Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - S-Rank Walkthrough - Mission 1: Phantom Limbs

Mission 1: Phantom Limbs
Beat the mission at least once before doing this S-rank. This allows you to change the helicopter's landing zone at the end and you can skip the confrontation with the skulls.
Make haste to the prisoner's location. Approach the village from the east, this way you can easily skip all guards. Pick up the prisoner, put him on your horse, call the helicopter and you are done. I completed this with the "No Traces" perfect bonus because I completely skipped all enemies in this mission.

There are two golden rules for getting S-ranks:
1. Don't try it on your first playthrough (a lot of strategies only work when replaying missions and you will unlock better gear over the course of the game).
2. Skip all cutscenes to save time (yes, cutscenes add to your time and will greatly reduce your points!)

S-Rank Strategies, basic tips and things you should know:
- Getting 130,000 points in a mission unlocks the S-rank (same score requirement for all missions)
- Only main missions have a ranking system, side ops don't. Main missions 02, 22, 43 are an exception, they don't have any ranks. There are 50 main missions in total.
- Completing the missions as quickly as possible without being seen is usually good enough. Skip the bonus objectives, they take too long and will complicate things.
- Equipping the Invisibility Camo, Parasite Suit, Raiden Suit, Cyborg Ninja Suit, Chicken-Hat, Infinity Bandana, using D-Walkers Fulton Ballista or calling in air strikes / helicopter support will void the S-rank. With these items you are limited to A-rank at best. So don't use them!
- On your first playthrough of the missions, always try to take out the enemy radar stations. This gives you a huge tactical advantage because you can call the extraction helicopter directly to the enemy base (or start the mission there).
- S-Ranks earn you a lot more money and heroism than lower ranks

With these tips in mind you should have very little trouble following these video guides and obtaining all S-ranks. Be warned, however, that the game uses a variable difficulty system. If you use a lot of headshots, enemies will get helmets. If you always infiltrate at night, enemies will get night vision goggles. If you always use sleeping grenades, enemies will wear gas masks etc.
In this walkthrough series I stick to the basics to make it as easy to replicate as possible. These guides are fairly spoiler free as I skip the cutscenes to save time.

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Follow PowerPyx:

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Trophies and Achievements:

Apprentice
Completed a mission using a Combat Unit staff member.

Accomplished
Completed all missions.

Executed
Completed all mission tasks.

Elite
Completed all missions with an S rank.

Undertaken
Completed a SIDE OP.

Cleared
Completed all "Mine Clearing" SIDE OPS.

Achieved
Completed all SIDE OPS.

Captured
Captured an outpost or guard post.

Search-and-Destroy
Captured all outposts and guard posts in Northern Kabul, Afghanistan.

Sweep-and-Clear
Captured all outposts and guard posts in the Angola-Zaire Border Region.

Deployment
Completed all key Dispatch Missions.

Intruder
Played an "Infiltration" FOB mission.

Cry Havoc
Made D-Dog available for deployment.

Speechless
Made Quiet available for deployment.

Trusty Steed
Raised bond with D-Horse to the maximum.

Man's Best Friend
Raised bond with D-Dog to the maximum.

War Buddy
Raised bond with Quiet to the maximum.

Extraction
Fulton extracted an enemy soldier.

Interrogation
Interrogated an enemy soldier.

To The Rescue
Extracted a female prisoner.

Platoon
Increased Mother Base staff to 50 or more personnel.

Battalion
Increased Mother Base staff to 250 or more personnel.

Army
Raised all Teams/Units to level 99.

Enhancement
Developed 50 or more development items.

Reinforcement
Developed 100 or more development items.

Locked and Loaded
Developed 300 or more development items.

Architect
Constructed all available platforms for Mother Base.

Deterrence
Developed a nuclear weapon.

Disarmament
Disposed of a nuclear weapon.

Prosperity
Earned a total of 10,000,000 GMP or more.

Conservation
Extracted all wild animal species.

Collector
Obtained all blueprints and key items.

Reminiscence
Obtained all memento photos.

Hero
Obtained the codename "Hero."

[hellbern]

i've spent so much time thinking of a way to pass by the Skulls without being seen at the bridge. And the only thing i gotta do is change the LZ point. Good one Kojima. Always thinking outside the box.

[kaleocambra]

I can't believe you just rolled up, grabbed Kaz and left.

[jimmythekiller]

This game still looks drop dead gorgeous.

