Battlefield Hardline

*Spoiler below*


Hello and welcome to my guide. First off the other two guides here are very good and contain valuable information. In my guide I will touch on some very good shortcuts that will make this hard line play through a breeze!!!


First as you may know you must play at least "officer" difficulty to unlock "hardline" difficulty. During this play through I highly recommend that you obtain all evidence and arrest all suspects with warrants!! If you do this you can breeze through the hardline play through because you can kill or skip enemies and you will not need to search for evidence in enemy populated areas!

Now once you played through and unlocked "hardline" difficulty select the prologue and play it....then select "hardline" difficulty.

Now for the shortcuts I mentioned earlier.

Always carry a grappling hook when you can!! This will allow you to shoot it on rooftops and avoid enemies on certain levels! More on that below! Also make sure all your weapons have a silencer on them ( I used the m16)

On episode 3 when you reach the stadium, you can use the grapple hook on the far left hand side of the stadium and skip all the enemies by avoiding them.


On episode 4 when you reach the warehouse you can run all the way to the left side of the map on the road and shoot the grappling hook up to the rooftop....kill the enemy near where you climb up and jump off the roof and on to the staircase....then open the door....you just avoided 90% of the enemies outside!

Click for a video guide
Battlefield hardline episode 4 shortcut !!:
On episode 9 you should equip c4 and the gas mask....when you start drilling the vault you can drop the c4 near the desks and retreat to the balcony. Remember the windows are bulletproof!!! Use that to your advantage and hide behind them. Because you have the gas mask you will not be hurt by the gas grenades and I found that when equipped the enemies will NOT toss fire grenades.

When the enemies approach your c4 trigger it....you will need to shoot at one enemy to get them to that area.

Also you can lay down and crouch behind the glass on the balcony if you get hurt bad....Kai will toss health as well.

This next trick is by far my greatest tip in this guide!!!!

In episode 10 you will approach the beach and 2 enemies...kill them or arrest them... Walk to the left where the shoreline is and you will see one enemy on the dock, kill him....now jump into the water and swim all the way around the water bungelows and keep swimming until you see a wood dock....walk up the path and look for the two enemies near the side of the cliff..... This is referred to as the cliff shortcut!

You will kill them and then use the grapple hook twice, once at the top kill the enemy and then walk to the left...hop into the waterfall and over the rocks....line up the enemy through the glass and shoot.... Next walk up to the door and you will cutscene kill Dawes! YOU JUST BEAT THE LAST LEVEL IN ABOUT 5 MINUTES ON HARDLINE!


Below is a video I made for you in case you find it easier to watch the method for episode 10.
Episode 10 Shortcut battlefield hardline !!!:

Please feel free to leave feedback, questions, or comments below, thank you and good luck!

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

This isn't so much as a guide as it is a warning: If you happen to select the "restart campaign" option by pressing the button, you will lose ALL progress you have made in the campaign episodes. This includes your current expert level, all case file progress, and most importantly, any and all weapons/accessories you have unlocked.

While you can still unlock all items in the way you usually could, it's a bit of a hassle and will put you at a disadvantage when you are forced into a firefight.

Once again, this is just a heads-up to those who would like to make Hardline difficulty as quick and painless as possible.

Hardline difficulty is unlocked after the completion of all 11 episodes on at least Officer difficulty. Once all 11 are completed, a message will be displayed on screen stating that it is now available.

Hardline difficulty has a few changes from veteran and Officer difficulty, which is most notably enemy damage. Enemies will have an increased rate of fire, accuracy, and damage per bullet than before. However, this only applies to foot soldiers. Vehicles will not take any more or less damage depending on the difficulty.

As well, you will have no recovery time between recieving hits, meaning returning fire will under fire is not recommended.

The stealth aspect is not affected at all. While enemies may have slightly different positions and patrol routes than in previous playthroughs, that is not an outcome of difficulty.

Their are a few ways to easily complete missions on Hardline, with varying difficulty depending on your own playstyle. It is highly recommended that you do not go for evidence/warrants on this difficulty.

1) Stealth.
As stealth is not affected by difficulty, this is the easiest for someone who attempted total stealth on the first playthrough. Should you take this approach, you will need to keep the tazer with you at all times. It is instant kill and silent, but should only be used if their is no other alternative due to it's lack of range.

A grappling hook is also recommended. There are numerous ways to skip large bodies of enemies by using the grappling hook, such as the alternate route into the mansion of the final episode. (See "Social Climber" achievement for help on that.)

At least one weapon of yours should have a silencer attached. It is best to use a ranged weapon for this, such as a rifle, assasult rifle, or battle rifle. When using assault/battle rifles, it is advisable to keep it on semi-auto fire mode by pressing down the d-pad. As well, a 3.4x scope will come in handy. One should also keep a heavy pistol like the Desert Eagle with them, for forced confrontations that may not be stealthed.

