007 First Light Beginner Guide: How to Get Started in 2026

I picked up 007 First Light on launch day, May 27th, and honestly the first couple hours were rough. IO Interactive built this game like Hitman, it punishes you for treating it like a cover shooter. Once I stopped trying to shoot everything and started treating each level like a puzzle box, the whole thing clicked.

If you're just starting out, here's what actually matters and what you can safely ignore.

The Walther PPK is iconic. It's also not your best option.

You start with the PPK and it feels right, it's Bond's gun. But the MCX Spear, which you can grab in the London Docks mission (your second proper mission), has better damage, a larger magazine, and takes a suppressor. I used the PPK for three missions out of pure nostalgia before switching and immediately wondered why I waited so long. The Spear carries you through about 70% of the game.

If you absolutely must stick with the PPK, at least unlock subsonic ammo when you hit weapon level 15. Without it, even suppressed shots alert guards within 15 meters. With subsonic ammo, a guard three meters away won't flinch. Most players don't even know subsonic ammo exists until their second playthrough.

Stealth pays about 3x more than going loud.

The XP math is simple enough. Silent takedown: 150 XP. Combat kill: 50 XP. Finish a mission with zero alerts and you get a bonus 5,000 XP. On a typical mission with 20 guards, you're looking at 3,000 XP for ghosting versus maybe 1,000 for shooting your way through. That's the difference between unlocking the Stealth Suit in mission 4 versus grinding until mission 6.

Beyond XP, certain gadgets are locked behind Ghost ratings. The Pen Grenade, which creates a one-way smoke screen where you can see out but enemies can't see in, requires a Ghost run of Cairo Embassy. You literally cannot unlock it if you play loud. The Grapple Watch, same deal but for Venice Gala.

Basic stealth mechanics the tutorial barely explains.

Crouch walking cuts your detection radius by around 60%. Obvious enough. What the game doesn't tell you: crouching silences your footsteps completely on carpet and grass, but NOT on tile or metal floors. You can hear your own footsteps change if you pay attention, there's an audible difference between soft and hard surfaces.

Bodies. A guard finding a body doesn't just alert the nearby area, it puts the entire floor on permanent alert. Not a 60-second timer. Permanent. Hide them in lockers, dumpsters, tall grass, behind furniture. If you absolutely can't hide one, at least drag it somewhere no patrol route passes. I've had runs ruined because I left a body in what I thought was a dead corner and a guard with a weird patrol loop found it 4 minutes later.

Cameras. Your Watch EMP disables them for 6 seconds, enough to slip past. But shooting a camera alerts every guard on the floor. The better approach: find the security room first. Every level has at least one camera hub and one alarm panel. Disable the hub and cameras become decorative. Disable the alarm panel first or one panicked guard ruins everything.

What gadgets to upgrade and when.

You get five Q-Branch gadgets: the Q-Watch, Agent Phone, Earpiece, Spy Lighter, and Pen. They all have upgrade trees. Your early game priority should be:

The Watch Laser is the most versatile tool in the game. It cuts through grates and metal panels, scans patrol routes through walls when you hold the scan button, and can blind guards if aimed directly at their face. Upgrade the scan duration first, the base 4 seconds isn't enough to map a room properly.

Suppressor for your primary. Second priority. A suppressed MCX Spear fundamentally changes how you approach encounters.

The EMP watch module. Disables cameras and turrets, and forces armored guards to check their phones for a few seconds. Essential for Venice Gala and any mission with heavy electronic security.

Pen Grenade. This one's locked behind a Ghost run of Cairo Embassy, so it's a mid-game unlock. But it's worth it, one-way smoke is borderline broken in stealth runs.

The Spy Lighter is a flamethrower disguised as a lighter. Really fun for the chaos missions where stealth isn't the goal, useless for ghost runs. Save your gadget parts for other things early on.

Mission order actually matters.

The game gives you some flexibility, but the optimal path for gear unlocks is roughly: MI6 Training → London Docks → Moscow Intel → Cairo Embassy → Venice Gala → Arctic Base → Dubai Finale. Don't skip side objectives in early missions, they unlock gadget blueprints and crafting materials you'll want later. Replaying missions for better ratings is how you get the Stealth Suit, Grapple Watch, and other gear that makes the late game much less painful.

The 8 locations, Iceland, Malta, Slovakia, Mauritania, Vietnam, Antarctica, London, and MI6 headquarters, each have their own visual identity and enemy types. Malta is heavy on cameras and electronic security. Antarctica has open sightlines and sniper positions. Knowing what you're walking into helps a lot with loadout choices.

What NOT to do in your first 10 hours.

Don't spend credits on new weapons before upgrading the MCX Spear to at least damage level 3. A half-upgraded new gun is categorically worse than a maxed Spear.

Don't ignore the civilian NPCs in distinctive clothing. IO Interactive put them there for a reason. They give you keycards, safe codes, and alternate route info that the game never provides any other way.

Don't try to ghost missions before you have the Stealth Suit. You don't have the tools yet. Get through the mission, come back later with better gear. I wasted three hours trying to ghost Moscow Intel before accepting this.

And don't craft gadget upgrades before mission 4. The early game gadgets don't benefit enough from upgrades to justify spending Weapon Parts you'll desperately want for the Pen Grenade and Grapple Watch.

After the roughly 20-hour campaign, there's an Escalation mode that works just like Hitman's, remixed missions with new targets and restrictions. If you liked Hitman's Elusive Targets or Escalations, this is where the game really opens up. I've put almost as many hours into Escalations as the main campaign at this point.

The PC version also supports NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 and ray tracing on IO's Glacier 2 engine. If you've got the hardware, the lighting in the Antarctica mission alone is worth turning RT on for. The way the aurora interacts with the snow and the facility lights is genuinely stunning.