them or not. Dispatch missions noted here are only the essential ones.

Key Items

Key Items vary entirely in terms of what they actually are, but they all are very beneficial, as you can see below. Do not look at this if you want to avoid as many spoilers as possible.

• Collector

  Obtain all blueprints and key items.

  
  

Posters

Posters are the least useful collectible, but you get a bit of GMP when you collect them and you can attach them to cardboard boxes. They can be hard to spot if you're not looking for them, but its' not like you need to get them.

Memento Photos

Memento photos are given to you by Militaires Sans Frontières members after you rescue them during the "Extract the Wandering Mother Base Soldiers" Extra Ops. There's a specific room on the medical platform that you can take them to; look for a blue light above a doorway. Hand the person inside a photo every time you get one to try to jog their memory. After giving them all ten, the last photo will appear in the hall leading to their room. Picking it up will give you an achievement.

• Reminiscence

  Obtain all memento photos.

  
  1 guide

Upon loading up the game for the first time, you'll be put into the first-person perspective of a man who just woke up in a hospital in Cyprus. A nurse will run off to tell the head doctor before you see the title screen for the first time.

Main Ops 00: Awakening

V, as the nurse has referred to you as earlier, will wake up in the presence of a Greek doctor. The first few minutes serves as an opening to the controls and how Big Boss ended up in this hospital anyway. The doctor will eventually explain that the world wants Big Boss dead and will ask you how you want to look after he performs plastic surgery on you to save your identity. Go with whatever design you feel like, although it's better to go with something realistic instead of something completely ridiculous.

Regardless of what you feel like looking like, the doctor will not go with the surgery, and you'll be given another cutscene; this initial mission is about an hour long with cutscenes, which you shouldn't skip, so there will be a lot of these. Series director Hideo Kojima is a big fan of movies, and it shows in the Metal Gear Solid series.

The patient in the next bed over from you, despite his seemingly worse facial condition, will be more than ready to escape the hospital with you after the events that just occurred. Most of the mission is simply following "Ishmael" and what he tells you to do as you escape mercenaries and the Man on Fire (along with a particular kid). Once you get a pistol, you'll be near the end of the gameplay for the prologue; try to go for headshots and clear the lobby, then run out the hospital door.

The next thing you have to do may be tricky, as it isn't particularly obvious. After trying to leave the hospital, go right back over to the front doors and dive out of the way of those coming into the hospital so you can finally get out of the building. You'll ride with Ishmael in an ambulance for a while before the two of you part ways.

As the Man on Fire approaches once more on a fiery unicorn (you'd have to be psycho to conjure something like that up) you'll conveniently hitch a ride with a familiar face, who will give you a shotgun to ward off the Man on Fire's attacks from behind. This is also not overly instructive; you don't need to be firing at him constantly, but only when he gets too close or when his arm is raised, as the latter signals an incoming attack. Firing the shotgun at him when his arm is raised will cause him to lob fireballs off-target, which is obviously desirable. You and Revolver Ocelot will eventually get out of harm's way, ending the prologue.

You'll very likely get an S Rank on Main Ops 00 without even trying, unless you spent an intentional amount of time going in every direction but where you're supposed to or have otherwise increased your time spent by dying repeatedly. These are fairly hard to do, however, so the S Rank will likely be yours on your first go. You'll also earn heroism after the ranking screen, but you'll learn more about this later.

• Awakening

  Complete "PROLOGUE: AWAKENING" mission.

  
  

On Ocelot's horse, he'll explain to you that your old partner Kazuhira Miller is being held prisoner in Afghanistan and will most certainly be killed in two weeks tops. You'll get a proper mechanical arm like a particular teacher had in Latin America ten years ago on the way to Afghanistan to save Miller.

Main Ops 01: Phantom Limbs

When the two arrive in Afghanistan, Ocelot will show you how to use your new iDroid to check the map, use the Int-Scope (binoculars), and place markers. The first place you're directed toward is Da Vialo Kallai, as there may be some intel there on Kaz's exact location as opposed to a general one. If you head over to the village and use your Wu S.Pistol to tranquilize enemies, you'll be able to find the intel in one of the buildings. You should normally aim for the head, but if you're not doing so well with that yet, you can also fire twice in their bodies and wait a few seconds for them to fall over. Alternatively, you can sneak up behind enemies and point the pistol at them to hold them up, and you can knock them out by choking them out. If you wipe clean either the outpost on the way to the village or the village itself, then you'll get an achievement for it.

• Captured

  Capture an outpost or guard post.

  
  

You won't be able to understand what the soldiers are saying if you interrogate them, even though they're speaking Russian; Ocelot will let you know that it's probably a result of there being a large chunk of shrapnel in your head. When you get the intel, ride D-Horse to Da Ghwandai Khar and scope out the area from a far distance to identify as many enemies as you can. Then sneak your way into the area and take out whatever soldiers are in your way so you can find Kaz. He's going to be in the building that has a special song playing on the radio.

Cut Kaz loose and get him out of Da Ghwandai Khar towards the extraction point, which will soon be covered by a gas that prevents the chopper from landing. Your pilot Pequod will head to another point that's clear of the gas, but a new threat blocks your path: the Skulls. These are the guys that attacked Kaz's men earlier, and he knows how much of a threat they are. You can't really avoid the Skulls here unless you feel like waiting an incredibly long time; just ride on D-Horse with Kaz straight into them and book it towards the chopper. The Skulls will not continue to chase you outside of the gas, allowing you and Kaz to safely get onto the chopper.

Don't worry about your rank this time around, as you'll easily be able to improve it later.

• Phantom Limb

  Complete "PHANTOM LIMB" mission.

  
  

Kaz will tell you about how things have been for him for the past nine years and his strong desire for revenge on Cipher and others responsible for the attack on Mother Base nearly a decade ago. He too has lost some limbs and will be sent to rest while Ocelot teaches you how to run Mother Base in the next Main Ops.

Main Ops 02: Diamond Dogs

To make Mother Base stronger, you'll need more staff members. The legend of Big Boss is strong enough to persuade just about anyone to the cause, so all you'll really need to do is extract soldiers out of the area with the Fulton Recovery Device. Knock out the nearby Mother Base soldier with your tranquilizer and Fulton him to put him into the R&D Team. After that, Ocelot will show you your staff list in the iDroid and will walk you through developing a cardboard box for use in the field after you extract a few more guys.

You can request supplies to drop at just about any location, which is what you'll be doing with the cardboard box. This is incredibly useful, especially in the early game, since you'll find yourself running out of supplies fairly quickly. You may even want to call in a supply drop just so you can have a new suppressor after your existing one wears out during a mission. Supply drops do cost GMP, however, but you should have plenty of that for now.

Once you get your supplies, you should call in the chopper to pick you up, but first you should finish Ocelot's training. Stand near him and listen to his instructions; grab hold of one of your staff members and knock him out so you can extract him, then strike another and extract him. Doing this fulfills the other two Mission Tasks in this Main Ops, which means that you won't have to replay this again later. The mission doesn't even get a ranking, as it's only meant to teach you how to manage Mother Base, so if you finish Ocelot's training you won't have to come back to Main Ops 02 ever again.

After finishing Main Ops 02, feel free to check the pages in this walkthrough about Mother Base, items, and other tips. You should also listen to all of the tapes you've collected thus far, as they go into detail of the story a bit more. For example, some of the earlier tapes explain that the V you were referred to by the nurse in the Cyrpus hospital stood for Venom Snake, which is one of your new codenames (aside from the ever-standing Big Boss).

You'll be able to choose in which order you want to do the next three Main Ops in. Main Ops 03 is generally the best one to do first, but you can go in whichever order you feel like.

Main Ops 03: A Hero's Way

Remove the Phantom Cigar from your loadout because you really don't need to be speeding up time and it consumes resources to leave with it. Try to extract everyone you can here so you can raise your R&D level. By getting it to Lv07, you'll be able to improve the iDroid, Int-Scope, and tranquilizer, which is very important in the early game.

The objective here is to eliminate a commander stationed in Shago Village. To get to him, you'll have to either hold up or tranquilize his men until you get to him, then Fulton out all of the guys you came across (including the commander) you can so you can raise your Mother Base levels. After that, go for any other soldiers in the area before leaving the hot zone yourself.

• Extraction

  Fulton extract an enemy soldier.

  
  

After this mission, if it's the first one you play after Main Ops 02, you'll be able to develop items for your ACC (chopper) and D-Horse. Additionally, some staff members like Hideo Kojima himself that you rescued in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes will join you on occasion from now on. You'll also unlock your very first Side Ops; of the first two, you should aim to finish Side Ops 001 immediately, as it will allow you to finally interrogate enemy soldiers.

• Interrogation

  Interrogate an enemy soldier.

  
  

Main Ops 04: C2W

Here, you just need to disable communication equipment so reinforcements can stop being sent between outposts for a short while. Try to interrogate people outside of the comms outpost and ask them to "Spit it out"; this may tell you the exact location of the equipment that you need to destroy. Either disable the enemy or wait for a sandstorm so you can sneak into the building that the equipment is in, then toss a hand grenade or plant some C4 to get the job done. If you go with C4, you'll be able to get farther away so you can leave the hot zone faster and finish the mission without having to deal with the alert caused after the explosion.

After this Main Ops, if you've been extracting a bunch of soldiers, your Base Development Unit should be created on Mother Base. This unit creates and refines resources, and develops more platforms to make Mother Base much larger. This will drastically increase Mother Base's potential over time, so try to improve this unit quickly.

The Challenge Task list will also be available, which provides rewards for things you'd do normally by playing the game. Check in here every once in a while and grab some free stuff.

Main Ops 05: Over the Fence

The engineer that created Big Boss's mechanical hand is being held in Afghanistan after having tried to escape to the west. If you can get him to Mother Base, he should be able to improve the hand and give it more functionality.

Use the landing zone on the left so you can more easily scale the slope upwards towards the main part of the barracks. Take out soldiers in your way and extract them using the methods described in the second, more elaborate tips page, as this saves ammunition. The prisoner is located in the large, ruinous building to the northwest, which is easily visible on your iDroid. Either sneak him out of the base to extract him from a safe distance or Fulton him through a hole in the ceiling, then leave the hot zone to end the mission.

You'll now be able to add modifications to your bionic arm. These improvements range quite a bit in terms of what they improve upon; one increases reflex time, while others add a sonar function to locate enemies and other things. These act as perks and stack, so you should try to upgrade the arm when you can.

Main Ops 06: Where Do the Bees Sleep?

You get this mission from the U.S. government after finishing two of the three prior Main Ops. They're interested in a high-tech missile launcher named the Honey Bee, which was in possession of the rebels fighting the Soviets. This weapon was given to them by the CIA, and they don't want it to fall into Russian hands after the rebels' defeat. Do not expect this mission to go as smoothly as the previous may have gone.

It's a long ride to Da Smasei Laman. The Hamid survivor that Kaz mentions will be found at the Mountain Relay base, but he won't be of much use to you; he's deaf, and he can't write out where the Honey Bee is. You should extract him here, however, as the Soviets will take him to Da Smasei Laman so he can physically show them where the Honey Bee is hidden.

It's going to be very difficult to get past the enemy gunship up ahead since there are enemy forces on the ground. If you wait for a little while, the chopper should move west, giving you enough time to move towards the west path leading up to the target location. The western flank leads to a cliff that allows you to scope out the area for enemies, whereas the eastern is a road into the base. Check for as many enemies as possible before taking care of a few or entering the caves.

There are lots of diamonds in this cave; pick them up when you see them, then try to move up through the main entrance so you can access the eastern side of this cave system. You should be looking for a set of small doorways by a tall light pole, which will have Soviet soldiers walking around it if you didn't manage to set off an alarm. The Honey Bee isn't inside these doors, but they serve as a good spot to look for a tunnel to the north of them. Northwest of the water is a set of rooms, with the main room having some candles inside. Behind the candles to the right is a tiny storage room; look behind some crates and beer bottles for the Honey Bee. There's a much larger tunnel south of the pool of water that will allow you to get outside of the entire cave system quickly.

Big Boss will make an encounter with a man first seen in Ground Zeroes: Skull Face. Alongside him is a massive machine and the Skulls. When you're dropped towards the Skulls, immediately whistle for D-Horse so you can ride him out of there as fast as you can and head west. Avoid using the Honey Bee if you can. Mother Base will automatically send the ACC in that direction to pick you up.

• Beekeeper

  Complete "WHERE DO THE BEES SLEEP?" mission.

  
  1 guide

Kaz will create an Intel Team for Mother Base, which will identify resources and enemies' rough positions. They'll also predict the weather and other things.

Main Ops 07: Red Brass

Three Soviet commanders are all meeting up at Da Wialo Kallai, which you've already been to before during Main Ops 01. This is a very simple mission. All you have to do is head to the village and wait for two of the commanders to show up, then take care of the third that's already stationed there. You should aim to extract all three of them and their squads to beef up your staff numbers. After dealing with the commanders, the mission will be over.

If you extract all three commanders, you'll learn that the soldiers in this region of Afghanistan are getting more proper gear thanks to your strong attacks against them. The Medical Team should also be established after this mission as well. The next mission you should try to play is Main Ops 10; skipping 08 and 09 will be a good idea for now.

Main Ops 08: Occupation Forces

For this mission, use the western landing zone and bring the best C4 you've got. If you have a rocket launcher of some kind, then that's even better.

You first need to find a colonel in Sakhra Ee Village and locate the information leading to the path his tanks will be traveling on; you've got a bunch of time for this, so capture the entire place if you have to. When the coast is clear, scale the buildings to the top of the cliffside and scan the intel to get the path going. There are at least two options you can go with now.

1. Set up a bit of C4 for the first tank that follows the road, then get fairly far away and try to wait behind the two other vehicles. Extract the two other vehicles, including the commander.
2. Line up a bunch of C4 and blow all the vehicles up. It's not like you need a tank at the moment anyway; this is Main Ops 08.

Main Ops 09: Backup, Back Down

The objective is to destroy as many enemy vehicles as possible, which can be just one vehicle your first time around if you really feel like it. There will be two targets at the start of the mission; follow the closest one with D-Horse and wait for it to come to a stop near a base, then extract it if you've got the proper upgrades for your Fulton Device. If not, then blow the thing up with explosives. If you shoot the thing with a single bullet (not from a tranquilizer round) it'll stop right in its tracks.

Do this same thing over again with the second vehicle, which should be a lot closer now. The third will appear on the map, and you should use D-Horse to block the path so you can stop this vehicle and Fulton it/destroy it as well. After the third vehicle is down, go for the one that has prisoners inside of it, as that one is closer. You can just Fulton the vehicle with him in it.

After that, just go for vehicles at your own discretion. D-Horse serves as a great roadblock for stopping all of these vehicles.

Main Ops 10: Angel With Broken Wings

There's a prisoner named Malak held up in the ruins here that needs to be extracted. There are in fact several prisoners here, and all of them have vital skills for development at Mother Base. Try to be very quick about getting through the ruins and stopping any soldiers that may cause harm to the prisoners. There's a third prisoner inside one of the metal sheds to the north; he's the last one, so follow the instructions given to you by Kaz and go north to find Malak.

The base here is very large, and you'll likely have a hard time even approaching the thing. You could try jumping into the shallow stream south of the base and running upstream until you can run up closer to the building itself. There's a back entrance you can take that will allow you to get into the "courtyard". Be careful and slowly sweep the base, Fultoning everyone out to make things easier for you. There are two more prisoners here as well, and you should try to bring them to Mother Base safely to collect the full set.

If you destroy the massive anti-air radar in the courtyard, you'll be able to call in the chopper for landing so you can leave right from the middle of the base. This is important because Malak will be too injured for a Fulton extraction. There's another LZ very close to the north, however, so if you don't want to go through the trouble, you don't have to.

Main Ops 11: Cloaked in Silence

After finishing a few of the Main Ops between 07-10, you'll eventually get a call about a sniper in the ruins to the north that is never seen, but leaves a trail of bodies in its wake. Travel to the Aabe Shifap Ruins and you'll find her. The easiest way to take her down, which everyone probably knows about before they even get here, is to mark her with the Int-Scope and call a supply drop on her head. You have to do this twice to knock her out.

After knocking her out, decide what to do with her. The optimal thing to do is to listen to Ocelot and bring her home to base, as she can prove to be quite useful later.

On the way back to Mother Base, the ACC will undergo a slight interruption. Quiet will be put into a cell on the medical platform when you return to base. Additionally, if you've finished at least ten of the Main Ops, the Animal Conservation Platform will be constructed. This place is free of charge and is managed by another organization, but you can visit the animals you've retrieved and pick up some plants for your own use.

Finishing ten Main Ops should bring DD to full maturity, if you retrieved him at the time suggested. This will unlock him as a buddy to replace D-Horse on missions if you so choose.

• Cry Havoc

  Make D-Dog available for deployment.

  
  1 guide

Side Ops 082: Make Contact with Emmerich

After finishing ten Main Ops, you'll get word that Huey Emmerich has actually contacted Diamond Dogs to be rescued from the place he's being held up in. Since he is highly likely to be responsible for the attack nine years ago, it's in your best interest to find him. Get to Serak Power Plant however you see fit and head to the base's back gate, where you'll find a locked door. Emmerich will be inside, but he'll be moved to the main camp up north before you can get to him.

Main Ops 12: Hellbound

You'll have to follow Huey to the base, but all the soldiers you've previously downed at the power plant are back, and there's a gunship to boot. Try to slink by everyone as best you can, although it may be hard to do so unseen. If you can make it out of there without any fighting, then ride D-Horse all the way up to the base or use a delivery point if you've got the two unlocked.

When you get to the base, Fulton as many enemies as you can out of the base so you can get a cleaner escape going later. Then look for the chopper and wait for it to hover slightly above the ground; you'll want to plant some C4 there and blow it when the chopper returns to that spot. If it never quite touches the ground, then ignore it for now. Take care of whoever you can and reach Huey, whose location you can find by interrogating soldiers.

Huey will offer to let you use a Walker Gear he's developed to leave the base more efficiently. Accept his offer and either use it properly or Fulton it safely back to base, then head to the landing zone which is automatically selected for you. Getting there is simple enough, but now you'll have to make it to another landing zone while a much larger force is looking for you: Sahelanthropus. Do what you can to get to the next LZ and try to get on board with Huey, then use the minigun to defend the chopper from Sahelanthropus's attacks.

