Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Stealth & Combat

• Pressing the context-sensitive action button (Triangle/Y/E) while prone reduces your profile to near-invisibility, particularly at night.

• You can "knock" anywhere from the command menu. It doesn't require you to be pressed up against a wall so split up guards with magazines and knock to draw them out one by one.

• You'll automatically remain pressed up against a wall without having to hold down the stick/button.

• You can quickly do things like call your helicopter or a supply drop by pushing up or down on the map screen. The Flare Supply grenade can also be used to resupply if you don't have time to go to the menu. Supply drops don't affect your mission rank.

• Try out all your tools in various ways, for example smoke grenades can be used for concealment, but also to help take out a group of unsuspecting enemies while they're distracted or incapacitated by one.

• It's worth interrogating guards whenever possible once you're able to do so, since often they'll permanently mark things like resource locations, other guards, and hidden diamonds on your map. The early game "Capture a Russian interpreter" side op is worth doing right away to understand Soviet soldiers.

• Keeping an eye on the distances from which guards react to various things makes it easier to avoid surprises and plan stealthy approaches. For example the sound of a fulton balloon gets investigated from roughly 30 meters away even if no one can see it, useful for luring out more balloon victims.

• Enemies have less time to react to grenades thrown in a longer arc.

• The game is very lenient about what counts as a "kill" for scoring purposes. Lethal things that do not count as kills include (amongst other things) deaths by barrels or vehicles exploding, watchtower collapses, friendly fire, getting drowned, or falling/getting tossed off a lethal height. Destroying "closed" vehicles like gunships or APCs also don't count as kills.

• Guards are fairly adaptable to your tactics, and the enemy advantages indicated on the map screen are a result of your actions. Use headshots a lot and they'll get helmets, attack at night a lot and they'll get flashlights and NVGs, etc. They'll also start investigating things in pairs if you like to split them up. Specific enemy advantages can be temporarily disabled via combat assignment missions later in the game.

Knocking Out & Fultoning Enemies

• Guards with helmets can still be headshot even with the tranquilizer gun by aiming for the face.

• Body shots tranquilize people with a delay, but don't alert the target or anyone near them. You can take out groups of enemies by purposefully aiming for a body shot on each one, and then waiting for a bit until they all fall asleep near simultaneously.

• Long-range headshots with the tranquilizer gun (i.e. ones fired outside its "red aiming reticle" range) are both an effective way to take out helmetless guards safely, and on missions also worth an easy +2000 points from the score bonuses of a combined headshot and Tactical Takedown.

• If a mission tells you to eliminate someone, you're usually best off fultoning them instead as they and any personal guards they might have tend to have particularly high stats.

• One of the prisoners in the main mission 10 ("Angel with Broken Wings") is always a Transportation Specialist which is the skill that unlocks fultoning heavy equipment and vehicles, making the mission and his rescue worth prioritizing before the rest. Once acquired, eliminating vehicles should be done by fultoning them whenever possible.

• Knocking people out before fultoning them stops them from shouting for help, attracting less attention. Guards seeing someone getting fultoned won't cause a combat alarm, but they will radio it in and put the base on alert status.

• Unconscious guards stuffed in containers or toilets never wake up on their own. Guards held up and ordered on the ground also remain there indefinitely unless you trigger a combat alarm.

Running Mother Base

• Once you get the Fulton device, extract everyone you can until you fill up every slot in every team, that way the game'll automatically assign them to the optimal team and knock the lowest skilled guy on that team into the waiting room. You can also auto-assign everyone at will from the Staff Management menu.

• Once you gain the ability to expand platforms, upgrading the Command Platform gives +5 capacity to all teams, so it might be worth prioritizing.

• If you're strapped for cash, you can always sell off weapon emplacements and unnecessary plants. They're worth quite a bit.

• The Base Development team automatically mines resources as well as refining them, the frequency depends on the team's level.

• Offline projects that require a certain amount of time to finish only count down while the game is running. Online projects (colored yellow with a separate globe icon) tend to take much longer, but do count down even while the game isn't running.

• It's worth visiting Mother Base itself occasionally for various events and such, especially as you build up new facilities. Some items, primarily rough diamonds, can also be found on each platform you construct. Interrogating the staff there will give you their locations as well as provide various tips.

Miscellaneous

• Avoid quitting out of the game during the helicopter ride to a destination, at least on PC this can corrupt your save. The ACC (Aerial Command Center) itself is safe though.

• In freeroam you can return to the chopper instantly from the pause menu without having to call it in. Make sure to get to a checkpoint first though.

• You usually can't complete all the optional objectives on missions on your first attempt. Some require tools you won't acquire until later on like the Cargo Fulton.

• Named areas on the map usually have an anti-air radar that looks like a trailer with a giant dish on top. They're not the same as the comm units which are platforms with a little radar on top. Destroying them lets your helicopter land closer which is useful during side ops.

• After developing helicopter upgrades, they can be applied from the "Customize" menu in the ACC.

• Destroying certain base infrastructure like communications equipment or power systems in freeroam will often have them remain disabled for a time even if you initiate a new mission there afterwards. This does not apply to everything, such as base equipment tied to mission objectives, and only anti-air radars will remain destroyed indefinitely.

• Your Buddies all have some very useful uses, such as D-Dog's ability to automatically mark things and Quiet sniping guards for you. Try them all out and spend time with them to increase your Bond and unlock stronger abilities for them.

• Two of the four buddies are unlocked automatically through story progression. Quiet is unlocked by making a certain fairly obvious choice during a story mission involving her, and D-Dog will appear in certain early mission deployment locations (missions 3, 4 or 5) and must be Fultoned.

• You don't need to use non-lethal weapons to capture Quiet. There is a challenge reward for it though, as well as finishing her off with a non-firearm.

• You may notice that your guns make mention of accessory slots but can't do anything with them, along with mention of specific stocks/scopes/etc. You can fully customize your weapons later by completing the Legendary Gunsmith sidequests.

• Vehicles cost nothing to deploy, so don't fret about having to bring out D-Horse just to travel around. Fulton yourself a Jeep and you're set.

• Riding an enemy vehicle out of the hot zone after finishing a mission counts as capturing that vehicle even before you can start fultoning them. Also, anyone onboard an extracted vehicle (fultoned or otherwise) is extracted alongside with it.