You do not need to eliminate all enemies for this style. It is easier to just cut a path to your objective and ignore outlying enemies.

2) Tactical.
This is a mix between stealth and confrontation, depending solely on the situation and level. The weapons neccesary are the same as the stealth style, but a battle rifle is the most useful. You will need a health pack and ammo pack for this style, in order to maintain proper fire on enemies.

For this style, range and ammo are key. When there is a situation in which you have the vantage point, and stealth seems like a hassle, you can pick enemies off selectively. There is not much strategy or planning involved with this style, just intuition. Should there be no vantage point for eliminating enemies, refer to the stealth style above.

If you provoke enemy attention, eliminating all enemies in the area is vital. Once the last enemy of an area is killed, the mini map will flash green and a character will mention that you're clear.

3) Run and Gun.
This playstyle is the quickest for someone who knows the map layout. The point of this style is simply to get to the objective as fast as can be, and kill any enemies directly in your way.

You will need a shotgun for this style. Attachments are a personal preference, as they will not make a difference. An automatic pistol may also come in handy. For equipment, you will need armor and a tazer. The armor is to shrug off a little damage that actually hits you, while the tazer is a quick alternative to reloading while running.

Since you will be running right through enemies, they will become aware fairly fast. The idea is to go straight for the objective. If an enemy is in your way, the shotgun will allow you to kill him instantly and retain your course of action. if you know your way through the level, you should know the quickest routes. Follow them, and you'll be done in no time.

Killing all enemies is not neccesary, and will only slow you down. Since you will be running, the enemies will also have a harder time hitting you. However, since they gain an accuracy boost on hardline difficulty, they will still be able to hit you as well as if you were stationary on Officer difficulty.

Edits: Just trying to clean this guide up.
THIS GUIDE WILL CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS! READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION!
This should not be necessary as unlocking Hardline difficulty requires you to complete the campaign on any other difficulty.

NOTE: One extremely important pointer for this achievement is that you MUST restart the campaign and play all chapters with Hardline difficulty. Before you start off your quest, you must restart the campaign or else it will get stuck around the 90% completion mark. I learned this the hard way and so got a double dip with each chapter... Now, onto the guide!

I strongly recommend you do normal difficulty before jumping here (unless you already did Veteran mode).In here, each shot you receive will deplete major chunks of your health and the power of your weapons are toned down. Your aim assist is taken away from you and can make shoot outs very hard. Stealth is pretty much mandatory where possible. I am warning you, run and gun will not work well. (That is not a challenge).

My loadout for this is a semi-auto sniper (socom16) (note, on this is a thermal scope (irnv) an extended magazine and a suppressor. I also equip either a machine pistol (mac-10) or heavy pistol (bald eagle) with same accessories minus the scope (which I use delta for). Whether I use the Mac-10 or Bald Eagle as my sidearm varies by situation. For my gear, I will always be wearing an armored insert. The second gadget will vary by situation as well. I only take the armored insert off in 2 instances, which are the ones where grappling hooks and ziplines are necessary.

Even though according to Proscaline the armored insert does not make much of a difference, you will not have enough time to check your health during a shoot out, and most of the time, I end up barely surviving because the armored insert gives me an extra second in a gun fight. That extra layer can make the difference between who finishes off who. If you are good at gun fights, this will probably not be needed, but if you are bad with gunplay, I strongly recommend you use it.

Also, Proscaline makes an extremely strong point about the tazer. I agree with him that it is a powerful weapon and will finish off any enemy, but there are several bad parts. Misfiring can get you caught (if fired too close to an enemy). The weapon is very short range. Enemies will note if an ally is down (yes, this happens when you arrest people also, but the room for error during tasing is too much for me). The taser takes an extra second to kill the enemy. You also have room for one cartridge at a time (meaning you will need to reload after every shot), making this a very inconvenient tactic. It is also very easy to be caught in the process of tasing an enemy. It is okay for last minute stealth, but arresting will work out just as fine. I will never recommend you take a taser into a firefight, because it is just plain ineffective.

This is a pretty nasty achievement at times. I am going to tell you all the difficulty of each chapter (Based off the hardest scene):

Prologue- Very easy. Almost nothing to worry about here, just do not attempt to screw up the shoot out.

Chapter 1- Fair. The only hard parts are when you try escaping the school (as sometimes I do not notice all enemies) and when you are at the end protecting your partner.

Chapter 2- Hard. You can get away with a few arrests in garage, but once the guys start shooting at you, move from cover to new cover. Khai should supply you with a health pack. The laundromat scene is not hard, just be discrete about it. The courtyard chase is possible, but when you get to the pool closest to the lobby entry, you should start sniping (from the upper deck, so do not head down the stairs). The first lobby part you can get through using arrests. The second part, if you have a breaching charge, throw it to the floor and detonate. You will have a decent amount of combat, but equip a gas mask and go for the office behind check in and you have a good healing spot.

