This Ready or Not beginner guide starts with one rule: play your first missions on Casual, build every loadout around arrests, and replay on Standard once you can arrest everyone, because Standard is where the achievements count. The reason is in Steam’s numbers. Steam’s global achievement statistics show 94.2% of players have made an arrest, yet only 27.1% hold The War, the achievement for clearing the first three missions at C+ on Standard or higher. The five campaign chapters then sit in a narrow band of 17.8% to 27.1%. The cliff is at the start, not the end.
Ready or Not is a first-person SWAT shooter from VOID Interactive: on Steam it costs $49.99 for Windows, and it also runs on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and the Epic Games Store. You can play single-player or in co-op for up to five with crossplay, and 276,587 of 350,213 reviews (79.0%) positive, which Steam labels Mostly Positive (Steam store page, read 19 October 2026). Below you get a first-evening checklist, the funnel, a ten-mission arrest drill, what Casual costs you, the Mission Editor settings that matter, door technique, and which Boiling Point mission to leave until last. Everything was checked against patch 1.5.3 (13 October 2026). This hub doesn’t walk through individual missions; those get their own guides.
Quick Start: Your First Evening in Ready or Not
Do these eight things in order before you chase a grade; the sources are in the sections that follow.
- Run Training once, then fire your weapons at the Range or Kill House before a mission (Magic Game World).
- Select Casual on the mission screen; the preset is chosen before each mission.
- Take a less-lethal primary (beanbag shotgun or pepperball launcher) and a taser as the backup.
- Shout for compliance before you shoot. Compliance commands lower suspect morale, and morale at zero ends the fight.
- Put the Mirrorgun under every door before you open it.
- Look into each room from the doorway before you step in (slicing the pie, below).
- Restrain everyone, civilians included. Arrests are what the grade rewards.
- Replay on Standard once a mission goes cleanly, because every mission achievement requires Standard or higher.
Where Steam Players Stop: The Achievement Funnel
The big drop happens before the end of the first chapter, not late in the campaign. Almost everyone makes an arrest; far fewer clear the first three missions at C+ on Standard.
| Achievement | What it asks for | Steam players |
|---|---|---|
| First Arrest | Arrest one suspect or civilian | 94.2% |
| Arrest Warrant | Arrest 50 suspects or civilians | 43.0% |
| Peeping Tom | Use the Mirrorgun under a door 30 times | 28.9% |
| The War | Thank You, Come Again; Rust Belt; Twisted Nerve at C+ on Standard or higher | 27.1% |
| The Exploited | The Spider, Valley of the Dolls, Sinuous Trail, 23 Megabytes a Second at C+ on Standard or higher | 25.2% |
| Practice Makes Perfect | Complete Training | 20.4% |
| The Left Behind | Carriers of the Vine, Sins of the Father, Ides of March, A Lethal Obsession at C+ on Standard or higher | 19.7% |
| The Abducted | Buy Cheap, Buy Twice; Hide and Seek; Ends of the Earth; Greased Palms at C+ on Standard or higher | 18.6% |
| The Decaying City | Elephant, Relapse, Neon Tomb at C+ on Standard or higher | 17.8% |
| Medal of Valor | Every base-game mission at S on Standard or higher | 2.2% |
| I’m Too Old For This… | Every base-game mission on Hard | 0.7% |
Three readings fall out of it. First, only about 29 in every 100 players who have arrested someone (27.1 ÷ 94.2) hold The War. Second, once players are past chapter one they mostly carry on: the rarest chapter achievement (17.8%) is 66% as common as the first (27.1%). Third, S on every base mission is about one-eighth as common as C+ on the last chapter (2.2 ÷ 17.8), so a clean-sheet S run is an endgame project, not a beginner target.
Read the numbers with care. Every chapter achievement requires Standard or higher, so someone who cleared a chapter on Casual is not counted. Steam’s percentages cover Steam players only. The chapters are not strictly sequential either: The Left Behind (19.7%) is more common than The Abducted (18.6%), which suggests people skip around. And Training’s 20.4% means at least 73.8% of players have an arrest without that achievement (94.2 − 20.4); we can’t tell whether they skipped Training, or whether the achievement came later than launch.
