Basic Game Mechanics - how to do stuff in general

For folks brand new to Rebellion brand games, or simply looking for some basic game information.

Extreme Basics

Two warnings:

1. In SE5 and SE6 campaign mode (I call Sniper Elite Resistance SE6), by default, "Invasion" mode is ON. Turn it OFF (in Options, Game, Multiplayer). If left ON, you probably will get a random, uninvited, often highly-skilled player, dropping into your solo or co-op campaign, acting as an extra special bad guy: a human-controlled enemy sniper, among all the other enemies you have to kill. If you want PvP, it's great. But most new players don't and this setting should NOT be set to default ON.

2. The inventory system/item selection system is extremely awkward for a PC game.

Items include health kits, throwables like grenades, mines, bombs, and distractions.

All items use the same key to activate: F, by default. First select an item, then, with the F key, use the item. So...select your bandage, then press F to use the bandage. Select your health kit, then press and HOLD F for a few seconds to use the health kit. Select a grenade, then either press and HOLD F to bring up a graphic that aims the grenade (release to throw, or right click to cancel throw), or just tap F to throw the grenade in the direction you're facing.

This is the only game I've played where to throw a grenade, you don't use either the weapon fire button, or the grenade selection button itself. Until you get used to the system, it's very easy to throw a grenade at your feet, when you really intended to plant a mine, or heal yourself.

This is aggravated by auto-swapping. When you run out of one item, by default, you automatically select the next item. So in a moment, you can switch from health items to grenades without pressing a button to switch. This is dangerous, because you use the same key to activate all items. Tap the F key when grenades have been automatically (unknowingly) selected and BOOM. So...probably turn OFF auto-switching when empty (automatic swapping). This is done in the advanced difficulty customisation section and is only turned OFF by default on the highest difficulty: authentic. (Not available for disabling in games SE1-SE4.) However, since auto-swapping is set in difficulty, know that you'll probably auto-swap if you join a stranger's game, set to anything less than authentic difficulty.

The best players on YouTube seem to all use the radial inventory menu to select everything, all the time. I like to use separate buttons for everything I use regularly, but if you plan to play authentic mode where there's no HUD to see the bullets remaining in your magazine (in Authentic Plus mode, in SE4, you needed to check your inventory just to see what you'd picked up), practice using Q for the radial menu, where everything is always clearly listed. It's often easiest to change the settings on items from within the radial menu.

If you're carrying multiple ammo types, ammo types can be changed (but there's no automatic switch back to alternate ammo types when you run out! instead, auto-swapping switches you to your pistol, and when you switch back to your rifle, it may seem that your gun does not work, because you're still trying to fire, for example, armor-piercing special ammo...but you have none).

(Another time when your gun may seem to not work: you can often aim through a railing, but your gun won't fire through it; you must stand up. Especially frequent in SE5.)

Settings on some mines can be changed. Teller mines can be set to pressure - not set off by single ordinary soldiers. Schu-mines can be set to lure/draw enemy closer distraction status - on higher difficulty, they only knock enemies out, so luring is occasionally better. TNT can get timers (or you can lay it beside Schu-mines to add to their punch). And grenades can be set to sticky, so they don't bounce, and if they hit an enemy soldier, will stick to him until the grenade explodes. You never trigger your own mines, and you can defuse any friendly or enemy mines you encounter.

Another oddball quirk: Right-clicking on a gun in the radial menu lets you switch ammo types (if you're carrying multiple ammo types), but if you do that to more than one gun, the previous gun gets ammo selection mode queued up in memory: when you next equip that gun, perhaps several minutes later, even if you are trying to shoot an enemy, you will instead take the time to switch to the previously requested ammo type.

Finally, extra items like keys, satchel charges, and crowbars are listed in the top right of your radial menu. You can use them when appropriate, but not equip them.

More basics

Aiming

In all Sniper Elite games, bullets always fly true. If you aim right, you can always count on a headshot with a low velocity bullet from 300 or 800 yards. If you turn off the aim assists as soon as you are comfortable with the game, then it's pretty satisfying to guess the proper deflection of a bullet, based on distance and wind (although wind deflection was more fun (required more skill) in SE4; In SE5 and SE6, the wind gauge at the top of your scope shows the exact left/right bullet deflection for your gun, range, and ammo type, rather than showing you the relative wind speed.) For judging bullet drop, tag targets with binoculars to see their range, then use the Q & E keys to select from among the pre-set range adjustments (pre-zeroed) on your scope. They'll be at 50m, 100m, 200m, etc. Landing hits between those preset distances is where the experience and guessing happens, because the bullet aim points are deflected from the horizontal and vertical center of your scope. However, it's still easier to hit a stationary target at 300m, than to hit a moving target at 100m. And if, or when, you turn off the scoped mini-zoom & time-slowing, you'll have to re-learn how much to lead moving targets.

