Easily being spotted by mules

[jaeminPro]

I do not understand stealth in this game. I'm constantly and easily being spotted by mules from miles away and those tall grasses don't even help at all to hide from the mules. I'm always easily spotted no matter where I am.

I heard that offloading your cargo (holding E button) is supposed to help from being detected, but I'm still being detected. Is it because I'm playing on Very Hard? If i turn down the difficulty level, do I have higher chances of not being spotted?

[VisciousFishes]

I assume so. Judging by the previous games by H.K. I have played, the difficulty curve, I believe works like this:-

Lower level difficulty it takes longer to spot you and they have less hit points and they aim like Storm Troopers. As the difficulty increases, so does their hit point value and also the range of vision they have.

Organising your load out can help. The further in you get, the more tools you will have at your disposal. I, so far, have unlocked two countermeasures (most recently in the past two hours, as I type this) which are effective. But these two are locked behind certain story missions. If you see my game hours "2 hours ago" sounds like a long amount, but I have done a huge amount of side missions and been rebuilding roads. Plus I just got stuck because I couldn't find somewhere I needed to be and have been running in circles for about 20 game hours.

[Seamus]

Are you still NEAR the cargo after you offload it? Because what they detect from a distance is the ID tags on the cargo. Same as your ping button does.

[Vahnkiljoy]

If your stuff is stacked too high tall grass means nothing to them, as well if they run right past you in tall grass they will still see you.

[Caz]

Don't bother trying to hide from them. The "stealth" in this game is only "useful" against BTs.

Carry a Bola Gun or a NL Assault Rifle (bola is easier to hit with) and just let them lemming themselves into a pile of unconscious bodies as they run at you.

For Timed deliveries, where you can, stick to roads. Even from South Knot to the pizza dude in the north, with a vehicle, you can make it under 10 minutes.

[joxertm22]

Originally posted by Caz:

(bola is easier to hit with)

Eh? Since when?
Aiming is the same. Well on my mouse at least.
I ditched bola as soon as I got nonleathals. Just don't stress when hostiles start rushing towards you and you'll do headshots easily.

[Daxank]

Originally posted by joxertm22:

Originally posted by Caz:

(bola is easier to hit with)

Eh? Since when?
Aiming is the same. Well on my mouse at least.
I ditched bola as soon as I got nonleathals. Just don't stress when hostiles start rushing towards you and you'll do headshots easily.

The beauty of the bola gun is that you don't have to aim for the head, once they're tied on the ground you can approach them and kick them unconscious

[joxertm22]

Not saying it's useless, you can also use it to temporarily disable BTs, but...
I kinda didn't have time for kicks (if you don't headshot with bola) later. ;)

[vivi]

There are some tricks to get by completely unnoticed that i learned from trying to stealth through camps. Depending on how far you are in the game you might not have them unlocked yet.

All these camps have sensors around them similar to knots and prepper shelters so if you enter their sensor ring you will automatically get pinged by their radar and they know your position. If you are not spotted immediately their spotted position will show up as a yellow hologram and you can still relocation yourself to a spot with tall grass. Later on in the game your odradek (the scanner arm) gets an upgrade which allows you to cancel out their ping scanner if you manage to send it in time that way. This allows you to get in completely undetected.

The enemies in generall try to engage or scout around where they have the last hint of your position so if you are in tall grass you can even engage them, take one out and move on and the remaining ones will try to search for you where your gunshots came from. The later upgrades of the weapons also have a silencer which helps this a ton.

Smoke is good! The tools to lay down smoke confuses and "soft alerts" the camp and cause suspicion. They will head on to inspect the situation, if they did not already spot you which you can use to your advantage. A later upgrade from the elder also makes the decoy cargo case filled with smoke gas which will put them to sleep basically forever unless they are picked up by a mate, its similar to knocking them out.

They cant seem to pinpoint you even when firing a grenade launcher with sleeping rounds. They will however head to you but if you cover them all in sleeping gas they get stunned and just pass out.

Basically my go to strategy and loadout to raid a mule/terrorist camp is a NL AR Lv 3 a grenade launcher with sleeping gas rounds, at least 1 ammo pouch on my backpack depending on how many enemies there are and just use this strategy. I got through camps like this without getting detected many times and looted all their stuff, enemies put to sleep will also drop the extra cargo if you play on very hard so its a more safer approach if you just start getting into territory of terrorists who use lethal firearms. They arent as easily countered as mules who often resort to melee.

Early on in the game i found it also near impossible to stealth because of the lack of the ping counter but you migh be able to if they ping your cargo in tall grass and then you move around somewhere else.

I think the stealthing in this is pretty good even though it is not a main part of the game at all.

[Mr. 101]

I'm playing on Hard and stealth is difficult but pretty rewarding when it turns out alright -- reminds me a lot of standard MGS sneaking, though Sam is much, much worse at sneaking and taking out enemies than Solid Snake. Making sure your cargo is no higher than your head height, staying crouched and in tall grass or behind cover, and countering enemy pings with your own Odradek radar pings (if you time it right, the pings will cancel out) are essential for stealthing through the middle of enemy territory. After that, it comes down to moving when the MULEs aren't looking in your direction, and if it comes down to it taking MULEs down via a knockout from the Strand wire or one of the weapons you'll unlock as you play the game.

You're playing on Very Hard, so stealth is probably less forgiving than on my difficulty, and on mine you have to be pretty exact to not get caught. On Hard, enemies will notice if they see one of their own unconscious (and rush to wake them up), they'll see you in the distance if you're not careful and launch a ping to lock on to your cargo, and they hit harder than on normal or easy (or very easy). I'd imagine on Very Hard you have to be substantially more careful to outmaneuver enemies, especially when trying to stealth right in front of them.

If you gotta turn down the difficulty go ahead, as far as I know you only gain exclusive benefits/rewards from Very Hard when running the normal deliveries (your S-Rank will be Legend of Legend of Legends instead of a Legend of Legends or Legend rank. That's it?). Try sneaking around on a lower difficulty and see if you can get the hang of it!

[Daxank]

Honestly, I find that sneaking around mules is kind of a waste of time, they're easy to deal with and you can also just go through a camp at top speed even with a truck and they still won't stop you.

BTs on the other hand...

[Pure Hostility]

I stopped bothering with sneaking. I just run in with a rope in a hand and parry them then beat them up to death.
If there is a swarm, just use bola. Haven't gotten to a gun yet. MULEs don't seem to be a threat at all but are great source of materials needed to upgrade structures and roads.