Why Your First Ten Missions Should Be Arrests
Treat every suspect as someone to arrest for your first ten missions. Ten is our cut-off, not the game’s: chapters one and two plus the first three missions of chapter three, in the order the wiki lists them. Two of the game’s own systems point the same way, and one warning applies.
The grade rewards it. Game Rant’s S-rank guide gives the S requirements as every objective done, nobody dead (suspects and officers included) and every suspect arrested, including the ones who fake surrender or fire on you. One guide, AI Owl, reports +35 points for an arrested suspect against +5 for one who is dead or incapacitated, plus an “invisible” −30 for each failed arrest. That is a single community source and we couldn’t confirm it in official documents, so treat it as a ballpark: if it is right, a kill throws away 30 of a possible 35 points.
The morale system is the real lever. Each suspect has morale, and at zero they drop their weapons and surrender (Game Rant). VOID’s Mission Editor briefing lists what chips it away: compliance commands, less-lethal weapons, kicking in doors, gunfire and ordnance. Gunfire and ordnance are on that list too, but they are the entries that can also cost you the S. Practising with less-lethal tools and shouted commands means practising the lever that ends fights without ending the run.
Less-lethal is not harmless. The game doesn’t treat it as safe, and neither do the people who study it. Game Rant warns that a beanbag shotgun “can still kill,” and AI Owl says a headshot with it is lethal and fails an S attempt. The term “less lethal” exists because “nonlethal” would overpromise; NIJ-sponsored research on blunt-impact projectiles drew on more than 600 incidents to study the injuries they cause.
| Tool | Use it for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Beanbag shotgun | Dropping a suspect who is resisting; aim at the legs or lower torso | A headshot kills, and the round can kill elsewhere too |
| Pepperball launcher (VKS / R7) | Safer, slower arrests; works well for AI squadmates | Finite range, and ineffective against masked suspects |
| TRPL pepperball pistol | A less-lethal pepperball sidearm, added in the July 2025 update | The notes publish no stats for it |
| Taser | Instantly incapacitating one suspect who refuses to comply | One target per cartridge |
| Tactical grenades (9-Bang, flash, CS gas) | Lowering morale across a whole room; the 9-Bang was added in the Boiling Point update | Stunning is not arresting: every suspect still has to be restrained for an S |
Our read of those sources is that no single tool is the safe one: the beanbag is faster and riskier, so it suits a suspect who is already resisting, while the pepperball launcher is slower and safer, so it suits a room where you have space and time.
The Ten-Mission Drill
Our drill uses the chapter order in the wiki’s mission list; the wiki says only that finishing a mission’s main objectives unlocks the next in single-player, so players who join multiplayer lobbies may meet them in another order.
- Missions 1–3 (Thank You, Come Again; Rust Belt; Twisted Nerve): Casual, every suspect arrested, Mirrorgun on every door. The exit test is three finishes with nobody dead.
- Missions 4–7 (23 Megabytes a Second; The Spider; Sinuous Trail; Valley of the Dolls): play each on Casual, then replay it on Standard. Go back to missions 1–3 on Standard until each is C+.
- Missions 8–10 (Ends of the Earth; Greased Palms; Buy Cheap, Buy Twice): start straight on Standard with less-lethal kits for your AI officers as well; solo players can change them in the Locker Room.
If you can finish any three missions in a row at C+ on Standard with everyone arrested, you are done with the drill. Nothing in the sources says ten missions is the right number, and your own results should overrule ours.
Casual, Standard or Hard: What the Preset Changes and What It Costs
Start on Casual, then move to Standard as soon as you can arrest everyone, because Casual is the only preset that costs you achievements. The three presets arrived with the Los Sueños Stories update on 15 July 2025 and can be picked before each mission or in Commander mode; since 1.4.1 hosts can also change difficulty from the mission end screen.
VOID describes Casual as an “introductory difficulty for players who are new to the game” (Vol. 83 briefing). On Casual the SWAT AI gives you more room to engage suspects, while Standard and Hard add suspect squad behaviours (Rally, Support, Attack, Retreat) and let some experienced suspects switch between semi-auto and full auto depending on range. Hard makes your AI squad slightly more effective. VOID says the presets move values such as reaction time, likelihood of surrender and accuracy but hasn’t published the numbers (PCGamesN). The cost is on the achievements page: every mission achievement says “on ‘Standard’ difficulty or higher.”