Try the shooting range, although I'm not sure how to change the difficulty and turn off aim assists there.

No grenades are available for practice though...sigh.

Key bindings

Bind "empty lung" (breath) to shift. Don't use the spacebar for holding your breath while sniping.

The reason you don't want space bar for breath, is that when you're shooting from behind a low barrier, if you try to expel your breath but you're not quite scoped yet, then spacebar will make you jump forward over the barrier. Worse, this will often leave you hanging from a high railing while getting fired upon.

(No worries about duplicate functions on a single key: using shift for breath won't make you sprint while looking down the scope - the game notices what mode you are in and the same keys have different effects for standing, scoped, in radial menus, aiming a grenade, etc. Note that duplicate functions also means that in SE5 & SE6, you can assign something else other than weapon selection to wheel up and down, without messing up zoom ability on scopes or maps.)

Co-op

If you're looking to invite a friend to a private game, start hosting a game, then click on your gamer's name in the top right, and THEN it's pretty straightforward how to invite a friend.

You'll see a 9 character code, a space to enter a 9 character code, and Sniper Elite's list of your friends. There are two ways to invite:

• easiest is to find your friend in the drop-down list, click on their name, click Invite, click close. This works for me even inside a private game. Your friend should be in-game before returning to desktop and clicking play on their Steam invite. During the mission, hit Esc to get lobby view, click your name, and send a new invite.
  
• second way is with the host's 9 digit code. It's a pain to read out the code, but if your friend has the code written down, they can enter it in the appropriate space (lobby, click their own name, paste disabled!) then rejoin the game without distracting you. Re-joins go to lobby, (then change loadout?) then click play, then spectate, then re-spawn with next new wave (in survival mode).

There's no friends-only mode for lobbies, probably because the game supports cross-platform.

All players must have the same crossplay settings (on/off) to play together.

Unlocking

Unlocking weapons for campaign and survival is mostly done by completing campaign missions. (Unlocking missions is done by completing the previous mission, but you can join a co-op friend in ANY mission they are hosting and unlock attachments there.) Unlocking weapon attachments is mostly done by finding and clicking on workbenches located throughout the missions, and pistols. In each of missions 2-8 (and the kill Hitler mission too) there are three benches: one bench each for rifles, SMG's and pistols. One of the more important unlocks is a rifle suppressor/silencer unlocked at the rifle workbench in mission 3: Sonderzuge Sabotage. While at a workbench, even in the middle of a mission (similar to time between missions) you can change your weapons and attachments. Your ammo can only be changed between missions.

If you're having trouble finding workbenches, look for online guides: keyword collectibles. If you want an exact list of what attachments come from each bench, and which weapons and ammo types are unlocked by each mission...I couldn't that find that list myself. :-)

Skills/Perks

You level up as you go along. That gives you points for perks. Click on any of the three big perk circles. NOW you get explanations of each perk and can decide how you want to spend your perk points before actually spending points. Annoyingly, you can't even strip ammo from an enemy weapon until you get the right perk. Some perks open inventory spaces to carry special ammo.

Ammo

Ammo is divided into rifle, SMG, and pistol ammo. Any rifle can use ammo from any other rifle, but you can't strip the ammo from heavy weapons like FG-42 machine guns.

You can pick up any special ammo from ammo boxes you find, if you have room in your inventory. You eventually unlock (by completing missions) the ability to choose particular ammo types to pre-equip, although you can only pre-equip about 40% of your capacity for two special ammo types that you select (and you also start each mission with only about 60% of maximum standard ammo, and always have to find yourself a new bolt-cutter and crowbar too.) Special ammo types include armor-piercing, suppressed, match grade, etc. There's now a high-explosive round available too: it's great in survival mode games, but may be too loud for most places during campaign. Ammo effects, damage, piercing, bullet drop, audible distance, and player discovery (AP leaves trails).

Stealth

Silencers effect audible distance of your weapons: important because enemies outside that distance will not be alerted by your shots. Enemies inside that distance will be alerted, but will only locate you if you fire at least twice from the same position, or you are VERY close to them.

Note as well, that enemies never hear you when you crouch-walk.

Seeing through walls using FOCUS helps you get behind the enemy. Too easy? Turn it off?

Audible Ranges

You'll notice when adding attachments to your weapons, and selecting among ammo types, that the audible range of your weapon changes.

In general, the audible range is how far away the enemy can hear your shots. Outside that range, the enemy will ignore your shots if those enemies are not already activated. You can check their distance from you with binoculars...if you can see them. Activation can spread.