Huey will be interrogated by Kaz and Revolver Ocelot, and will then be hidden inside the same cell for his own safety. He'll be contributing to your R&D Team. The only useful information you'll be able to squeeze out of him is that Cipher has moved their operations from Afghanistan to Africa. You'll now be taking part in some missions over there starting now.

• Gears Turn

  Complete "HELLBOUND" mission.

  
  

Main Ops 13: Pitch Dark

For your first Africa mission, you'll be disabling an oil treatment plant, as it's contaminating the area after a large oil spill. You'll find a squad of child soldiers when you reach Masa Village for the first time, and you'll be instructed not to hurt them (or the mission is over). Try to avoid them this time and head towards Mfinda Oil Field, which is where you're meant to be going. Sneak through the plant and reach the top of the facility to get to the office, which is where you'll be able to shut off the operations here. Next, get to the oil tank and plant some C4 on it, then head to the southern corner of the base. You should have the second cargo upgrade by now, which allows you to take the two resource containers here. Fulton one of them, and then stand on top of the other and hold the same key/button continuously until you're taken out of the hot zone with the cargo.

Kaz will inform you about the SANR corporation and their involvement in the spill, and will then question what those corpses were doing in the oil. You'll now also be able to deploy your own Walker Gear, which will be called D-Walker by Huey.

Main Ops 14: Lingua Franca

Time to get your own Afrikaans interpreter. The one here is British, and several other Brits are being held prisoner by the Afrikaners here. The guy who called in the request said it was fine to ignore the other British, but it's always good to have more crew. You're supposed to tail the interpreter to the prisoner, but it's far more enjoyable to just tranquilize him and look for the prisoner yourself. Make sure you Fulton the interpreter at one point. You can find some intel on the prisoners' locations inside a house near the swampy area of the camp. Depending on the location of the prisoner, you may or may not be able to leave the hot zone quickly.

You may receive a call from Ocelot requesting you to visit Quiet's cell on the medical platform. Doing so will allow her to be deployed as a buddy.

• Speechless

  Make Quiet available for deployment.

  
  1 guide

Main Ops 15: Footprints of Phantoms

A rebellion in Angola has sent a request for Diamond Dogs to eliminate all of the Walker Gears that threaten their troops. The targets are in the abandoned village of Ditadi. The village is positioned on an upward slope, so it may be difficult to work upwards towards the four Walker Gears; you can alternatively attack from the backside to make things significantly easier.

By removing all of the Walker Gears, the PF will order more from Cipher, and their payment convoy is Diamond Dogs' next target.

Main Ops 16: Traitors' Caravan

The escort for the PF's payment to Cipher should be at a nearby guard post, but it will have already left the area. Search for some intel at the post and then head south towards the airport. On the vehicles' predicted route, you'll find the convoy, and when you get close the Skulls will come in to act as guards.

Assuming you've found these things on the road, sneak behind the tank in back and extract it, then knock out the soldiers affected by the Skulls' mist with ONLY headshots if possible. Being the first time through, you'll want to go for the other tank and the truck itself, but the Skulls make for a deadly set of foes. If you can manage, continue to Fulton the cargo truck until the Skulls slip up and let it get away, then run as far as you can out of the hot zone to end the mission.

• Caravan

  Complete "TRAITORS' CARAVAN" mission.

  
  

The cargo you recovered will be found to be related to nukes, but not enough of a material to be for creating a nuke itself.

Main Ops 17: Rescue the Intel Agents

It appears two Intel Team staff members have been captured by those who were attacked at the oil field, the CFA. If you don't rescue these men, then Mother Base will want revenge and the relationship between the two factions will just get worse and worse.

You should be able to find one of the guys fairly quickly into the camp. Fultoning him out will result in him telling you where exactly the other soldier is.The second staff member is, as you'd expect, on the complete opposite side of the area. He's wounded and cannot survive a Fulton extraction, so you'll have to get him out of there by chopper with you. This second guy will say that the CFA is blaming Diamond Dogs for some kind of disease, which is the one that you witnessed at the oil field.

Main Ops 18: Blood Runs Deep

There are six soldiers that need to be killed, so says the general of these soldiers. He's ordering this so his men don't talk when captured.

One of the soldiers defected to the local PF and is working as a standard guard at the Bampeve Plantation. Find him, then kill or extract him and avoid the enemy gunship as you do so. The next point of interest is the mine, which is where the remaining five soldiers are working. The entrance to the mine is on the southern rim of the place. Once you've found your remaining soldiers, get them to the the extraction point.

Take the injured soldier and carry him on your back as the five of you get through the swamp leading up to the LZ. The gunship and other soldiers will make this fairly difficult.

Main Ops 19: On the Trail

The commander of the Rogue Coyotes is getting the idea of dealing in nuclear armaments. It'd be a good idea to eliminate the commander, or at least remove him from the Rogue Coyotes. The Major is supposed to meet with one of his subordinates, who is at the nearby guard post. Instead of having to trail this guy for thousands of meters of road, just head southeast of the 13th guard post on the map and find the Major there early. If you feel like it, wait for the guy who plans to meet with the Major and extract him as well. Doing this will fulfill a Mission Task early so you don't have to do this later.

Once you're done here, Huey should have developed a weapon to fight back against the Walker Gears, named the Battle Gear. Kaz also has another mission for you, this time from one of the ex-soldiers you rescued in Main Ops 18. There's one boy named Shabani who led the five that was taken to Ngumba Industrial Zone, which was coincidentally bought by Cipher.

Main Ops 20: Voices

You can only deploy a long distance away from the Industrial Zone. When you make it through the thin tunnel leading to the place, get through the heavy mist and plants until you reach a tunnel leading into the Industrial Zone. Be sure to resupply while you're outside, then enter the building on the other end of the tunnel.

When you leave this building, try to stun the Man on Fire by blowing up water coolers and the large water towers when he's near them. That'll give you some time to get through the tunnel and evacuate the area. If you approach the tunnel while he's active, it'll be destroyed, and you'll have to call in the chopper for an extraction instead.

• Voices

  Complete "VOICES" mission.

  
  

Main Ops 21: The War Economy

The socialist rebels of the region want you to get rid of a CFA official at Nova Braga Airport. If you approach the airport as you'd normally do, you may trigger a soft alert, preventing the inspector that he's supposed to meet up with from landing. That's okay, because this isn't about the inspector, this is about the official. Look for him inside a building in the back of the airport and kill or extract him to fulfill the objective, then leave however you see fit.

Main Ops 22: Retake the Platform

You'll get a call from Kaz about enemy forces moving into the base and taking over one of your platforms without anyone knowing until it's too late. You will not be allowed to ask for supplies, as the enemy may see that as an attack and shoot the hostages they've taken. Try to hold up enemies so you can eliminate them without using ammo as you get to the top of the main platform.

The culprit behind this attack is an ex-MSF member who had the events of the past mixed up simply due to misinformation.

After this attack, you'll be able to construct a Forward Operating Base, or FOB for short, where you can house more Diamond Dogs and create an entirely new place similar to Mother Base. Doing this is very important, as you'll never be able to truly reach full potential without several FOBs. You'll also be able to infiltrate other FOBs to collect more resources, which is significantly faster than retrieving them in the field. Given that the game is no longer new, there should be many bases out there for you to loot without retaliation from their owners.

Main Ops 23: The White Mamba

A child nicknamed the White Mamba is leading a group of child soldiers as they terrorize and invade Masa Village. The best way to get to the White Mamba undetected is to tranquilize, hold up, or use CQC on his fellow soldiers. You'll want to kick them awake if you ended up knocking them out, which will allow you to hold them up. If you didn't read the other tips page, targets held up on the ground will never budge, as they don't actually know if you're still behind them. If you don't want much hassle later, consider going through the hassle of putting all the child soldiers on the chopper before reaching the White Mamba in the shipwreck.

This kid isn't going down without a fight. He moves through the ship like liquid, and you'll have to use CQC to counter his attacks several times before he finally gets tired.

When you bring the White Mamba to Mother Base, he'll still be a bit hesitant to lose. Cassette tapes inform you of his true name.

Main Ops 24: Close Contact

Two engineers have gone missing after being deployed into the area. They've been regular attendees to Cipher's base in one of the previous Main Ops, where you fought the Man on Fire. When you get to the female engineer, she'll tell you about what her work has consisted of in the region, which includes work on the strange infection you've seen. It's very simple to get them both to Mother Base.

If you haven't rescued a female prisoner yet, then this will be the one to get you an achievement.

• To The Rescue

  Extract a female prisoner.

  
  1 guide

Main Ops 25: Aim True, Ye Vengeful

The Mbele rebels have a set of child soldiers that have defected from them with the brother of the general. The objective is to extract the brother and the child platoon leader. The mission is surprisingly easy due to the layout of the area; child soldiers are fairly compacted into the camp and there's only one prisoner to speak of, which is the one you're after. If you go to the southern LZ to put both targets in the chopper, then you'll find a third prisoner to extract with a Fulton Device.

After finishing Main Ops 24 and 25, the infection will break out on Mother Base. There's one thing connecting the infection's spread, and you'll be tasked with quarantining everyone who you deem may be susceptible to the disease. You're never going to accurately guess what it is, but it'll be put in spoilers just in case you don't want to know right away.

You'll need to quarantine absolutely everyone who meets the qualification if you want to reduce the casualties to the lowest amount possible. In order to get rid of this quarantine epidemic, you'll want to power through the next couple of Main Ops until it's over.

Main Ops 26: Hunting Down

A human trafficker is trying to leave the country, and his position is currently unknown. Head to the abandoned village and grab some intel on his location, then follow his field of movement backwards to find him and his men. They'll all be moving on foot, so they'll be easy to reach once you find them. Do not extract anyone but the target (unless you decide to kill him); you may as well not bother until the epidemic is over.

If you extract the target, he'll tell the crew about the infection and something about a forest.

Main Ops 27: Root Cause

An Intel Team member needs rescuing. He thinks he's figured out the cause of the infection on Mother Base, but he's been captured by a PF. Infiltrate the guard post and look for the building pictured in the missions tab of your iDroid. After finding out that the prisoner is not here, look around and you'll eventually see him take off in a truck. He's going to drive the truck towards a cliff and bail when it gets there, so just follow him and pick him up so you can take him to the chopper.

The team member will lead you to a man who knows how to treat the infection, named Code Talker.

Main Ops 28: Code Talker

When you approach the mansion Code Talker is said to be in, you'll come across a strange mist. This one isn't like the one outside of Ngumba Industrial Zone; this is the one you usually see when something difficult is about to pop up at you in a group of four. These Skulls are female and will very quickly pull out sniper rifles in order to stop you. Get behind a rock and scope one of them out with your binoculars so you can figure out where they are, then call in a sniper rifle of your own and fire at them from behind cover.

When you get past the Skulls, approach the mansion carefully and work through soldiers until you can get inside. Then work your way down to the very bottom to find Code Talker. Listen to what he has to say, then take him to the northwest LZ so you can avoid the enemy gunship.

Main Ops 29: Metallic Archaea

As you leave for Mother Base, the strong mist will return over the chopper with you and Code Talker inside of it. You'll be surrounded by the Skulls when you land, and will have to defeat all of them to save yourself. Bring Quiet along with you as a buddy so she can help fight them, as D-Dog won't be of much use. You should go with some kind of strong assault rifle or machine gun with a fair amount of ammo and perhaps a rocket launcher. Try to be quick about calling in a resupply. After enough support from Quiet and breaking through their shields to weaken their health bar, you'll eventually be able to defeat all four of them and extract Code Talker.

• Immortal

  Complete "METALLIC ARCHAEA" mission.

  
  1 guide

Code Talker will explain more of Skull Face's plan, and afterwards you'll be told that you can develop a parasite suit. To develop it, you'll need to extract Skulls themselves. Huey will be interrogated once again to reveal the location of Metal Gear Sahelanthropus, being at a base known as OKB Zero.

Main Ops 30: Skull Face

Approach OKB Zero and try to slip past the initial XOF soldiers so you can start extracting them. If you have to shoot at any of these soldiers, go for their legs. You'll be able to Fulton out about a dozen soldiers or so before you even get through the front door. There are three massive areas that you need to sneak through in order to make contact with Skull Face. It's going to be a difficult journey through this place, but as long as you try Fultoning everyone out so they're no longer a threat, then it should be alright. The goal is Skull Face's heliport at the very back of the base. Move towards the helipad until you reach the staircase leading up to it. Go down the stairs south of the helipad and reach the top of the elevator for a hidden cassette tape so you don't have to replay the mission to get the tape later.

Once you reach Skull Face, follow him around to the vehicles parked nearby and get in with him. This will take you all the way to Serak Power Plant. The mission will end eventually.

Main Ops 31: Sahelanthropus

Bring as many explosives weapons as you can with you for this mission. If you aren't currently confident in your explosives, you can always come back later after they're more developed. Unleash all of your ammo onto Sahelanthropus and grab supply drops when they come in until the thing finally falls. Your first target should be the four white canisters on its back, as these are explosive and will heavily damage Metal Gear. After this, the only other weak spot is its core when it's exposed. When Sahelanthropus uses its rail gun, get behind some kind of solid cover and stay there to avoid the attack. Hit the other child when he appears and continue to aim for the core in the chest.

When you've defeated Metal Gear, head to Skull Face and you'll be given a choice. Abstaining leads to a far more interesting cutscene.

• Skull

  Complete "SAHELANTHROPUS" mission.

  
  

After the end of Chapter 1, Kaz will put a 1984-esque set of rules over Mother Base for the time being, which is meant to help in finding Cipher spies. An appropriate code to mimic, as the current year is 1984. You should check the Battle Gear hangar on the R&D Platform by going downstairs on the first platform of the set so you can use it in Dispatch Missions.

You can skip the missions that are tougher versions of Chapter 1 missions for later if you so choose.

Main Ops 32: To Know Too Much

A CIA agent in OKB Zero has been removed from the area after Soviets reclaimed the base. He needs to be extracted from Soviet hands before he tells either superpower about the existence of the vocal cord parasites. He's being hunted by four Walker Gear pilots, so get behind them and hold them up to neutralize them quickly. The prisoner will be laying in the sand nearby.

Main Ops 33: [Subsistence] C2W

In Subsistence missions, you'll be replaying old Main Ops where all weapons and items must be procured on site. No buddies, no supply drops of any kind, no reflex mode, and no support attacks. You will also not have any reflex mode available to you, so if you're spotted, you'll have to deal with it instantly.

You'll be replaying C2W, but without any starting equipment, of course. You'll first want to run to Guard Post 24 and stealthily take out the soldiers there so you can take their weapons. Next, reach the communications outpost, but watch out for a pair of soldiers on patrol just outside of that area's boundaries. Stick to the high ledges of the outpost and scope the rest of the place out so you can learn where everyone is. A surefire way to not be spotted while destroying the equipment is to remove every soldier from the outpost, so set up a plan to knock everyone out or slit their throats so they're no longer an issue. If you're going with knocking soldiers out, walk far enough away from the other soldiers (40m is safe) with the soldier on your back so you can Fulton him out unnoticed. Below is a rough plan of what I did.

I snuck around the hills to take out the guy all by himself watching the southern road (watch out for three claymores planted up in the slopes to the west). As I did so, another soldier came to investigate, and I managed to get him by hiding the first soldier behind the sandbags of his station until I could knock out the second one. I then went back down the south road to trigger a checkpoint, making sure I wouldn't have to do that again, and then stand on the cliffs to scope out more soldiers. A soldier might spot me when I did this, so I hid until he came close enough for me to get the drop on him. To deal with a pair of soldiers walking back and forth along the higher path area, I hid in an alcove above the path until they passed; I then took one up to my spot and held him up on the ground so he wouldn't go anywhere, let the other one pass back to the west, and then took care of him. After this point, there were few enough soldiers for me to be comfortable with actually getting into the middle of the outpost and handling the remaining enemies.

To exit the hot zone with ease, just Fulton one of the large material containers at the outpost. I managed an S Rank, even with a handful of checkpoint resets after deaths.

Main Ops 34: [Extreme] Backup, Back Down

In Extreme missions, the enemies are significantly tougher than they usually are.

The easiest way to complete this mission for the first time is to simply extract/eliminate only one armored vehicle and then standing still for the remainder of the mission.

Side Ops 113: Eli's Challenge

After his defeat in Africa as the White Mamba, Eli wants to challenge you back at the R&D Platform. Take whatever strong non-lethal weapons you can develop with you to make things easier. A shotgun made to stun can take him down in five hits or so. You'll get his conch shell as a reward.

Side Ops 143: Extract the AI Pod

Return to the Afghanistan Central Base camp and reclaim Huey's AI pod that remained in his lab. Activating it will cause it to skyrocket back to Mother Base.

Side Ops 144: Secure the Remains of the Man on Fire

The Soviets have recovered the body of the Man on Fire and have brought him to Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost. His body is laying out in the open on the helipad in the yard of the main building. Get close to it to put the man to rest for good.

After a little while, Kaz will give you a tape of Huey being asked questions about the AI pod.

Main Ops 35: Cursed Legacy

Some of Code Talker's research materials are about to be picked up by XOF, which is now back to working under Cipher after the end of Chapter 1. You'll need to be capable of Fultoning the containers out of the area, which you should already have been able to do way early into the story. The most optimal thing you could do is have the Fulton Wormhole upgrade to make things go as smoothly as possible.

Land by the southern infiltration point and interrogate enemies until you learn the locations of the two containers. Then run up to the first one or try to take care of the soldiers guarding it so you can Fulton the first container out of there. For the second container, just stand on top of it as you extract it and continue to hold the same key/button so you can immediately be sent up to the ACC and end the mission instantly.

At this point, the children on Mother Base will have likely made their way out of the Seychelles by sneaking into shipping containers. You'll receive a set of Side Ops with the objective being to bring them back.

Main Ops 36: [Total Stealth] Footprints of Phantoms

Bring D-Dog so he can locate all enemies for you and . Try to slip through them and Fulton out as many as you feel comfortable with extracting, then run out into the field and trigger a checkpoint so you don't have to do all that nonsense over again. Just work on getting everyone out of the area, then Fulton the Walker Gears and call in a chopper to land on-site to pick you up (assuming you've destroyed the anti-air radar). It's really that easy.