- If you can’t reach the first room alive: stay on Casual and work on door and corner technique.
- If you reach rooms but suspects end up dead or loose: stay on Casual and fix your loadout and orders first; the preset is not the problem.
- If you clear at C+ on Casual with every suspect arrested: switch to Standard for credit.
- If you hold C+ on Standard three times running: Hard is optional. Only 0.7% of players have every base mission on Hard.
The Mission Editor: What the Sliders Actually Are
The Mission Editor is a free addition from update 1.5 (3 September 2026) for “granular tweaking of gameplay variables within an existing mission.” It sits on the main menu, works in single-player and Friends-Only lobbies, and covers base-game and DLC missions; editing a DLC mission needs that DLC, and scenarios are shared through codes (patch notes; CogConnected). You may hear about an “aggression” slider that turns suspects passive. The patch notes list no setting by that name. These are the ones that exist:
| Setting | What VOID lists | How we’d use it to learn |
|---|---|---|
| Suspect Start Morale, Stun Resistance | Basic tab, Suspect AI | Morale at zero means surrender, so try lower start morale and test the direction in-game; the notes don’t publish a range |
| Suspect Accuracy, Fire Rate, Health | Basic tab, Suspect AI | Shrinks the cost of a mistake while you learn the order of commands |
| Suspect Count (min and max sliders) | Named in the 1.5.3 fixes | VOID’s own example is one suspect on 23 Megabytes a Second; ideal for single-room drills |
| Suspect and civilian archetypes | Cowardly, tactical, irrational and others; civilians can be “prisoner” | Prisoner civilians arrive pre-restrained; keep tactical suspects for later, since they are the coordinated threat |
| Max Locked Doors % / Max Open Doors % | Advanced tab, Mission | Fewer locked doors means fewer forced entries; more open doors means more sightlines and a harder map |
| Door Trap Count and types | Tripwire, IR, Flashbang, Explosive, Toxic Gas | Set to 0 for pure clearing practice |
| Damage Cap, Limited Bandages, Player Health | Player options | Damage Cap is the most damage you can take from one hit; use it to survive early mistakes |
| SWAT visual stimulus reaction time, Morale Damage by SWAT Activity | SWAT AI, per the dev briefing | Changes how quickly your squad reacts and how hard its commands and tools hit suspect morale |
The takeaway is that the editor can make mistakes cheap, but it can’t make them free. Three cautions apply. First, none of the sources we found says whether edited missions count toward grades, achievements or campaign progress, so use edit sessions as practice and earn credit on a normal Standard run. Second, the Suspect Fire Rate and Damage Cap values weren’t saving until the 1.5.3 update on 13 October (before that, the difficulty you picked when creating a mission decided the fire rate), and traps set to 0 didn’t fully remove traps on some missions, so update before you trust a setup.
- One-room drill: one suspect, traps at 0, prisoner civilians. Practise mirror, slice, compliance order, cuffs.
- Arrest-only drill: default suspect count with lower accuracy and fire rate, and a house rule of no lethal force.
- Return to default: reset to a Casual or Standard baseline and play the mission straight.
Door Craft: Mirrorgun First, Then Slice the Pie
Check the door before you open it. The Mirrorgun slides under a door for a view of the room beyond, and Peeping Tom (30 uses) is held by 28.9% of Steam players, so about seven in ten haven’t logged that many. Magic Game World recommends checking for booby traps with the mirror cam; if you find one, pick the lock, peek through and cut the wires when prompted. The editor’s trap list (tripwire, IR, flashbang, explosive, toxic gas) shows what the game can put behind a door.
Then clear the room from outside it. In Police1’s description of slicing the pie, officers see as much of the room as they can from the doorway before committing and enter once they have visually cleared roughly 75% or more of it; the alternative, the button hook, “propels you into unknown territory” and commits you. In Ready or Not, free-lean (Alt plus a direction) lets you peek without stepping in, there is no sprint, and chem lights mark rooms your second team can skip (Magic Game World).
In our diagram each colour is the first hallway position that can see that part of the room through the doorway, and the grey wedges beside the door are never seen from outside. In this illustration roughly a quarter of the floor stays hidden until you commit, which is why the first step inside is the risky one.
