With Far Cry New Dawn now out, series fans will be jumping back into Hope County, Montana, as they look to survive its vivid and colourful post-apocalypse landscape in the fight against the vicious Highwaymen. If you’re about to get started on the game – especially if this is your first Far Cry experience (or the first in a while) – these fifteen basic tips and tricks should help you get to grips with the game’s systems.
Without further ado, let’s begin, starting with some of the perks that you should look at unlocking before all the others.
INVEST IN THE TAKEDOWN PERKS
Stealth is always encouraged in Far Cry titles, but it can often be even more crucial in New Dawn. Owing to the fact that enemies now belong to separate tiers of difficulty based on their levels, they can be harder to take down with regular combat, so stealth is often far more effective. It can be even more effective if you’ve got the three Takedown perks unlocked. The Advanced Takedowns perk lets you execute takedowns on Level II enemies, Expert on Level III enemies, and Master on Elite enemies. The Master Takedowns perk is incredibly useful, but you need to have unlocked both Advanced and Expert before you get to it, so make sure to keep get these three unlocked as quickly as possible.
GET THE TACTICAL BINOCULARS PERK AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE
Returning Far Cry fans would be well aware of this- binoculars are a staple in the series, and that hasn’t changed in New Dawn. Using binoculars to tag and mark enemies while you invade outposts or other enemy encampments is a crucial tactic, so you’re going to want to get them unlocked as quickly as possible through the Tactical Binoculars perk. In fact, this should be the first perk you unlock, ideally.
GET EXTRA WEAPON SLOTS
You don’t need us to tell you why having extra slots to carry more weapons in is useful. While you start out with two slots, you can unlock two more, one through the Well Armed perk, and then the other through Heavily Armed perk. These don’t cost a lot of perk points either, and though they’re not as crucial as something like, say, the binoculars we just talked about, they’re still something you should work toward as quickly as possible.
UNLOCK THE WINGSUIT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
Using the wingsuit to fly across its open world maps is something else that has become a staple of the Far Cry series. Not only is it a great way to traverse large distances very quickly, it’s also, plain and simple, just a ton of fun. In New Dawn, you can unlock the wingsuit by getting the Skydiver perk.
COMPLETE THE CHALLENGES
We’ve spoken plenty about perks, but how exactly do you unlock perk points a little bit more quickly in order to be able to unlock all these benefits? Challenges are a great and easy way for doing so, and award you perk points for a variety of tasks, such as getting a certain number of kills with specific weapons, or doing certain tasks a set number of times with different Guns for Hire characters. Some of these can easily be completed during the course of regular gameplay, while switching between weapons and Guns for Hire characters regularly also helps. So keep an eye out on your Challenges- they’re usually pretty easy to beat.
SEEK OUT TREASURE HIDEOUTS
Treasure Hunts are back, of course. There are ten treasure troves scattered throughout Hope County, preceded puzzles or platforming challenges and the like. Getting through these hurdles is well worth it, though, because these hideouts reward you with perk points, as well as in-game currency (which may or may not be useful to you, depending on how much you care about cosmetics). Treasure Hunts aren’t as easy or effective a way to get perk points as the Challenges we’re just spoke of, but by and large, they’re also just great, enjoyable activities, so keep an eye out for them.
THINK ABOUT WHICH GUNS FOR HIRE TO BRING WITH YOU ON MISSIONS
Not only does experimenting with Guns for Hire characters give you the opportunity to complete Challenges, it’s also a good idea to keep shuffling them as per your style of play, or the nature of the mission you might be attempting next. Timber marks enemies and is useful for stealth, Horacio is a tanky boar and draws aggro from enemies, Nana is a sharpshooter and is great at covering your back from a distance in firefights. It’s a system that works like it did in Far Cry 5, and just as it was in that game, having the right character with you during missions can be very useful.
