Hitman: Blood Money

= General Information =

Most of the basic game mechanics are properly explained in the tutorial, so not everything will be mentioned here. Only some of the less-clear aspects of the game will be covered.

Rankings
Upon completing a level, you will receive a rating title and bonus cash, depending on how well you carried out your objective. Although you can definitely approach each mission with a "shoot first, ask questions later" style, the game discourages this kind of behaviour by giving you less cash and lower rankings. On the other hand, if you manage to get through the mission stealthily, only killing your targets and escaping unseen, you will get more money to be spent on upgrades (see table of contents for more info).

The smallest sum of money you can get as a Ranking Bonus is 0$, which is basically what you'll receive for a massive body count and plenty of witnesses...interestingly, if you kill everyone in the level, you actually receive a 1000$ bonus reward. The highest amount of money you can get is 150,000$, which is awarded for the coveted and difficult to obtain "Silent Assassin" ranking, which can apparently only be obtained if you kill only the specific targets (no bystanders or guards) in a minimum amount of time.

Generally, if you wish to obtain high rankings and obtain more money at the end of the level, you'll need to keep your body count as low as possible, and definitely make sure not to get caught killing someone. Setting off a bomb that kills several people will lower your ranking, obviously, but opening fire with a gun and killing that same number of people will hurt your ranking even more.

You should also note that the two primary aspects of your ranking are Noise and Violence. While you will obviously need to use a little violence in order to complete your mission, unnecessary violence involving non-mission critical NPCs will lower your ranking. Noise is quite self-evident: firing shotguns or high powered rifles will get you noticed. Bombs are a major hurt to this category, since they cause a lot of noise, raise much attention, and can likely cause a bit of collateral damage. Even so, they are the best way to finish off a target in certain cases, so you should use them in some situations, but carefully.

Rewards
In addition to the rankings, you can also get extra cash rewards based on your performance during a mission. Factors which determine your final cash purse include:


 * Objectives: Obviously, completing the primary hit gets you money...this is the biggest factor in your cash reward, even more so than ranking. For this reason, even if you make critical mistakes in a mission that kill your ranking, but still complete the hit, you'll still rake in a fair sum of cash.  Certain missions have optional objectives that will get you more cash.


 * Damage Control: The more civilians you kill and the more people witness your acts, the more bribe money the Agency has to pay to cover your tracks. Note that this is a penalty.  You start off with no sum of money in the Damage Control category, but you'll start losing money, depending on how much chaos you cause (if any).  With enough damage done and enough people killed, this penalty can quite possibly surpass 100,000$.  If you cover your tracks well enough, this should be a minor sum, or cost you nothing at all.


 * Custom Weapons Retrieval: If you leave behind one of your custom weapons in a mission, you will be charged 5,000$ to retrieve it. This fee will be multiplied per weapon.  If you can restrict yourself to the Silverballer and SMG, there should be no problem here, as both weapons are easily concealable.


 * Suit Retrieval: If you exit a mission wearing anything but the custom-made suit you always start off in, you will be charged a penalty of 5,000$.