Boiling Point: What It Adds and Which Mission to Save for Last
Leave Boiling Point until the base campaign is comfortable, and play A New America last. The DLC came out on 12 March 2026 at $9.99, needs the base game, and adds three missions: No Good Deed, All Gods Burn and A New America (Steam’s DLC page). A host who owns it can host those missions for friends who don’t, and the Deluxe Edition bundling the base game with all three DLCs was $69.99 at launch (The Sixth Axis). The 1.4.1 notes add a lethal-gas hazard used by some suspects and a new CQB suspect type for the DLC missions.
| Mission | Steam players with its achievement | What to know | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Good Deed | 5.2% (The Flashpoint) | The opening mission; sets up the terror plot (games.gg) | First of the three |
| All Gods Burn | 6.0% (The False Idol) | A mid-campaign step up, per games.gg; its Hard-mode no-armor, no-grenade achievement is held by 0.4% | Second |
| A New America | 2.7% (The Final Directive) | “The toughest mission of the bunch”; the flower-masked VIP carries the detonator, TheGamer’s advice is to reduce him rather than kill him, and the mission fails if the bomb is activated; suspects can use gas bombs (TheGamer) | Last, after C+ on Standard in the base chapters |
The percentages are shares of all Steam players, not of DLC owners, so they aren’t pass rates. A New America’s 2.7% is about half No Good Deed’s 5.2%, which fits TheGamer’s ranking, but it is a hint rather than proof. The advice to wait is our judgment: no source recommends a difficulty gate, so we use C+ on Standard in all five base chapters.
A cross-reference note: Patched.gg’s launch post lists Narcos, Animal Shelter and Training Center as the March 12 maps. Steam’s store page, the Steam changelog and The Sixth Axis all name No Good Deed, All Gods Burn and A New America, and the wiki files Narcos under Home Invasion, so we used the Steam list.
What to Do for Your Player Type
| You are | Start with | Priority | Skip for now |
|---|---|---|---|
| New player | Training, then Casual | Three finishes in a row with everyone arrested; Mirrorgun on every door | Hard, S-rank hunting, Boiling Point |
| Short sessions | Mission Editor one-room drills | Ten-minute reps on mirror, slice and orders | Long missions you can’t finish in one sitting |
| Optimiser | Standard | Constraint runs: The Tactician (13.2%), By the Book (7.4%), The Hanged Man (2.9%, Hide and Seek with only taser, flashbangs and bash) | Pistol-only challenges until your arrest rate is steady |
| Completionist | Standard, base campaign first | Medal of Valor (2.2%), then Boiling Point at S (Nosce Te Ipsum, 0.5%) | I’m Too Old For This (0.7%) until the rest is done |
The takeaway is that beginners and completionists disagree on order: learn arrests on Casual, collect on Standard, and treat Hard as a separate project.
FAQ
Is Ready or Not worth $49.99 in 2026?
Yes if you like a slow, deliberate SWAT game, and no if you want run-and-gun. It has 79.0% positive reviews from 350,213 Steam reviews, 5,656 people were in a session when we checked on 19 October, and the free Mission Editor adds replay value to 18 campaign missions and the two Los Sueños Stories missions added in July 2025. The price only makes sense if you are willing to play slowly; the DLC is optional.
Can I play Ready or Not solo?
Yes. Steam lists single-player and co-op for up to five players with crossplay. Solo, you command AI officers and can change their kits in the Locker Room, and the Mission Editor works in single-player and Friends-Only lobbies.
Should I play on Casual if I want achievements?
Learn on Casual, earn on Standard. Every mission achievement carries the phrase “on Standard difficulty or higher,” so Casual clears don’t pay out. The trade is worth it: you are buying cheaper mistakes during the stretch where most players give up.
Is the beanbag shotgun actually non-lethal?
No. Game Rant says it can still kill, AI Owl says a headshot is lethal, and NIJ-sponsored research has studied the injuries these projectiles cause. Aim low, and treat it as a tool for resisting suspects, not a safe default.
Do I need Boiling Point?
No, and not early. It is three missions against 18 in the campaign, it costs $9.99, and a friend who owns it can host for you. Buy it when you want a harder finish, not as a way to learn.