Enemies close enough will hear you and they'll probably start to search for a while. If you fire two or three shots from the same location, they may locate you and then attack/hunt you, usually moving closer to your last known location to do so.

Except in authentic difficulty, you get a a handy arc-shaped (with a stem that points to the enemy) warning sign that grows bigger the closer you get to being noticed by the enemy. It starts white, then turns yellow, then red. But it can turn red all at once. An exception is enemy snipers, who must be spotted by good reconnaissance or the glare of their sniper scopes alone.

Enemy snipers that are not activated will not see you outside of 200m (at least on hard difficulty) Once activated though, they can spot and fire upon you from further than 200m.

If you move about 20m or more between shots, you will be heard, but will not be located unless you are very close to an enemy. Enemies far outside your weapon's audible range will never locate you, no matter how many shots you fire. But you may run out of ammo.

Still MORE? "basics"

b]Destroying tanks (spoiler?)[/b]

It's dumb. Shoot them between the tail pipes, then shoot the exposed engine, and BOOM! (I preferred SE4's dumb requirement of shooting the drivers through the vision slits...which always had the bullet proof glass vision blocks removed!) To open a gaping hole in the back end, and disable tank movement: shoot lotsa bullets. Fewer AP bullets. I've killed the King Tigers with 3 AP rifle bullets total. (German tanks weren't as tough as I'd thought.) A single panzerfaust or a satchel charge (if you can't set the timer, shoot the charge attached to the vehicle from a distance) opens the back armor too, but you still have to explode that engine. BOOM! Don't stand too close.

Try not to disable tanks before they move into the playable area of any map, or you may never be able to get behind the tank to destroy it (mostly (only?) an issue while laying anti-vehicle teller mines in Survival mode).

Map starting points

Most maps have three available starting points, two of which must be unlocked. When you are near a starting point, you get a notice, and a blue eye-like symbol appears on your main map. You almost always must find a nearby bonfire to light, or a gate to unlock, to complete unlocking the new starting location. Success will give you a message, and the blue eye-symbol will disappear from your main map (the blue eye-symbol comes back the next time you load, but unlocking again does nothing I've noticed.)

Manual Saves

You can save ANYWHERE in the game (well...there are a few short-duration exceptions). When you mess with the order of the missions, the game warns you that you'll be over-writing your existing auto-saves. But your manual saves are never touched, except when you explicitly delete selected files.

Survival Mode

There are jpg images of the survival maps linked at the end of this guide.

Survival mode maps are co-op. There are only two so far. It's not enough. (Well...Rebellion added an EXACT copy of Pest Control from SE5. I'm not sure that counts.)

In survival, you are tasked with defending a series of four command posts/supply points against three successive waves of Germans for each command post, 12 waves in total, with a brief pause between waves, allowing for for re-supply, laying mines and looting corpses. The waves get bigger. It can be fun, but it works best with at least two people. I mostly played survival in SE4 & 5, and expect to do the same in SE6.

There are only two maps, but there are 16 different possible command posts on each map. Before starting, players can choose from three-four pre-set alternative series, each series (operation) having four unique command posts to defend.

If you lose your command post, you get no new supplies (until the next command post is activated), and no bonus supplies at the next post, but you can run and gun and survive more easily...if you can survive the shame of losing the post. :-( Get ammo from weapons and dead Germans until the next command post is available.

Propaganda posters

Campaign missions 2-8 each have a special, resistance-positive propaganda poster, bravely posted by the French underground. Our hero, Harry Hawker, takes them down and collects them.

They make a flappy-in-the-wind sound when you are nearby, and also can be identified by a clickable center spot. There are plenty of online guides for finding them: keyword collectibles.

Each poster taken unlocks a different mini-game for quick play later on. There are 3 sniper challenges, 3 stealth challenges, and one combat challenge.

• Most of the sniper challenges have one minute base time, to kill 20? enemies, with some bonus time awarded for killing particular enemy types.
  
• Most stealth challenges have a minute and a half, base time, to kill 24? enemies, with 30 seconds added for each stealth kill.
  
• The combat mission gives 10 second bonus times for kills with heavy weapons and explosives, which are lying about everywhere.

The timers all start when you make your first attack. You cannot change your weapon loadout for the propaganda challenges, and kills don't count towards campaign kill totals and rewards.

Sadly, this mode is solo only. Make it co-op, please Rebellion!

Documents and letters and eagles

Besides the propaganda posters, other collectible items (documents, letters, and stone eagles that you can shoot off tall buildings and structures) only give you achievements and XP towards skill points, and finding them doesn't directly make any difference to your progress in the campaign.

