20 Beginner Tips for The Phantom Pain

Since Metal Gear Solid released, everyone has been going crazy over it, including me. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I have made plenty of discoveries that have made playing a million times better. Many of these tips are simple and quick. Some will save you time, some may save your life. Check them out and see if there were any you didn’t know. And don’t worry there are NO SPOILERS  in this post. 

1. Hitting up and down on control pad in map to select helicopter pickup
   • Annoyed with going into the menu every time and selecting supply drop, Heli pickup, or whatever? Just hit “up” or “down” on your control pad in the map to quick select what you need. A million times faster and far less of a headache.
2. Extract everyone, even when they say to kill them
   • There are times where you will be instructed to kill people. DON’T DO IT. Anyone that needs to be killed normally has great stats you can utilize, if you can, fulton them instead.
3. Nothing wrong with killing people you don’t need
   • That being said, don’t be afraid to start killing people when you need to. There will always be more people to fulton, and sometimes it’s just easy to extract the hostage if you kill the three enemies guarding it than trying to sneak past them all.
4. Place C4 as distraction for emergency situations
   • I always place C4 far away from my mission objective (usually on something explosive). I never set it off unless I am about to get caught and have no other option. I’d rather have them go on “Alert” status and walk away from me, than spot me and go into “combat” status.
5. Manually switch people in your staff
   • Kaz does a good job of assigning people at Mother Base, but every now and then go in and check to see if someone should be moved. Maybe someone has “A” in Medical and Support, but your Support team is a lot lower than Medical. Move him over to balance it out.
6. Visit mother base now and again
   • It’s important to visit Mother Base now and again, increases staff morale and there are goodies to find. Not to mention there may be a cutscene here or there.
7. Stay Clean! 
   • While you’re at Mother Base, shower. It’s not just for looks, it increases your reflex time and defenses. Also, enemies can smell you if you stink…seriously, they can.
8. Download the companion app
   • I never download companion apps, but I have the Phantom Pain one. Having a map open at all time in real-time makes sneaking a million times easier.
9. Blow something up with no C4? Find a mortar
   • Need to make something go boom but don’t have any explosives? Find a mortar and you can blow it sky high.
10. Stopping Cars
    • Need to stop a car for whatever reason? Leave a box in the middle of the road, they’re stop (can also use D-horse or a body)
11. Return to ACC button
    • Calling in a Heli for pickup and running to a LZ is pretty annoying. Go to the pause menu and click “Return to ACC” It will immediately put you right back in your ACC. Only do this after you complete a mission, because it restarts you from the closest checkpoint, which isn’t a problem if you just completed a mission.
12. Switch weapons while aiming with Square/X button
    • Simple enough, but could save your life in the right moment.
13. Supply drops can knock people out (hint: useful for one boss fight early in the game)
    • Some pesky guard out of view and not moving? Call in a supply crate on their head. Also, keep this in mind for an early game boss fight, will save tons of time.
14. iDriod has a speaker that can be useful…
    • When you upgrade your iDriod it can play music from speakers which guards will hear. This can call their attention, but it can also save your from being spotted. Hide in a portable toilet, pop in a cassette tape of someone vomiting for twenty seconds (yes it exists), and any enemies investigating will leave you alone.
15. Run and D-Horse will come to you
    • Don’t run to D-Horse, it will only slow you down. Run in the direction you want and D-Horse will run up alongside you. Then you can just hop on all in one motion.
16. Legendary Gunsmith (Not yellow but super important)
    • Really, really important side-op that isn’t listed in yellow. It really should be, but when it pops up, just do it immediately. Seriously…immediately.
17. Interrogate your soldiers to find diamonds
    • On Mother Base you can interrogate your soldiers and they’ll tell you where they hid some diamonds…even if they pretend they didn’t put them there.
18. Disable camera shake in options menu
    • Getting motion sickness from running long distances with that shakey camera? You can turn it off in options.
19. Only auto save so be very careful
    • There is no way to manually save your game so just be careful and pay attention when that save icon pops up.
20. Water gun
    • Everything in Metal Gear Solid has a purpose. A vomiting cassette tape has a purpose, and so does a water gun. You can shoot communication controls to disable base communications. We all know this, but even if you shoot it with a silenced weapon, enemies can hear the bullet impact. They will also see it was sabotaged, ‘cause you know, it has bullet-holes throughout it. But if you spray it with a water gun, it breaks the communications, doesn’t make a sound, and they will think it was just an accident or malfunction.

There you have it, 20 quick simple tips. Which ones did you know? Anything you didn’t know? Leave your own tips in the comments below, just remember, NO SPOILERS.