Ghost Recon Online Beginner’s Guide

Ghost Recon Online Beginner’s Guide by Freyar

Choosing Your Class

Assault

• Uses assault rifles and shotguns.
• Can knock enemies down with BLITZ, or suppress enemies with HEAT.
• Uses heavy armor.
• Excellent all-around class. Provides a good amount of accurate fire with a good deal of suppression-oriented devices.

Specialist

• Uses LMGs and shotguns.
• Can protect allies with the AEGIS shield, or disorient and disable equipment with BLACKOUT.
• Uses medium armor.
• Excellent at supporting, suppressing, and pushing. This class can help turn around a capture that may be failing, or lead the spearhead to allow teammates to get on point.

Recon

• Uses sniper rifles and SMGs.
• Can uncover enemies to all teammates using the ORACLE detection system, or sneak behind enemies with the CLOAKing system.
• Uses light armor.
• Excellent support and assassination. This class can help feed valuable information to allies as well as have advantages when countering enemy recons as well.

Your Equipment Is Your Life

In your loadout, you can pick and choose what pieces of equipment you want to take with you in games. You end up with eight slots, which correspond to the type of equipment you have.

• Primary Weapon (Rifles, SMGs, LMGs, Shotguns)
• Secondary Weapon (Handguns)
• Armor
• Helmet
• Device (HEAT, ORACLE, AEGIS)
• Squad Support Item (Combat Regen, Gunshot Vector, Ammo Regen)
• Grenades
• Boosters (XP and RP Boosts)

You will need to note that dark items are ones that are NOT for your class and cannot be used on that character or loadout. You can always switch to the appropriate class and equip the item there.

Any Way You Want It

Clicking the small box in the bottom right corner of your armor or primary weapon will allow you to modify your equipment. Your weapon will have eight slots that you can potentially modify, but most weapons do have attachments that you may not modify such as the stock, the grip, and the barrel in the example here. As you change equipment or add to a weapon, you will change it’s characteristics.

• Damage
  • The higher the number, the more damage each shot will do. This number is BEFORE armor protection on your target is calculated, so numbers in the field may be substantially lower.
• Fire Rate
  • The higher the number, the faster you can fire one round after another.
• Ammo Pool / Magazine Size
  • The higher the first number, the more ammunition you can carry on your person.
  • The higher the second number, the more rounds will be in your magazine after reloading or spawning.
• Accuracy
  • The higher the number, the more accurate your weapon will be, reducing “bloom” during a firefight.
• Recoil
  • The higher the number, the more recoil the weapon has, shifting your camera violently during a firefight. This is one of the few stats where a smaller number is better.
• Handling
  • The higher the number, the less time it will take you to ready your weapon after some actions such as sprinting.
• Reload Time
  • The higher the number, the longer it takes to change your magazine. Lower is better.
• Fire Modes
  • What modes of fire are available for this weapon. Auto, Semi, Burst, and Single are possible.

Bestowed Upon Thee Is a Challenge Before Me

Challenges are split into three types.

• Daily Victory
  • Winning your first victory of the day will give you a small bonus to “RP”
• Solo Challenge
  • Challenges designed to test you on your own.
• Fireteam Challenge
  • Making a group generates a “fireteam”. These challenges require you to satisfy group objectives such as killing a large number of enemies in one round while in a fireteam. A fireteam should not be confused with “Squad”.

Basic Handling

Ghost Recon Online has some unique properties that may frustrate newer players. Being aware of yourself, your enemies and most importantly your environment is important to making sure that when you need your weapon, it will be there ready for you. One of these unique properties is the notion that your weapon will not go through, or “clip”, through walls. If you stand too closely, you will lower the weapon from a ready state, leaving you vulnerable. As such it is very important to make sure you allow enough room between you and a wall for your weapon, otherwise that small amount of time needed to raise it will get you killed.

It is also important to note that accuracy in general is not like most other games. Weapons are inaccurate by default and require you to “get used” to them over time. Knowing when to choose an appropriate firemode is important. By default you can press “X” to change between available fire modes for your weapon. Note that some weapons do not have this option such as shotguns and bolt-action rifles.

