When I play games I normally choose to not kill people if given the option. I've been playing through so far using just the stun gun and the tranq rifle but I'm starting to think it may not be worth the effort. There's hardly any ammo for these weapons lying around and I'm not really patient enough to be super stealthy. I'm only a couple hours in but my current mission is starting to frustrate me. I'm on the mission where I just found the guys who were responsible for the initial attack and I have to find the leader before they all leave.

There seems to be a ton of enemy dudes and alerting one gets all of them on my ass and my only option is to run and hide and then wait until they stop being hostile towards me. Should I just start killing everyone and stick to story choices that let me kill or let someone go?

I've also only upgraded hacking stuff so far. Am I going to screw myself by not having any combat upgrades or not carrying any lethal weapons?

I wouldn't bother, it may look ok at the start but they pile on the enemies in the last half of the game, seems like it would be a nightmare and probably take twice as long to finish.

Only if you want to do it as a personal challenge type deal. There's an achievement for it as well if you're into that. There are a couple of parts where that can get dicey. If you are starting to get frustrated on the second main mission I'd suggest just dropping it and going with a more flexible approach.

As a general rule of thumb if you're going for 0 kills, it's best not to alert anyone in the first place rather then have to wait for them to calm down, and they will still be more alerted afterward. And you lose the unseen and no alarms raised bonuses too if you keep alerting guys.

Not really, the only mandatory battles are the boss ones, and they feature rooms with gear and weapons before and during the fights if you just use a bit of savvy they should be enough to do the job several times over.

I think you already answered your own question. I personally think stealth/non-lethal is the more fun way to play the game and stealth is often more rewarded than brute force in the game. It can be played either way but you can tell that the game leans heavy in the stealth/non-lethal direction.

At a certain point, I said "fuck it" and went nuts. The melee kills are so good.

It's less rewarding, but don't kick yourself if you feel the need to go lethal. There are always second playthroughs.

It's really just an extra layer to the difficulty. If your into challenging yourself go for it. I'm half way through Dishonored with a no kill playthrough, haven't played in awhile though

@hunkulese: Frankly, I think going nonlethal is actually one of the easier ways to play the game.

You're right in that stun gun and tranq rifle ammo is rarer, but if you explore a lot, you will find some, and make sure to buy it from shops whenever you can (because money is basically endless in that game). The reason I say it's easier is for two reasons. One: the tranq rifle is really good, in that one shot anywhere on a guy's body will take him out silently, though it will take longer if you don't hit him in the head/neck. Two: try to use the stealth melee takedown as often as you can. You can't just use the stun gun and tranq rifle all game, as there really isn't quite enough ammo. Always try to takedown before any other option. Only in areas full of guards should you start using the tranq rifle. Don't accidentally do the lethal melee takedown, as that one actually makes a bunch of noise because the guy yells when you stab him. Sometimes the patrol routes are tough and it's tricky to isolate guards, but the melee takedown and tranq rifle are seriously really good.

Edit: Oh yeah, reason number three that nonlethal is easier: every nonlethal kill on a guy gives you a 20XP bonus because I guess it's slightly harder than headshotting a guy with a silenced pistol. All of those 20XPs add up over time to get you to more augmentations at a slightly faster rate. Nonlethal takedown on a guard is 50XP total (10 for defeating guard, 20 for takedown, 20 for nonlethal), whereas even getting a pistol headshot on a guard only gives you 20XP total (10 for defeating guard, 10 for headshot). Getting a tranq rifle headshot is 40XP total (10 for defeating guard, 20 for nonlethal, 10 for headshot), and even if you miss the head, you still get 30XP.

I do still recommend you upgrade the fuck out of one lethal weapon so you can fight bosses. The combat rifle and the revolver are both very good. The bosses take little to no damage from the stun gun and tranq rifle and the game forces you to kill them, and boss kills don't count against you if you're going for a pacifist, nonlethal run.

Hacking is good, but I also recommend you get the double melee takedown augmentation. Cloaking is also very useful for allowing you to reposition yourself while trying to find the best way to take guys out, or use it to just progress through an area and don't even bother taking out the guards. The energy recharge augmentation allows you to get back that one free energy bar much quicker. Also, there is an aim stabilizer augmentation (NOT the recoil one) where all the description mentions is that it makes you more accurate while running and gunning, but way more importantly it steadies your aim while looking down the scope of the tranq rifle/crossbow/sniper rifle, so that's incredibly useful too.

Gas grenades can be good for nonlethally dealing with a cluster of dudes. Concussion grenades can be good if you want to stun a group of guys, then run up and keep doing melee takedowns (you will have to eat some energy bars to do this).

I'm not clear on what level you're at. Is it Highland Park? The place with all of the red and black commandos from the very beginning of the game? And there's a big underground facility? For the record, even when they tell you to hurry because some guy might leave, that is never true, you always have all the time in the world, except the first mission where you rescue the hostages. Those hostages die if you wait too long, but that is the only situation where there is actually a time limit.

It could be worth the effort but overall doesn't change things too much from what I remember (apart from any achievements), at some point I switched from the tranq gun & headshots to just using a normal pistol/sniper rifle as the headshot xp was quite a lot (and not much less than a non-lethal attack) plus there were times when I just got tired of wasting all my tranq/stun gun ammo on people only to get them revived by some wandering guard.

I actually managed to "kill" most of the bosses with the stun gun. Maybe they've patched it, but for the most part you could actually stunlock them if you had enough ammo for it, meaning that they would just stand there and let you hit them over and over again until they fell over. Pretty fun.

I played through the first time on a no-kill run, focusing almost exclusively on melee takedowns. Lot of fun, but it took a long time, and keep in mind that knocked-out enemies can still die if you drop them down a ladder or some such. The game doesn't tell you when you kill someone like that, so you can get to the end of the game and not get the achievement and be a little confused.

I know you can do it. I did it. If I can do it, you can certainly do it. Because I'm about as non-stealthy as you can get in stealth games.

I don't have an answer for you. I just thought I'd share that sometimes I really like reading GB thread titles as though they aren't related to games. And this one is awesome!

It also goes without saying that you will have to do some amount of picking up bodies and hiding them, since no guards will be permanently dead, and you don't want guards waking each other up.

Seriously though, nonlethal melee takedown is free and completely silent. It sucks having to wait for it to recharge, but it should be your number 1 tool throughout the game. If you use it a lot, you should be able to build up a supply of stun gun and tranq rifle ammo.

Thanks for the responses.

I think I'll keep trying to not kill anyone but if I get caught I'll just start blasting dudes.

If you're patient and explore a whole lot, you'll find that many nooks and crannies include some useful goodies.

The last time I played it, I tried to be as stealthy as I could but if I got caught I took no issues with using lethal force. The game doesn't seem to care if you do so or not, I don't ever remember it affecting the story aside from some meaningless changed dialogue early on. Some segments of the game are more fun when you do things stealthy, though, and that should always be your first choice anyway, especially since you take a lot of damage.

Also, when going lethal, a pistol is your best friend. No kidding. Just one little bullet to the head of anything and it's dead. Make sure to keep some electrical grenades or something of that sort, I forgot what they're called, for robots, but otherwise that pistol is your best friend.

I tried for that in my first run of the game--I even saved the helicopter pilot without killing anyone--but at one point I knocked a guy out, and unintentionally pushed him off a ledge that apparently killed him. I was under the impression that it would not affect my run through, and yet I didn't get the achievement. So be careful of small stuff like that if you go for it.

It is possible, as except for that accidental falling death, I avoiding killing anyone else but the bosses.