Chapter 3- Hard. Stealth is possible for first few portions, but you must be careful about the multi-freezing. The stadium segment is simple enough, just stay in stealth and have a pistol ready. The warehouse is best done with a gas mask and an insert, and a sniper rifle (with night vision like IRNV). Until enemies start using molotov/inciendiary, you have a decent enough situation. Once you get up the stairs (to the catwalks), I recommend you find cover. after you get to the next floor, it gets much easier.

Chapter 4- Medium. When you are about to investigate warehouse, just grapple up to guy on far left (right near billboard) and arrest them. Jump across to stairs and quickly (keyword being quickly) freeze guy right by door. Arrest and open up. Make further arrests and progress down to meth-lab, easy stealth. Shoot out is no problem. Outside of mall you can arrest everyone. Move in and start arresting second floor patrols. You should have a nice shoot out but can easily survive. When going for Khai, just quickly kill everyone and head for her. Move to food court, where you can just vault over far right of your location and run around the guards (they might be alerted but it is nothing to worry about).

Chapter 5- Easy. No worries, just stealth around and blow up meth lab for distraction if you wish to do so (makes it easier). Be careful when going down mountain to not alert the officers.

Chapter 6- Hard. When you insert usb, run for storefront and deploy a breaching charge on the approaching car and quickly move back and start cooking (besides, it is always funny for me). Just find good cover during next wave and leave store with usb. When truck attempts to ram you, just shoot and do not worry. Following this is a small shoot out. Take cover behind cars and use pistol for this task. Now you get to car repair area after small chase. You can stealth through this and a warehouse infiltration (very similar to a scenario in chapter 4). Now grab laptop, survive quick time event, and use thermal scope on sniper rifle (I recommend here you have an ammo box), find cover. Shoot out should be fairly simple. When you get back to first half of repair area, snipe a few people and walk around fence on right. You will have a little sniping still, but this is no big deal as long as you move fast. Now you get to a car chase. First part just try avoiding falling into aquaducts and move very fast. Second part, you are the shooter. You are using your pistol with a bottomless magazine. I recommend a mac-10 here. Survive this area and go into the other repair plant. Start making arrests outside. Wait to arrest guys on far right until meeting breaks up. These guys have little patience and one glitch you may use is aligning the gun at multiple heads. Make arrests, move left, arrest guy next to door. Move around next corner and arrest guy near shutter. Walk around building entirely until you find door next to shutter. Open said door and disable alarm. Go back outside to roof and through window, you will have nice vantage point. Stealth works for a little time here. Just make the most of this window (of opportunity) and quickly make some arrests. Run outside when suspicion comes up and back through same window. Snipe some people. The men in repair room will not leave easily. This shooting part is hard. Chapter is done shortly.

Chapter 7- Medium. Move through mansion as usual. Arrest guy near window, break open window (shockingly no suspicion there) and jump out to pool. Equip a zipline and aim for pretty much anywhere below you (some areas might be out of bounds, but it saves a bunch of time). Move from your zipline end to a spot with decent vantage of the pool house and use new zipline to get there fast. Go in and trigger cutscene. When shootout starts, move backwards to porch and start sniping with an ammo box. You should be finished soon.

Chapter 8- HARD! Drive to trailer park, get in silo. Find men complaining about Marcus. Quickly take down guy in side room and do not bother freezing men in little den, it is hard finding a good vantage. Just blast away and pick up scanner. Escape and move to the right side of trailer park area. Arrest men near the taser, grab taser, start stealth flank and you should work your way to equipment in good time. Grab your stuff and start running for car. As long as you act discrete, you should be able to get to car in very short time. When you arrive at gas station (this is definitely the hardest section of all, this is just my way of getting through) die and follow this load out: (Semi-Auto Sniper with night vision, mac-10, breaching charge, and armored insert). Put charge on wall where turret truck comes by, and detonate when they come through (give yourself space please). Move towards equipment box and open it up (This is the only way to refill your breaching charges). Place a few charges on explosive barrel and nearby there, do not detonate yet. Move around right side and take cover near vending machine. Snipe out guys at other turret truck, quickly reload, and shoot as much as possible at gas machine when the van comes nearby. Head back in and grab refills, snipe men flanking around left side of gas station and use a mac-10 to finish the job (note that it is likely that you will empty your clips here, do not bother reloading. Just swap to your side arm). Head back into building and wait for another turret truck to drive around store. When they are approaching barrels (use minimap to get ready for this) detonate the charges and you should hopefully have them killed (note that they keep circulating, so sniping is not your best bet here). Afterwards, your work is done (take a breather and have a little celebration, you just beat a terrible shoot out). Now drive to the airfield, do not screw around with the nuker, it will need time to chamber each rocket. Now grab brute, go to tank, and destroy the bad guy. Run to the plane and you are done here.

