Survival mode is one of the five modes introduced in the latest entry in the Sniper Elite series. What makes this mode unique is the intensity of the battle between you or your team and the waves of enemies. Your prime objective is the Tower Defence while enemies are closing in. You are your team can utilize a series of weapons, from sniper rifles to the best standard rifles in Sniper Elite 5.
However, that is not all to the survival mode. It is also going to challenge your sharpshooting skills and team coordination to take the higher ground and put an end to the enemies circling you. For that instance, you might want to know how to play the survival mode effectively to tackle intense situations. Let’s discuss how to play the survival mode to maximize your character’s performance.
Key Takeaways
- Sniper Elite 5’s Survival mode: defend against Nazi invasions solo or co-op (up to 4 players).
- Requires strategy, sharpshooting, and coordination.
- Choose from various weapons, including sniper rifles, pistols, and explosives.
- Stages A, B, C, D with increasingly challenging enemy waves.
- 3 skill trees (Combat, Body, Equipment), 28 skills to unlock.
- Campaign skill points usable in any mode.
- Top skills: Steady Hands, Swift Hands, No Time to Bleed, Combat Medic, Carry More Explosives, Secondary Special Ammo, Focus Range, Focus Movement, Speedy Recovery, Stabilised.
- Key tactics: looting, vantage points, distance, and strategic planning.
- Success yields medals and perks for other modes.
Sniper Elite 5 Survival Mode
How to Play Survival Mode in Sniper Elite 5?
Survival mode is one of the five modes in Sniper Elite 5, known for its intense battles against waves of enemies while defending a tower. You and your team can utilize various weapons, including sniper rifles and standard rifles.
However, the challenge goes beyond just firepower. Survival mode tests your sharpshooting skills and teamwork, requiring you to secure higher ground and eliminate encroaching enemies effectively. Here’s how to play it:
- Use High Ground: Prioritize securing elevated positions. This offers better visibility and protection, making it easier to pick off enemies.
- Communication: If playing in co-op, communication is key. Coordinate with your team to cover different angles and share information about enemy positions.
- Aim Precision: Make every shot count. Ammo might be limited, so ensure your shots are accurate to maximize damage.
- Weapon Selection: Choose your weapons wisely. Sniper rifles are excellent for long-range engagements, while standard rifles are more versatile. Having a mix can be advantageous.
- Explosives: Keep grenades or explosives on hand for crowd control or dealing with groups of enemies.
- Team Roles: Assign roles within your team. One player can focus on sniping, while others provide cover fire or flank the enemy.
- Prioritize Targets: Target enemy officers or commanders first, as they may provide bonuses or spawn additional enemies. Eliminating them can disrupt enemy tactics.
- Manage Resources: Keep an eye on your ammo and health. Use resources efficiently to ensure you can withstand waves of enemies.
- Stay Mobile: Don’t stay in one spot for too long. Move strategically to adapt to changing enemy positions and to avoid becoming an easy target.
- Practice: Survival mode can be challenging, so practice and teamwork will improve your performance over time.
Top Skills for Playing Survival Mode
Sniper Elite 5 Skills
Now that you know how to play survival mode, it is essential to incorporate some prime elements to smoothen your gameplay experience. As the stages with each wave intensify the enemy count and their attack power, your character needs more than just ammunition and explosives to secure victory in the mission.
Steady Hands/Swift Hands
Acquiring the Steady Hand skill from the Combat skill tree is crucial for accuracy and early kills, especially in solo play. It reduces scope shake when taking shots, ensuring your bullets hit their mark even during the rush of combat.
Here’s why Steady Hands is important:
- Accuracy: Steady Hands helps maintain accuracy, vital for making precise shots on enemies, especially when they’re closing in on your position.
- Sprinting Enemies: It’s particularly useful against fast-moving enemies, as it significantly reduces weapon shaking, making it easier to hit them.
Steady Hands costs one skill point. However, in conjunction with this skill, consider getting the Swift Hands skill, which costs 2 skill points. Here’s why Swift Hands is valuable:
- Ammo Management: In survival mode, ammunition is limited, and running out can be deadly. Swift Hands allows you to automatically collect ammo and medical supplies from defeated enemies in close quarters, such as during melee attacks.
No Time to Bleed/Combat Medic
Two valuable skills for increasing your chances of survival are “No Time to Bleed” and “Combat Medic.”
- No Time to Bleed (1 Skill Point):
- In survival mode, your character doesn’t die when incapacitated but enters a low-energy state.
- With the “No Time to Bleed” skill, your character can draw a secondary weapon immediately after becoming incapacitated.
- Use this secondary weapon to eliminate nearby enemies, giving you another chance to rejoin the battle.
- Combat Medic (2 Skill Points):
- Consider investing in the “Combat Medic” skill to improve team survivability.
- It allows you to use Bandages instead of Medic Kits for reviving a player.
- Having this skill can be crucial for efficiently using your medical supplies and keeping your team in the fight.
Carry More Explosives/Secondary Special Ammo
It’s important to distribute your skill points equally among the three skill trees. Consider investing in Equipment skills to gain an advantage in the survival mode. Here are two valuable skills to consider:
- Carry More Explosives (1 Skill Point):
- This skill increases your carry limit for explosives such as grenades and TNT.
