Metal Gear Solid 5: Blood Runs Deep

This walkthrough will show you how to complete the Blood Runs Deep main story mission in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, earning an S Rank for your efforts. We’ll also list all of the mandatory and optional objectives, as well as help you knock a few off along the way. It should be noted, however, that you do not need to complete the optional objectives to get your S Rank, you only need to earn 130,000 total points. This score is mainly achieved through the time bonus, so sometimes skipping an objective is in the best interest of your S Rank.

Objectives

• Eliminate the former Mbele soldier (Mandatory).
• Eliminate the five prisoners held at the Kungenga Mine (Mandatory).
• Extract a child prisoner (Mandatory).
• Extract the former Mbele rebel soldier (Optional).
• Complete mission without the enemy discovering the prisoner escape (Optional).
• Eliminate the gunship (Optional).
• Extract five snipers from near Kungenga mine (Optional).
• Extract three armored vehicles (Optional).

Walkthrough

There is a lot going on in this mission, so if it’s your first play through we advise that you take your time and explore every single outpost, and every hut within them. There are a lot of Rough Diamonds, a lot of shipping containers with materials, and quite a few other nifty items to find. If you’re just looking for the S Rank, you should plan to have this done in about 25 minutes, completing some of the optional objectives along the way. The time bonus alone will not get the 130,000 points (if you take 25 minutes).

We chose to use Quiet for this mission, even though you can cut down on a bit of travel time with D-Horse, and D-Dog is pretty good at marking enemies. The reason we went with Quiet is because she has the skills to take out entire outposts before you ever reach them, making the rest of your journey much easier to manage.

Your first destination is Bampeve Plantation. When your chopper drops you off, use your iDROID, selecting Mission, Buddy Support, and then instructing Quiet to attack the Bampeve Plantation. She won’t wait for you, which is what you want. She will run ahead, take up a position, and starting killing everyone in sight. This isn’t the most subtle approach, but since you need to be quick, it’s a pretty solid method.

Quiet likely won’t have the camp cleared when you get there, so give her a hand and start shooting the enemies that are left. You actually need to shoot one in a white t-shirt, but since you’re going to kill everyone, his time will come. If you want some extra points, make sure you are scoring headshots. When the camp is cleared an armored vehicle will roll through. You can either sneak past it, or you can use smoke to sneak up on it and use the Fulton Recovery Device (Cargo +2) and send it back to Mother Base.

With the armored vehicle dealt with, send Quiet to the next outpost up the road. If there isn’t a deployment point for her, send her all the way to the Kungenga Mine and again tell her to attack. She’s basically your snow plow for this mission, clearing the road so that you have an easier time. It’s also important that nobody at the mine lives, as this can lead to an optional objective being completed later on.

There is at least one major outpost between the Bampeve Plantation and the Kungenga Mine, but it shouldn’t be too hard for you to just sneak past. If you are on a first play through, be sure to stop and use the Fulton Recovery Device (Cargo +2) and extract the shipping containers full of materials. If you’re after the S Rank, just keep moving along and ignore the outpost completely.

If all has gone according to plan, by the time you reach the Kungenga Mine, Quiet should have put a serious dent into their forces. Join her in slaughtering anyone that’s left, and make sure that you bring a rocket launcher to take down the gunship that patrols overhead. Not only is this an optional objective that will give you a few extra points, but it also makes the rest of your trip a little bit easier. If you don’t have a rocket launcher that locks on to vehicles, let the gunship see you to trigger Reflex Mode, making it much easier to nail it with an unguided weapon.

When the mine is clear you’ll want to continue forward, and as you are filtered into a canyon, there will be an iron bar door on the left. Go through it, killing anyone that might be left, and make your way to the five prisoners that you need to extract. If you are looking for a time bonus, skip the cut scene from the pause menu. We aren’t sure that this is necessary, but it’s better to play it safe.

When you have the children, exit the mine and turn left. You’ll want to make sure that Quiet is covering you, which is one of the options in the menu for your current buddy. As long as she is, she should keep moving along with you, and killing anyone that she sees. Unfortunately, there are no deployment points for her between you and the landing zone, so there are times when she gets a little wonky and doesn’t keep up. You’ll have to ensure that you’re setting the prisoner that you’re carrying down, killing anyone that blocks the path forward.

The route between you and the landing zone shouldn’t have too many soldiers, so just use a sniper rifle to take any bad guys out from a distance. When the path is clear, pick up the prisoner and move along with the group. If you find that the prisoners won’t follow you, tell them to wait, and then to go again and that should get them rolling. If they still won’t move, make sure there are no soldiers running behind you, which is why we advised that you kill absolutely everyone from the start of the mission until its end.

Once you arrive at the landing zone, throw the prisoners aboard the chopper and extract. If you got your S Rank, you were likely done in about 20 minutes, and hit a couple of the optional objectives as you were naturally playing. If you didn’t hit your S Rank, play it again, but focus on headshots from a suppressed weapon. Either that, or try using D-Horse to cut down on your travel time, just keeping in mind that you’re wasting precious seconds as you switch back to Quiet, or D-Dog.

Continue to Metal Gear Solid 5: On the Trail, or return to the Metal Gear Solid 5 Walkthrough and Guide.