Deus Ex: Human Revolution Hints

Stealth Tips

• 1 of 11: Why play the stealthy way instead of shoot-'em-up combat style? There are many reasons. The main one is that enemy fire will kill you *very* quickly, even on the lowest difficulty setting. You'd have to constantly seek cover to avoid fire long enough for your health to regenerate. Also, weapons take a long time to switch or reload, most of them are very inaccurate, ammo for any particular kind of weapon is often too scarce for you to use that weapon frequently, you can't store very many weapons in your pathetic little grid-based inventory, alerted enemies love to swarm you from all sides and pelt you with grenades, you get more XP for stealthy non-lethal takedowns than for kills, and you get XP bonuses for getting through areas without being seen (the "Ghost" bonus) or sounding any alarms (the "Smooth Operator" bonus).
• 2 of 11: If you really want to do some combat, you've got to at least combine a bit of stealth with your shooting. If a room has three enemy soldiers in it, sneak up to a spot where you can shoot one of them in the head for an instant kill, then drop a frag mine as you retreat so the other two will hit it as they chase you. Or sneak into a room using a vent shaft, shoot from there, then sneak back to the other end of the shaft so you can come up on the hostiles from behind. That sort of thing.
• 3 of 11: The hints given in this file for getting through enemy-filled areas will always focus entirely on stealth, and will guide you through the best possible stealthy solution for the area. This sometimes involves sneaky non-lethal takedowns, and often no takedowns at all. When possible, I always give stealthy solutions that don't require you to have any particular equipment or to buy any augmentations, though there are often minor equipment- and augmentation-dependent shortcuts you can take. If such a shortcut is particularly helpful, I'll put something in about it. (Shortcuts and side areas that just get you extra XP or loot usually won't be mentioned, and it'll be up to you to find them on your own.)
• 4 of 11: Since you get XP and (usually) items for taking enemies down, it always pays to find a stealthy way to do so. The hints will usually have you sneak past enemies whenever that's the easiest thing to do, but you may want to take the time to figure out a way to stealthily take them all down. Your three main weapons for doing so will be takedown moves, stun guns, and tranquilizer rifles. There are a few others, like gas grenades and mines, but they're not as generally useful.
• 5 of 11: A takedown move is always preferable whenever you can do it unseen, since it uses no ammo -- only a rechargeable energy cell. It also gets you 20 more XP than any other type of non-lethal takedown. The obvious disadvantage is that you have to sneak right up behind someone without him or anyone else seeing you. You may also have to quickly drag the body off somewhere to avoid it being seen by patrolling guards or security cameras. (NOTE: Stealth is technically irrelevant to how much XP you get for takedowns, but if you or an unconscious enemy are ever seen, it'll ruin your Ghost XP bonus.)
• 6 of 11: The tranquilizer rifle will be your weapon of choice for long-range stealthy takedowns. Its disadvantages, however, are numerous. It takes up a lot of room in your inventory, it has to be reloaded after every shot, its ammo is scarce in most regions, and the overly-fancy scope reticule is hard to line up shots with. You'll want to quicksave before each shot in the likely event that you miss, or that a nearby enemy sees his pal go down and revives him. (Note that you can use that against enemies by shooting one, then quickly shooting others as they go over to him. Just don't miss any of them. Also, it's very risky to try this in areas with alarm systems, since someone will probably sound the alarm. And besides that, enemies seeing each other go down will ruin the Ghost XP bonus.)
• 7 of 11: The stun gun is a "happy medium" between the up-close takedown and the long-range tranquilizer darts. You have to be fairly close to your target, but not as close as you do for takedowns. There will be many situations where you can't close to takedown range without being seen, but you can easily zap your target with a stun gun. You can use the "knock a guy out to lure in the others nearby" trick with stun guns, but you'll have a harder time remaining unseen than you would with long-range tranquilizations. Another thing that stun guns can do is temporarily disable security devices such as cameras and turrets without setting off any alarms.
• 8 of 11: Whenever you can't sneak over close enough to an enemy for a close-range attack, and don't want to use the tranquilizer rifle for some reason, there are various things you can do to attract an enemy's attention without him immediately turning hostile. You can let him catch a quick glimpse of you moving around, you can let him hear you running around or falling and hitting the floor, you can fire off a shot with a noisy weapon (though be warned that doing this will usually get an alarm sounded in areas that have alarm systems), you can pick up and throw a movable object, or you can open and close a door or vent cover that's within his sight. Once an enemy is alarmed, he'll usually move toward you, and you can wait in cover mode for him to get within takedown or stun-gun range.
• 9 of 11: No matter how good you get at stealthing your way around sneakily, there are a couple of notable problems to watch out for. One problem is that there is some randomness regarding enemy movement (especially when alarmed or hostile), so strategies for sneaking past enemies or taking them down stealthily won't always work exactly as is without variation. The strategies given in these hints were play-tested several times each, and any notable variations I experienced are mentioned. However, there's always a chance that you'll encounter a variation that I didn't.
• 10 of 11: The biggest problem with stealthing your way through the game is that there are four unskippable "boss battles" that require you to take down some big, tough enemy that you can't use stealth against. (Well, you *can* use a bit of stealth, but you can't quickly finish bosses off with non-lethal means or sneak past them and move on.) It's important for any character to get at least some of the damage reduction skin upgrades before the first boss battle near the end of Part 2. Also, buy the Typhoon augmentation, or keep a good high-damage weapon that isn't too big (like a shotgun or revolver) with you at all times, and fully upgrade it with weapon mods. Also, have several health-boosting items (like hypostims and painkillers) that you can use during the battle.
• 11 of 11: And the number one tip for dealing with boss battles is: always play the game on the lowest difficulty setting. That won't make sneaking around unseen any easier -- it'll just cause you to take less damage from enemy fire and explosives, which will only make a difference during boss battles.

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