Main Ops 37: [Extreme] Traitors' Caravan

Just like before, tranquilize as many people at the guard post you start by and look in a tent for an intel file. You can alternatively try to book it towards Nova Braga Airport and locate the truck here before it takes off (do not extract any materials containers, though). If you get close enough while it's parked, the Skulls will infect all nearby soldiers; ignore that and Fulton the truck, then hop onto a material container and finish the mission with ease.

After a while, you'll eventually get a cutscene upon returning to Mother Base of an interrogation, as Kaz and Ocelot have finally figured out what happened to the third missing English vocal cord parasite. After this, you'll get a key item and will be able to develop a new piece of buddy equipment.

Main Ops 38: Extraordinary

One of Ocelot's informants sent to research the Man on Fire and the other child has been killed, but has placed his report in a film canister at Spugmay Keep. When you arrive, focus on neutralizing and extracting all enemies in the area so they're no longer a threat, then check the picture that Mother Base sends you when they're done decrypting it for the location of the film canister. It'll be in a crack of one of the pillars of an archway shown in the picture. Exfiltrate the area, preferably by chopper, once you get the canister.

Main Ops 39: [Total Stealth] Over the Fence

This is a pretty simple mission in terms of objectives. You'll just have to extract a prisoner out of the Wakh Sind Barracks. As with the other Total Stealth missions, it's a very viable strategy to Fulton out as many soldiers as you feel comfortable with, then getting far enough from the barracks to trigger a checkpoint so you don't have to do it again. You may only have to do this once or twice. To save yourself some time after extracting the prisoner, use a nearby material container to Fulton yourself back to base.

Main Ops 40: [Extreme] Cloaked in Silence

If you did the original version of this mission, you'll know exactly what to do to finish this version easily: drop supplies on her head. The only significant change here is that you'll want to make sure that you don't get hit by Quiet until the supplies are just about to drop on her head (<10m). Her shooting you will prevent her from jumping out of the way, therefore inflicting some stun damage on her. You can't get hit, however, because this will kill you. Just pop your head out from behind cover for a split second. Additionally, you should bring the weakest equipment you've got so your supply drops cost far less than they should.

You'll find that a supply drop will inflict much less stun damage to Quiet than before. This just means that you'll be spending more time setting up these drops until she finally falls. If sandstorms start to flurry up, just sit tight and wait for it to end. Once again, the supply drop method should take care of the S Rank and the mission tasks all in one go. When you decide what to do with Quiet, you'll find that she looks like another sniper from a different time. This outfit can be made for her after you finish this mission.

Side Ops 145--149: Search for the Escaped Children

To continue the story, you'll need to eventually bring all five children back to Mother Base. They're spread out in multiple areas, and the only way you can Fulton them (as this is far faster to do than extracting by chopper) is to defeat Eli in Side Ops 113 for the upgrade blueprints. Finding the children isn't hard if you have D-Dog with you. Bring some kind of stun shotgun for the third child to use on some bears cornering him.

If the next mission isn't unlocking, then try listening to all tapes marked with yellow dots, as these are the "essential" ones that are more story-related than most.

Main Ops 41: Proxy War Without End

Bring a good rocket launcher for this mission so you can deal with a chopper.

One side of the civil war going on in Africa has hired you to help them, which involves you taking down some enemy vehicles. If you've upgraded your arm's mobility to the highest possible, you should be able to run up to each one as they drive towards the middle of the mission area. To stop them (and therefore allow them to be Fultoned), you'll want to try laying some C4 down and blowing it up in the general proximity of a vehicle. After Fultoning or destroying all four targets, the final target, a gunship, will appear. Take this last target down and leave the area to end the mission.

Kaz will call to tell you to return to Mother Base as soon as possible. It's about Eli.

Main Ops 42: [Extreme] Metallic Archaea

For this mission, you need to fight the Skulls at Nova Braga Airport once more, except it'll be harder to kill them and easier for them to kill you. Bring Quiet with you so she can provide cover fire, wear the strongest Battle Dress you have (and a bandana if you have one), and pack your two most heavy-hitting primary weapons. A good choice is a highly-upgraded Hail MGR-4 grenade launcher; mine was at *7.

Even with the Battle Dress, you're barely going to be able to withstand any attacks, but if Quiet has the Sinful Butterfly, she can provide ridiculously strong cover fire for you. First, you should wait for Quiet to take a shot at one of the Skulls; one shot from the Sinful Butterfly should completely eradicate their tough shield. After this, batter the Skull with grenades and other weapons until its health drops to a minimum. If Quiet doesn't neutralize the Skull, then you will, and you should be able to extract them when they're defeated. If you can extract them all, do so, and you might finish all of the Mission Tasks AND get the S Rank in one playthrough of this mission.

To unlock Main Ops 43, just complete a few Side Ops. It should only take about three or so missions to get it to unlock.

Main Ops 43: Shining Lights, Even in Death

Men inside the quarantine platform's laboratory have been infected with a new outbreak of vocal cord parasites. The communications from the lab are dead, but this could lead to two scenarios. One: The surviving members, aware of their infection, are refusing to speak. Two: Everyone is dead. It's time to find out how they're doing.

Walk through the quarantine tent and proceed with the tasks given to you.

Main Ops 44: [Total Stealth] Pitch Dark

It's a return trip to Mfinda Oilfield for this mission, but nobody can know that you came here. To avoid having to sneak through Masa Village, run to the east around the large rock formation east of the village and continue from there up towards the oilfield. The smartest way to finish the mission for the sake of finishing it is to completely clear the entire outpost of soldiers so it's just you and the objectives. Once you've gotten everyone out of the base, plant some C4 at the tank, turn off the machinery in the building, then stand by one of the large material containers before blowing the C4. As soon as you do, hop on one of the containers and extract yourself out of the area.

You'll eventually get a sixth tape of Ocelot questioning Huey, and after listening to it, you'll be asked to return to Mother Base after a few more missions. It's time for Huey to be put on trial.

To unlock Main Ops 45, you'll need to listen to all of the more important tapes up to this point, have a maximum bond with Quiet, and not have the butterfly emblem in the logo design for Diamond Dogs. You'll also need to do a few more missions first. The next main mission will make you lose Quiet as a buddy, but she can come back easily afterwards. If you would for whatever reason not want this mission to occur (which you will have to play eventually), then you can put the butterfly emblem somewhere in Diamond Dog's emblem design to prevent it from happening. Since you can get her back, there isn't really anything to lose; if you don't use Quiet as a buddy aside from maxing the bond, then you theoretically have even less to lose.

Side Ops 150: Secure Quiet

After fulfilling the above requirements, you'll be asked to bring Quiet back to base; she's been captured by the Soviets. Bring the Hail MGR-4 grenade launcher, the FB MR R-Launcher, the Uragan-5 pistol if you have it (if not, then just bring the Wu S.Pistol like usual), and the best Battle Dress you have as a uniform. For headgear, put the standard bandana on if you have it. You should be able to get an S Rank your first time through Main Ops 45, so don't put the Infinity Bandana on. It'd also be handy if you have your bionic arm upgraded to the most potential it could possibly have. If you couldn't tell, you'll be pushed immediately into Main Ops 45, and it's going to be a pretty big fight.

Sneak into the building surrounded by the most soldiers when you reach the guard post, where you'll find some intel on Quiet's location.

Main Ops 45: A Quiet Exit

Upon dropping down near Lamar Khaate Palace, Code Talker will tell Big Boss some things you probably already figured out about Quiet. Quiet will free herself once you get close enough. Tanks will approach from the distance to prevent the two of you from leaving quietly. Fight off the rest of the tanks as supplies are dropped down to you automatically; Quiet will mostly serve as recon to identify tanks' locations, but you should tell her to provide cover fire so as to kill any troops on the ground. It's going to be a very long fight against tons of tanks, so get used to things quickly.

Once all of the tanks are taken care of, travel with Quiet to the landing zone in the distance. When you regain control of Big Boss, look for Quiet near a tree on a hill in the area.

• Disappearance

  Complete "CLOAKED IN SILENCE" mission.

  
  2 guides

To get Quiet back, simply replay Main Ops 11 seven times, with all instances ending with sparing her. It's a pretty odd way to make her come back, but it works.

Main Ops 46: Truth: The Man Who Sold the World

After Huey's trial, you'll likely unlock this mission before Main Ops 45. There's nothing wrong with playing them out of order. You'll be recollecting your memories from the hospital here. Do not skip any cutscenes until you've taken some digoxin to get you back in the game. After that, everything is the same until you escape the hospital, in which you should stop skipping cutscenes again.

After reaching the credits for this mission, do not skip them, because there is some timeline information that would be skipped along with them.

• Truth

  Complete "TRUTH: THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD" mission.

  
  

For a bit of clarification on the events told in this mission, click the spoiler below. Spoilers for the first games in the series are involved as well, so if you plan on playing Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake on either the MSX2 (Japanese-only console) or through the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (the only official English translations of these games) on the XBox 360, then avoid the spoilers altogether.

After the credits' timeline scroll is the just-as-important title dialogue, where Kaz and Ocelot talk about their futures.

Main Ops 47: [Total Stealth] The War Economy

Just like before, you need to locate a CFA official before you do anything else. D-Dog is highly useful here as always. An arms dealer will arrive in a chopper a few minutes after the mission starts. Try to quickly pass through the eastern half of the airport so you can see the western side on the other side of the airstrips. You should be able to easily get to the west side by going around the southern side of the airstrip.

If you can, try to get to the roof of the main building on the west side and wait for the arms dealer and the official to leave the building. Then tranquilize them and Fulton them away and simply ride a material container out of the mission area.

Main Ops 48: [Extreme] Code Talker

Bring a tranquilizing sniper rifle to fight off the Skull snipers that ambush you in the forest on the way to Lufwa Valley. A single shot from them will very likely kill you, so you're going to want to crawl between large rocks to use as cover as you fire a shot at the Skulls. If you have D-Dog with you, he'll be able to locate the Skulls until they're fully aware of your presence, in which case he'll likely be injured and sent back to Mother Base. This sniper battle, if you choose to go at it like a proper sniper battle, will take a very long time.

When approaching Code Talker, don't worry yourself about Fultoning everyone out of Lufwa Valley before getting to him, as the soldiers will re-station themselves around the mansion when you reach him. As soon as you skip the cutscenes where you first meet him, call the chopper towards the northern LZ. Head out the back door of the mansion and move to the LZ; to get rid of enemies looking for you, shoot them in the legs, where they have no armor. They'll pass out after a few seconds. You can also try to sneak up to the tank so you can extract it as well, but if things go sour, run up to the tank and see if you can extract it before it starts moving.

Main Ops 49: [Subsistence] Occupation Force

For this mission, you'll want to sprint straight towards Guard Post 06 as fast as you can in order to reach the convoy before they go too close to the middle of the mission area. Hide behind something when they get close, then intentionally jump out ahead of the tank in front so it spots you. This will stop the entire convoy, which should allow you to simply Fulton all three vehicles, but you have to do so from their sides so they don't drive into you. A good spot to wait is behind a rock south of a small building on the road. It may take a few attempts if the tanks feel like being able to hit you with their bullets from any position you're in.

Main Ops 50: [Extreme] Sahelanthropus

Like Main Ops 42, you'll be more focused on combat this time around. This fight is against Sahelanthropus, however, so you'll want to bring a Hail MGR-4 grenade launcher and a Falkenberg rocket launcher (FB MR R-Launcher) at *5. If your versions of these weapons are better than the suggested levels, then this is only an advantage to you. You don't really need a tranquilizing pistol, so replace it with whatever you want, as long as it's a damage-inducing weapon. Wear the Battle Dress and the bandana if you have it.

Sahelanthropus will not have any new attacks. Simply fight him again with these far superior weapons, which deal far more damage than before, and you'll defeat Metal Gear in about ten minutes or less. If the other child appears, shoot him with your pistol to disrupt Metal Gear's attacks and get an opening. This will also fulfill a Mission Task.

• Accomplished

  Complete all missions.

  
  

To earn an S Rank on a mission, you need to earn at least 130,000 points when scored at the end and you cannot have used any items that restrict you from getting such a rank. These include items like stealth camouflage, the chicken hat, and other items, which all tell you that you'll be restricted when you look at their descriptions. Most of your score will be made of the time bonus, which means that you'll want to focus on speed more than usual. Cutscenes do count towards your time, so skip them when replaying Main Ops.

The methods below assume that you've already beaten every Main Ops at least once before and have gone through the entire story, so if you're going at some of these S Ranks earlier than that, you may have to think of other things to use if something mentioned here isn't available to you just yet. It's also assumed that you're skipping all cutscenes when going for S Ranks so as to avoid repetition in instruction. D-Dog, a sneaking suit, C4, and your best Wu S.Pistol are part of the presumed loadout unless stated otherwise.

Main Ops 00: Awakening

Now that you've played through the mission and have seen the cutscenes that set the story of the game, you can skip them all as soon as they appear. You cannot, however, skip the slow crawling at the start of the mission. Just speed through the mission as fast as you can, and you should have no trouble getting an S Rank on it.

Main Ops 01: Phantom Limbs

To get an S Rank as fast as possible, ignore getting the intel and head straight to Da Ghwandai Khar. Tranquilize all soldiers at the outpost and then reach Kaz; taking the outpost over will allow you to call the chopper in to pick you up here instead of past the Skulls, which also completes a mission task. As long as you do all of this quickly, you should get more than enough points for an S Rank.

Main Ops 02: Diamond Dogs

This mission doesn't have a ranking, so you don't have to replay it again.

Main Ops 03: A Hero's Way

The fastest way to complete this mission is to pack a sniper rifle to kill the commander, which you may as well do from further than 100m so you can fulfill a Mission Task. After killing him through a window in his building, run out of the mission area to finish the mission faster than you would if you had to wait for a chopper to pick you up.

Main Ops 04: C2W

Instead of doing anything that you're supposed to, just select the LZ directly above the Eastern Communications Outpost and use the minigun to take out the three pieces of comms equipment. Destroying all of them while still in the helicopter will result in the chopper just flying around for a bit and taking off again with you in it, giving you an incredibly short play time.

Main Ops 05: Over the Fence

If you didn't get an S Rank on your original run of the mission, at least you'll have a better idea of what you're doing this time. Make your first target the crack in the wall just to the left of the barracks itself; it'll have another crack on its left side. Climb up this crack and you'll be able to enter the backside of the building that the engineer is being held hostage in. Once there, hold up any other soldiers inside and get them to lay flat on the ground so they can't pose a threat any longer. Then go for the engineer and pick him up to Fulton him from a safer distance (Fultoning makes noise, of course) or Fulton him through the hole in the roof of this very building. Whichever way you go about it, you'll want to locate a material container while remaining undetected and Fulton it to get yourself out of there.

Main Ops 06: Where Do the Bees Sleep?

For this mission, make your chopper as defensive as possible and use the LZ directly on top of Smasei Fort. If you're lucky, you'll be able to land without any of the soldiers identifying you specifically and will instead focus only on the chopper. Whichever situation plays out, run towards where the Honey Bee is and pick it up, then dash outside to trigger two cutscenes. As soon as you regain control, sprint out of the outpost area until the Skulls leave; this will render all soldiers previously affected by the mist unconscious, which will allow you to safely call another chopper in to Smasei Fort to pick you up without any issues.

Main Ops 07: Red Brass

This is a quick S Rank that you'll earn very easily, especially in the post-game. After arriving in Wialo Village, just wait for all three commanders to show up and Fulton them when they arrive. One of them will drive in with a few of his men; Fulton them as well, since there's a Mission Task related to it. That should be all you have to do to get your desired ranking.

Main Ops 08: Occupation Forces

There's a really easy way to finish this mission that you'll also be using for the Subsistence version of this mission. Use the western LZ and run on the road towards Guard Post 06; when you hear the tanks coming, hide behind a rock near the road and wait for them to pass. Try to jump out in front of the first tank when it gets very close (alternatively, park D-Horse on the road), which will cause all three vehicles to stop moving. Fulton all three out of the area immediately and then call a chopper to pick you up nearby to finish the mission with a new S Rank.

Main Ops 09: Backup, Back Down

Bring D-Horse and some phantom cigars with you and start off at the northern LZ. You'll want to look on the map for an intersection north of the Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost and park D-Horse a bit north of a large rock near the road. This rock should be big enough for you to crouch behind. Wait here a little while and eventually one of the targets will come up the road, stopping to make D-Horse move off the road. When this happens, extract the vehicle and return to the LZ. Use the phantom cigar to make time run out completely, then call a chopper in to leave the area.

For whatever reason, not being spotted and not leaving a trace will automatically give you an S Rank.

Main Ops 10: Angel With Broken Wings

To get an S Rank here, just charge into Lamar Khaate Palace at night and immediately tranquilize as many enemies as you can, and try to Fulton the armored vehicle as well. This should prevent Malak from going anywhere, which means that you don't have to do any more traveling. Put the entire enemy presence at Lamar Khaate Palace to sleep, then call in a chopper to pick Malak up and Fulton out any prisoners that you can reach while you're waiting. When the chopper arrives, pick up Malak and take him into the chopper to finish the mission.

Main Ops 11: Cloaked in Silence

You should have gotten an S Rank when you played through this mission during the story. If not, replay it and only defeat Quiet by marking her and then calling a supply drop in on her head. This will stun her a bit, and doing so twice will result in her passing out. This will also fulfill all four Mission Tasks.

Main Ops 12: Hellbound

One of the most important aspects of finishing the mission quickly is to have both delivery points between the power plant and the central base camp unlocked. You need to reach the delivery point in Serak Power Plant completely undetected. After this, interrogate a soldier to find Emmerich's location, then take Emmerich out of the area to make Sahelanthropus appear. After this, you need to evade Sahelanthropus and get into the chopper without it noticing. A good way to do this would be to leave Emmerich at the closest LZ, then run to the second one so Sahelanthropus follows you to that area. When Metal Gear is far enough away, run back to Emmerich and get into the chopper before he can spot you again. You may very easily score over 200,000 points if you have even a bit of trouble with Sahelanthropus, so you can spend a lot of time in this last part without losing your S Rank potential.