By pressing the spacebar, you can put yourself in cover. This gives you a number of advantages, though with some minor disadvantages as well.

• Pros of Being in Cover
  • You can bonuses to your recoil, accuracy, and stability.
  • You are protected (in most pieces of cover) from gunfire and are significantly closer to that piece of cover, making it harder for you to be seen.
• Cons of Being in Cover
  • Not all cover is bulletproof.
  • Depending on the angle to an enemy, you may end up with your weapon lowered.
  • You are limited to moving along your cover left and right, although you can usually press “E” to climb over it if possible.
  • In some places, enemies will expect you to take cover.

It’s best to use cover, but the cover system in itself should be used when appropriate, not all the time. Your bonuses for using the cover system cover are very helpful, and are also improved based on which stance you are in. Standing, Crouched, and Sitting provides better bonuses the further down you are. The downside to sitting is that you may expose your legs so your stance must be chosen carefully. Remember, you don’t always have to be against a wall, sometimes it is better to just keep an object between you and an enemy.

There’s No “I” In Team

While playing you will notice lines connecting your shoulder to teammates that are within a certain range. The best way to describe this is a wireless network. Data will transfer between you and your teammates if you stay within range. If one of your teammates spots an enemy, all teammates within range will see this enemy too. The range for these networks can be increased by forming a fireteam before the match furthering these benefits.

Each player can have a team support item that can help their connected teammates while playing. In the case of an assault, he can equip a “Combat Regen” utility that will provide teammates connected to him a useful regeneration effect that can help keep them alive. Other classes have other benefits as well such as ammo regeneration and being able to spot enemies that may be sprinting or shooting.

Tips

Contributed by Kryztjan Grendelizer

I would add for beginners to MAKE SURE you go into the store, consumables, armor inserts and buy some with the highest protection value available for your level and make sure to hit the customize button on your loadout to check that the inserts are actually in your body armor!

Also, get to level 7 and 10 as quickly as possible so you can get decent armor and a decent weapon. Even after that you’ll run into players with the level 30 armor (4 inserts) and a weapon that fires faster with more damage per shot so you don’t have much chance killing them in a heads-up firefight.

GET A HEADSET! Your chances to stay alive and capture points goes up if you can communicate with your team. “flanker behind us on right” “clear to advance on D” etc.

And lastly KEEP YOUR GUN UP, stay in the sights when you round corners- if someone is there looking your direction with their gun up you don’t have much chance.

Contributed by circle

More Tips:
– Level up all 3 characters to level 2 for a easy 3K (will probably take 3-6 matches, depending on skill)
– use crouch or ironsight when approaching corners so that your weapon is ready to fire
– when playing defence on onslaught maps, all you need to do to prevent the attackers from winning is just to stay on the point. If there are at least the same number of players on the point, the capture will stop, and the capture meter will slowly deplete. So even if you are a sniper recon, at times you need to just get onto the point to prevent the capture to secure a win for the round.

For Assault
– buy the extended magazine if you use the assault rifle
– equip your blitz shield when waiting for your ability to recharge – it’ll block bullets
– do not use heat in an emergency, while in the open. It takes some time to deploy and after that there is a lag time before the enemy will be affected.

For Recon
– if you are using the sniper rifle, you will *usually* have a good view of the battlefield, keep your team updated on enemy movements or locations. Relaying information is sometime more useful than trying to go for kills.
– don’t run when using cloak near enemies, higher level recons with vector detection squad support will detect you and draw a giant rectangle around your character – easy target

For Specialist
– when using a lmg, make use of your large ammo pool:
– if you know an opponent is around a corner, start shooting at the corner as you approach it
– do not reload unless you absolutely need to (less than 10 or so bullets left)

Daily Challenge Tips:
– the “Kill a player 10 level higher than you” challenge seemed the easiest for me
– try to fireteam with someone using a different class and do the “Play 3 rounds with at least 1 Recon/Assault/Specialist in your fireteam” challenge

Grenade tip
– always aim to bounce your grenades (off covers or off the ground)
– if you aim directly at the enemy, the grenade will usually bounce/roll past the player position
– higher level players, depending on loadout and presence of squad support, can survive up to 2 grenades blasts