Ready or Not is VOID Interactive’s tactical SWAT shooter about clearing high-risk incidents in Los Sueños. This guide covers the base game and focuses on practical beginner habits for missions, loadouts, squad control, and safer room entries.
Content warning: Ready or Not is rated Mature and includes intense fictional crime scenarios. This guide avoids graphic story detail and stays focused on tactics.
Essential Tips
1. Start Every Mission at the Briefing
Do not treat the station as a menu. Read the briefing, objectives, floorplan, and available intel before picking gear. Ready or Not punishes generic loadouts because mission layouts, civilian density, suspect armor, and entry routes change how much less-lethal gear, wedges, optics, breaching tools, and armor you need. Even one minute with the tablet can prevent a bad first door.
2. Move Slowly Until the Room Forces Speed
The safest beginner rhythm is methodical: stop before thresholds, clear visible angles, listen, check the door, then commit. You are not playing a sprint shooter. Leaning, slicing corners, and holding angles expose less of your body than walking straight into a hallway. Fast entries still matter when a suspect is active or civilians are at immediate risk, but speed should be a deliberate answer, not your default.
3. Identify Before You Fire
Your score, squad safety, and mission outcome all depend on reading the contact in front of you. Armed suspects, surrendered suspects, unarmed civilians, and incapacitated bodies need different responses. Shouting for compliance, watching hands, and using light discipline are beginner survival skills. If you fire at everything that moves, you will lose score, stress your team, and make later rooms harder.
4. Bring a Mirrorgun or Assign One
Information is the strongest beginner tool. The mirrorgun lets you check under doors, identify traps, see room shape, and spot contacts before you expose the whole stack. It is especially valuable when you do not know a map yet. If you are playing co-op, assign one player to intel and have the team wait for their call instead of stacking five people on a blind door.
5. Use Door Wedges to Control the Map
Every uncleared door is a possible flank. Wedges let you freeze a side route while your team works a room, hallway, or objective cluster. The habit is simple: wedge what you are not clearing, announce it, then remove it when the team deliberately returns. This makes large maps less chaotic and keeps suspects from turning your careful entry into a crossfire.
6. Plan for Arrests, Not Just Kills
Ready or Not rewards controlled force. Less-lethal tools, flashbangs, stingers, gas, and clear verbal commands can turn dangerous rooms into arrests instead of shootings. Lethal force is still necessary when suspects present a threat, but your loadout should include ways to make compliance happen. A team with no restraint plan often clears the threat but drops the grade.
7. Secure Weapons and Bodies as You Go
Dropped weapons and restrained contacts are not cleanup chores to leave for the end. A surrendered suspect can still become a problem if you crowd them carelessly, and unsecured weapons can cost score or create confusion. After a room is stable, assign one officer to restrain, one to cover, and one to collect evidence. That rhythm keeps momentum without abandoning safety.
8. Match Ammunition to the Threat
Do not pick ammunition by habit alone. Armor-piercing rounds are useful against armored suspects, while hollow points are better suited to unarmored targets. If a mission mixes armor levels, consider a flexible setup across the squad rather than every officer carrying the same weapon and round type. Your goal is reliable threat stopping without spraying rounds through civilians or teammates.
9. Choose Armor for the Mission, Not Looks
Heavy protection can save you when a room turns bad, but it reduces your equipment flexibility. Lighter armor gives more room for tactical tools, while armor material changes durability and movement tradeoffs. Beginners usually benefit from survivability first, then gradually trimming weight once map knowledge improves.
10. Treat Sound as Intel
Gunfire, doors, footsteps, and voices can reveal contact location before you see anyone. Pause outside rooms long enough to listen. In co-op, keep comms short when the stack is preparing to enter. In single player, let your AI team work from clear orders instead of dragging them through noisy improvisation.