[firewolf]

"yes, cutscenes add to your time and will greatly reduce your points!" what?! why :(

[jonathanchuah]

now i know why i get rank E. i use 5hrs to figure out this mission, this video just play in 6min

[nicninja]

I remember when I was first doing this mission and my mom decided to watch me play. I got to the point where you have to go to the LZ, and when PQ said they couldn't land to extract us because of some weird fog my mom said "what the f***?". I guess she was really worried about Kaz and I. XD

[malzaharkhalil]

To all those that typed in "I did EXACTLY as you did BUT the place was crowded"
thats because you guys aren't "EXACTLY" following him.
PowerPyx completes the mission around 5min20sec - note this.

the secret is the sortie departure times in all his videos. Here i he rides the D horse at full speed and reaches the place where Miller is WITHIN 2 minutes, he doesn't slow down/diverts from original track and gets back on it. (MEMORIZE THE PATH HE TOOK TO MATCH HIS TIME).
When you to that and do the crouch thingy on horse when u reach the place and leave the horse at that exact place in the video and arrive at that point WITHIN THAT TIME FRAME AND NO LATER, NOT EVEN A MINUTE LATE (20 sec acceptable though) ONLY then you can walk in and out without any guards to stop you or interrupt you.

I did this exactly as him WITHIN that time frame and got no guards. did it multiple times, I confirm what you see above.
Although PowerPyx completes the mission in 5min20sec, i did it in 5min36sec (im greedy grabbed some diamonds and fuel thingys), I got no guards, didn't even need to mark/look out for any guards approcahing the area, just walked in, walked out with Miller.

Sorry for the long comment, hope this helps. To all you people, go grab those S ranks :D

[jcdelgado]

I cant believe how easy that was vs how complicated I was making it for myself thinking I had to complete all the objectives to get an S rank

[djrec]

I never knew you could skip the skulls on this mission! Great to know but passing up on the cool cutscene of them pulling the gun out of their hand and then them chasing you is too cool for me to ever skip XD

[YoroKobi]

Yah! clop clop
yah! clop clop
yah!clop clop

[sataoborao]

I’m just repeating the mission 600 times to get in under 8 mins and this man shows me that I can just extract somewhere else...

[petebaez]

I died when getting close to Miller, restarted, and had to use reflex when carrying him out and still got S rank. I tried this after beating the game and enemies had shields, full armor and claymores everywhere!

[djiluvu]

why is the enemy base empty? mine is full of guards

[Shedovv]

I have just got MGSV: The Definitive Experience on sale (it was the exact same price as No DLC for some reason).
And being the stubborn dum dum that I am I decided I will S rank this mission even though the description says you cant/shouldnt do it on your first Try. And after 3 restarts I did it. But not 100% as the Video shows.
There were 2 complications:
1) I have a different guard pattern, I got guards in the spots where PowerPyx does not have them, one of those being a guard walking out of the building straight at me. Even though I am taking the exact same route to the base right away at full speed, so I ended up holding him up and throwing him on the bed in Kaz's cell.
2) Even though I can vaguely remember there being a way to avoid Skulls having played the game on Xbox before, I couldnt do it and couldnt be bothered trying over and over to do it. So I said screw it and just charged forward as soon as I got detected and the Nanobot Gun-draw cutscene played. So I kept running (that is to say Riding on the D-Horse)* at full speed only getting shot once with a burst somehow. And getting out of the mist and almost exactly at the LZ. And extracted.

So I got Codename Chick - Rank S - 117341 points for completing the mission in 9 minutes 57 seconds. And 51K for the - No Retries (having Restarted rather than Loaded Chekpoint), No Kills, No Reflex, No Enemy Combat Alerts and surprisingly (I always thought Skulls count for it) Perfect Stealth, No Kills bonus. For a Grand Total of 169631 points. That is with a small amount of points I got for taking down that guard.

[maklokiper]

wow thanks dude.. I was googling how to get S rank, and came across your video!!! more please :)

[zoaadilli]

why the fuck are you free to walk in and out and when i do it the whole place is fucking crowded, every alley & room? i did Exactly what you did, directly go to the village, no stops no nothing and still a stupid mofo is waiting for me. how man?

[criosray]

And here I spent 2 hours with retries to stealth through, capture, collect resources and only to get rank A lol...

[thetrueandfinaldeath]

I love how i thought s was.stealth so i snuck in on the skull face mission but i got b then i rammed a tank through the whole base and got s

[HockeyDude]

you know you dont need to beat poor d horse so much lol takes like 6-7 seconds for em to start slowing down lol

[Seldanas]

Great playlist Pyx, watching through them all to help my scrubby face out with the S-Ranks