Main Ops 13: Pitch Dark

A suppressed lethal weapon is good to bring, just so you can shoot out lights.

You may find it easier to run along the side of the large rock formation east of Masa Village to avoid everyone there. When you approach the village, focus on Fultoning as many soldiers as you can, leaving the area far enough to trigger a checkpoint to save your extraction progress. Try to clear out the eastern half of the oilfield so you can use the east gate to cause more checkpoints, and put a lot of focus into shooting out as many lights that you think might be a problem for you. Lights remain broken after a checkpoint reload, so doing this early is extremely useful.

When you're satisfied with your takeover of the south end, try to reach the oily separator tank and place some C4 on it. Then head to the control room and shut off the pumps, but don't blow the C4 just yet. Return to the west entrance and stand on top of a resource container before blowing the tank, then use the container to extract yourself back to the ACC.

Main Ops 14: Lingua Franca

Use the LZ that's the most north of the ones available. Instead of bothering with anything else in this mission, look at the mission area on your map and you should see an inward angle between two edges on the northern perimeter. Head there, and as you do so, you'll find the Viscount being protected by a single soldier. Take care of the soldier and extract the Viscount, then leave the mission area. You'll be able to call in a chopper right on this position if you don't feel like physically leaving the area yourself.

Main Ops 15: Footprints of Phantoms

This S Rank is easy. Just focus on extracting everyone in the area that gets in your way, and then make sure you Fulton both prisoners and the Walker Gears at the village for more points. Once they're all gone, leave the mission area however you feel is easiest for your situation and you'll be done. Remember that you can run out to a checkpoint to make the game save your progress on removing soldiers.

Main Ops 16: Traitors' Caravan

The easiest way to finish the mission is to run straight to Nova Braga Airport, then head to the northwest area and approach the truck, which will be parked and unmanned. Just run straight up to it to trigger the Skulls to attack. After they show up, Fulton the truck as soon as possible and then run to a material container in the area, which you'll use to return to the ACC.

Main Ops 17: Rescue the Intel Agents

Land at the western LZ and run straight to the intel team member who's being hunted down. You should be able to get to him in the forest without any issues, but you may have to tranquilize a few soldiers so you remain unseen. Rescuing him will give you the location of the second intel team member, who needs to be extracted by chopper. Getting to him is nothing special, but you may find a fully armored soldier in the area. You should try to use the LZ east of here as a safe place to finish the mission.

Main Ops 18: Blood Runs Deep

First, go to the Bampeve Plantation and find the first of the six targets here. Extract him and use the delivery point here to travel to the mine in a flash. From there, enter the mine's mouth and locate the children. Assuming you're doing this after you've beaten the story as suggested, you'll be able to extract all of them for an easy completion. The injured child will not move, so you can extract him right away. The other four will wait by the locked gate up ahead; tranquilize them and Fulton them, then return to the delivery point to move out of the mission area/use a resource container to return to the ACC.

Main Ops 19: On the Trail

A reliable way to get an S Rank is to use the eastern LZ and run straight to the mouth of the crevice leading to the Ngumba Industrial Zone. You'll be able to find The Major there before his subordinate arrives; just extract him and run out of the tiny hotzone to finish the mission.

Main Ops 20: Voices

The key to finishing this fast is the stun arm, but D-Horse would help minimize travel time. If you're having a lot of trouble charging the stun arm, then bring the water pistol/have it dropped down to you before you enter the testing facility.

Since you want to finish the mission as fast as possible, get to the central building of the industrial zone as fast as possible. There may be a minimum of five soldiers that you should preferably tranquilize in order to get to the testing area without being spotted, so getting there is only a matter of time taken and isn't going to pose any difficulty. Just dash into the building, trigger the cutscene, and start fighting the Man on Fire. When you're engaging him, try your hardest to fully charge the stun arm and let it loose to defeat him. If you didn't cause the tunnel to collapse by getting too close to it, then you should be able to run out of the tunnel when the Man on Fire is defeated to finish the mission.

Main Ops 21: The War Economy

The fastest way to earn an S Rank is to not worry about any of the Mission Tasks whatsoever, unless you can manage to Fulton out both the commander and the arms dealer. Instead of entering through the main gate protected by a watchtower and a security camera, pick the lock on a gate south down the same wall and run along the southern wall until you can make it to the airstrip. Just make sure that you keep an eye on where nearby enemies are so you can get there without being caught. Additionally, any lights you shoot out will remain broken if you do have to restart from a checkpoint, so keep that in mind as well.

When you get to the airstrip in the middle of the area, crawl or crouch-walk even more to the south than you were before so that the snipers atop the main building won't be able to spot you as well. You may encounter a Walker Gear on the way to the west side of the airport; hold him up from behind if you can and extract both the soldier and the machine. Try to slip onto the roof of the main building to find the commander, but wait until the arms dealer joins him so you can extract him for more points. If you can wait long enough, the two of them will walk outside with their skin exposed, providing you a perfect time to tranquilize and extract them.

There are some material containers that you can use to extract yourself out of the area in the southwest corner of the airport. This will help in finishing the mission faster.

Main Ops 22: Retake the Platform

There is no ranking for this mission, so there's no need to replay it.

Main Ops 23: The White Mamba

This S Rank should only be attempted after you've upgraded the Fulton Device to properly extract children. A highly-upgraded stun arm is going to be really important for lowering your mission time here. Just Fulton all of the child soldiers to force Eli to be completely alone, or use a fully charged stun arm blast to instantly KO anyone within 50m of your position (as long as Eli is within range). Make sure you can put him in the chopper without any hitches, and you'll have a quick and painless S Rank.

Main Ops 24: Close Contact

Start the mission using the northern LZ, since that's closer to Guard Post 20. Just head to the guard post, find and extract the prisoners, and then leave the hotzone. There should be a material container around the guard post that you can use.

Main Ops 25: Aim True, Ye Vengeful

Use the LZ at the north end of the map and run down to the guard post. Since there aren't many child soldiers here anyway, you'll easily be able to find the leader and Fulton him (or all of them) out of the area. The prisoner is too injured to be Fultoned, so call a chopper to the southern LZ and run down that way, Fultoning the escaped prisoner as well. It's a really quick mission, so you'll be done with everything in a few minutes.

Main Ops 26: Hunting Down

Use the southern LZ, and arrive there at night (of course). The trafficker and his men are easy to track; they start off from Guard Post 14 and move upwards into the predicted field of movement on the iDroid's map. All six of the total men will be moving very cautiously through the area. If you can, try to tranquilize them all without being spotted and extract them all to fulfill the related Mission Task. If you intercepted the group before they got too far from Guard Post 14, then you shouldn't have a long distance between you and leaving the mission area, so you may want to consider just running out of the area instead of waiting for a chopper.

Main Ops 27: Root Cause

This mission is easy enough that you can get the Mission Tasks done at the same time if you play your cards right. If you arrive at night, you can tranquilize some of the soldiers on the way up the hill and reach the prisoner before he gets into the truck. Tranquilize him or just get close to him if he starts walking over to it, then put him in the passenger seat and drive away yourself. Going north up the road with the target is a quick way out.

Main Ops 28: Code Talker

Bring D-Horse for this mission. You'll want to ride straight up the shallow river, past the Skull cutscene, up until you can slip right underneath the ledge they're sitting on. Keep riding to the end of the cliffside and hug the left side of the area until you're out of reach and can get to the mansion. Doing this while being completely undetected may take a couple of tries, but you can live with being caught here. Scale the cliffs left of the mansion and get to the back door. Toss a magazine or shoot a suppressed weapon to distract the soldiers outside the back door and then either tranquilize them or sneak past them into the mansion. Once inside, sprint down the stairs all the way to Code Talker and skip his cutscenes.

You'll have to do the slow walk up the stairs as Code Talker provides story information. Once you can run again, call your chopper to land on the LZ to the north and sprint to it to finish the mission. You should be able to get by the Skulls on the way to the chopper just fine, just make sure the puppet soldiers don't overwhelm you and Code Talker.

Main Ops 29: Metallic Archaea

When you return to this mission, you should do so as you follow the same instructions for Main Ops 42, which is the extreme version of this same mission. Bring the Hail MGR-4 at *7 and have Quiet use her Sinful Butterfly to provide cover. The two of you will work together on one specific member of the Skulls until they're neutralized; Fulton them away and work on that Mission Task as you blaze through the enemy forces much faster than you did before.

Main Ops 30: Skull Face

For this S Rank, instead of slipping through enemy lines to get to Skull Face, you'll want to instead sprint nearly the entire way there while being as hidden as possible. Before the first gate, try to stick to the right and fire a shot near the sniper to distract him, giving you the space to continue past the gate. Getting to this gate unnoticed is important, as it will give you a checkpoint if you can do so. For the next area, try to stick to the right, but also try to distract the sniper here as well. If this fails, dash for the next area and try to stay alive. You can stick to the left side all the way to the final hangar, which holds the staircase leading up to Skull Face. When you get to him, skip everything to finish the mission as soon as you can.

Main Ops 31: Sahelanthropus

You should have no issue earning an S Rank here unless you have to retry dozens of times without restarting the mission entirely. To make things easier, come back with stronger equipment like the Hail MGR-4 *7 and the Battle Dress; you can see the specific suggested weapons in the story page of Chapter 2.

Much like before, you'll want to keep D-Dog as your buddy unless stated otherwise since he's far superior at locating enemies, vehicles, and weapons. Many of the tougher versions of earlier missions use the same or similar strategies.

Main Ops 32: To Know Too Much

This should be a simple S Rank, being the first mission of Chapter 2. Just run along the sand towards the dotted path leading up to the main path of Lamar Khaate Palace to find the prisoner, preferably before the Soviets do, and extract him. Then just leave the mission area.

Main Ops 33: [Subsistence] C2W

Instead of doing anything that you're supposed to, just select the LZ directly above the Eastern Communications Outpost and use the minigun to take out the three pieces of comms equipment. Destroying all of them while still in the helicopter will result in the chopper just flying around for a bit and taking off again with you in it, giving you an incredibly short play time.

Main Ops 34: [Extreme] Backup, Back Down

This is going to be the same strategy as before.

Bring D-Horse and some phantom cigars with you and start off at the northern LZ. You'll want to look on the map for an intersection north of the Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost and park D-Horse a bit north of a large rock near the road. This rock should be big enough for you to crouch behind. Wait here a little while and eventually one of the targets will come up the road, stopping to make D-Horse move off the road. When this happens, extract the vehicle and return to the LZ. Use the phantom cigar to make time run out completely, then call a chopper in to leave the area.

For whatever reason, not being spotted and not leaving a trace will automatically give you an S Rank.

Main Ops 35: Cursed Legacy

Use the southern LZ and interrogate a soldier as soon as you can. This should give you the locations of both containers, which should be pretty close by. Try to knock out/hold up all the soldiers by both containers, then Fulton yourself on top of the second container back to the ACC. This should be a quick and easy S Rank compared to most others in Chapter 2.

Main Ops 36: [Total Stealth] Footprints of Phantoms

This S Rank is easy, at least compared to the usual tougher missions. Just focus on extracting everyone in the area that gets in your way, and then make sure you Fulton both prisoners and the Walker Gears at the village for more points. Once they're all gone, leave the mission area however you feel is easiest for your situation and you'll be done. Remember that you can run out to a checkpoint to make the game save your progress on removing soldiers.

Main Ops 37: [Extreme] Traitor's Caravan

The easiest way to finish the mission is to run straight to Nova Braga Airport, then head to the northwest area and approach the truck, which will be parked and unmanned. Just run straight up to it to trigger the Skulls to attack. After they show up, Fulton the truck as soon as possible and then run to a material container in the area, which you'll use to return to the ACC.

Main Ops 38: Extraordinary

This S Rank coincides with one of the Mission Tasks, where you retrieve the film canister before reinforcements arrive. Sprint to Spugmay Keep and use the intel in the pause menu to get a sense of where the canister is, then use your fully charged stun to neutralize the ruins. Grab the film before the reinforcements show up, then leave by chopper or land to finish the mission.

To make things easier, find the canister and then restart the mission entirely; the canister should be in the same place, so you can easily fix your run of the mission.

Main Ops 39: [Total Stealth] Over the Fence

If you didn't get an S Rank on your original run of the mission, at least you'll have a better idea of what you're doing this time. Make your first target the crack in the wall just to the left of the barracks itself; it'll have another crack on its left side. Climb up this crack and you'll be able to enter the backside of the building that the engineer is being held hostage in. Once there, hold up any other soldiers inside and get them to lay flat on the ground so they can't pose a threat any longer. Then go for the engineer and pick him up to Fulton him from a safer distance (Fultoning makes noise, of course) or Fulton him through the hole in the roof of this very building. Whichever way you go about it, you'll want to locate a material container while remaining undetected and Fulton it to get yourself out of there.

Main Ops 40: [Extreme] Cloaked in Silence

Getting an S Rank here should be almost as easy as it was in Main Ops 11. However, this time Quiet is aware of your supply drop trick, and you can only use the trick on her if you stand out of cover when the supplies are less than 10m above her head. This will force her to shoot, preventing her from having enough time to move out of the way. Keep dropping supplies on her like this without being hit at all (one shot will kill you) until you finish the mission.

Main Ops 41: Proxy War Without End

Pack some EMN mines and your favorite missile launcher with you for this mission. If you choose the middle LZ, two tanks should be approaching from about 600m away. Place some EMN mines on the road and wait for them to pass, then extract the two vehicles. Then work your way to the other two vehicles and extract them as well. After this, your last target will be the attack chopper; shoot it down to finish the objective. If you want to, follow the chopper as it falls and look for some blueprints that it drops. This will eliminate a Mission Task that you won't have to worry about later.

Main Ops 42: [Extreme] Metallic Archaea

If you're following the weapon suggestions from the tips on the story page for Chapter 2, you should have no issue earning an S Rank unless you have to retry dozens of times. However, since this is the second version of Main Ops 29, you should be well familiar with this mission already and it's highly unlikely that this will occur.

Main Ops 43: Shining Lights, Even in Death

You don't need to play this mission, as it has no ranking associated with it.

Main Ops 44: [Total Stealth] Pitch Dark

A suppressed lethal weapon is good to bring, just so you can shoot out lights.

Since this is a total stealth mission, you want to be completely undetected; as such, you may find it easier to run along the side of the large rock formation east of Masa Village to avoid everyone there. When you approach the village, focus on Fultoning as many soldiers as you can, leaving the area far enough to trigger a checkpoint to save your extraction progress. Try to clear out the eastern half of the oilfield so you can use the east gate to cause more checkpoints, and put a lot of focus into shooting out as many lights that you think might be a problem for you. Lights remain broken after a checkpoint reload, so doing this early is extremely useful.

When you're satisfied with your takeover of the south end, try to reach the oily separator tank and place some C4 on it. Then head to the control room and shut off the pumps, but don't blow the C4 just yet. Return to the west entrance and stand on top of a resource container before blowing the tank, then use the container to extract yourself back to the ACC.

Main Ops 45: A Quiet Exit

Bring your best Battle Dress and two most powerful primary weapons. To save yourself the time later, you'll want to make sure Quiet is never hit in the entire skirmish. If this is your second run of the mission (the first being the story run), then you should be more familiar with the mission and will perform better. Even if you die several times, you may very well get an S Rank; the amount of points you get is very high. Hopefully you can manage to keep Quiet entirely intact for the related Mission Task.

Main Ops 46: Truth: The Man Who Sold the World

As with the prologue, you're going to be skipping a lot of cutscenes and crawling very slowly for most of the mission. The difference here is that most of the end of the mission is cut out, what with the Man on Fire and all. Skipping everything should easily get you the S Rank, but you may as well go for the Mission Tasks too. Kill all six enemies at the hospital entrance and pick up their weapons and ammo. When the Man on Fire is in the building after you try to leave, blast him with at least 20 shots. You'll get another chance outside the hospital if necessary, as long as you don't skip the upcoming cutscene.

Main Ops 47: [Total Stealth] The War Economy

The fastest way to earn an S Rank is to not worry about any of the Mission Tasks whatsoever, unless you can manage to Fulton out both the commander and the arms dealer. Instead of entering through the main gate protected by a watchtower and a security camera, pick the lock on a gate south down the same wall and run along the southern wall until you can make it to the airstrip. Just make sure that you keep an eye on where nearby enemies are so you can get there without being caught. Additionally, any lights you shoot out will remain broken if you do have to restart from a checkpoint, so keep that in mind as well.

When you get to the airstrip in the middle of the area, crawl or crouch-walk even more to the south than you were before so that the snipers atop the main building won't be able to spot you as well. You may encounter a Walker Gear on the way to the west side of the airport; hold him up from behind if you can and extract both the soldier and the machine. Try to slip onto the roof of the main building to find the commander, but wait until the arms dealer joins him so you can extract him for more points. If you can wait long enough, the two of them will walk outside with their skin exposed, providing you a perfect time to tranquilize and extract them.

There are some material containers that you can use to extract yourself out of the area in the southwest corner of the airport. This will help in finishing the mission faster.

Main Ops 48: [Extreme] Code Talker

Bring D-Horse for this mission. You'll want to ride straight up the shallow river, past the Skull cutscene, up until you can slip right underneath the ledge they're sitting on. Keep riding to the end of the cliffside and hug the left side of the area until you're out of reach and can get to the mansion. This may take a couple of tries. Scale the cliffs left of the mansion and get to the back door. Toss a magazine or shoot a suppressed weapon to distract the soldiers outside the back door and then either tranquilize them or sneak past them into the mansion. Once inside, sprint down the stairs all the way to Code Talker and skip his cutscenes.

You'll have to do the slow walk up the stairs as Code Talker provides story information. Once you can run again, call your chopper to land on the LZ to the north and sprint to it to finish the mission. You should be able to get by the Skulls on the way to the chopper just fine, just make sure the puppet soldiers don't overwhelm you and Code Talker.

Main Ops 49: [Subsistence] Occupation Forces

The easiest way to complete the mission is also the best way to get an S Rank, so you've likely gotten it already. If not, here are the directions again.

