Challenges in Just Cause 3 are an excuse to race, fall with style and blow shit up to the tune of a tense timer. Completing them earns between one and five gears, which are used to unlock Gear Mods, new abilities for Rico.
Just Cause 3 restricts what you can unlock. Once enough gears have been earned, a new ability can be enabled, rather than have currency spent to unlock it. However, you should focus on specific types of challenges to unlock certain Gear Mods sooner.
Gears earned in a challenge can only be applied to the same Gear Mod class. Completing a land race, for example, will unlock land vehicle abilities. Some of these drastically change gameplay, like enabling grenades to explode instantly upon impact, so they can all be toggled on or off at any time once unlocked.
There are eight challenge types, thus eight different mod classes: land races, sea races, air races, shooting galleries, wingsuit courses, scrapyard scrambles, destruction frenzies and crash bombs.
Some of the more daring abilities take many, many gears to unlock, so here are five you should unlock early in the piece that require a small amount of gears (between three and nine). You won’t be pushed to complete challenges, but liberating settlements will open up more, and different types, to complete.
The Precision Aim weapon mod is a must for anyone that’s played a shooter in the past decade. It allows you to aim down the sights by pressing R3, which toggles it on or off, (if you have an Xbox One Elite controller, we recommend moving it somewhere else, perhaps the upper left paddle, as this feels strange in 2015).
It’s a little odd to be an ability that needs to be unlocked, but it only requires 3 gears, which can be earned from just one shooting gallery challenge.
The easiest challenge is the Handgun Training Course. It’s found by the small airstrip at Guardia Plagia II in the province of Plagia (pretty might right under where that is listed on the map) in the Insula Fonte region.
There’s also a Machine Gun Training Course at Grotta Contrabandero in the Cauda province of Insula Dracon – in the bottom lefthand corner of the map. It’s the area used as a base for the rebels early in the game.
The first mission gives Rico two tethers to play with so he can wreak destruction throughout Medici. But sometimes two isn’t enough, and if you want to start demolishing and airlifting heavy items, you’re going to need more.
There are two upgrades to Max Tethers. The first is easy to obtain, requiring just three gears from completing one scrapyard scramble challenge. It doubles the number of active tethers to four, which makes a huge difference when tearing apart military bases.
To get really serious, you’ll need to earn 12 gears (which can be had by doing relatively well in three scrapyard scrambles). This triples Rico’s tethers to six at a time.
The first Destruction Mod unlocked, by completing destruction frenzy challenges, is Glass Grenades, which causes them to explode instantly upon impact, and makes killing a gaggle of goons much easier. But it’s not the most useful early unlock.
By completing a second destruction frenzy relatively well, you should have enough gears to unlock the first tier of More Grenades, which increases Rico’s maximum capacity to four.
Grenades are super useful, not only for killing enemies, but for destroying Chaos item in settlements quickly....but not quietly. With the Glass Grenades mod active, throw them at small items to quickly destroy them when there isn’t time to engineer tether mastery.
Tiers two and three are much harder to unlock. You need 50 gears to be granted a fifth grenade, and a massive 87 to add a sixth to Rico’s arsenal.
Wingsuiting, grappling, flying and very occasionally driving are all fun ways to traverse Medici, but sometimes it's better to fast travel. But with space for just one fast travel flare in your inventory by default, sometimes it can't spared. Remember, you can fast travel from liberated provinces for free, but need to pay to get back to them from enemy controlled locations.
Fortunately, it’s easy to upgrade to three flares by earning seven gears from air vehicle races (two should do it). These can be difficult if you’re not used to flying, so remember to use the X & B / Circle & Square buttons on controllers to use the rudder to make minor course adjustments -- not L1/R1 like GTA V.
If you’re trying to get five gears in an air challenge, the default planes and choppers probably won’t cut it. You want to upgrade to a jet for maximum speed. Unlock one, and call it in via Rebel Drop just before activating the challenge.
The Reel-in Boost is another multi-tier upgrade you’ll benefit from most at stage one. The first unlock requires just three gears from wingsuit courses to allow Rico to boost when reeling in his grapple.
Just Cause 3 is all about physics and aerodynamics. Use this extra speed to catapult into the sky with the wingsuit or parachute, and keep doing it to gain lift while wingsuiting – just be careful not to face-plant into a mountain!
The Reel-in Boost can be upgraded again to make these manoeuvres seamless. Twelve gears unlocks the Slingshot Boost, to reel-in at speed with the parachute deployed. With 80 gears, activate the Slingsuit Boost to get a speed boost while using the wingsuit.
