Watch Dogs: Legion - Here Are 7 Tips To Make You a Hacking Pro

Watch Dogs: Legion - Here Are 7 Tips To Make You a Hacking Pro

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Dan Webb

Ubisoft Toronto’s Watch Dogs Legion is out now all over the world, and if you’re anything like us, and fancy a real challenge, you’re likely going to boot up virtual London, crank the game up to hard and whack on the permadeath mode. I mean, it’s definitely the most tense and rewarding way to play the latest Watch Dogs, so, if you are doing that, or heck, just want some invaluable tips to kick ass on the streets of London, then we’ve got you covered.

Here are 7 tips to help make you a pro at Watch Dogs Legion.

Mind the Gap – First things first, let’s get something simple but rather vital out the way. One quick tip that will set you up for a far less frustrating experience in the grand scheme of things. What's certain in Watch Dogs: Legion is that it won’t take you very long to realise that Ubisoft Toronto has an affinity for constantly sending you from one side of the map to the other - it happens with alarming regularity. It's key, then – for your sanity, mostly – to defog the map and uncover the significant number of London underground stations dotted across the city as soon as you can, so that you can fast travel. Otherwise you’re going to be doing a lot of back and forth across the map, and to be honest, it’s not going to take long before your enthusiasm is zapped.

This one is less a tip for survival and success, sure, and more one to keep you sane. Once you’ve unlocked a good chunk of the tube stations, navigating London is going to be a hell of a lot easier, although you will have to sit through a few more loading screens. If that’s not your bag, you can use a car’s autodrive function, although that might take you a tad longer (why not go and make a cup of tea while you're travelling). This is one that you’ll thank us for in the long run, and let’s be honest, that’s basically what Londoners do all year round, getting from one side of London to the other: use the bloody tube. As it is in real-life, it’s a saving grace in Ubi’s digital version of London.

Get High – Right, now onto the nitty gritty... the grind, if you will. This tip might be one of the most valuable; and that’s to make friends with London's vertical spaces. Yes, verticality is key in Watch Dogs: Legion, and whether you’re hunting down tech points for upgrades, going after mission objectives, adorning paste-up spots in hard to reach places, hacking money (ETO) from tablets strewn around the world, the best way to tackle these with ease is to thoroughly explore London's heights by using the tools at your disposal.

In order to truly embrace the sheer verticality of London and the hidden goodies stashed just out of reach on its rooftops, there are a few things you’re going to want to keep an eye out for. From an everyday perspective, while roaming the streets of the UK capital, keep an eye out for both the enormous cranes that populate the rainy skyline and for window cleaning lifts - they are incredibly valuable early game when you don’t have access to certain useful gadgets. Just get them hacked, drop the suspended platform, then get on and see where it takes you. In the case of the former, you can take full control over where the cage drops, which isn’t blindingly obvious the first time you come across one.

But the best way to tackle London’s high spots is with a Cargo Drone. These can either be summoned at platforms marked on your mini-map by a square with with a circle split into four sections in it, or if you have a character with a special Cargo Drone summon trait, then you can beckon one whenever you want. Having access to a Cargo Drone as and when you like is perhaps the most valuable trait in the game for exploration and infiltration, as you can bypass a lot of the security to gain access to potentially tricky areas – so keep an eye out for construction workers, as this trait is commonly attributed to them. It’s that overpowered that it can feel a bit like cheating, but it’s so incredibly badass, that we don’t really care.

Government Stealth Warning - Watch Dogs Legion isn’t the kind of game where you’re going to want to run in with a submachine gun and blow everyone away. I mean, you can do that, but one: it'll make the game infinitely harder (trust us, you'll get shot to ribbons); and two: come on, man, you’re meant to be saving London, not mowing down its citizens. Think about that ludonarrative dissonance! Anyway, in short: stealth is the way forward. That means when you've acquired enough tech points, it's wise to invest in the disrupt hack and attract hacks, as they’ll come in handy if you’re aiming to remain silent and deadly (which you should).

The first you can combine with a takedown to devastating effect; the second you can lure unsuspecting foes into devious traps without leaving the comfort of your cover, or if you’re using a drone or spiderbot, without even being on the premises! Other than that, in terms of abilities, you’re going to want to unlock various drone disables and max out your AR cloak and spiderbot. To be honest, that’s about all you really need – using those tools you can be in and out of a facility without so much as a whisper. If you’re flush with tech points, then by all means, get the AR Shroud to turn bodies left in your wake invisible, and the Skin Mesh so you can absorb more damage - they can come in handy.