Sprint straight towards Guard Post 06 as fast as you can in order to reach the convoy before they go too close to the middle of the mission area. Hide behind something when they get close, then intentionally jump out ahead of the tank in front so it spots you. This will stop the entire convoy, which should allow you to simply Fulton all three vehicles, but you have to do so from their sides so they don't drive into you. A good spot to wait is behind a rock south of a small building on the road. It may take a few attempts if the tanks feel like being able to hit you with their bullets from any position you're in.

Main Ops 50: [Exteme] Sahelanthropus

If you're following the weapon suggestions from the tips on the story page for Chapter 2, you should have no issue earning an S Rank unless you have to retry dozens of times. However, since this is the second version of Main Ops 31, you should be well familiar with this mission already and it's highly unlikely that this will occur.

• Elite

  Complete all missions with an S rank.

  
  1 guide

Mission Tasks are separate from S Ranks but are similar in that they're only specific to Main Ops. You should really only try to complete these tasks after earning an S Rank, because some of them will be completed through the methods involved in earning those S Ranks. While you can complete a number of Mission Tasks without knowing what they are (some are mandatory), you'll be able to see all of them in your iDroid after finishing the mission once. Many can be done at the same time; however, others are completely exclusive from the other and require multiple playthroughs. For example, you cannot extract someone and kill them from at least 100m with a sniper rifle in the same run of a mission. However, you can quit out of a mission after fulfilling a Mission Task, but only after triggering a checkpoint save by entering or leaving an area.

The methods used below assume that you've already beaten every Main Ops at least once before and have gone through the entire story, so if you're going at some of these Mission Tasks earlier than that, you may have to think of other things to use if something mentioned here isn't available to you just yet. You are allowed to use items such as the Infinity Bandana and other items that would prevent you from earning an S Rank, because the rank is not the objective. Mission Tasks in italics are automatically completed throughout the mission's natural objectives.

Main Ops 00: Awakening

First, you should know that the second objective is worded wrong; it should say, "Completed the mission without allowing the Man on Fire to attack you even once after meeting up with Ocelot.

To complete the first objective, just turn off Reflex Mode in the pause menu and finish the mission. As for the Man on Fire, you'll want to make sure you only use ammo to keep him at a safe distance and to disrupt his attacks. You'll know when he's about to attack when he moves his arms into a different position, and you can tell when you get hit with a hit counter that appears in the bottom left. The Man on Fire will also light up a bit when an attack is ready. To prevent the man on fire from hitting you with a column of flames in front of the horse, keep him on your tail the entire time. If you're hit (you'll hear Big Boss grunt), restart the checkpoint; either of these attacks will void the Mission Task.

It's possible that the second objective is bugged. To remedy this, you may have to trigger reflex mode in the hospital or not skip the cutscene after you fend off the Man on Fire.

Main Ops 01: Phantom Limbs

When you start the mission, get off D-Horse and look for a crack in the wall shown on your map. It should be directly east of where you start. Either scale the crack or run along the slop to the side and get to a hidden rough diamond; pick it up, and then head to Da Wialo Kallai. Ride around to the west road entrance and try to tranquilize the soldier taking a break by his truck. This is the transport truck driver that you need to extract. When he's secured and headed to base, look in the main building nearby and get the intel on Miller's exact position if you haven't done this in a previous run of the mission.

Next, ride/drive to the Wakh Sind Barracks and either interrogate the soldiers posted here to find the commander, or dig into the highest area of the barracks and find him yourself. he'll be wearing a red beret.

Finish the mission by changing the chopper's LZ to near Da Ghwandai Khar, which requires you to blow up the anti-air radar. This will remove the Skulls as a threat, finishing the final Mission Task.

Main Ops 02: Diamond Dogs

If you followed Ocelot's instructions when playing through this mission the first time, then you should have already completed all five Mission Tasks. The first three are given to you for doing the bare minimum to complete the Main Ops, but the other two are done after you've developed the cardboard box. Talk to Ocelot and have him walk you through a bit more training on how you can render enemies ready for extraction until you've finished the two remaining objectives, then call in Mother Base's chopper and head out.

Main Ops 03: A Hero's Way

Bring D-Dog with you and head southeast of Shago Village into some sand dunes. Keep an eye on your map whenever D-Dog spots medicinal plants, because you'll want to pick the haoma in the dunes. After you obtain it, reach the village and look underneath a bridge west of it for a hidden material box, completing the fifth Mission Task. Finally, knock the Spetsnaz commander out and Fulton him to Mother Base to finish the third passive objective. This is the only material box in the outpost that you need to collect in order to finish the related Mission Task.

If you need to kill him from over 100m away, play the mission again and tag him so you know how far you are from him. Then get to a safe distance and use a sniper rifle to perform a headshot. After that, run out of the mission area to finish the mission quickly.

Main Ops 04: C2W

You should start this run by heading directly to Wialo Village. The two prisoners held here are on the west side of the village; if you have a hard time finding them without using D-Dog as a buddy, try interrogating some soldiers until you can learn their positions and extract them. After that, look on the map for a crack that you can climb just south of the Eastern Communications Outpost. The crack will take you to a high path leading northwest that may be protected by two wolves; just let them pounce on you so you can whack them away and extract them.

Right before a cliffside that allows you to look over the entire outpost is a slanted rock slope, which is hiding a large rough diamond on top of it. Grab this gem and you'll finish another Mission Task. The bulk of what's left to do relates simply to the comms equipment. Identify the three antennas by using your binoculars and then, if you want to remain hidden, work on Fultoning absolutely everyone out of the area very carefully. Remember that you can leave the area to trigger a checkpoint, which will save your progress on removing the soldiers. When the coast is clear, look inside one of the buildings to find the outpost's transmitter, which you should destroy for the related Mission Task, then destroy the three radars to finish the main objective. After that, Fulton the material container in the middle of the base, finishing the final Mission Task. You should be able to find another container on the road a bit north of here that you can use to return to the ACC.

Main Ops 05: Over the Fence

This can be done in one run. Use the LZ south of the Wakh Sind Barracks and extract as many soldiers you deem necessary in order to reach the prisoner. A four-wheel drive should pass through the area for a little bit, assuming you're booking it from the LZ to the barracks, and you should be able to stop the driver before he gets away to fulfill the fourth Mission Task.

Look on the map for a crack in the wall that you can use to bypass the main entrance to the higher region of the barracks. With D-Dog accompanying you, you should be able to find a prisoner high up on the rocks. Extract him, then look into the portable buildings in the main section of the barracks for some blueprints to pick up. Now all that's left to do is to Fulton the engineer inside the building; when you find him, carry him to the hole in the roof of the building he's in and Fulton him out from underneath the hole. This can be done with even the Fulton Wormhole to fulfill the related Mission Task.

With the final objective out of the way, use a material container to lift yourself back up to the ACC.

Main Ops 06: Where Do the Bees Sleep?

You should be able to finish all six objectives in one go. Pack a strong missile launcher and air shotgun, and wear the infinity bandana if you have it to make things run a little more smoothly. Run on over to the Mountain Relay Base and wipe the place out so you can extract the pair of snipers and the prisoner here. After you do this, run towards Smasei Fort and use your rocket launcher of choice to take the chopper down.

The last bit of objectives you need to take care of occur after you find the Honey Bee. When the Skulls show up, you'll want to use your air shotgun to defeat them all. This is going to take a while, but at least you'll have the Honey Bee intact. When the Skulls have all been defeated, Fulton them back to base and call a chopper on your position so you can return to base.

Main Ops 07: Red Brass

If you followed the S Rank suggestions, you should have already completed the first five Mission Tasks, not to mention the first three are mandatory objectives. For the final Mission Tasks, use the LZ near Ghwandai Town and try to locate and extract the two prisoners as soon as you can. Then deliver yourself back to Wialo Village and stay hidden as the three commanders have their conversation. When the Mission Task marks itself as complete, extract the commanders once more and finish the mission (or trigger a checkpoint and abort).

Main Ops 08: Occupation Forces

If you've gotten the S Rank with the strategy provided for both the story and S Rank pages, then the only two remaining Mission Tasks should be to secure the deployment plans and to extract the prisoner at Sakhra Ee Village. Since you can quit out of a mission after triggering a checkpoint, this cleanup will be much less painful than it might have otherwise been.

Just infiltrate the village from the east, preferably at night, and interrogate a guard to get the location of either the prisoner or the intel (or both). Continue to interrogate them until they spill the beans on both, then grab both and leave so you can trigger a checkpoint. After that, just abort the mission.

Main Ops 09: Backup, Back Down

There are a minimum of two separate Mission Task runs, which you can do in whichever order you feel like. The first focuses on prisoners and the weapon being transported, and the other is for eliminating all vehicles. You should bring D-Dog for the prisoners and D-Horse for the vehicles. EMN mines are also a huge help for the vehicle run.

Land at the southwest LZ. When looking for prisoners, you should look for one in the mountain path west of Guard Post 15; this is one of two time-sensitive prisoners, and you'll want to get to him as soon as possible.m You'll want to extract all four soldiers looking for this (1/6) Prisoner, then extract the prisoner himself. After this, return to the approximate location of the southwest LZ and head north into some sand dunes for the second (2/6) Prisoner. From there, run to Lamar Khaate Palace, where you'll be able to find another (3/6) Prisoner held in a cell. From here, go north and look around the river for the fourth (4/6) Prisoner, then go to the Wakh Sind Barracks for the last standard (5/6) Prisoner. The last (6/6) Prisoner will be taken around in a four-wheel drive, so once you have the first few prisoners or so, focus on bringing this guy back as soon as you can. You should also aim to extract the weapon being carried by one of the trucks in this run if you can, but you can always replay the mission later for this exact Mission Task. Stop the truck with an EMN mine, D-Horse, or some other means so you can secure the weapon intact. You must pick up the weapon yourself, you cannot extract the truck with the weapon inside for it to count. You can also do this in the vehicle attack run.

When you're ready to wipe out all seven enemy vehicles, start the mission at the northern LZ and sit by the rock you were at for the S Rank tactics (if you don't know this place, just hide anywhere), and use either D-Horse or EMN mines to disable tanks so you can extract them. This is going to consist of a lot of waiting around, so you may also want to consider simply running around and blowing the vehicles up instead. There are seven vehicles that you need to defeat/extract; the four-wheel drive carrying a prisoner and the vehicle carrying a special weapon do not count, but the latter will be passing into this point from the north if you haven't already obtained the weapon. If you find that you have some downtime, there should be a vehicle parked inside Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost if you want to Fulton it early. The two last vehicles will likely not be fast enough to reach your hiding spot before time runs out, so you'll want to approach them yourself and get rid of them before the clock runs down. You can blow these last two up if you want to, since you only need to eliminate them for the Mission Task. Once you've stopped all seven vehicles, three tanks and a chopper should appear; the tanks are involved in the last of a chain of related Mission Tasks. These only appear after defeating all other vehicles, and you must extract all three to complete the final task. Leave via chopper extraction to finish the mission after eliminating all four vehicles.

Main Ops 10: Angel With Broken Wings

After following the S Rank tips, you should have already extracted the armored vehicle and the three prisoners at Lamar Khaate Palace. The most important thing to do now is listen to the conversation between the truck driver and Malak, which requires you to be at Yakho Oboo Outpost. When you start the mission, run straight to Yakho Oboo and try not to interact with any soldiers whatsoever; keep the place as intact as possible. Malak will eventually arrive and will be escorted inside a building. Use your binoculars' microphone while overlooking the place from the northwest corner to hear the last conversation (if any rise in alert takes place, the conversation will not happen), then rescue the two other prisoners held here if you haven't done so before. Either finish the mission or trigger a checkpoint and abort to the ACC to make the Mission Tasks save.

Main Ops 11: Cloaked in Silence

You should have already completed all of these Mission Tasks by beating Quiet in the story with the information provided then. If not, replay the mission and defeat Quiet by marking her and dropping supply drops on her head. Doing this twice will fulfill all four objectives.

Main Ops 12: Hellbound

Extracting three Walker Gears and keeping Emmerich fully healthy are Mission Tasks that speak for themselves. Since there is no time limit, you have all the time in the world to extract the Walker Gears. Keeping Emmerich safe just requires you to be aware of your surrounding more.

This leaves the final two Mission Tasks. Assuming you're using delivery points to reach the central base camp faster, you should be able to find one of the large structures (similar to Emmerich's lab) numbered 01. The blueprints you're looking for are on a shelf in there. The vertical poster is inside the small garage-like building's southern entrance. This building, when you look on your map, is north of the middle of three central structures. The middle one you're looking for is the partially broken-down one. With these two items secured, reach Emmerich to trigger a checkpoint, then abort to the ACC to save yourself the hassle of finishing the mission.

Main Ops 13: Pitch Dark

These Mission Tasks require two runs. For the first, start the mission at night (which you should already be doing), and bring a stun arm. The infinity bandana wouldn't hurt either.

D-Dog can very easily find the children in Masa Village sleeping in the same building together; use the stun arm's overcharged blast to stun them all, allowing you to Fulton them without using tranquilizer rounds. From the village, you can use the delivery point to get to Mfinda Oilfield quickly. Once inside, start working on Fultoning everyone out and shooting all the lights, triggering checkpoints by running out of the base so you don't have to re-Fulton the soldiers again. Clear the entire place out, then run past the south exit with D-Dog to locate a lappet-faced vulture, which you need to extract. To leave the hotzone before four Walker Gears seal the place off, you need to blow the tank while near a resource container, then get onto one ASAP and extract yourself before they arrive. On a second run, just Fulton the Walker Gears before you finish the mission.

Main Ops 14: Lingua Franca

This will require two runs, since you need to save the prisoners and listen to their interrogations.

Land at the southern safe LZ and approach the camp to reach the interpreter and the first prisoner. Knock out all surrounding enemies and extract the prisoner (you can extract the others if you want, but that costs time), then run straight north to find another prisoner. The third prisoner is held in the main area of Kiziba Camp, by the anti-air radar and inside one of the cages by a pit. The central building here (if you can call it a central building) contains the intel for the prisoner locations, which you'll need to scan regardless of your knowledge of their positions for the related Mission Task. The Mission Task related to rescuing the prisoners may only register after extracting the final prisoner, the Viscount.

On your second run, you'll just want to use your Int-Scope to listen to the prisoners' interrogations. The best LZ to start with is the southern one, just like before. When the first prisoner and the interpreter split up, don't get confused and accidentally follow the wrong guy; follow the interpreter to another prisoner and listen with your Int-Scope at a distance. When his (1/3) Interrogation is over, reach the female prisoner - the third you rescued before - by the cages, pit, and anti-air radar. The first prisoner will be interrogated with her. After the second (2/3) Interrogation, the prisoners will be killed, which may cause the poor AI to trigger an alarm, even though they were the ones to kill the prisoner. If this happens, restart a checkpoint. If not, then check to see if the interpreter and the commander are making their way towards the Viscount. If so, run over to the Viscount's location and wait for them to arrive; if not, then the soldier guarding the Viscount will slowly push him along all the way to a different meeting point. In the second scenario, you may as well continue following the interpreter. Make sure you stay at a safe distance so neither party is aware of your position. The two parties will eventually converge for the final (3/3) Interrogation, and once it's over, secure the Viscount and finish the mission.

Main Ops 15: Footprints of Phantoms

When starting this mission, head towards the fork in the road at the southern edge of the village, where you'll find the truck that you need to extract. Since two of your other Mission Tasks are focused on extracting, you'll really want to just make it a main priority to Fulton everyone and everything out of here, including the two prisoners and the set of Walker Gears when it's safe to do so. D-Dog will be able to identify the location of the digitalis (lutea) for your map, but you can also just find it at the top of the rock structure in the middle of the area. If you've neutralized everyone in the base, you can call the chopper in to the LZ here, which is conveniently right on top of this rock structure.

Main Ops 16: Traitors' Caravan

To make things easy when fighting the Skulls, bring your best sleep grenades with you. The infinity bandana wouldn't hurt if you don't have remarkable sleep grenades. Everything can be done in one run, if done correctly.

The escort unit's route can be determined by intel found in a tent at Guard Post 14; just stop by for a spell and do what you have to in order to reach the intel. Next (or first, if you've already found this intel before), go to Nova Braga Airport and try to overlook the place when the escort unit appears. Try to identify the transport truck and the escort unit, which is not only a Mission Task, but is useful for keeping track of the vehicle, and then try to mark the transport truck driver. You'll then want to stay around the western wall by a small platform to safely hear a (1/3) Conversation between the truck driver and nearby soldiers. The next destination is Guard Post 12; you can head there right away as soon as the first conversation has ended, if you want. At around the same time the convoy reaches the guard post, a four-wheel drive with some Zero Risk Security soldiers will appear, which you can identify with your Int-Scope. Mark them when you can, then turn your attention to the truck driver and use the microphone on the scope to hear the second (2/3) Conversation. As soon as this conversation ends, quickly get to the northern entrance of Kiziba Camp and wait for the convoy to arrive here.

The final (3/3) Conversation will occur west of some resource containers. Try to hide somewhere in the vicinity of them until you hear the end of this conversation, then crawl along the ground behind some wooden containers, which should give you enough distance to cause the Skulls to appear. With your cover in play, you should be able to toss sleep grenades at them until they're all conked out. Try to extract them if you can, then go for the transport truck driver and the target vehicle. All that should remain now are the ZRS soldiers, which are easily located if you marked them earlier. If not, they should be stunned on the ground a bit down the road south of here; D-Dog should be able to find them easily. That'll be the last thing you have to do, so leave the mission area however you please and be done with the mission for good.

Main Ops 17: Rescue the Intel Agents

Use the northern LZ to get the drop on the search team reinforcements, who will be traveling from here southward. All four members of the reinforcement team will be traveling together in a jeep, so you need to be quick about stopping them. If only three get in the jeep, then one of the other members of the guard post will be the fourth member, and you need to extract him as well. After a minute or two of being at Guard Post 01, even if you're not done with the reinforcement team, a transport truck will pass through. This is the truck driver that you need to extract. Stop him however you please and send him back to base. D-Dog can easily find the prisoner held at Kiziba Camp; he should be between the two intel agents in a building. The CFA officials, if they're not already by the prisoner, will travel together on a jeep after you extract one of the intel agents, and should be around the northern edge of the camp. Both of them will be wearing balaclavas. There aren't many checkpoints in this mission, so you may want to just play it safe and finish it all the way through.

