007 First Light follows the origin story of the world’s most famous spy, James Bond. As a fresh recruit in MI6’s revived Double-0 program, Bond has plenty to learn about the covert world of espionage. We’ve spent over 20 hours mastering the art of spycraft in 007 First Light to bring you 18 essential tips that’ll help you survive your first field assignments at one of the most prestigious intelligence agencies in the world.

In this 007 First Light guide, we’ll get you up to scratch with everything you need to know about the spyworld, including strategies for using your fancy new gadgets to your advantage, tips for taking down enemies before they can radio for backup or finish cooking a grenade, and even a handy method that’ll make tracking down missing collectibles and challenges a complete breeze.

18 Essential Tips and Tricks for Getting Started in 007 First Light

Understanding the Licence to Kill Mechanic

Unlike most games, 007 First Light heavily limits when Bond can actually fire a weapon. In fact you may go over an hour of playtime in between true fire fights, depending on your playstyle that is. This is due to the Licence to Kill mechanic. Bond can only pull out a firearm when the enemy is actively firing upon him. You’ll see this signified by the Licence to Kill text at the top of the screen, highlighted by a red glow. Don’t expect to be collecting large reserves of magazines during the Licence to Kill sections.

First Light actively encourages you to be constantly swapping out your gun with those of your fallen enemies. You can even throw your gun at an enemy once your reserves are depleted. Shooting an enemy in the hand will disarm and fling their weapon, letting Bond catch and fire back at them. Once the enemies have been cleared out, the License to Kill text will disappear, and Bond will put away his gun to continue his usual subterfuge.

Prioritize Taking Down Enemies Radioing For Backup

If you have accidentally blown your cover during a mission and hear an enemy requesting to radio in the encounter, you’ll have a very brief window to target them and break their call for help. Neutralizing the enemy during this transmission will be crucial; if you’re successful, the call-in will be revoked and the request for back-up won’t be made. Breaking their transmission with force often has the best chance of success, but using gadgets also works.

Identifying which enemy is attempting to alert others can be tricky in the heat of the moment, but thankfully there is a key indicator: simply look for the enemy with an antenna icon above their head. Breaking their radio transmission before their bar runs out not only allows you to regain control over the situation, but also opens up the possibility to return to your stealth approach, as long as guards outside the encounter have not spotted you.

Use Your Instincts to Talk Your Way Out of Situations

On the bottom of the screen, you’ll see Bond’s count of “instinct” points, and the various options on how you can spend those points. Being the smooth talker that he is, Bond may be able to talk himself out of a jam using the bluff mechanic. While this will work for your average low-level henchman, you won’t be able to bluff “watcher” type enemies. You also won’t be able to rely on disguises around these enemies. “Watchers” are signified by a white dot icon on top of their head.

Using instinct, you can also lure enemies to your current location, setting them up for a potential trap. During combat you can spend instinct by essentially activating bullet time using the focus mechanic. When you do, you should pay attention to the instinct meter on the bottom left hand side of the screen, which gives you a more granular look on how much more instinct you can spend to slow down time.

You might be wondering how you gain instinct? Well, by doing cool spy stuff of course. Eavesdropping on others to find valuable intel, silently knocking out enemies, and successful kills will all give you instinct.

Pick the Right Gadgets for Your Play Style

When it comes to selecting gadgets, you always want to choose the tools that are best suited to your desired playstyle. As neat as the Missile Pen and Shockwave Camera may be, their uses are somewhat limited—especially if you’re going for a more stealth-focused approach—as they’re mostly designed for quickly (and rather loudly) taking down enemies and destroying environmental objects.

If you’re after a bit of a quieter approach that’s more useful for distracting, stunning, and dispersing enemies, you can never go wrong with bringing the Q-Watch, Dart Phone, Laser Strap, or Smoke Pod gadgets, as they excel and aid in stealth situations.