Where to Go Next
Ready or Not isn’t in the guides below, but each answers a question this one raises. If you are here for squad play with friends, R.E.P.O. vs. Lethal Company vs. PEAK compares three co-op games by difficulty, group size and scares, and 10 co-op horror games ranked by chaos, scares and extraction depth ranks the wider field. If the funnel above made you curious about another shooter’s learning curve, our ARC Raiders beginner’s guide takes a different approach to the same problem.
Sources
- Valve / VOID Interactive. Ready or Not, Steam store page and review summary, read 19 October 2026 (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144200/Ready_or_Not/)
- Valve / VOID Interactive. Ready or Not: Boiling Point, Steam store page, read 19 October 2026 (https://store.steampowered.com/app/4224910/Ready_or_Not_Boiling_Point/)
- Steam Community. Ready or Not global achievement statistics, read 19 October 2026 (https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1144200/achievements/)
- VOID Interactive. RoN v1.5 Update: Mission Editor Changelog (v1.5.2). Steam Community announcements, 3 September 2026 (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1144200/view/1842846814444426)
- VOID Interactive. Ready or Not Development Briefing, Vol. 90 (Mission Editor). Steam Community announcements, 30 July 2026 (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1144200/view/1839676055886174)
- VOID Interactive. Ready or Not v1.5.3 Update Changelog. Steam Community announcements, 13 October 2026 (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1144200/view/1846018067944803)
- VOID Interactive. Los Sueños Stories Update Changelog. Steam Community announcements, 15 July 2025 (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1144200/view/1805065414356758)
- VOID Interactive. RoN v1.4 Boiling Point Release Changelog (v1.4.1). Steam Community announcements, 12 March 2026 (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1144200/view/1826992588593910)
- VOID Interactive. Ready or Not Development Briefing, Vol. 83 (difficulty modes). VOID Interactive (https://voidinteractive.net/vol-83-ready-or-not-development-briefing/)
- Game Rant. Ready or Not: How to Get S Rank in Missions (https://gamerant.com/ready-or-not-how-get-s-rank-missions/)
- AI Owl. Ready or Not: Quick Tips & Tricks Guide (https://ai-owl.com/ready-or-not-tips/)
- Magic Game World. Ready or Not ultimate beginners guide: tips and tricks to get started (https://www.magicgameworld.com/ready-or-not-ultimate-beginners-guide-tips-tricks-to-get-started/)
- PCGamesN. Giant Ready or Not update adds two extra missions, intense new difficulty modes (https://www.pcgamesn.com/ready-or-not/update-new-missions)
- TheGamer. Ready or Not: Boiling Point, A New America mission and VIP suspect guide (https://www.thegamer.com/ready-or-not-boiling-point-a-new-america-mission-vip-suspect-guide/)
- games.gg. Ready or Not: Boiling Point DLC Guide (https://games.gg/ready-or-not/guides/ready-or-not-boiling-point-dlc-guide/)
- Police1. Slicing the pie vs. button hook for room entry (https://www.police1.com/swat/slicing-the-pie-vs-button-hook-for-room-entry)
- National Institute of Justice / NLECTC. How “Less” Is Less Than Lethal? TechBeat, Spring 2000. NCJRS (https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/how-less-less-lethal)
- Ready or Not wiki (wiki.gg). Missions (https://readyornot.wiki.gg/wiki/Missions)
- CogConnected. Ready or Not Just Got a Free Mission Editor, and It Changes Everything. September 2026 (https://cogconnected.com/2026/09/ready-or-not-just-got-a-free-mission-editor-and-it-changes-everything/)
- The Sixth Axis. Ready or Not: Boiling Point DLC is out now with three new maps. 12 March 2026 (https://www.thesixthaxis.com/?p=469876)
- Patched.gg. Ready or Not: We’re Live at Boiling Point Launch. 12 March 2026 (https://patched.gg/games/ready-or-not/ready-or-not-were-live-at-boiling-point-launch)
Steam achievement percentages, review totals, the price and the player count were read from Steam’s public pages and APIs on 19 October 2026, so they will move. Patch-note details come from VOID’s official Steam changelogs up to v1.5.3. The point values attributed to AI Owl are one community guide’s and unconfirmed. Our slice-the-pie diagram is an illustration of doorway geometry, not a map from the game.
Images on this page are AI-generated illustrations or our own diagrams, not game footage. Ready or Not is a trademark of VOID Interactive.
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.