- Since you’ll encounter tanks and heavy artillery in survival mode, having more explosives is crucial for dealing with them effectively.
- Expanding your inventory capability for explosives can significantly aid your progress through enemy waves.
- Secondary Special Ammo (2 Skill Points):
- This skill adds an additional special ammo slot for your secondary weapons.
- In survival mode, having an extra slot for special ammo can be a game-changer.
- It allows you to make the most of special ammunition options, enhancing your combat capabilities.
Focus Range/Focus Movement
Focusing on skills that enhance your killing ability is essential, and “Focus Range” and “Focus Movement” from the Body skill tree are top choices.
- Focus Range (1 Skill Point):
- This skill increases the radius of your Focus ability.
- With a larger Focus radius, you can effectively eliminate multiple enemies simultaneously, enhancing your character’s performance.
- It’s a cost-effective skill, requiring only one skill point.
- Focus Movement (2 Skill Points):
- “Focus Movement” skill boosts your mobility while using the Focus ability.
- By investing two skill points in this skill, you’ll have greater maneuverability when aiming with Focus.
- This added agility can be a game-changer in intense survival mode situations.
Speedy Recovery/Stabilized
“Speedy Recovery” and “Stabilized” skills from the Body skill tree are crucial for your character’s survivability.
- Speedy Recovery (1 Skill Point):
- This skill starts Health Regeneration sooner, helping your character recover health more rapidly.
- In the midst of battles with bullets and explosions, the ability to regenerate health quickly is vital.
- “Speedy Recovery” enhances your character’s resilience by ensuring faster healing.
- Stabilized (2 Skill Points):
- “Stabilized” complements “Speedy Recovery” by reducing your heart rate while using bandages and medkits.
- Lowering your heart rate makes it safer and more efficient to heal in intense situations.
- These combined effects enhance your character’s overall survival capabilities.
Tips for Survival Mode
Playing the survival mode is some of the best experiences that players can avail themselves of in the game. It comes with various weapon choices, skills, and teams that will yield numerous opportunities to follow your plan and pursue an ideal playthrough. At the same time, players might also need to incorporate different tips and tricks to achieve success at the end of each wave. Let’s discuss the best tips you must follow for the best experience.
Stealth is not the only Option
A large portion of the Sniper Elite community follows a stealthy approach toward killing the Nazi invaders during the survival mode wave. However, it is essential to note that it is not the only path you need to follow. Especially with huge map sizes, stealth indeed holds a wealth of opportunities.
It becomes perilous in the case of survival mode as the enemy closes into your unique position and will eventually spot your character. On top of that, you also need heavy weapons to defeat a large pool of enemies. In this case, suppressed weapons are not your ideal weapon in the day of surviving a survival mode in Sniper Elite 5.
To increase the chance of success, you must ensure multiple vantage points with the help of your co-op teammates. Only this way you can progress through the waves and complete the stages efficiently.
Loot off Dead Enemies
As said earlier, ammunition and bandages are the top aspects you need to consider in between the short interval of each wave. Instead of returning to the spawning point of each stage, you can also loot off the corpse of enemies to collect ammunition, grenades, and bandages for your character.
The time interval after each wave is as short as 35 seconds. So you will need to be fast enough to loot anything that seems vital for your weapons.
Set Vantage Points on Higher Ground
Vantage points higher in the buildings have always proven to assist players. It is because staying above the enemies allows players to get a comprehensive look at the enemies’ movements. Once you have acknowledged these movements, you can quickly strike the enemy with a sniper rifle or explosives to yield a cluster of kills.
As said above, getting the most kills early in the wave is always important to spare some energy and focus on the most intense waves. Cooperate with the co-op partners, and register kills early with the help of high ground vantage points.
Keep Your Distance
Last but not least tip that you should consider is to keep your distance. It is highly important for players to never engage in close quarters combat with the enemies. You may run into the enemy at an unfortunate corner and use the melee kill as an advantage. But pursuing close and personal combat for survival mode is never recommended.
The main reason is that the enemy is aware of the situation and will approach your base to capture the point. If your character is already in the hornet’s nest, there is no chance of coming out alive. Keep your distance from the entry points of the enemies, and always be careful never to get caught in the melee combat.
Final Words
Sniper Elite 5 survival mode is a famous addition to the game that tests the player’s patience and skill in dealing with hordes of enemies. The mode will encourage players to follow strategic planning to stay alive and contribute to most kills in each stage. On top of that, the game will reward players with medals and numerous other perks that are usable in other game modes.
The key to success is to incorporate different skills and tactics into your gameplay to avoid losing all the progress in the mode. That is about it for the survival mode of the latest entry in Sniper Elite. Do you find this guide helpful for playing the survival mode in Sniper Elite? What are your approaches to tackling the storming Nazi enemies in each stage of the mode? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section down below.
Now that you are here, why not check out Sniper Elite Mission 2: All Collectibles[Occupied Residence]
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Nauman Shah is a VeryAli’s Guide Writer. With a background in Software Engineering along with immense love for video games and three years in Unity 3D games development, Nauman joined the writing media to share his thoughts around the world. Moreover, he likes to smash people with difficult questions on social media and watch shows with a cat named ‘Blep’.
Nauman primarily plays RPG and Open World Games – His Gamer Tag is #Sammich. You can check his gaming library and connect with him!