The Dart Phone allows you to temporarily disorient and disperse enemies, cause distractions, and remotely activate objects around your environment. The Dart Phone's stun timer is what makes the gadget so useful, as its stun lasts much longer than every other gadget. This is helpful if you need an enemy to leave an area for an extended period of time.

The Smoke Pod, while slightly more situational, excels in tackling larger groups of enemies—especially when you can draw them in close together—as it creates a thick cloud of smoke that temporarily blinds and confuses those engulfed. While they are blinded, you’ll be able to slip past enemies that would otherwise be difficult to sneak around.

The Laser Strap, on the other hand, is more of a jack-of-all-trades. In addition to temporarily blinding enemies (both in and out of active combat), you’ll also be able to slice through metal barrels, locks, and even wires holding up the likes of chandeliers and other hanging objects. The Laser Strap's stun does only last for a few, but this is still great for situations where you need to quickly pickpocket or sneak by someone guarding an entrance.

Lastly, Bond will be able to interact with various objects throughout the environment by hacking them with his Q-watch. This is incredibly useful to create distractions or to disable security cameras.

Look For Hints Around the World

While exploring the more open-ended levels, Bond can find hints on the various ways to progress. This is basically First Light’s version of Hitman’s opportunities or mission stories. Usually you can find these hints by following the teal icons while holding in the gadget button.

To view the hints you have acquired so far, go into the journal screen’s objective tab and press the “show hints” button. If you have multiple leads, you can track a specific hint you want to follow. Remember, there are many ways to approach these levels so be ready to experiment.

Hone Your Combat Skills in the TacSim

Combat is briefly touched on in your initial training in Malta, but you may be surprised to learn that there’s actually a lot more to combat than first meets the eye. When navigating to the Tutorials Menu, and selecting Combat, you'll find a full breakdown of all possible combat maneuvers.

At the end of Chapter 2, you’ll visit Q’s Lab, where you can speak with Selina Tan, the head of Tactical Simulation at MI6. Speaking with Dr. Tan unlocks the TacSim Department, granting you immediate access to two Escalations: Advanced Tactical Training and Advanced Close Combat Training (with more unlocking after you beat the main story).

Now, before continuing with the main story, we highly recommend spending some time completing at least the first two tiers of these Escalations, as they’ll provide advanced tutorials that run you through more complex strike combinations, parrying, sidestepping, grabs, and much more.

Practicing these techniques in a risk-free, repeatable environment is the absolute best way to master 007 First Light’s combat system.

Use the TacSim to Challenge Others Online and Unlock New Cosmetics

While the TacSim may at first appear to be more of a tutorial trainer, the reality is that's actually so much more. The TacSim essentially acts as the online component of First Light. You have leaderboards, a progression system with unlockables, such as outfits, and a plethora of missions to try your hand at.

There are two types of missions, escalations, and operations. Escalations will give you a series of challenges, with each one escalating in difficulty. Operations on the other hand are single missions designed to test your lateral thinking. These missions will often have modifiers, or “game changers” to shake things up and adjust the difficulty.

This all will sound pretty familiar to you if you were a fan of the recent Hitman trilogy, and just like with those, IO Interactive plans to provide plenty of post launch support to the TacSim mode. As for now, completing the main story will grant you more content to check out inside TacSim.

Check Challenges at the Start of Every Chapter

At the start of every new chapter, be sure to always check the Challenges menu. Here, you will find a full list of all optional, chapter-specific challenges that you can complete during the mission. By checking these challenges at the beginning of every chapter, it’ll allow you to tailor your playthrough towards completing specific challenges, whether they be stealth-focused, combat heavy, or require you to find a particular object.

We recommend waiting until you complete the story before you actively try your hand at checking off all these boxes, as the pacing of the story can slow down quite a bit, and you will have to replay sections anyway no matter what you do. First Light has a very generous chapter select system that makes replaying specific sections a breeze (which we touch on below).