Also, it’s worth remembering that not everyone is a hostile when you breach into forbidden areas - click in the right stick to see whether they have a red or blue outline. If it’s blue, they couldn’t give a toss about your presence; if it’s red, either a stealth takedown or a headshot will do the trick. The aforementioned distract and takedown combo is probably the handiest move in the game.

Go Deep – Not everyone in Legion’s London is going to want to join the DedSec cause. In fact, some of the best characters are the hardest to recruit – which makes complete sense, to be fair. After all, the best things in life you have to earn, life was never meant to be easy, yada yada yada. Let’s be blunt: kickstarting a revolution with a badass team is the opposite of easy!

In order to recruit anyone who hates DedSec (indicated by a red thumbs down on their profile), or those who have some vendetta against you (perhaps you accidentally ran them over a few days ago) you’re going to want to invest in the Deep Profiler via the Tech tab in your menu. This allows you to drill down into their schedule and then break the ice, so to speak, enabling you to potentially persuade them to join your ranks. This might mean you'll have to assist them in resolving an issue, be it helping them to settle a debt, save them from a random goon, and so on. Once this is done – by highlighting it on the map and heading to the blue magnifying glass icon – you’ll have to perform a certain task, which then opens up the recruit in question’s quest chain and takes them down from an enemy of DedSec, to a prospective member of the resistance.

London Needs YOU! – A little later into Watch Dogs: Legion, things will get slightly more interesting and hectic. And should any of your recruits happen to succumb to Albion or any of the other rival factions of London, you’re going to need to rescue them, whether that means saving them after being kidnapped, getting them out of jail, or helping them to full-health when they take a bit of a kicking. In order to expedite the process here, you’re going to want to recruit citizens who can aid you when this happens. So, that means barristers and lawyers to get your citizens out of jail quicker; or paramedics and doctors who will give your crew preferential treatment to get them out of hospitals swiftly. Having these guys and gals on-hand in your faction will help you out, for sure, by instantly saving out-of-action team members, or at the very least, reducing the time until they're released and back in the game.

Overall, you’re going to want a pretty diverse team, meaning you have the right tools for specific jobs that preferably don’t double up. The same can be said for hackers, drone experts, and citizens who have personal vehicles when it comes to how valuable they are to your cause; the stats that certain citizens have around the world can be a godsend in certain scenarios, like the Living Statue, who can avoid pursuit, by, you guessed it, impersonating a statue. Head to Leicester Square and similar tourist traps to find a whole bunch of these gold or silver-painted performers stood around just waiting to be recruited. And the final point on potential recruits - look out for green circles on the map (or recruits highlighted by your AI buddy Bagley), as these are often particularly handy individuals to have on your team.

Defy to Get By – Staying on the subject of recruits, in Watch Dogs Legion you’re only as powerful as your strongest recruit – it’s all well and good having a good mix of lawyers, doctors, performers, etc., but they’re not going to have many combat traits that come in handy. The best way to unlock the best recruits in the game is if you fight back against the oppression in the game’s eight boroughs. After the game’s prologue, each district has three or four objectives to tackle, that once completed, can not only result in the locals coming to your assistance when things get sticky, but will also reward you with a superstar recruit.

These range from super spies with James Bond-style gadgets and a car with rockets and a cloak, to the more bizarre Beekeeper who hurls swarms of bees at enemies. Well, nano-bees, to be more specific. There are eight to recruit across London, but only if you turn each district defiant. Once you have all eight, you’ll likely be unstoppable, so don’t delay in at least recruiting a few from the off. You won't regret it.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing – Last, but by no means least, having a whole host of characters with different disguises at your disposal will present a path of least resistance in Watch Dogs Legion, especially if you took our advice and are playing on hard with permadeath enabled. Recruiting construction workers, police officers, Albion lackeys and heck, even recruiting a Royal Guard to get access to the grounds of Buckingham Palace is not just a truly badass way to infiltrate certain properties without raising suspicion, but it’ll keep you out of trouble for the most part, meaning you’re not putting yourself in unnecessarily risky situations. That said, it’s not a cheat button - you still have to play it relatively smart, not get too close to your foes, and avoid suspicious behaviour like running around. Combine this with the invisibility cloak – fully upgraded – and take things slowly, you can effectively just stroll through every area in Watch Dogs: Legion without a care in the world.

And there you have it, folks. Seven tips to make you a pro at Watch Dogs: Legion. Now go forth and create the best damn revolutionary crew that virtual London has ever seen! Watch Dogs: Legion is out now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, and you can check out our review here and obligatory comparison video here.

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