Seven tips for taking on the Cartel in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is a huge game and can be a little overwhelming when you first start. There is very little tutorial to guide you when you first begin, and the game throws you straight into the action after a short exposition as to why you are there and you pretty much have to learn on the job.

To help you get familiarised with the enormous task at hand in Bolivia, we have put together some tips to help get you started.

Set your online preferences

Ghost Recon Wildlands is a co-operative experience, and we feel one that is best experienced with a group of friends. If you don’t have three friends, you can search online for an open group, but you will need to enable that in your settings.

If you prefer to work alone utilising the AI, then you can set your game to be non-searchable, invite only or open to friends.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

Going in unprepared will almost certainly end in failure so you should spend some time scoping out the area first, tagging enemies and points of interest in the camp. You have a couple of tools available to you in the form of a drone that has a limited battery life and range as well as binoculars.

Tagging is very easily achieved by focusing the reticle of your drone, binoculars or even gun scope on a target. In addition, you can mark specific targets for priority take out either by your AI partners or highlighting particular dangers for your friends.

A well planned out attack is one of the most satisfactory elements of Wildlands, so be sure to utilise all the tools available.

Search enemy hideouts

When scoping out an enemy hideout, you can also check for items that can help you in your mission to wipe out the cartel. Often in buildings there will be pieces of intel that help flesh out the stories of the individuals who serve the cartel and can lead to further clues to taking out one of the bosses.

In addition, many of the camps have caches of supplies that you can tag for the rebels to come and collect at a later date. By helping the local rebels gather supplies such as medicine and gasoline you will unlock higher tier skills that will come in handy when you start getting into the meatier fights with the cartel bosses.

Gather intel

Gathering intelligence on the various elements of the cartel is a key component of the gameplay. There are two types of intel that you can gather from individuals: firstly there are civilians who will be able to tell you about local weapon caches or side missions that will assist the rebel forces, and secondly there are the drug lords who you can capture and interrogate, and will tell you more information about the particular cartel boss you are tracking.

Be wary when attacking a hideout though because you can scare the informant off and if you accidentally kill one of the drug lords you will fail the mission and have to start over.

Stealth

Being stealthy is your best resource in Bolivia; if you are spotted in a heavily fortified base it is often game over as reinforcements are called in and you are then left fighting enemies on all sides.

In addition to the cartel enemies, the local militia police force (Unidad) can become alerted to your activity and can also start attacking you. In this instance it is advised to withdraw and regroup your squad.

Vehicles

Bolivia is huge, and the distances between missions are sizeable so utilise the many vehicles that are available to you. If you are playing in single-player mode your AI squad will automatically teleport into the vehicle you are using, even if that is a helicopter, so be sure to utilise them to escape should you run into trouble.

Be wary of straying too far in the map without taking on some of the under-bosses and clearing a province though as you are likely to be shot down by a missile if you explore too much, particularly in early game.

Find some friends

Ghost Recon Wildlands has been designed as a co-operative experience and it is our opinion that the game really comes alive when you are playing with a bunch of friends, so find a couple and get stuck in.

When working with friends it is useful to establish roles that each will play. It is entirely possible to just run in and start shooting enemies, but successful missions usually have a mixture of players who are sniping from afar and assault players moving into base.