As far as the challenges go, the usual suspects for a stealth game are here like Pacifist, which asks that you complete specific parts of levels without killing enemies. Ghost on the other hand asks you to get through specific parts of levels without being spotted.

With that in mind, we do recommend that you read what these challenges are asking for very carefully. Both Pacifist and Ghost may have extra specific stipulations that aren’t exactly clean cut. For example, some challenges tied to pacifist will allow you to knock out enemies, and other challenges won’t. It can be a bit confusing. While sneaking up behind an enemy might be called a “takedown,” that's not the same as “taking out” an enemy as described in the challenge text.

Utilize the Robust Checkpoint System to Your Advantage

007 First Light features a robust checkpoint system that allows you to reload from a series of checkpoints in every chapter. This means that if you’re trying to complete a particular Challenge, you can reload at dedicated checkpoints, essentially allowing you to skip large chunks of a chapter that you would otherwise need to replay.

To use this feature, simply back out to the main menu at any point and follow these steps:

• Navigate to Story > Chapter Select.
• Select your desired Chapter, which then provides a list of all Checkpoints for that chapter.
• Finally, select your Checkpoint, followed by Difficulty, and then proceed to save your new playthrough to any of the five available save slots.

You can now easily clean up any Challenges and track down missing Collectibles without completely replaying entire missions. Best of all, Collectibles conveniently carry over between your saves, which makes trophy hunting a breeze.

Keep Your Eyes Peeled for Collectibles

Hidden throughout every mission is a series of collectibles that you can find. In total, there are five collectible types to discover, each with their own achievement/trophy tied to collecting them. These collectibles consist of: 36 Cards, 23 Intel, 14 Mementos, 10 Postcards, and 9 Legacy.

Tracking down these collectibles can be a little tricky, as while some are conveniently hidden in plain sight along the main path, most are tucked away off the beaten path, often inside optional rooms and areas that are otherwise inaccessible without special access, whether it be a Key, Keycard, or even gadget-related. Some are even locked behind environmental triggers caused by story progression or specific conversations. Because of this, be prepared for some backtracking and re-exploring of areas.

Now, 007 First Light has no shortage of items to inspect, but thankfully, collectibles do feature their own unique HUD tag that makes them easier to pinpoint. As you near items, be on the lookout for a bookmark-like symbol that’ll appear, as this indicates the item is a collectible. After inspecting the item, it’ll be automatically added to your Collectibles menu, where you can inspect them for even further lore and backstory, particularly so for items that fall into the Intel category.

Prioritize Headshots and Leg Shots

While you can stealth through most encounters in 007 First Light, firefights are sometimes just unavoidable. When things do go loud, you’ll often find yourself strapped for ammo and gadget resources the longer the fight goes on. So in order to converse your supplies, we highly recommend prioritizing headshots.

While headshots do take just a little longer to line up, a single clean headshot is all that’s needed to kill an unarmored enemy. Heavily armored enemies aren’t as easy though, as it’ll take anywhere from two to four headshots for them to go down.

Alternatively, when in doubt, you can always go for leg shots. When shooting an enemy in the leg, you’ll temporarily daze them. Shooting enemies in both legs though will incapacitate them entirely.

Button Mashing Can Land You in Danger

As tempting as it may be to button-mash your way through a fight, doing so could lead you to a quick and early death—especially when facing off against large groups of enemies. As mentioned earlier, enemies don’t wait to attack. Queuing up multiple strikes can land you in hot water, as you’ll more often than not be locked into a long attack animation, and any surrounding enemies won’t hesitate to blindside you with a swift hit that you can’t react to in time.

Because of this, we highly recommend planning your strikes strategically by performing well thought out Strike combinations, Grabs, and Object Tosses—all of which you’ll learn about in advanced training and the tutorial menu. Taking a slower, more calculated approach to combat makes it much easier to dodge and parry unexpected hits. It also opens up opportunities to grab nearby environmental items in the heat of the moment, which you can toss at enemies between strikes to stagger them significantly.