Loadout and Equipment Priorities
Build your first loadouts around control. A balanced beginner team wants lethal coverage, at least one reliable less-lethal option, flash or gas support, door wedges, a mirrorgun, breaching options, and enough armor to survive mistakes. Avoid filling every slot with grenades if nobody can inspect doors, block flanks, or safely restrain contacts.
Breaching choice matters. Peeking a door is quiet and preserves control, while rams, shotguns, and C2 trade noise for speed and shock. Hard breaching can help disrupt suspects, but it also announces you to nearby rooms. If you have not read the space, mirror first, wedge nearby flanks, and choose the breach after you know what problem the door presents.
Turn on nearby weapon highlighting if you struggle to find evidence. Dark rooms, dropped weapons under bodies, and cluttered scenes make post-fight searches easy to miss. The setting is a practical tool, not a shortcut, because you still need to secure the area before chasing outlines.
Room Clearing and Rules of Engagement
Think in layers: outside danger, door danger, immediate room danger, deep corner danger, then evidence and civilians. Beginners often stare at the center of the room and miss the angle that matters. Slice the doorway, call known contacts, deploy tools, enter with purpose, and keep one player or AI element covering the next threat.
Prioritize armed suspects before admin work. Civilians matter, but restraining one while an armed suspect is still moving can get everyone hurt. Once threats are down, surrendered, or isolated, shift to rescue and evidence. Restrain incapacitated suspects too; do not assume the fight is over because a body stopped moving.
Rules of engagement are not flavor text. Use clear commands, give suspects a chance to comply when safe, and escalate when they present danger. If you rely on lethal force for every uncertainty, Commander Mode stress and mission scoring will push back. Controlled arrests also preserve team condition across a longer campaign.
Commander and Co-op Habits
Commander Mode adds a layer beyond surviving the map. Squadmate and hostage deaths affect the team, and stressed officers may need rest or therapy. Rotate officers when performance drops, value traits that match your plan, and do not chase perfect ranks by burning out the roster.
In co-op, the hardest mechanic is often communication. Assign roles before launch: point, mirror, breacher, less-lethal, rear security, and evidence. Use short calls such as “wedged left,” “trap right,” “civilian front,” or “armed deep.” Five players talking over each other creates the same result as no communication.
When playing solo, trust commands but stay realistic. AI teammates can help clear, restrain, and cover, but they still need good positioning and clear orders. Do not leave them in doorways, stack them in exposed halls, or ask them to solve a room you have not inspected.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Do not rush the first visible door - Check the briefing, floorplan, nearby flanks, and door condition before committing.
- Do not skip the mirrorgun on unfamiliar maps - Blind entries waste health, grenades, and officer lives.
- Do not leave side doors unwedged - A single open flank can undo a perfect first room.
- Do not restrain civilians while armed suspects are active - Stabilize the threat before switching to rescue work.
- Do not ignore dropped weapons - Secure evidence as rooms become safe so you are not searching under pressure later.
- Do not bring only lethal answers - Less-lethal tools, commands, and grenades are how you earn cleaner outcomes.
- Do not hard breach every door - Noise can solve one room while waking the next three.
- Do not stack the whole co-op team in one doorway - Spread roles across point, cover, breaching, rear security, and evidence.
- Do not run stressed officers into every mission - Rotate or rest the roster before performance problems snowball.
Summary
| Category | Top Tip |
|---|---|
| Briefing | Read objectives and floorplans before choosing gear |
| Movement | Clear slowly until a real threat demands speed |
| Doors | Mirror, wedge, then breach with intent |
| ROE | Identify contacts and escalate only when needed |
| Evidence | Secure weapons and bodies after each stable room |
| Loadout | Balance lethal, less-lethal, intel, wedges, and armor |
| Commander | Protect the roster, not just the current score |
| Co-op | Assign roles and keep calls short |
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8 checked for this guideEvery factual claim in this guide was checked against at least two independent sources before publication. These are the references used for Ready or Not.
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