WHEN EXPLORING THE WILDS, BRING THE JUDGE WITH YOU
A much more specific example of the point we just talked about would be The Judge. The Judge is a character who, after passing the threshold of having killed 15 Highwaymen animals, makes it so that no animal attacks you unless you attack it first (as long as The Judge is with you, of course). In New Dawn, as in any other Far Cry game, you can often get attacked by vicious beasts while you’re trekking from one place to another, or while you’re trying to hunt down a rather dangerous beast, and in such situations, The Judge’s calming influence on animals can provide a major boost.
UPGRADE PROSPERITY’S TRAINING CAMP AT THE EARLIEST
The Guns for Hire you recruit in New Dawn can also be upgraded, and can learn new abilities that can be quite useful. While that happens pretty much on its own during the course of the game (if you actually bring those characters along with you, that is), upgrading things such as their health and attack power is something you have to do manually. That is done by upgrading the Training Camp in Prosperity, your central hub, with each upgrade giving additional boosts. Get these upgrades as quickly as you can- even if you recruit Guns (or Fangs) after these upgrades have been made, the bonuses will still apply to them, so it’s a good idea to get the upgrades out of the way first.
RECRUIT TIMBER THE DOG AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN
As we’ve already discussed, stealth is an important tool in any Far Cry game, including New Dawn. Things such as the Takedown perks and binoculars can aid you in stealth, but so can the Fang for Hire, Timber the Dog. Much like Boomer from Far Cry 5, Timber can mark enemies automatically for you, and bringing him along during outpost missions is generally a good idea. So if you’re wondering which Fang/Gun for Hire you should recruit first, we’d say go for Timber.
UNLOCKING FAST TRAVEL
Fast travel is an important thing in any open world game with a large map, but in New Dawn, other than always being able to fast travel back to Prosperity, it’s something that you have to earn, rather than something that the game hands out to you. To unlock fast travel to the Outposts you have liberated, you’ll have to upgrade the Expeditions facility in Prosperity, and it’s something that you should preferably get out of the way as quickly as possible. If you want the option to fast travel to any discovered location, and not just to outposts, you’ll have to upgrade the Expeditions facility again.
KEEP LIBERATING AND REPEATING OUTPOSTS FOR MORE ETHANOL
Ethanol is a premium resource in the post-nuclear world of Far Cry New Dawn, and is used for upgrading several vital things (such as facilities in Prosperity). Liberating outposts nets you with ethanol, but if you do so without being detected and having disabled all alarms, you get an extra bit of ethanol on top. If you want to keep grinding for ethanol, you can do that as well- after liberating an outpost, rather than capturing it, simply scavenge it and move on. The Highwaymen will eventually move back in, allowing you to liberate the outpost for ethanol again. Though repeat liberations are much more challenging than initial ones, the reward is usually worth the effort.
ALWAYS HAVE MOLOTOVS ON YOU
Have as many molotovs on you at any given time as possible, and make sure you’re always well stocked, especially when you know you’re about to enter into tougher areas where you will come across challenging foes. Why? Well, molotovs deal a lot of damage, and can be a very handy tool when you’re trying to take down Enforcers, who are some of the toughest enemies in the game.
AUTO-DRIVE
There will be several moments throughout your playthrough when you’ll find yourself in the middle of combat while you’re driving around the map in a vehicle. In such situations, simply set the vehicle to auto-drive, which does exactly what the name suggests, allowing you to focus entirely on shooting down your enemies. You can also simply not get in the driver’s seat at all, and get one of your Guns for Hire to do the driving for you- also a good tip for when you just want to enjoy the scenery through the window.
PURCHASE MAPS FROM THE CARTOGRAPHER
Make sure you don’t ignore the Cartographer in Prosperity. Though part of the joy of New Dawn is simply in exploring the land and finding new things for yourselves, purchasing maps from the Cartographer can save plenty of busywork. For instance, if the Cartographer is upgraded to level 2, you can purchase a map that marks the locations of all treasure hunts in the game.