Use Gadgets and Instincts Wisely

Your Gadgets aren't unlimited. Depending on the item, every use of a gadget will drain a small amount of your Battery or Chemical resources (which can be tracked on your Q-Watch gauges). To avoid unnecessary trips towards these resources, keep a close eye out for resource icons as you explore. If an item's icon is blue or green, you have room to pick it up. If it is greyed out, you're completely full for that specific resource.

Just like Gadgets, Bond’s skills (such as Lure, Confrontation, Bluff, and Focus) are limited, as they cost varying amounts of Instinct to use. You can monitor this resource by checking the large yellow lightning bolt meter that’s displayed next to your Q-Watch. A small amount of Instinct can be recharged each time you perform a spy move, such as disposing of an enemy or successfully eavesdropping on a conversation.

Get the Most Out of Your Q-Lens

The Q-Lens is a vital tool in James Bond’s arsenal. For this reason, we highly recommend using your Q-Lens frequently to take advantage of its following features:

• Discovering Hidden Items on NPCs: This includes Keys, Keycards, and mission objectives like Cash Bundles. These items can be used to progress the main story—often opening up alternate paths outlined in mission Challenges—or to unlock otherwise inaccessible rooms that hide collectibles and Challenge-related items.
• Highlighting Interactables: All interactable items in your immediate vicinity will be highlighted in orange.

• Highlighting NPCs: All surrounding enemies and notable staff members, including those found in nearby rooms, will have their outline highlighted, allowing you to track their movement patterns and whereabouts through walls and objects.
• Highlighting Gadget Effects: By hovering over people and objects with the Q-Lens, you will be able to learn how a particular gadget impacts them. For example, it’ll display if it’ll cause low vision, destruction of an object, an explosion, or even more.

Take Advantage of Enemy Chatter

When you find yourself pinned down by enemy forces, always listen for enemy audio cues, as they’ll often shout out their tactics—such as pushing forward, flanking, calling for backup, or cooking a grenade. Thankfully, you can use these cues to your advantage to anticipate their next move.

For example, if an enemy shouts that they're throwing a grenade, quickly snap your focus to them. A single shot from a weapon or gadget is enough to interrupt their animation, causing them to drop the live grenade, which will detonate in their immediate area, either killing or stunning anybody nearby.

Select Your Cover Carefully

If you’re engaged in a firefight, it’s crucial that you select your cover carefully, as most cover options—such as wooden crates and corrugated sheeting—are highly destructible and will only withstand a few bullets before they are destroyed. Leaving you wide open to incoming attacks, and potentially a quick death.

For this reason, we highly recommend looking for more permanent cover options like sturdy structures and metal beams. Scouting areas for safe cover prior to engaging in combat can be incredibly valuable, and likely save you a death or two.

Beware of Dynamic Environments That Change

As you progress through key story objectives and conversations—like at the Safe House in Chapter One and the Nightclub in Chapter Two—be sure to keep an eye on shifting environments, as certain NPCs will move position and new conversation options will become available, allowing you to interact with new areas and items, such as collectibles and disguises, that you previously couldn’t.

Low on Health? Don’t Hesitate to Run!

Now feels like a good time to mention that while Bond might be charming, he’s not invincible. In fact, it only takes a few solid hits to take him down. Retreating isn't usually 007's style, but sometimes it’s absolutely necessary to stay alive, as the game's health regeneration system can at times be incredibly unforgiving.

If you’re low on health and seeing red, we recommend taking cover immediately or focusing solely on dodging enemy melee attacks if you’re just facing one target. If you’re facing several enemies at once, though, dodging their attacks can be difficult, since enemies are free to attack you at any time—even if you’re locked into an attack animation with another enemy.

So, in order to survive, you’re going to need to create some space. While we don’t recommend sprinting into another room (which might alert even more enemies), you can opt to kite your current targets around your environment. Essentially, you’ll want to run enemies around obstacles to maintain a safe enough distance until your health can regenerate.