Far Cry 3 Exploration, Hunting, And Crafting Guide

While Far Cry 3 has drawn comparisons to The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim in its encouragement of exploration, hunting, and crafting, the open world experience is actually quite different between the two. While Skyrim allows the player to take the entire map at their own pace, regardless of their participation in the main quest line, Far Cry 3 is designed for the player to balance their exploring with making progress in the game. However, you will find pockets of time to wander about as you please, and indulging in what the island has to offer will greatly aid you in your quests. Read on for some tips on how to make the most of your time in the jungle.

Exploration

To efficiently make trips back and forth across the vast Rook Island, buy maps as soon as you can afford them. Two are available for every area, covering Items and Loot. They will tell you where to pick up relics, memory cards, and letters, which will give you experience points. Also on the map will be markers for over thirty pirate camps. Each can be taken over by killing all the pirates stationed there. Extra points are awarded for disabling the alarms and claiming the camp without being detected. As the camp is taken over, it will activate a waypoint for you. New missions and sidequests will become available as well, opening up new opportunities for cash, weapons, and experience.

Along the way you'll also find a total of 18 radio towers. Each are unpowered and have to be scaled and reactivated to work. Once you climb to the top you will be able to flip a breaker and turn the tower back on, revealing a section of the surrounding landscape on your map. It will also act as a respawn point if you die.

Crafting

Gathering herbs and plants will be a necessary part of your Far Cry 3 strategy. The syringes you slap together from their mutilated parts will dramatically boost your skills in areas from healing to hunting. There are several types of foliage dotting the Rook Island mountainside, but they all are placed in five color coded categories: White, Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green. Blue plants are found only in the water. The rest are found only on land. All are marked on the map once the area is revealed via radio tower.

There are four types of boosters: Medicine, Hunting, Combat, and Exploration. Each is crafted from plants and delivered via syringe. New recipes become available as progress is made in the game. With them you can see enemies through visual obstacles, sprint or dive faster, heal wounds, repel wild animals, and more.

Crafting will also allow the player to carry more items, weapons, ammo, and syringes. The first upgrades will be made of the animal skins that are the easiest to obtain: Pig, Boar, Goat, Dog, Deer, or Tapir. These animals are generally harmless and can be killed with a knife, allowing the player to avoid the attention of nearby pirates (beware, however, as predator animals often lurk by). As you branch out into new territories and gain more powerful weapons like sniper rifles and grenades, you can more effectively take down the more deadly prey like Tigers or Sharks. Check your map diligently so you know what to expect in each area. Animals that cannot be skinned for crafting, like Manta Rays and Crocodiles, will not be marked on the map.

In order to receive the last tier of storage upgrades, the Path of the Hunter side quests must be completed. These missions can be found in many of the pirate camps once they've been taken over for the rebels. Many of them target a rare animal whose hide can be obtained no other way.

Hunting

Killing and skinning animals is a very important part of Far Cry 3. Hides will allow you to craft items that store more of the weapons and tools you need out on the field. Path of the Hunter sidequests can also be completed, awarding cash and experience for successful missions.

There are over 20 different animals inhabiting Rook Island, from Birds of Paradise to Dingoes. Observing the behavior of the animal you're hunting will assist greatly in knowing how to approach it. Generally, herbivores are skittish and will scatter quickly if they detect a predator. Most will pose no threat but a few will act aggressively and easily kill the player. The Cassowary will easily become territorial and attack. Buffalo will become angry and charge horns-first, knocking over anyone perceived as a threat. Boars will fight back when provoked. Komodo Dragons, one of the jungle's many scavengers, are one of the most dangerous animals and tend to hang out in packs (you can often hear pirates in the jungle screaming as they try to use Molotov cocktails to kill them).

Predators tend to hang around specific types of prey but can be stalking any of the more defenseless animals. Tigers like Buffalo, Bears prefer Deer, and Leopards have a taste for Boar or Deer meat. All can be seen around Goats and Tapir as well. Using Hunting syringes is an important step in taking them down. Hunter's Instinct will allow you to see them through obstacles, Deadly Hunter will make your attacks more effective, and Animal Repellant will keep aggressive animals from attacking. The Exploration syringe Sprint will also come in handy.

At a point in the main quest line, you'll receive a suit that will allow you to move through the jungle and shoot as often as you please without attracting the attention of Privateers. This will be your best opportunity to score major kills from Leopards and Tigers without having to deal with added gunfire from enemies.
If you want to sell the animal hides or just get your upgrades a little faster, choose the Zoology 101 perk as soon as its available in your skill tree. It may not be of much use later in the game but if you want to make money off the skins, it can come in handy.

What are your best tips for surviving Rook Island?