Main Ops 18: Blood Runs Deep

Bring a lethal weapon for lights and to stop armored vehicles, a missile launcher for the gunship, and the infinity bandana.

Assuming you've gotten the S Rank done with using the methods given in the walkthrough, then you should only have to eliminate the gunship (if your chopper didn't do so for you in the story), extract five snipers, and extract three armored vehicles. Start by going to the Bampeve Plantation and waiting for one of the armored vehicles to park itself in front of a building, which is where the former rebel soldier usually is. The second armored vehicle generally patrols the road between Guard Post 04 and Guard Post 05. Feel free to destroy the gunship at any time past this point.

You should then go all the way to Guard Post 13. Two of the target snipers are by the mouth of the crevice leading to the Ngumba Industrial Zone; extract them, then move upwards from here directly into Kungenga Mine; this should be an inverse of the path you take in the story, and should be a direct south-to-north path. Try to completely clear out the mine if you have the patience, then leave the northern exit and look around for the final armored vehicle. It'll be traveling on the long road extending north and west around the mine. Since you're out of the mine, move to Guard Post 02 and go west so you can reach a small pocket of a forest. The remaining three snipers are in this forest. Once you've extracted them, you'll be able to trigger a checkpoint by returning to Guard Post 02, which means you can quit out if that was your last Mission Task.

Main Ops 19: On the Trail

Sleep grenades can be useful to knock The Major's men out all at once.

This is a really easy set of Mission Tasks to accomplish. When you start the mission, run straight to Guard Post 16 and quickly rescue the prisoner being held there. Then go to the Viscount, who will be at the mouth of the crevice leading to the Ngumba Industrial Zone. When the subordinate arrives, wait for them to have their conversation before knocking the whole team out. Before you extract The Major and his subordinate, identify them with your Int-Scope. Fulton them and leave the hotzone to finish this short mission.

Main Ops 20: Voices

Start the mission off with the tranq pistol so you can reach the Man on Fire more easily, then call in the water pistol when you're done listening to the conversation about the bodies. The infinity bandana helps very much for this mission, and the stealth camo would make things easier for you when sneaking. For listening to the conversation, you must not alert anyone or tamper with anyone, so let all soldiers be and prevent anyone from being stunned or put to sleep. Bring a shotgun of some type as your primary weapon, preferably a silenced air shotgun just in case you really have to stun someone. It'll also be useful later regardless.

The first task you can complete is finding a wild dog, which should easily be possible as you move from the LZ to Munoko ya Nioka Station. Just extract one, then get to Guard Post 20 to find an intel file that you need to scan. The last miscellaneous Mission Task that you can do before reaching the Man on Fire is to listen to the conversation about the bodies; the man who starts the conversation will be arriving by truck to Guard Post 20 very shortly. Stand by and wait for him to arrive (if his truck isn't already there) and get into the truck bed. The conversation you need to listen to is the very last one. Sit in the truck bed until the driver takes you near Guard Post 17, then wait for him to get a decent distance away and follow him on foot to the tent outside the tunnel, where the conversation will take place. Any sort of awareness of an enemy presence will prevent him from ever starting the conversation, so you'll very likely have to restart or reload your checkpoint. You cannot simply go straight to the tent either, as he just won't show up if you don't encounter him earlier. Call in your water pistol and a shotgun of some kind if you don't already have them equipped.

When you start to fight the Man on Fire, continuously shoot your water pistol at him until he collapses. There are two strategies you can go with for hitting the boy, but the latter is suggested if you have the infinity bandana. Many try to call in a supply drop directly onto the Man on Fire when he's downed, but this may not hit the floating boy, or it may not arrive in time before he disappears again. You can alternatively keep shooting the boy with your shotgun until one of the blasts hits him; this, however, may take a few cycles of stunning the Man on Fire, but it's not like that's going to be hard. The Man on Fire cannot attack and will barely move if you're constantly shooting water at him. When the boy has been shot, try extracting the Man on Fire to defeat him. He won't be successfully brought back to base, but it will count as a defeat, finishing the third Mission Task.

Main Ops 21: The War Economy

If you went through the S Rank suggestions provided for this mission, you should have the first five Mission Tasks taken care of already. Now all you have to focus on is the chopper and, more annoyingly, listening to four conversations between the official and the arms dealer. If you haven't done the first five tasks in the S Rank run, you can easily overlap them after doing the sixth Mission Task, so there's no worry of doing things out of order. Make sure you bring C4 for this mission and have the Wormhole Fulton unlocked. The stun arm would help drastically as well.

There's an easy way of listening to all four conversations without having to follow the pair of targets around, being in their truck, or anything like that. You'll want to pick the lock on the gate south of the east entrance to the airport, then locate the two sets of buildings in this area that run north to south. The set you'll want to be on top of is the one furthest to the west, which has a gas tank on the ground to the left of it. There'll be a ladder at the north end that you can climb to the roof, and this is where you'll spend a lot of your time. Park yourself on the southern end of this first building, then wait for the gunship to arrive (remember where it hovers above the building for later) and focus your binoculars into the window of the main building so you can hear the first (1/4) Conversation.

When the first conversation ends, head to the northern edge of this roof and look for a blue hangar with a truck inside. They'll be getting in this truck soon, but you have time to Fulton any nearby enemies if they pose some kind of threat. After they reach the truck, they'll have another (2/4) Conversation and be on their way to another hangar. When they start to get into their truck, run south to the other rooftop and jump (the same key/button for climbing) as you sprint towards it so you can make it across. If you'd like to get your objectives done in one run, then sprint towards the hangar that they're headed towards (there are some red material containers inside) so you can prep to take out any Walker Gears that approach the hangar. Listen outside as they have their next (3/4) Conversation and remember this place, because these material containers are required for the final Mission Task.

When they're done talking, rush to the main building, take out as many enemies as you can, and try to get to the roof where the chopper dropped the arms dealer off before. You'll want to plant C4 on the spot that the chopper will drop down onto when it tries to pick the arms dealer up. As for the final (4/4) Conversation, standing on the roof should suffice for hearing it. Take care of the enemies with a Fulton extraction, or blow the C4 when the chopper is hanging directly above it with the targets inside and grab the blueprints that fall out. To finish the mission off for good, return to the hangar where the third conversation took place and Fulton yourself out with the final container you extract.

Main Ops 22: Retake the Platform

By finishing this mission, you'll complete the only Mission Task. You don't have to replay this.

Main Ops 23: The White Mamba

Make sure to bring D-Dog (as usual) and the best stun arm you've got. When you land in Africa, go to Guard Post 06 and interrogate the child soldiers here to find some diamonds hidden at the post in a tent. Then Fulton all eight children here, as there are only 12 at Masa Village, and you'll need 20 for the final Mission Task. The two remaining tasks are at Masa Village; a prisoner can be found in one of the houses around the northern border, which should easily be located with D-Dog. Then stay undetected and extract the remaining 12 children (not Eli) to finish the final Mission Task off. With nobody around except Eli, charge your stun arm to full power while Eli is within 50m of you to knock him unconscious immediately. Then just carry him to the chopper to end the mission.

Main Ops 24: Close Contact

The first destination is Guard Post 16, where you'll be able to find the four material containers you need to extract. You then want to reach the northern entrance of Munoko ya Nioka Station and have D-Dog locate a large martial eagle. Extract it, then enter the station and get through to the other side to find the African peach that you need to pick.

Now go to Guard Post 20 and Fulton one of the four-wheel drives, if it's already here, and wait for the second one to come by from the north. Extract that one as well, then look east into the wilderness for six nubian goats. Fulton all of these to finish what should be your final Mission Task, then extract the prisoners and use a nearby material container to get back to the ACC.

Main Ops 25: Aim True, Ye Vengeful

Since you need to extract the commander and the XO at the same time, you'll want to use the northern LZ again so you can reach them as fast as possible. Knock out and extract all child soldiers EXCEPT for the commander, who you want to hold up and keep on the ground or place into the vehicle nearby. Then run south and try to get to the escaped prisoner before the wild dogs can kill him (if you fail, just restart the checkpoint).

Look all around for a total of 11 other child soldiers to extract. Then, with the commander still on the ground or in the vehicle, look on the map in the west for a weird, lumpy-looking structure. Get on top of it by finding a path around the little nub sticking out of the northeast corner of it, then pick one of the flowers on top to satisfy the last Mission Task.

You should now only have to extract the 12th child soldier (the commander) and the prisoner out of the mission area by vehicle. That will fulfill the last two tasks.

Main Ops 26: Hunting Down

As before, quickly make your way to the area just north of Guard Post 14 and take out all six of the men in the group. Extract all of them Before moving to Ditadi Abandoned Village, look north of here towards Kiziba Camp for a jackal and extract it to complete the sixth Mission Task. The final Mission Tasks should be both completed at Ditadi Abandoned Village. When you reach the village, locate the four prisoners and extract them, then look around the village for the intel file that shows you the trafficker's route. When you've finished these tasks, put the trafficker down and Fulton him, then use the delivery point in the village to leave the mission area.

Main Ops 27: Root Cause

If you arrive at night, you can tranquilize some of the soldiers on the way up the hill and reach the prisoner before he gets into the truck. Tranquilize him or just get close to him if he starts walking over to it, then put him in the passenger seat and drive away yourself. Going north up the road with the target is a quick way out.

Main Ops 28: Code Talker

These Mission Tasks are simple, but there's a big source of tedium coming from the initial sniper battle with the Skulls. You'll want to either enter the mission with a tranquilizing rifle or call one in when you get there so you can slowly pick them all down. To do this, hide behind the rock you start out next to when the Skull cutscene plays, then crawl along the ground and fire at the Skulls when you have a good line of sight on them. If spotted, not much different will happen aside from the potential melee attack from one of the Skulls; always keep an eye on your surroundings and walk away from where she'll appear, then try to bop her with your Wu S.Pistol to speed up her demise. When all four Skulls are passed out, Fulton them back to base and reach the mansion.

Do not waste your time by Fultoning everyone away from the mansion before you reach Code Talker, because they'll just respawn when you get to him. Instead, rush into the mansion and get to the basement as soon as you can, and then call a chopper on the northern LZ as soon as you have Code Talker on your back. Sneak out the back door and climb up the slope leading to the LZ, but put Code Talker down behind a rock. You'll want to shoot all soldiers in your way in the legs so they can become tranquilized, then Fulton them so they're out of the mission area. Bring Code Talker a bit forward until you spot a tank; try to get around it if you can, but if you get spotted, bum-rush the tank and try to extract it before it starts moving. If you start the extraction process and the tank moves away afterwards, the process is not disrupted.

With the tank and all future threats out of the way, take the completely unharmed Code Talker to the chopper and finish the mission.

Main Ops 29: Metallic Archaea

Bring your strongest grenade launcher, which is hopefully the Hail MGR-4 at *7, and wear the Battle Dress and bandana like you did to play Main Ops 42 the first time. Have Quiet use the Sinful Butterfly and wait for her to deplete a Skull's armor in one shot. After that, you and Quiet should whittle down that particular Skull's health until he collapses; extract him when he's on the ground, and then continue this process for the other Skulls until they're all defeated and headed to Mother Base. As you do this, make sure to just avoid the puppet soldiers as much as you can so you're not grabbed by one. Any remaining soldiers will pass out after all Skulls have been defeated, so if you feel like extracting them, you can. It shouldn't take too many tries to pull all of this off.

Main Ops 30: Skull Face

These Mission Tasks are incredibly easy, since all you have to do for most of them is extract things. Just make sure you give the game enough time to replace the red containers if you recently made a return trip and Fultoned some of them. As for the cassette tape, proceed through the mission like usual until you reach the staircase leading up to Skull Face's helipad. Go down the stairs south of the helipad and reach the top of the elevator for the cassette tape.

Main Ops 31: Sahelanthropus

To do this as fast as possible, wear a Battle Dress and bandana and bring the Hail MGR-4 grenade launcher (*7 or so), the FB MR R-Launcher (*5 or so), and a damaging pistol. These are the weapons suggested for Main Ops 50, so this should be a piece of cake compared to that mission. Just aim for the head until the head is destroyed and then prolong the battle long enough so that the other child appears; shoot him with your pistol before he disappears to finish the third mission task, then defeat Sahelanthropus to successfully complete everything.

As usual, the recommended loadout includes C4, D-Dog, a sneaking suit, and your Wu S.Pistol.

Main Ops 32: To Know Too Much

These Mission Tasks can be completed in two runs of the mission. First is a run where you reach the CIA agent before he's discovered (he's in the sand on a dotted path leading up to the main path towards Lamar Khaate Palace); instead of extracting him right away, take him with you to Lamar Khaate Palace and Shago Village as you extract the prisoners being held there. After saving both prisoners, Fulton the CIA agent and call it a day.

For the next run, allow the search team in Walker Gears to locate the prisoner, which will lead to them calling a transport truck driver. Fulton all four members of the search team and their Walker Gears before the driver arrives, then let the driver take the agent to Lamar Khaate Palace. Let the soldiers her call for another guy to show up in a balaclava (a black mask covering his entire face) who is meant to kill the agent. Tranquilize and extract him as well as the man who drove the prisoner here, and you should be ready to finish the mission. There should be a material container here at Lamar Khaate Palace that you can use to finish the mission quickly.

Main Ops 33: [Subsistence] C2W

You should start this run by heading directly to Wialo Village, stopping at Guard Post 23 if you want to have a gun early. The two prisoners held here are on the west side of the village; if you have a hard time finding them, try interrogating some soldiers until you can learn their positions and extract them. After that, look on the map for a crack that you can climb just south of the Eastern Communications Outpost. The crack will take you to a high path leading northwest that may be protected by two wolves; just let them pounce on you so you can whack them away and extract them.

Right before a cliffside that allows you to look over the entire outpost is a slanted rock slope, which is hiding a large rough diamond on top of it. Grab this gem and you'll finish another Mission Task. The bulk of what's left to do relates simply to the comms equipment. Identify the three antennas by using your binoculars and then, if you want to remain hidden, work on Fultoning absolutely everyone out of the area very carefully. Remember that you can leave the area to trigger a checkpoint, which will save your progress on removing the soldiers. When the coast is clear, look inside one of the buildings to find the outpost's transmitter, which you should destroy for the related Mission Task, then destroy the three radars to finish the main objective. After that, Fulton the material container in the middle of the base, finishing the final Mission Task. You should be able to find another container on the road a bit north of here that you can use to return to the ACC.

Main Ops 34: [Extreme] Backup, Back Down

There are a minimum of two separate Mission Task runs, which you can do in whichever order you feel like. The first focuses on prisoners and the weapon being transported, and the other is for eliminating all vehicles. You should bring D-Dog for the prisoners and D-Horse for the vehicles. EMN mines are also a huge help for the vehicle run.

Land at the southwest LZ. When looking for prisoners, you should look for one in the mountain path west of Guard Post 15; this is one of two time-sensitive prisoners, and you'll want to get to him as soon as possible.m You'll want to extract all four soldiers looking for this (1/6) Prisoner, then extract the prisoner himself. After this, return to the approximate location of the southwest LZ and head north into some sand dunes for the second (2/6) Prisoner. From there, run to Lamar Khaate Palace, where you'll be able to find another (3/6) Prisoner held in a cell. From here, go north and look around the river for the fourth (4/6) Prisoner, then go to the Wakh Sind Barracks for the last standard (5/6) Prisoner. The last (6/6) Prisoner will be taken around in a four-wheel drive, so once you have the first few prisoners or so, focus on bringing this guy back as soon as you can. You should also aim to extract the weapon being carried by one of the trucks in this run if you can, but you can always replay the mission later for this exact Mission Task. Stop the truck with an EMN mine, D-Horse, or some other means so you can secure the weapon intact. You must pick up the weapon yourself, you cannot extract the truck with the weapon inside for it to count. You can also do this in the vehicle attack run.

When you're ready to wipe out all seven enemy vehicles, start the mission at the northern LZ and sit by the rock you were at for the S Rank tactics (if you don't know this place, just hide anywhere), and use either D-Horse or EMN mines to disable tanks so you can extract them. This is going to consist of a lot of waiting around, so you may also want to consider simply running around and blowing the vehicles up instead. There are seven vehicles that you need to defeat/extract; the four-wheel drive carrying a prisoner and the vehicle carrying a special weapon do not count, but the latter will be passing into this point from the north if you haven't already obtained the weapon. If you find that you have some downtime, there should be a vehicle parked inside Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost if you want to Fulton it early. The two last vehicles will likely not be fast enough to reach your hiding spot before time runs out, so you'll want to approach them yourself and get rid of them before the clock runs down. You can blow these last two up if you want to, since you only need to eliminate them for the Mission Task. Once you've stopped all seven vehicles, three tanks and a chopper should appear; the tanks are involved in the last of a chain of related Mission Tasks. These only appear after defeating all other vehicles, and you must extract all three to complete the final task. Leave via chopper extraction to finish the mission after eliminating all four vehicles.

Main Ops 35: Cursed Legacy

If you are yet to complete the third Mission Task, you'll want to replay the mission as you've been encouraged to before, but make sure all soldiers around both containers have been eliminated in some fashion. For the other three Mission Tasks, you'll want to land at the northern LZ and run west until D-Dog finds some jackals in the distance. The large rough diamond is within their territory; tranquilize them all and look around for the sparkling of the gem, then run east to the mansion. Here, you need to find intel on the guard captain's location, and then extract that captain. You can interrogate soldiers to find the guard captain, but this won't count to the Mission Task. This is, however, what you should do, because for some brilliant reason the captain is in the same room as the intel detailing where he is. Slip into the mansion and find the captain, then look around for the intel so you can scan it. Then either trigger a checkpoint or finish the mission as usual.

Main Ops 36: [Total Stealth] Footprints of Phantoms

When starting this mission, head towards the fork in the road at the southern edge of the village, where you'll find the truck that you need to extract. Being the Total Stealth version of this mission, you'll really want to just make it a main priority to Fulton everyone and everything out of here, including the two prisoners and the set of Walker Gears when it's safe to do so. D-Dog will be able to identify the location of the digitalis (lutea) for your map, but you can also just find it at the top of the rock structure in the middle of the area. If you've neutralized everyone in the base, you can call the chopper in to the LZ here, which is conveniently right on top of this rock structure.