Killing Hitler DLC

(Spoiler? Sorta)

To use traps on Hitler, you have to get Hitler moving by spotting him with your binoculars.
(Info thanks to Shin Happens and Das Trojanische Pferd.)

Otherwise, you can just go in guns blazing, and Hitler will move to a hiding place...that's not difficult to find.

There is another poster-unlockable stealth challenge included with the Kill Hitler DLC too. Oddly, your avatar for this one seems to be a particularly evil looking Nazi.

Medals and achievements

Check your service record to review your collectibles, medals, ribbons, etc. Service record's position in the menu floats around depending on game state.

Medal: Killing Kruger with a passing truck. (Spoiler)

The truck needs to be the FIRST truck in the 4?-truck convoy coming towards Kruger. You can disable that truck ahead of time only putting the final bullets into the engine as Kruger passes it.

As above, many medal descriptions are a bit too concise.

Closing remarks

This guide grew and grew...

Just the basics?

Hopefully, it helps you decide if you want to keep the game past 2 hours, and makes it easier to start out if you're brand new to Rebellion's game control system. I've really enjoyed SE4, SE5, and SE6. I hope you do too, despite the many flaws :-) Hopefully now, when something doesn't seem to be working properly, you'll be able to recognise that...it's worked that way for years, so...not a bug?

In the Sniper Elite series (mostly in survival mode), I've spent more time searching enemy corpses than in all my other games combined. But oddly, back in real life, the game has still not managed to normalise corpse-looting for me. (Or maybe I'm lying?) For less gruesomeness, you can turn off the x-ray view in your kill cams. Or you can completely turn off the kill cams. They just break up your rhythm. :-)

And it's goofy fun to watch Jason, a Rebellion founder and co-CEO, history-sharing on YouTube, play-acting a medieval knight or a peasant (needs to be covered in more mud...is that mud?) So it's buy a game, and feed Jason's warhorse for half a day? Jason knows Lindybeige too, so is it any wonder that he's concocted a game where the best fighter in the French resistance is a Brit?

(Special kudos to anyone who spotted the instance of brackets within brackets writing. I've only seen that style published in Martha Wells' collection of Murderbot diaries. I am not Murderbot.)

Cheers.

It's a feature, not a bug.

Earlier, I wanted to say: The only outright bug I've seen in SE6 is

• falling through the map in places in the Kill Hitler DLC mission.

But then I remembered...

• I've been unable to complete a few optional quests until I reloaded - however, some quests require that certain people never be activated/alerted before the player attacks/sets the trap; it's difficult to tell if the enemy is glitched or was activated by mistake earlier - If all else fails, just reload the map and re-try the quest on easy difficulty.
  
• in survival, many times I've seen lone enemies who glitched out and forgot to come attack the command post, or attacked very, very late - so far though, there's never been an enemy glitched in an out-of-bounds, unseen area where he was invulnerable to attack (fingers crossed) (This did happen a few times in a Borderlands 3 arena.)
  
• three times, in SE6 only, about once every 10 hours of play, I've had game visuals begin to stutter: once while my co-op friend reported no stuttering, even though I was hosting - I've heard turning off an option (below) that usually clears this problem up, but it can also occur for people like me, who have "disable keyboard/mouse lights" greyed out. If your game stutters in solo campaign, why not just use quick save, quit, restart the game, and quick load. The fixable settings, when available, are: options, accessibility tab, advanced, disable "keyboard/mouse lights" (Info thanks to Shin Happens...again.)

Lotsa other bugs and glitches reported, but none happened to me in hundreds of hours of play across SE4, 5 & 6.

A few downloads

The survival maps for SE5 and SE6 (none for SE4 - map key is disabled).

Survival Maps, All Operations[drive.google.com].

Although it might be easier to get the zipped file using the link below, where you can separately get...

My Keyboard layouts for SE4 and SE5&6 as MS Excel files (and PDF). Not sure they'll be helpful to anyone else, because, obviously, you gotta edit them until they match what you've chosen for yourself. Still...maybe?

Keyboard Excel files, 101 keys and Logitech G502 Mouse.[drive.google.com]

[DiggerDog]

JJKirbs: I doubt there will ever be a game officially titled SE6, and it's convenient, and everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about when I say SE6. Sorry that it bugs you, but you can't put SE:R into a file name, so...

I also used to say CoD5 instead of CoD:WaW. A few people got mad. No game officially titled CoD5 was ever released. Probably similar for Sniper Elite 6. Maybe in 2 years you can say: "Told you so!" but until then...

[Kirbs]

Do NOT call this game SE6, what hyperbole, not to mention the fact it is genuinely not even a numbered entry.