Hitman: Blood Money

General Advice

• Get used to messing up. It will happen. Gun everyone down and flee in a clown suit if that's what it takes to get the job done. Eventually you'll learn the ins and outs of the level, and then you can worry about that precious Silent Assassin rating.

• NPCs in Blood Money have fragile spines and poor equilibrium- you can kill anyone with an accident by pushing them over railings or down even small inclines. If they complete a full turn over the railing/low wall/whatever a script will kill them instantly before they even hit the ground. Accident kills are the "cleanest" way to play Blood Money, and with many targets, pushing is the only accident available.

• Hide corpses. You will never feel stupider than when you're six feet from a level exit and some adventuresome douchebag stumbles across the unconscious waiter you left in a bathroom surrounded by piles of clothes and six discarded revolvers.

• You should pretty much always be wearing a disguise. Especially outfits with low-cut tops, even if only to admire 47's incredible physique;)

• Want to break the game into a million pieces? You have an infinite number of coins that can be used as sound lures.

• Detection is bizzarely focused on 47's face, which is innately more suspicious than the rest of him. Turn around and duck if someone is approaching you and you want added cover. Beware; some mirrors let NPCs see behind them.

• Trespassing is nuanced; in many places, guards will shout at you and wave you off, but if you get out of the area quickly without doing anything overtly illegal, they won't sound the alarm or open fire.

Combat Tricks

• Your melee skills are very useful. You can disarm and knock out any enemy by getting right up to them with empty hands and clicking; it makes 47 do a sicknasty headbutt (this is, of course, not exactly stealthy, and will count as being detected).

• You can throw any knife you can pick up by holding the G key. Thrown knives will instantly, silently, kill any enemy... if you hit them, anyway. The knife has a bit of an arc to it.

• Syringes are your friends. You can sprint at people from behind and put them down swiftly a well as silently. Perfect for taking down guards when you're in a restricted area, or when you're just too god damned impatient to sneak up with fiber wire.

• Your RU-AP mines are incredibly versatile. Use them.

• Sneak up behind people with your gun drawn and grab them, then knock them out and drag them away from open places. If you don't shoot the body, they will only get up if someone finds them.

Getting Silent Assassin

• To get Silent Assassin on a given mission, you must:
  • Not lose your "cover". (The player cannot be attacked by guards).
  • Acquire no witnesses. (Basically no one can see you doing something illegal. The exception is being caught trespassing, which does 'not' lose you SA.)
  • Do not get recorded by a camera (or steal any recorded evidence). The camera will always "spot" you if you're in your suit, even if you're not doing anything illegal.
  • Do not hurt non-targets.

• There's a big list of exceptions here, weirdly! Accident kills, human shields killed by other guards, melee attacks, sedation, and killing/sedating animals do not count.

• Do not have weapons detected during a frisk.

• On difficulties above Normal, you also cannot:
  • Leave the default suit or customizeable weapons in the level when you leave. This also penalizes your payout ("suit retrieval costs")
  • Allow bodies to be found. Accident kills and animal kills are OK.

Notoriety & Money

• Blood Money pays you for completing each mission based on your ranking (with some occasional side objective bonuses for retrieving items). If you replay a mission, you generally only earn more money by getting closer to a perfect completion and a faster completion time. There are exceptions that involve bugs with save file states; google them elsewhere. Remember, in practice, the total amount of money you earn is finite. Choose upgrades and purchases carefully.

• If you leave witnesses or camera footage behind in a mission, it adds to 47's "Notoriety". This makes civilians and guards suspicious of you in your suit, or even in disguise. You can reduce your Notoriety by replaying a the faulty mission and not leaving evidence, or by paying money to reduce or reset its value. Never do this, just replay the level. If you repeat a mission, then your notoriety at the end will be the least you gained on any of your tries.

• For similar reasons, think carefully about whether you need to buy mission intel.

Weapons and Upgrades

• There are no missions in the game that require a gun after the tutorial.

• Upgrades are unlocked as you progress through the main story. If you want to save money, wait until later in the game and you can skip them by getting the most powerful versions.

• The miscellaneous upgrades are some of the most powerful.

• Upgrade your silverballers first- they are by far the most versatile and effective weapon you can customize.

• Combining magnum ammunition with a high-quality suppressor on any weapon will give you a quiet weapon that shoots easily through doors and sends corpses flying.

• The SP12 shotgun is completely pointless. Never waste money on it unless everything else is unlocked.

• You can get additional guns for your collection by finding them and leaving them in an ICA dropbox in the mission. This includes the tutorial mission, which is a very convenient place to get some guns if you're looking for a complete collection. Many, many guns appear in only one mission in an irregular location, but unlike Silent Assassin or Contracts, there are no truly hidden weapons.

All About Missions

• Never be afraid to take your time and explore the area. If you're the patient type, you can learn a lot just by chilling out in the map menu. Guard routes become apparent rather quickly, and that can often mean the difference between Terrorist and Silent Assassin. There are only two missions where there's an absolute time limit for an event; for the others, target behaviors are almost always on cycles.

• Some missions have dogs on them. Dogs count as witnesses if they see you doing something illegal. Yes, this affects your score. Stay away from them or find a way to...remove them.

• Again, shoving anyone over anything will kill them as an accident. It doesn't matter if the fall is a foot or a mile, For a handful of targets, this is the only way to get an accident kill.

• Aside from the omnipresent threat of gravity, Blood Money's implementation of accidents is...linear. Look for a big thing that the target interacts with. You can probably touch it and make them kill themselves, no matter what it is.

• If a mission has an elevator, that elevator is a magickal killcloset for 47. Figure out which one a target uses, enter the elevator, climb onto the roof and wait!