Just to warn you, you will only start off with D Horse when you begin The Phantom Pain. You should have all 4 buddies by about main mission 13 but don’t expect for them to drop into your lap and start fighting straight away. D Dog spawns at a random location on the map, so keep an eye out for Ocelot talking about a puppy on the radio. You’ll have to track down Quiet and convince her to join Diamond Dogs through your own strength and fortitude while D Walker requires Huey Emmerich for it to be built. Again, should you keep your eyes out and make the correct decision, you should have all of the buddies by mission 13. From here, if you want to unlock all the commands for each buddy, you have to increase your bond level with each one. Bond levels determine what weapons you can develop for them and can increase their effectiveness in the field so if you want Quiet to be reflecting grenades out the air with sniper shots, take her out on plenty of missions.

Don’t rely on a single tactic

The AI in MGSV are pretty smart, actually adapting to your strategies and outfitting accordingly. This isn’t just marketing spiel, guards will start wearing body armour and helmets to stop them being headshotted or tranquilised if you do it too much, soldiers will begin to check out noise disturbances in pairs to cover their friends or they will rush straight to a sighting of you, rather than just sauntering over and allowing you to get a quick headshot. This is why you should mix up using lethal and non-lethal tactics, along with swapping out your buddy based on the mission. You can also keep ahead of your foes by sending your Combat Unit on missions to stop shipments of helmets, security cameras and the like, so you can revert back to old tactics just to keep the enemy on their toes.

Low and slow is the way to go

If you’re a Metal Gear veteran, you’ll know this tip already but for those new to the series, keeping in your crouch walk is pretty much the default setting when moving around in a Metal Gear Solid game. It lowers your profile, keeps you from being spotted and you can easily transition to a prone position without having to fling yourself onto the ground. Slowly taking out all the guards and avoiding security cameras feels a lot more satisfying than getting caught by a random guard, getting locked into a combat phase and being forced to hide for 5 minutes until the situation returns to normal. You should only really run when you know the coast is clear and even then, aim for cover when you are running so you always have a spot to hide behind. Be aware than having a large weapon on your back like a rocket launcher can also make you easier to spot so putting on the right camo when you are carrying heavy ordinance can help immensely.

Mother Base can get awfully sad if their Big Boss doesn’t come home that often so make it a priority to return to base every 3 side ops or every main mission. Not only does it raise staff morale if you return and say hello to your soldiers, but you can get quite a bit of GMP and resources from having a look round your sea fortress. You can interrogate your men for the location of diamonds which are scattered throughout the base and they seem to respawn, so doing a quick treasure hunt on each platform every time you return home can help swell your coffers. Coming back to Mother Base also gives Snake the opportunity to have a nice warm shower to wash the muck of battle off. Having a shower has the benefit of cleaning all the blood and grime off Snake, but it also increases your time in Reflex Mode, along with reducing gun sway so getting clean before your next sortie is incredibly helpful. There are also posters scattered about your base which can decorate your cardboard box, shooting galleries to complete and special NPCs to chat to. Once you have rescued enough animals from out in the field, you can even visit your private zoo where you can see all the creatures you’ve whisked away via a Fulton balloon. Some of the animal pens have herbs inside them so feel free to stock up when you go to visit your prized bear or goat herd.

Also, keep your house in order

Prioritising R&D development, platform construction and self assigning certain soldiers can increase the efficiency of Mother Base drastically. Rather than scattershot researching everything you see in the Development tab, focus your efforts on completing specific lines of research than trying to create a huge armoury. You will learn very quickly weapons that you like to use in the field so stick to researching those first before developing other armaments or gadgets. As for platform construction, I personally would rush upgrading the Base Development platform first before branching out into other fields. The Base Development platform determines the amount of raw materials that are mined by Mother Base at set points, and then the speed at which those materials are refined into reagents that can be used to create items. Most of the time, it will be a lack of these materials like fuel which will hold up future developments of your base so building out the Base Development section first is a good way to make sure you aren’t hampered in the early game. As for assigning soldiers, some will have negative skills like Unsanitary which lowers morale in a unit or Troublemaker which causes fights among your men and usually, visits to the Sickbay. You can manage these negative traits by placing two Troublemakers in the same unit for example, which will cause them to focus on each other rather than the rest of the unit, but I would just dismiss them straight away unless they have amazing stats.

Don’t be afraid to start again

I don’t mean the whole game, but in missions. Like going lethal, you aren’t severely punished for returning to a checkpoint if you bungle a mission. You do lose out on the ‘No Retries’ bonus but it does not completely ruin your chances of an S Rank. When missions can be over an hour long in some cases, returning to a checkpoint 5 minutes ago is a lot less painful than starting the mission all over again. One added bonus of returning to a checkpoint is all the enemies you previously marked still remain so you can use the intel from your failed attempt to help improve your next go at a mission. You will get the option of donning a Chicken Hat should you continually return to a checkpoint, which reduces your chances of being spotted in plain sight but caps your mission rank to an A. It may be patronising but at least it is an option.

Import your Ground Zeroes save

If you still have your copy of Ground Zeroes, there has been an update that allows you to upload your save data for it to be downloaded onto your Phantom Pain save. It is not completely known what this may do to the game’s story but it does unlock some extra skins for Venom Snake and grants you access to not only the soldiers which you rescued from Camp Omega, but some other specialist soldiers too.

There are some tips and tricks to help get you started on your journey through Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. With the servers going live today and the FOB system finally becoming active, we will test this mechanic out and we should have our full review by the end of the week. In the meantime, enjoy your time with Diamond Dogs and let us know your own tips for MGSV below.