Main Ops 37: [Extreme] Traitor's Caravan

To make things easy when fighting the Skulls, bring your best sleep grenades with you. The infinity bandana wouldn't hurt if you don't have remarkable sleep grenades. Everything can be done in one run, if done correctly.

The escort unit's route can be determined by intel found in a tent at Guard Post 14; just stop by for a spell and do what you have to in order to reach the intel. Next (or first, if you've already found this intel before), go to Nova Braga Airport and try to overlook the place when the escort unit appears. Try to identify the transport truck and the escort unit, which is not only a Mission Task, but is useful for keeping track of the vehicle, and then try to mark the transport truck driver. You'll then want to stay around the western wall by a small platform to safely hear a (1/3) Conversation between the truck driver and nearby soldiers. The next destination is Guard Post 12; you can head there right away as soon as the first conversation has ended, if you want. At around the same time the convoy reaches the guard post, a four-wheel drive with some Zero Risk Security soldiers will appear, which you can identify with your Int-Scope. Mark them when you can, then turn your attention to the truck driver and use the microphone on the scope to hear the second (2/3) Conversation. As soon as this conversation ends, quickly get to the northern entrance of Kiziba Camp and wait for the convoy to arrive here.

The final (3/3) Conversation will occur west of some resource containers. Try to hide somewhere in the vicinity of them until you hear the end of this conversation, then crawl along the ground behind some wooden containers, which should give you enough distance to cause the Skulls to appear. With your cover in play, you should be able to toss sleep grenades at them until they're all conked out. Try to extract them if you can, then go for the transport truck driver and the target vehicle. All that should remain now are the ZRS soldiers, which are easily located if you marked them earlier. If not, they should be stunned on the ground a bit down the road south of here; D-Dog should be able to find them easily. That'll be the last thing you have to do, so leave the mission area however you please and be done with the mission for good.

Main Ops 38: Extraordinary

This may require two playthroughs, unless you got the third objective done on your S Rank playthrough. If not, then equip the Stun Arm and fully charge it when in the middle of the ruins to knock the entire place out. Then grab the film canister (use the intel picture for a clue) before reinforcements arrive. You can find a griffon vulture on the way from Spugmay Keep to the LZ closest to it, but it might be immobile on a cliffisde. If so, shoot near the cliff with a weapon to make it take to the air and tranquilize it mid-flight. The prisoner extraction is self-explanatory. Just get to the guard post and Fulton the guy out.

Main Ops 39: [Total Stealth] Over the Fence

This can be done in one run, and uses the same strategies as with Main Ops 05. Use the LZ south of the Wakh Sind Barracks and extract as many soldiers you deem necessary in order to reach the prisoner. A four-wheel drive should pass through the area for a little bit, assuming you're booking it from the LZ to the barracks, and you should be able to stop the driver before he gets away to fulfill the fourth Mission Task.

Look on the map for a crack in the wall that you can use to bypass the main entrance to the higher region of the barracks. With D-Dog accompanying you, you should be able to find a prisoner high up on the rocks. Extract him, then look into the portable buildings in the main section of the barracks for some blueprints to pick up. Now all that's left to do is to Fulton the engineer inside the building; when you find him, carry him to the hole in the roof of the building he's in and Fulton him out from underneath the hole. This can be done with even the Fulton Wormhole to fulfill the related Mission Task.

With the final objective out of the way, use a material container to lift yourself back up to the ACC.

Main Ops 40: [Extreme] Cloaked in Silence

Completing all four Mission Tasks here should be almost as easy as it was in Main Ops 11. However, this time Quiet is aware of your supply drop trick, and you can only use the trick on her if you stand out of cover when the supplies are less than 10m above her head. This will force her to shoot, preventing her from having enough time to move out of the way. Keep dropping supplies on her like this without being hit at all (one shot will kill you) until you finish the mission.

Main Ops 41: Proxy War Without End

This set of Mission Tasks is best done in two runs, one of which is partial. The first is similar to your S Rank run, so you may be able to skip it. You'll want to extract all four land vehicles, eliminate the gunship, and follow it to its crash site to find a set of blueprints. This will leave only two Mission Tasks remaining, both of which revolve around the armored column's commander, who will be arriving at Nova Braga Airport.

For your second, partial run, land at the middle LZ like before and head to the west side of the airport. The commander will eventually reach one of the smaller rooms in the building west of the central building at around 10-11PM. When he's inside, get in there and knock him out for an extraction, then look around the room for a hidden large diamond on one of the shelves. Once you're done with these, leave the airport to be at a far enough distance for a checkpoint to trigger and you'll be safe to abort to the ACC.

Main Ops 42: [Extreme] Metallic Archaea

Bring your strongest grenade launcher, which is hopefully the Hail MGR-4 at *7, and wear the Battle Dress and bandana like you did to play this mission the first time. Have Quiet use the Sinful Butterfly and wait for her to deplete a Skull's armor in one shot. After that, you and Quiet should whittle down that particular Skull's health until he collapses; extract him when he's on the ground, and then continue this process for the other Skulls until they're all defeated and headed to Mother Base. As you do this, make sure to just avoid the puppet soldiers as much as you can so you're not grabbed by one. Any remaining soldiers will pass out after all Skulls have been defeated, so if you feel like extracting them, you can. It shouldn't take too many tries to pull all of this off, even though it's an extreme mission.

Main Ops 43: Shining Lights, Even in Death

You will complete both mission tasks by finishing the mission, so there's no need to replay this mission.

Main Ops 44: [Total Stealth] Pitch Dark

These Mission Tasks require two runs. For the first, start the mission at night (which you should already be doing), and bring a stun arm. The infinity bandana wouldn't hurt either.

D-Dog can very easily find the children in Masa Village sleeping in the same building together; use the stun arm's overcharged blast to stun them all, allowing you to Fulton them without using tranquilizer rounds. From the village, you can use the delivery point to get to Mfinda Oilfield quickly. Once inside, start working on Fultoning everyone out and shooting all the lights, triggering checkpoints by running out of the base so you don't have to re-Fulton the soldiers again. Clear the entire place out, then run past the south exit with D-Dog to locate a lappet-faced vulture, which you need to extract. To leave the hotzone before four Walker Gears seal the place off, you need to blow the tank while near a resource container, then get onto one ASAP and extract yourself before they arrive. On a second run, just Fulton the Walker Gears before you finish the mission.

Main Ops 45: A Quiet Exit

You'll want to use the same items you used for the S Rank run, but you may also want to consider using armor parasites with the parasite suit. You'll need to run up to every vehicle before Quiet manages to destroy it, then extract it when it isn't moving. It's a very tedious and frustrating process to extract every single vehicle, but if you find yourself dying repetitively, you may want to consider using the Chicken Hat when asked. The hat isn't beneficial in itself, but failing with it leads to the Li'l Chick Hat, which reduces your score to 0 at the benefit of never being spotted. This is basically the easiest the mission will get, which you can do freely since you don't need to care about points this time. I personally had the most luck with the armor parasites; those things make you nearly immune to all damage. Quiet's supply drops include parasite resupplies as well.

Main Ops 46: Truth: The Man Who Sold the World

As with the prologue, you're going to be skipping a lot of cutscenes and crawling very slowly for most of the mission. The difference here is that most of the end of the mission is cut out and the Mission Tasks are different, what with the Man on Fire and all. Kill all six enemies at the hospital entrance and pick up their weapons and ammo. When the Man on Fire is in the building after you try to leave, blast him with at least 20 shots. You'll get another chance outside the hospital if necessary, as long as you don't skip the upcoming cutscene.

Main Ops 47: [Total Stealth] The War Economy

This process is the same as it was for Main Ops 21. If you went through the S Rank suggestions provided for this mission, you should have the first five Mission Tasks taken care of already. Now all you have to focus on is the chopper and, more annoyingly, listening to four conversations between the official and the arms dealer. If you haven't done the first five tasks in the S Rank run, you can easily overlap them after doing the sixth Mission Task, so there's no worry of doing things out of order. Make sure you bring C4 for this mission and have the Wormhole Fulton unlocked. The stun arm would help drastically as well.

There's an easy way of listening to all four conversations without having to follow the pair of targets around, being in their truck, or anything like that. You'll want to pick the lock on the gate south of the east entrance to the airport, then locate the two sets of buildings in this area that run north to south. The set you'll want to be on top of is the one furthest to the west, which has a gas tank on the ground to the left of it. There'll be a ladder at the north end that you can climb to the roof, and this is where you'll spend a lot of your time. Park yourself on the southern end of this first building, then wait for the gunship to arrive (remember where it hovers above the building for later) and focus your binoculars into the window of the main building so you can hear the first (1/4) Conversation.

When the first conversation ends, head to the northern edge of this roof and look for a blue hangar with a truck inside. They'll be getting in this truck soon, but you have time to Fulton any nearby enemies if they pose some kind of threat. After they reach the truck, they'll have another (2/4) Conversation and be on their way to another hangar. When they start to get into their truck, run south to the other rooftop and jump (the same key/button as climbing) as you sprint towards it so you can make it across. If you'd like to get your objectives done in one run, then sprint towards the hangar that they're headed towards (there are some red material containers inside) so you can prep to take out any Walker Gears that approach the hangar. Listen outside as they have their next (3/4) Conversation and remember this place, because these material containers are required for the final Mission Task.

When they're done talking, rush to the main building, take out as many enemies as you can, and try to get to the roof where the chopper dropped the arms dealer off before. You'll want to plant C4 on the spot that the chopper will drop down onto when it tries to pick the arms dealer up. As for the final (4/4) Conversation, standing on the roof should suffice for hearing it. Take care of the enemies with a Fulton extraction, or blow the C4 when the chopper is hanging directly above it with the targets inside and grab the blueprints that fall out. To finish the mission off for good, return to the hangar where the third conversation took place and Fulton yourself out with the final container you extract.

Main Ops 48: [Extreme] Code Talker

This will be just about the exact same process as with the standard version of this mission, except you have to be extremely careful about taking damage and performing headshots.

These Mission Tasks are simple, but there's a big source of tedium coming from the initial sniper battle with the Skulls. You'll want to either enter the mission with a tranquilizing rifle or call one in when you get there so you can slowly pick them all down. To do this, hide behind the rock you start out next to when the Skull cutscene plays, then crawl along the ground and fire at the Skulls when you have a good line of sight on them. If spotted, not much different will happen aside from the potential melee attack from one of the Skulls; always keep an eye on your surroundings and walk away from where she'll appear, then try to bop her with your Wu S.Pistol to speed up her demise. When all four Skulls are passed out, Fulton them back to base and reach the mansion.

Do not waste your time by Fultoning everyone away from the mansion before you reach Code Talker, because they'll just respawn when you get to him. Instead, rush into the mansion and get to the basement as soon as you can, and then call a chopper on the northern LZ as soon as you have Code Talker on your back. Sneak out the back door and climb up the slope leading to the LZ, but put Code Talker down behind a rock. You'll want to shoot all soldiers in your way in the legs so they can become tranquilized, then Fulton them so they're out of the mission area. Bring Code Talker a bit forward until you spot a tank; try to get around it if you can, but if you get spotted, bum-rush the tank and try to extract it before it starts moving. If you start the extraction process and the tank moves away afterwards, the process is not disrupted.

With the tank and all future threats out of the way, take the completely unharmed Code Talker to the chopper and finish the mission.

Main Ops 49: [Subsistence] Occupation Forces

If you've gotten the S Rank with the strategy provided for both the story and S Rank pages, then the only two remaining Mission Tasks should be to secure the deployment plans and to extract the prisoner at Sakhra Ee Village. Since you can quit out of a mission after triggering a checkpoint, this cleanup will be much less painful than it might have otherwise been.

Just infiltrate the village from the east, preferably at night, and interrogate a guard to get the location of either the prisoner or the intel (or both). Continue to interrogate them until they spill the beans on both, then grab both and leave so you can trigger a checkpoint. After that, just abort the mission.

Main Ops 50: [Extreme] Sahelanthropus

To do this as fast as possible, wear a Battle Dress and bandana and bring the Hail MGR-4 grenade launcher (*7 or so), the FB MR R-Launcher (*5 or so), and a damaging pistol. These are the weapons and items suggested for just completing Main Ops 50, so this should be a very similar experience. Just aim for the head until the head is destroyed and then prolong the battle long enough so that the other child appears; shoot him with your pistol before he disappears to finish the third mission task, then defeat Sahelanthropus to successfully complete this mission for good.

• Executed

  Complete all mission tasks.

  
  

There are 157 Side Ops in the game, most of which come from a similar set of Side Ops. You need to complete all of them to get the related achievements, but that's fortunately not going to be very hard, as almost all of these missions are a cakewalk. If you're finding that a mission you're looking for isn't available, try completing other missions until it appears.

Some Side Ops will be repeatable once all other available and incomplete Side Ops in that area of the map are done. Other Side Ops that haven't been completed may not show up if another incomplete one is already active and takes place in the same general region of the same map. If you want to finish a specific set of Side Ops, then the best thing to do is just to go for everything you haven't done, which will eventually unlock them all.

You can quickly return to the ACC by pausing and doing it that way. Doing this is much faster than having to leave the area by chopper every single time you finish a mission.

Side Ops 001-004: Extract Interpreter

These are missions that you'll want to do as soon as you get them. Extracting these interpreters will allow you to interrogate soldiers who speak the language. D-Dog is especially useful for locating just about anyone, so bring him along if you want to get these done faster. You should be able to interrogate everyone once you've got all four interpreters.

Side Ops 005-010: Secure the Blueprint

Blueprints are necessary for developing certain weapons and items, and you need all of them for an achievement. When you approach the mission area, interrogate a soldier and hopefully he'll tell you where the blueprint is. Just securing it will complete the mission.

Side Ops 011-026: Extract the Highly-Skilled Soldier

Some soldiers marked as being better than most others can be found through these missions. Simply extract them and bring them back to Mother Base.

Side Ops 027-046: Prisoner Extraction

Highly skilled prisoners are located in different places around the two maps, with skills that make them important enough for you to rescue. These are just like the Side Ops where you extract soldiers, but prisoners obviously don't fight back.

Side Ops 047-050: Capture the Animals

There are some animals that the Animal Platform could use. Just knock them out and Fulton them to bring them there. The sonar on your mechanical hand should help you find them, but D-Dog is far better at sniffing out animals. Finishing Side Ops 050 will allow for the development of the Fulton Wormhole, which allows for un-interruptable extractions, even indoors.

Side Ops 051-060: Extract the Wandering Mother Base Soldiers

These soldiers used to work for Big Boss in the 70's as a part of Militaires Sans Frontières, or MSF. Being alone in the world for ten years has made these men go crazy, which you'll see when you try to approach one. You'll have to pacify them from a distance or get inside a box and play Love Deterrence near them to get their attention. When they get close to the box, grab them and knock them out so they can return to the new Mother Base. If you have Mobility +3 for your Stun Arm, then you should be able to outrun even these guys. It might not be too useful, though.

Every soldier you rescue has a photo from the old days, which you can show Paz on the Medical Platform.

Side Ops 061-065: Unlucky Dog

One of the Diamond Dogs was captured as he was rescuing a prisoner. Reach their last point of contact and save both them and the prisoner they were after.

Side Ops 066-081: Eliminate the Heavy Infantry

Soldiers decked out in some seriously sturdy body armor are positioned at the locations marked for these Side Ops. The calmest way to get rid of them all would be to hold them all up (there are never a lot of them) so you can Fulton them out. You can alternatively just blast them with bullets, but that's not as safe, of course.

Side Ops 082: Make Contact with Emmerich

A mission required to progress the story. Travel to Serak Power Plant and reach the back of the base, where you'll find a large gate with a locked door to the right of it. Try to pick the lock to finish the mission and enter one of the Main Ops.

Side Ops 083-092: Mine Clearing

A bunch of claymores are deployed in some areas on the map. D-Dog can sniff them out pretty quickly, but you can also just airstrike the place and get rid of them like that.

• Cleared

  Complete all "Mine Clearing" SIDE OPS.

  
  

Side Ops 093-106: Eliminate the Armored Vehicle Unit

The units you need to get rid of for these missions consist of at least one tank or gunship and a squad of infantry escorts. Everyone in these units should be spread out enough for you to hold up and Fulton the soldiers, which will allow you to Fulton any tanks that may be present. You'll have to shoot down gunships.

Side Ops 107-109: Extract the Legendary Gunsmith

These three missions are all aimed to extract one gunsmith; you'll just happen to extract two of his apprentices instead before you finally pin down his location. It's very important that you find this gunsmith as soon as you can, because he'll be able to open up the possibility of using attachments for some weapons on others, if they're similar enough. The latter two missions may not appear until you finish Side Ops 006-010 and Side Ops 143-144, which are story-related.

Side Ops 110: Extract Materials Containers

All you have to do here is get some materials containers, which requires a Fulton upgrade that you very likely have by the time you get this mission.

Side Ops 111: Visit Quiet

A mission required to advance the story. Simply visit Quiet's cell on the Medical Platform to make her available for deployment as a buddy.

Side Ops 112: Intel Agent Extraction

A crucially important Intel Team staff member has been taken prisoner. Rescue him at Da Ghwandai Khar and bring him home.

Side Ops 113: Eli's Challenge

After his defeat in Africa as the White Mamba, Eli wants to challenge you back at the R&D Platform. Take whatever strong non-lethal weapons you can develop with you to make things easier. A shotgun made to stun can take him down in five hits or so. You'll get his conch shell as a reward.

Side Ops 114-127: Eliminate the Tank Unit

Similar to Side Ops 093-106, you just need to get rid of an armored vehicle unit that always consists of tanks and soldiers, and occasionally a gunship. Fultoning them out is almost always the best thing to do, but you can't Fulton a gunship, so you'll have to shoot it down.

Side Ops 128-142: Eliminate the Wandering Puppets

The wandering puppets are soldiers that have been influenced by the Skulls. They cannot be knocked out by a combat takedown, so either kill them, tranquilize them, or grab them and choke them out until they're unconscious. You can Fulton sleeping puppets back to base without consequence.

Side Ops 143: Extract the AI Pod

Return to the Afghanistan Central Base camp and reclaim Huey's AI pod that remained in his lab. Activating it will cause it to skyrocket back to Mother Base.