Chapter 9- Hard. Lobby area is easy stealth, you might trigger combat, but as long as you go around back and disable alarm, you should have no challenge here. Go up elevator and arrest guy in front of you. Go down nearby stairs and arrest person right nearby you. Go to offices on left and arrest guards milling through cubicles and the snack area. You are nearly done. Go upstairs and grab scan. Knock out guy on far right with melee. You can now arrest the other men and grab explosives from Tyson. You now need to go upstairs and enter elevator. When upstairs let Tyson in, let the brute do the work on the safe. Set up some trip-mines in hallways. Barely a worry. Second wave is harder. Just stay in room with security cam controls and find cover. On the porch behind you is a stairway where enemies pop out of. It is out of bounds, but if you make it in quickly it is perfect cover and great spot to recoup your health. Survive this and then head to the streets for another shootout. Take an ammo box with you and lay it down in strategic places (such as a food court to the left of where you start shooting the guys. This is also a decent sniping spot, so take a good advantage of it. You will need to move on soon, but you will survive anyhow. The chapter ends pretty much after the shootout.

Chapter 10- EASY. You are given a whole island to explore. Arrest two guys near shed where you will pick up grapple and zipline. Just walk around all of the major shootout spots and once you get near the mansion, you have three options: Go right and take a dirtbike for a spin, go straight and blow open the gates with a breaching charge, or go left and use a secret entrance (which you will be doing). Just arrest both guys at base of cliff and grapple up the platforms. You will end out on a small terrace, arrest guy in front of you, turn left, and leapfrog over waterfall. Now just walk into office hall and arrest any person in your way, and the game is done after you open the door.

Well done my friends. You are finished now. I hope you found this guide to be of use. If there is something you feel that I should put in, let me know. This was actually my first guide, so if you can comment with some advice for future that would be appreciated. Thanks for viewing!

There are already some good solutions here, but I'd recommend a couple of additional things.

First off, always use one of your equipment slots for the Armored Insert. Since your enemies are doing more damage per shot than normal, having the armor will give you an additional second or two more to hide, run, or finish returning fire before they get you.

For Chapter 9 I preferred using the gas mask and armored inset, and then equipping an assault rifle or machine gun (if you've unlocked it by that point) with the heavy barrel and one of the night vision scopes, then follow CounterInsurgent's advice about the balcony windows. The night vision is less effective on the second wave of enemies, since they use flashlights, but you still have a good idea where to aim.

Finally, I fully support the recommendation to use silenced weapons to make this achievement easier. If you aren't familiar with them, I recommend replaying Chapter 7, "Glass Houses" to practice, since it's designed to be a Splinter Cell like stealth mission. Here's a fun challenge, see if you can take out everyone but the DJ in the dance club without alerting him! I also highly recommend using a silenced assault rifle on Chapter 6, and It'll get you the drop on a lot of enemies that would otherwise have great cover.

There is a trick not yet listed here. On each chapter you can get to the last area on any difficulty then exit out. When you're back on the selection screen hit x to select the difficulty (hardline) and then back to go back. It will switch the difficulty but keep your progress in that chapter, finish the last part of each chapter this way and ta da achievement unlocked.

The funniest part i ran chapters 6-10 this way and then went and did chapters prologue through 5 on hardline and had little difficulty with the cew being the main weap almost running up to the enemies. I used a BR with silencer and m1911 silenced as my other weaps and kept the armored insert.

Just thought I'd throw my two cents in. Hardline difficulty is honestly not that hard. I found it much easier than say, Call of Duty on Veteran. If you've finished all cases (evidence and warrants) then you can breeze through the campaign in ~6hrs if you have the right tools. As much as the other guides said to try and stealth it, I found it MUCH easier to go in guns blazing in most scenarios. The AI still sucks at shooting and there's plenty of hiding spots in most areas.

For most levels here's my suggested loadout:

Bald Eagle (Your choice of attachments) - 2 hit body shot kill

.300 Knockout (Acog/Straight Pull Bolt) - This is an already silenced bolt-action sniper. It is a 1 hit kill except at very long range. Works excellent for picking off enemies from medium to long range. Even at close range it's great for peeking out from cover and quickly dispatching of enemies.

Gadget 1: Armor plating (makes damage levels return to about normal difficulty levels)
Gadget 2: Your choice. Last level choose grappling hook

To be totally honest, I died less running and gunning on Hardline than I did trying to stealth and knockout everyone on Officer difficulty. You'll do fine with my suggested loadout.