Dead Drop, the first mission of Sniper Elite: Resistance’s campaign after the prologue, tasks you with finding a German intelligence mole before the Gestapo. You’ll need to complete a handful of objectives involving Vertigo’s intel and also take out a hunter named Philo Beck who’s renowned in the Nazi party.
That all sounds simple enough, right? Guess again. Vertigo’s dead drop isn’t located conveniently out in the open; it’s buried in the heart of a Nazi fortress. On top of that, you can’t just take out Beck however you see fit. The game requires you to kill him with a rat bomb to mark the optional objective as complete and earn its unique weapon reward.
Here’s how to complete the Dead Drop mission in Sniper Elite: Resistance.
All Dead Drop objectives and overview
Dead Drop has a few objectives you’ll need to complete, each of which are identified by quest markers on the map:
- Collect Vertigo’s Dead Drop at the basilica
- Search Vertigo’s apartment for clues about his whereabouts
- Find and make contact with Vertigo
- Recover Vertigo’s intel in his office
- Optional: Find and kill Philo Beck with a rat bomb
- Optional: Disrupt Nazis’ investigation of the Resistance
How you want to go about completing the objectives and in what order is entirely up to you. If you’d rather sneak your way in and pick off enemies one by one, go forth and conquer. But if you’d rather run in guns blazing on behalf of the Allied powers, you can do that too—just be aware that enemies may call for reinforcements.
Like other missions in the game, there are also a few collectibles around the map for you to find. Many of these are tidbits of lore, like letters or classified documents, while others are workbenches or statues you must uncover. Dead Drop has a total of 20 collectibles to find, and you can see your progress by selecting “Service Record” on the options menu and then clicking on “Collectibles” at the top of the screen.
Beginning the mission: Breach the fortress
When the mission begins, you’ll spawn on the outskirts of a fortress baring the stark red banners of the Nazi regime. Follow the path in front of you, and you’ll eventually reach a wooden shed. On a table at the top of the shed’s ladder, you’ll find a rat bomb. Pick this item up, because you’ll need it if you want to complete the optional objective of killing Beck.
Before you head out of this shed, be sure to pick up the crowbar and bolt cutters found near the entrance to the shed; these will come in hand later. With your items in tow, it’s time to infiltrate the fortress. You have a couple options for entering the Nazi base:
- Using the crowbar, break the wooden planks blocking the entrance underneath the bridge ruins.
- Climb the vines located on a crumbling tower outpost to the left of the bridge.
- Be careful; there’s an enemy guard stationed here.
I recommend taking out the guard at the top of the outpost then proceeding along this second route, since this path will conveniently lead you to the mission’s Propaganda Poster, a collectible that will unlock the Propaganda Challenge for the mission.
Dead Drop Propaganda Poster location
The Propaganda Poster for the Dead Drop mission can be found on the southern side of the fortress, as shown on the map above. You’ll find it on the stairs leading up to the higher levels of the compound’s defense, relatively close to the entrance of the fortress.
This poster shows a man raising a rifle above his head while a castle explodes in front of him. The words “La Résistance” stretch across the top of the poster. Interact with it to pick it up, which will unlock the Propaganda mission that you can access later on.
Find Vertigo’s dead drop at the basilica
Once you’re inside the fortress, head to the southwestern-most yellow map marker on your map. This marker shows the location of the basilica where you can find Vertigo’s dead drop. There are multiple ways to enter the basilica: through the open doors on either side of the building, an open window, or the underground tunnel connected to a nearby café.
I chose to enter via the underground tunnel of Café du Matin, which is located east of the objective’s whereabouts on the map. To do so, enter the café, then head down the stairs through a blue door to access the underground tunnel. From there, follow the route on the map to the quest marker. Be careful heading up the stairs into the basilica, though; two enemies are hanging out near the top of the stairs. I took them out with a grenade, which sent other enemies loitering outside the building into a panic but allowed me to sneak into the building without detection.
As you ascend the stairs, look to your right for a vault key. Then, near the western entrance to the building, take another flight of stairs into a small office. Here, you’ll find a green safe, which you can open using the keys. Inside, you’ll find one of the five message collectibles. This item doesn’t check off any of your objective boxes, but it is one of the necessary collectibles you’ll need to acquire if you want to 100-percent complete the Dead Drop mission.
Across from the safe will be a corridor with a long flight of wooden stairs leading to the top of the building. Head up these stairs, but be prepared to run into a sniper when you reach the top. Follow the quest marker to find the painting of a woman wearing regal attire shown in the image above and interact with it to uncover the dead drop.
