Ghost Recon Breakpoint: Tips and Tricks

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is far more complex than its predecessor. Much like Wildlands, it had a massive world to explore with tons of missions to complete, but Breakpoint features a suite of loot and progression systems that make the experience more involved. When you start, the deluge of menus and tutorials might overwhelm you, which could cause you to skip past some vital information without even knowing.

To help in your mission to secure the Auroa archipelago, we’ve gathered tips that’ll better prepare you for the dangers that lie ahead. Whether you’re a returning veteran or a series newcomer, these tips will help you hit the ground running in your journey to become a top-tier Ghost Recon operative. To find exactly what you’re looking for, click from the table of contents below.

You might be compelled to follow the beaten path during Breakpoint’s opening moments, but if you’re the kind who dreads doing so and wants to jump out into the world without thinking, then you’re free to do so. As soon as you grab your first few weapons, wander in whichever direction you please. Take advantage of this opportunity to grind loot and get a feel for how movement, stealth, and combat feels.

Like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Breakpoint has a navigation option that strips away markers and quest objectives, forcing you to rely on your investigative and observation skills instead. This mode offers a more challenging experience that’s well worth the effort. You can turn it on via the options menu.

As you fly your helicopter across the map, you’ll notice trails of smoke coming off the island. These are Bivouacs, the game’s fast-travel points. You’ll often unlock Bivouac locations on the map from intel, but a more straightforward way to unlock them is to fly a helicopter to each smoke trail and fly low enough for the game to recognize that you’ve discovered one.

The Auroa archipelago is massive, so as you’d expect, traveling to and from its multiple locales is particularly time-consuming. While vehicles like cars, dirt bikes, and boats all have their place in the way of transportation in Breakpoint, nothing beats helicopters. Second only to fast travel, helicopters can get you around the map quickly and avoid most danger. However, don’t fly too low, or else you’ll get detected by the occasional air-security drone.

As you fly your helicopter across the map, you’ll notice trails of smoke coming off the island. These are Bivouacs, the game’s fast-travel points. You’ll often unlock Bivouac locations on the map from intel, but a more straightforward way to unlock them is to fly a helicopter to each smoke trail and fly low enough for the game to recognize that you’ve discovered one.

Apart from finding Bivouacs, it’s typically a good idea to rest at one of these temporary campsites if you need to recover health, fatigue, and ammo. It’s more than a place of rest, however, as you can also purchase guns, deploy vehicles from your garage, and craft items. Bivouacs also offer useful Preparations, one-hour buffs that provide perks such as increased Injury Resistance and improved accuracy. You can only equip one Preparation at a time, so be mindful of choosing what best suits the mission you’re about to do next.

Preparations offer the longest-lasting character buffs, but you can also stack one more on top by eating Rations, which provide similar buffs but in shorter durations. That’s right, you can totally stack a one-hour +40 Injury Resistance buff with a 10-minute +5% Damage Resistance buff, or you can boost it further by consuming a Ration with the same Injury Resistance buff.
Rations are crafted from organic resources in the environment, so you’ll want to hunt down some plants, fruits, and meats from the world first. As a general practice, always make it a point to gather these resources as you’re exploring. Once you’ve got what you need, set up shop at a Bivouac, select the Craft option, and tab over to the Rations menu to start cooking up some buffs. You can even gather these resources in Ghost War, the PvP mode in Breakpoint.

Erewhon is Breakpoint’s central hub and social space, and it’s an important location you should return to often. The further along you get in the campaign, the more missions that unlock from its various NPCs. However, Erewhon isn’t the only place you can grab new missions; Faction hubs are also home to a steady flow of tasks and challenges. Make it a point to frequently revisit these locations to top off your list of things to do.

You’re asked to commit to a class early on, but don’t worry, you can change between anyone you unlock on the fly. To switch between your classes, go to a Bivouac and select the Tactics tab.

If you lean towards choosing more offensive classes as a solo player, it’s recommended that you invest a point into unlocking the Field Medic class as a backup. If you’re finding yourself getting bodied during tougher missions, you’ll want to lean on the Field Medic’s self-revive class proficiency. It can save you in a tight spot and increase your chances of survival, especially on higher difficulties.

Breakpoint’s most significant addition to the enemy roster are drones, and gosh, are they a handful, especially if you’re playing sneaky. To best avoid these mechanical headaches, cover yourself with Cloaking Spray, which can make you invisible to them for a limited time. However, if you didn’t choose the Panther class, then this repellant isn’t available until after you complete the side mission called “Cover Up”–which is given to you by Skell scientist Christina Cromwell.

If you’re more about fighting drones directly, then stock up on EMP grenades and rockets. Ground drones can’t access elevated positions, so it’s best to attack from there to inhibit their capabilities. For the more powerful drones, it’s best to use an attack helicopter with rockets to destroy them, especially if you’re under-leveled.

If you drain your stamina bar by rolling down cliffs, then your stamina bar will get smaller. You can replenish your stamina bar by drinking water from your canteen. It only holds three uses, so try not to get yourself into trouble, You can refill the canteen in clean water streams.

As you unlock nodes on the skill tree, pay attention to the ones that specify that they have to be equipped to activate their effect. These are what Breakpoint calls Perks, and it can be easy to assume they’re active upon unlocking them. However, they don’t equip until you open your Loadout menu and do it yourself.

If you skipped past Maria’s shop tutorials–which is easy to do early on–then you’re likely to become confused over how blueprints work. As you can imagine, not all guns and attachments can be bought at the shop or even found organically in the world. Instead, you need to search for their blueprints. You can generally find them in special chests scattered across Auroa’s various bases and residential districts. But if you’re having trouble, you can clue in on their location by interacting with intel points.

Once you’ve acquired the weapon or attachment blueprint, you can then buy it at the shop. If you grow partial to a particular weapon, you’re welcome to re-purchase it with stats adjusted to your current level.

While you might be tempted to conserve your Skell credits by keeping to your arsenal’s base attachments, it’s better to start investing in attachments early. Once you purchase some from the shop, you can use them across all your weapons by type without fear of needing to buy more subsequent guns you use. It’s good to have multiple attachments on hand, as you never know what combat situation you might end up in that might call for their functionality.

Now that damage to enemies adheres to an RPG-lite statistics system, you might think that instant-death headshots are entirely off the table. Don’t worry; as long as an enemy doesn’t have a helmet, they can still be taken out with a single headshot no matter how high level they might appear. You can also shoot the helmet off of high-level enemies and then finish them with a single follow-up shot.

Are you unsatisfied with how all your looted equipment looks like on you? Well, fret no more! Breakpoint has a cosmetic option called Skin Override, which allows you to tailor your character’s look to your exact specifications without affecting your stats and gear score.

To fine-tune your appearance, head to the Customize tab in the pause menu to set the default look you want to maintain as you equip new gear. There are several tabs-worth of options, so don’t hesitate to go wild customizing your character’s face, equipment color, tattoos, and more. More cosmetic options will unlock as you pick up new gear, so make it a point to check back frequently to ensure your character always looks as fresh as possible.

As you’re breaking down or selling old weapons, be mindful of the ones that could be good to use in Ghost War. Many of the guns you find are fantastic for balanced PvP play long after they’ve become obsolete in the campaign.