Side Ops 144: Secure the Remains of the Man on Fire

The Soviets have recovered the body of the Man on Fire and have brought him to Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost. His body is laying out in the open on the helipad in the yard of the main building. Get close to it to put the man to rest for good.

Side Ops 145-149: Search for the Escaped Children

To continue the story, you'll need to eventually bring all five children back to Mother Base. They're spread out in multiple areas, and the only way you can Fulton them (as this is far faster to do than extracting by chopper) is to defeat Eli in Side Ops 113 for the upgrade blueprints. Finding the children isn't hard if you have D-Dog with you. Bring an air shotgun or a similar weapon for the third child, because there are two bears walking around the area where he's hiding.

Side Ops 150: Secure Quiet

Deep into Chapter 2, after fulfilling some requirements on the page for Chapter 2, you'll be asked to bring Quiet back to base; she's been captured by the Soviets. Bring the Hail MGR-4 grenade launcher, the FB MR R-Launcher, the Uragan-5 pistol if you have it (if not, then just bring the Wu S.Pistol like usual), and the best Battle Dress you have as a uniform. For headgear, put the standard bandana on if you have it. You should be able to get an S Rank your first time through Main Ops 45, so don't put the Infinity Bandana on. It'd also be handy if you have your bionic arm upgraded to the most potential it could possibly have. If you couldn't tell, you'll be pushed immediately into Main Ops 45, and it's going to be a pretty big fight.

Sneak into the building surrounded by the most soldiers when you reach the guard post, where you'll find some intel on Quiet's location.

Side Ops 151-157: Target Practice

There are target practice sites on each main platform of Mother Base. Bring something with a fair magazine size, like the Riot-SMG, and break all the targets at each of these locations.

• Undertaken

  Complete a SIDE OP.

  
  

• Achieved

  Complete all SIDE OPS.

  
  

It's highly suggested that you completely explore all of Afghanistan once you unlock the Combat Unit, as doing so properly will greatly open up movement opportunities and provide you with loads of resources in the early game which will benefit you later. The main objectives of these free roam pages are to open up fast travel points and landing zones, as well as capture every possible outpost for emblem parts. If you want to get every emblem part, then you'll want to be very careful about where you go and need to make sure you're keeping track of yourself due to the sheer amount of outposts in Afghanistan alone.

Collectibles found at every location are listed here as well, since so many of them are out on the field somewhere.

• Radios: Contain music tapes. Songs from this era are nice to have.
• Delivery Points: Fast travel points that require you to have the invoice from the delivery points in order to work. Very useful, as it's faster than using the chopper to leave and come back.
• Anti-Air Radars: Destroying these allows your chopper to land at the base you're at. It might not be a good idea if enemies are nearby, but if you're clearing the place out then it'll be fine.

Afghanistan Central Base Camp

Try to come for this place at night, as that will give you plenty of time to stay in the dark. There is a fairly dense population of soldiers here and a high amount of them to cover the whole base. Both a music tape and the delivery point are on the east side of the camp, while the anti-air radar is to the west. You can find several resource containers here; be sure to take as many as you can find before you leave.

Da Ghwandai Khar

Da Ghwandai Khar can be difficult to approach if you go straight into it instead of from the sides. The eastern side is usually a good way to get in. There's a music tape on the eastern side, and blueprints aren't too far away either. The surplus of buildings makes it easy to get through undetected.

Smasei Fort (Da Smasei Laman)

Approach this fort from the western flank and scope out as many enemies as you can. As you slink around, interrogate them to find out where some of their important goodies are. There's a radio with a music tape underneath a tent near the cave system entrance, and a blueprint is right next to it. There's also a pretty rough-sounding tape near the locked toilet by the same tent with the blueprints underneath it.

When coming here outside of Main Ops 06, there won't be any soldiers inside the caves. That makes clearing the place out much faster.

Eastern Communications Outpost

This outpost is small, but has a fair amount of soldiers patrolling it. Head to the outpost from the southern road you can pick up the delivery invoice, then slowly Fulton enemies inside to clear the place out. Don't forget to grab a music tape inside, and blow up the anti-air radar. There are two resource containers that you can use to get back to the ACC when you're done here.

Lamar Khaate Palace

There are several enemies outside and inside the ruins of the palace. You can easily get by the outer forces by just traveling south into the building, allowing yourself to clear the place out from the inside and work outwards. The delivery point is just outside the main entrance to the palace, and the anti-air radar is on the northern side of it. Try to save the raw material container for last so you can Fulton it while on top; holding the same key/button while doing this should allow you to quickly reach the ACC again. The music tape and blueprints here are on the upper floors of the palace, and are right next to each other.

Mountain Relay Base

Your first time coming here is probably going to be during Main Ops 06. When you have the time to clear the place out properly, get the shipping invoice from the delivery point on the left side of the road coming in from the west. Scope out the rest of the base from here and then work your way through the place. There are lots of resource containers for you to steal here as well. There's a music tape under a tent just before you cross the large bridge eastward.

There's another cassette tape near a toilet on the other side of the bridge; you may have to interrogate a soldier to find its exact position, but it's a pretty good tape. There doesn't seem to be an anti-air radar here.

OKB Zero

You won't be able to come here until Main Ops 30, and you shouldn't have to come back until one of the Side Ops brings you here. You'll find it very hard to sneak into the base's front door, as there are well-placed spotlights to deter any nighttime sneaking, but there are far few Russians patrolling the place as there were XOF soldiers in the main story. There are quite a few large material containers placed around the base; Fulton them out if you need them. There are no anti-air radars or delivery points here, so making return trips will always be a hassle.

Sakhra Ee Village (Qarya Sakhra Ee)

It's hard to attack this place from the west; there's a gun emplacement on the end of a long strip of road that can really blast you if you're spotted, but the west side is where the delivery point is. The anti-air radar is on the east side of the village, and you can find The Final Countdown near the southern tip of the village (make a marker on your map until you can hear the song playing).

Serak Power Plant

The first thing here for you to do is grab the invoice on the delivery point, which is a little ways behind the soldier that may be posted near a spotlight at the entrance to the power plant. The large anti-air radar should be easy to spot as you continue northeast to the back of the area. Aside from this, there aren't a whole lot of supplies to take out of the plant, but there is a music tape in one of the buildings in the back left corner.

Shago Village (Da Shago Kallai)

The village is fairly large, so try to come here at night. Try to clear the outskirts of the village first before moving in towards the main building, as this will remove any exterior threats when you're at the main building itself. There's a music tape in the main building alongside a bunch of materials, and an anti-air radar is positioned nearby as well. Debatably more important is the delivery point northeast of the main building.

Wakh Sind Barracks

This place is very large. You'll want to start from the bottom of the area and secure some large resource containers and the delivery point, which are right next to each other. The anti-air radar here is near a bunch of material containers. The song here can be found in the barracks on the eastern side, inside one of the metal portable buildings.

Wialo Village (Da Wialo Kallai)

There's a lot of stuff here to take for yourself, but there are a lot of Soviet soldiers to protect it as well. The devilry point is near the southern entrance to the village, on the right side of the road. There are also two different sets of blueprints here. Just interrogate soldiers to find out where they are.

Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost

This outpost is very large, and the best way to infiltrate it is to slowly seep into the western side. That way, you'll be able to get to the delivery point without having to backtrack. You can also find a music tape and some blueprints in the main area of the outpost.

01 Afghanistan Central Base Camp, East Guard Post

There are only three soldiers posted here. It's well worth coming here, as there are several resource containers to Fulton back to base. You may want to use one to get back to the ACC quickly.

02 Afgh. Central Base Game, South Guard Post

There are only three soldiers here, just like the next guard post, which you'll likely be visiting shortly after you're done here.

03 Serak Power Plant, NW Guard Post

There are only three soldiers at this guard post. It's easy to take over.

04 Aabe Shifap Ruins, East Guard Post

This guard post has five soldiers at it. Since you're likely going into this place from the west, you'll probably have to tranquilize most enemies instead of hold them up, as it's hard to get around them at night. There are some blueprints inside one of the buildings here, but it's nothing special.

05 Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost, NE Guard Post

You get to take on five soldiers here as opposed to the usual three or four. Just tranquilize one and do the same to the others as they're distracted.

06 Wakh Sind Barracks, NE Guard Post

You can find only four soldiers here. It's really easy to knock them all out or get behind them, and there's not much else to do aside from clear them out.

07 Sakhra Ee Village, NW Guard Post

There's barely anyone here. Like many outposts, you won't find any challenge in neutralizing all the enemies here.

08 Yakho Oboo Supply Outpost, SE Guard Post

There are only four soldiers here, but the guard post is very tightly secured, making it potentially difficult to approach without attacking first.

09 Wakh Sind Barracks, East Guard Post

You might find about three guards here. They're all easy to take care of, so this place will be cleared in a minute or so.

10 Sakhra Ee Village, East Guard Post

There's barely anything here. Just four soldiers or so are walking around one side of the guard post, and they're not protecting a whole lot of useful material.

11 Ghwandai Town, NW Guard Post

There aren't many soldiers here. One of them may even be asleep if you come here at night.

12 Lamar Khaate Palace, North Guard Post

The soldiers here tend to stick in pairs. It's a good idea to just knock out one soldier and do the same to the rest as they try to wake up their friend. There's a radio under the tent here that has a song playing in it.

13 Sakhra Ee Village, South Guard Post

A guard post held together by about four soldiers. One is in a guard tower that's actually in a good position, so you may want to tranquilize him first before moving on to the others.

14 Smasei Fort, West Guard Post

A really small guard post. It doesn't take long to clear the place out.

15 Wialo Village, NW Guard Post

There are only three soldiers here. One should be in the guard tower, which makes him an easy target, and the other two will be walking around very unprotected.

16 Ghwandai Town, SE Guard Post

Just four soldiers patrol this guard post. It's very easy to take over.

17 Smasei Fort, SW Guard Post

Due to the layout of this post, you're going to have a hard time not being spotted if you approach from the south. That's not much of a problem, though, because there are just about five soldiers here.

18 Wialo Village, NE Guard Post

This is one of the rare guard posts that actually has a real song hidden within it. Fortunately, there are only about four soldiers here, so you'll be able to get to it quickly.

19 Eastern Comm. Post, West Guard Post

This guard post is very loosely protected. You can easily sneak up on any of the four soldiers here to learn more about the area and get the place cleared out.

20 Mountain Relay Base, West Guard Post

A fairly populated guard post. This place is pretty far out of reach, so you should really only bother coming here when you have Side Ops 002.

21 Mountain Relay Base, SE Guard Post

There are only four soldiers here. There is very little to this place, which makes it both easy to see the enemies and easy for the enemies to see you.

22 Shago Village, North Guard Post

There are only three soldiers or so walking around. Two of them might be talking to each other, but that's not going to be an issue. There's nothing else here save for a few mortars.

23 Wialo Village, SE Guard Post

Despite this post's larger size, there are only four soldiers here. One is in the guard tower, and you should save him for last. He'll come down the ladder if he sees or hears anything out of the ordinary, giving you the perfect opportunity to hold him up.

24 Spugmay Keep, East Guard Post

There are only three soldiers here. It's very easy to take this place over, especially since you can shoot at the Soviets from the ledge behind the guard post.

25 Shago Village, East Guard Post

This post is really tiny, and it should only have about three soldiers walking around here. It's entirely possible to sneak behind every single one and Fulton them without being seen, but since there are so few soldiers it'd probably be faster to just tranquilize them and get it over with.

You'll be able to freely touch down in Africa after finishing Main Ops 13. You should only do so after you do more main missions, because doing some more work will make traversing Africa a bit easier, like extracting more interpreters, for example. You should also try to put capture cages down so you can work on finding some rare animals while you're working through these areas.

Bampeve Plantation

It can be very hard to sneak into the plantation from the eastern road, but that's where you'll find the anti-air radar. You can find blueprints for the Uragan-5 inside a tent at the northern end of the plantation, and there's a music tape in a building a bit north of that. The delivery point's location is a bit odd, because on the map it looks like the middle of the plantation; guards stop moving past the middle as it progresses down the road to the southwest, so it may or may not be at the edge of the plantation's actual location. Either way, look for it around the halfway point on the map to find it.

Ditadi Abandoned Village

Move upwards to the top of the hill one way or another until you get to the top, where you'll find a music tape and some blueprints. There's a delivery point on the road as it bends to the north as well, and the anti-air radar is nearby and within sight.

Kiziba Camp

Despite the camp's large size, there aren't as many soldiers as you'd expect there to be while free roaming. The southwest end of the camp is where you'll find the anti-air radar and a music tape. Inside of a wooden building a bit north of these are some blueprints to pick up. The delivery point for this outpost is also nearby, but it's more southeast than southwest.

Kungenga Mine

Kungenga Mine is a very large place with lots of buildings to search. If you get caught at all, you'll find it very hard to continue through the mine. Fortunately, most of the buildings around the crater contain only resources. You can find a delivery point at the northern edge of the crater, and on the eastern edge is the anti-air radar and a music tape. Walk down the wooden path to the right of the entrance to the mine and then look in a tent for some unique blueprints. It should be the first tent you come across.

Lufwa Valley

The location here refers to the mansion, which has a cassette tape and set of blueprints inside. All you have to do outside is find the delivery invoice. That's all there really is to say; it's just a big mansion.

Masa Village (Bwala ya Masa)

The delivery point is at the southern tip of the village, which is probably where you'll be starting from when you come here to raid the place. There's a radio with a music tape in it at the northern end of the village as well.

Mfinda Oilfield

You can find some material containers around the eastern entrance. You can get an invoice there as well, and a music tape is inside of the nearby buildings; blueprints are in the other of the two buildings here. The anti-air radar is more to the west, and is inside the oilfield's walls.

Munoko ya Nioka Station

The delivery point, anti-air radar, and music tape are all in the center of this outpost. The blueprints for a D-Walker flamethrower are here too, but they're in a building.

Ngumba Industrial Zone

The Ngumba Industrial Zone is specific to one of the main missions and lacks any collectibles.

Nova Braga Airport

The anti-air radar, delivery point, AND blueprint are all on the western side of the airport. The delivery point is in the southwest corner, while the other two are near and inside the largest building on the left. There are lots of materials containers at the southwest and northeast corners, so be sure to take those before leaving. On the east side of the airport are some buildings that only have open doors on their second floors, which are always reached by walking up a staircase. Inside one of the rooms in these buildings is a radio with a song playing in it.

01 Kiziba Camp, NW Guard Post

There usually isn't much of interest at guard posts. This one actually has some blueprints, but you can find these exact same blueprints in other specific locations in Africa.

02 Kungenga Mine, NE Guard Post

Nothing of particular interest here. Just tranq the soldiers, get the emblem part, and continue onwards.

03 Bampeve Plantation, SE Guard Post

Not much to do here but clear the place at least once. Doing so will give you the only noteworthy reward you can earn from this guard post.

04 Bampeve Plantation, SW Guard Post

There are a fair amount of soldiers and two resource containers here. You can find blueprints for the UN-AAM in a tent, but these blueprints exist in a lot of other places as well.

05 Ditadi Abandoned Village, NE Guard Post

You can find about five soldiers here, and all there is to do here is to wipe the place out for the emblem word.

06 Masa Village, North Guard Post

Nothing here but some soldiers and loose change resources. You won't have to stay here for very long.

07 Kungenga Mine, West Guard Post

When entering from the south, the first major item you'll come across will be the blueprint in one of the first buildings up the hill. You may have gotten this one before, however. The other significant things here are material containers, all of which are processed.

08 Lufwa Valley, NW Guard Post

You'll be able to find a music tape here, and you'll definitely be able to find it when you get close. The radio is on a table.

09 Ditadi Abandoned Village, North Guard Post

Nothing here but a few resources and soldiers. You'll be able to get through this place quickly, especially at night.

10 Kiziba Camp, SE Guard Post

Again, more scraps are the only things you'll find at this guard post. On the bright side, you will clear this place very quickly.

11 Masa Village, East Guard Post

There are about five soldiers on the ground, with one likely being in the guard tower and two more on the hills acting as snipers. You can only find a blueprint here as part of a Side Ops mission, so there isn't anything here normally.

12 Kiziba Camp, South Guard Post

There should be approximately five or so soldiers here, with a sixth on the hillside to the west in a sniper position. Underneath a tent outside, you'll find blueprints for the UN-AAM. That's just about all there is here.

13 Kungenga Mine, SW Guard Post

You can find the standard amount of enemies here. A strange buzzing in a tent might lead you to a music tape simply titled 204863, and that'll be among your highest priorities for this place. There should be some material containers here as well.

14 Nova Braga Airport, NE Guard Post

Five or six soldiers should be walking around. There's literally nothing here except for them and some of the smaller resource boxes.

15 Ditadi Abandoned Village, South Guard Post

There isn't a whole lot here to discover. You can get a set of blueprints, which is nice, but that's all you'll be getting here.

16 Munoko ya Nioka Station, NE Guard Post

There's not much to do here aside from clearing the post, much like most of the other posts, but you can find some blueprints here as a reward.

17 Ngumba Industrial Zone, West Guard Post

This guard post only loosely exists through the heavy mist outside of the Ngumba Industrial Zone. All you have to do here is capture the place.

18 Nova Braga Airport, East Guard Post

There are seven soldiers here, and they tend to be looking at each other, which makes it hard to take them all out undetected. Like many other outposts, all you have to do is clear the area, so get to it so you can go somewhere else.

19 Munoko ya Nioka Station, NW Guard Post

The majority of the soldiers at this guard post are on the northern side of the area, but there is one way to the south (at least at night) that you shouldn't forget about. You can also find some large material containers to the north, so bring them back to base and use one to lift yourself back there as well if you need to.

20 Ngumba Industrial Zone, SW Guard Post

The only thing you need to do here is clear the guard post.

21 Munoko ya Nioka Station, West Guard Post

There is an item of great importance here, and that is the music tape for the main theme of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. It doesn't have any special benefits or anything, but you're going to enjoy the song if you haven't heard it before. The tape is in a building.

22 Nova Braga Airport, South Guard Post

You can find some blueprints for the Isando on a table here, but you'll very likely have gotten these blueprints somewhere else if you're aiming to take over every outpost. At least there are a few material containers here.

23 Munoko ya Nioka Station, SW Guard Post

Nothing but soldiers and material containers here.