Search Vertigo’s apartment for clues about his whereabouts
After you’ve found Vertigo’s dead drop, head through the open door leading to the rafters on the outside of the building. This will then take you into the roof of a neighboring building, leading to a very long zipline, which will allow you to quickly traverse to the next map marker.
Like with the basilica, there are multiple entrances to Vertigo’s apartment—and several enemies loitering around, as well. To get rid of them, I caused a nearby truck to explode using a grenade, luring Nazis out and picking them off one by one while hiding in tall grass by the zipline. Once the area was clear, I waltzed into Vertigo’s apartment through the front door.
Inside, you’ll find that the apartment was trashed by the Gestapo. It isn’t immediately clear what you’re looking for, but if you head to the top of the stairs, you’ll see a piece of the floorboard you can interact with to unearth intel, which informs you that Vertigo may be underneath the compound in the underground tunnels. A new quest marker will appear on your map, north of where you need to find and kill Beck.
Find and make contact with Vertigo
Before you can find and make contact with Vertigo, you need to locate the tunnel entrance in the Library Gardens. To do so, head north of the search area, and look for a small, six-sided building with a wooden door, shown in the image below. Open this door to descend into the tunnels below.
From here, follow the tunnel to the quest marker, which will lead you to a small room. In it will be Vertigo’s dead body, and Harry will comment on how Vertigo chose suicide instead of risking capture. After this dialogue, the quest will be marked as complete.
Recover Vertigo’s intel in his office
The final mandatory objective is to retrieve Vertigo’s intel. The quest marker will lead you to an almost fortress-within-a-fortress location across a small bridge, and you’ll need to once again clear out the enemies lurking in this area to reach your objective. Like with the other areas, you can reach this compound through a number of ways: either by crossing the bridge out in the open, taking underground tunnels, or scaling the outside with the dead vines.
Vertigo’s office is a small room that can be tough to find at first, but it’s located to the left of the courtyard on the second floor of the building, as shown in the image below. Vines lead up to one of the open windows, allowing you to scale your way to the office. Or, if you’re lazy like me, you can take the stairs inside the building and head through a series of doors to your right.
In Vertigo’s office will be a safe that you need to open. You can do so either by placing a satchel charge, which will alert any nearby enemies, or with a key. You can find a satchel charge in a small garden area just northwest of Vertigo’s office on the ground floor. I ended up taking this approach, since the key proved too difficult to find.
Whichever way you open the safe, Harry will say the documents are too encoded, and he needs to hand them off to someone else for decryption. If you’ve completed the other mandatory missions, you’ll see multiple map markers pop up on your map showing different places you can go for extraction. Exiting the map at one of these locations will then end the mission. If you haven’t yet completed the optional objectives below, we recommend doing so for the most rewards from the campaign.
Optional objective: Kill Philo Beck with a rat bomb
If you haven’t noticed yet, the rat bomb isn’t like a grenade; you can’t throw it. Instead, it needs to be placed on the ground like a trap. There’s a spot on the floor behind the bar Beck can be found in where the rat can be placed, as shown in the video below.
It seems as though this mechanic may be bugged. If Beck walks over the rat, nothing happens. I was able to get it to explode by throwing a bottle to lure Beck over to the window near where the rat is placed. Then, I snuck behind him and shot the rat with my pistol. This caused the rat to detonate, effectively killing Beck and netting me the M1895.
Optional objective: Disrupt Nazis’ investigation of the Resistance
As you approach the library, the northernmost building in the fortress, a blue quest marker will appear on your map. This is an optional quest that requires you to locate three stolen files from the Resistance inside the library. The building is crawling with Nazis, so you’ll need to take them out if you want to find and safely recover all three files.
The files will appear as blue markers when you approach them. But if you’re having trouble finding all three files, refer to the map above. All three files count as collectibles, and acquiring all of them unlocks the File O’ Facts achievement.
Dead Drop collectibles
Workbench locations
There are three workbenches you can find in Dead Drop, each containing one of the following:
- Rifle Marksmanship package (Rifle workbench) – Second story of a building southwest of the basilica, in the lower left-most corner of the map.
- Pistol Carbine kit (Pistol workbench) – Northeast side of the map, south of the library in an underground tunnel.
- Secondary Control upgrades pack (SMG workbench) – Beneath Vertigo’s office behind a locked gate on the ground floor of the compound.
Stone Eagle locations
Dead Drop has three Stone Eagle statues to collect. These stone birds can be tough to spot, since they’re relatively small, and each of them are perched on roof tops. To mark them as collected, you need to shoot them, destroying them in the process.
From west to east on the map above, here are the individual locations of each Stone Eagle in Dead Drop.
- On the rooftop of residential buildings to the west of the compound
- On one of the corners of the mini fortress where Vertigo’s office is located
- Above the bakery near the library
