Money in Far Cry 3 is easy to come by and can be hard to spend. Since you can easily unlock the standard weapons for free by disabling radio scramblers, cash is mostly useful for buying ammunition, particularly at the midgame when you’ve got enough ammo capacity to be toting around an LMG or sniper rifle, and body armor. If you loot every chest you run across while you’re exploring and traveling, you should have no problem acquiring more than enough money to keep you well supplied throughout most of the game.
If your wallet is full and you want to burn off some of your bankroll, try spending it on ammo for weapons you aren’t using, extra explosives (there is no such thing as too much C4), or maps. In the late game, the signature weapons cost three to five grand each, and are all a worthwhile investment.
Loot Boxes
As early as your first missions around Amanaki Village, you should notice the presence of glowing chests in the game world, which are marked on your minimap with a diamond-shaped icon. They can be found just about everywhere, and they don’t seem to belong to anyone. You can loot them all without any repercussions.
Loot chests come in three varieties. The first and most common are brown or green wooden shipping crates, which always contain a small amount of cash ($10-$50) and a single loot item. The second are metal chests in Army green, which have a chance to contain a small amount of random ammunition or a single grenade in addition to cash. The third, and rarest, are red treasure chests, which are found near collectible items and can contain ammunition, a single high-value loot item, and between $200 and $300.
The items found in chests often have some interesting or funny history attached to them, but if it shows up in your loot rucksack, it is only valuable in terms of its resale value. There’s no reason to hang on to a loot item any longer than you have to.
Many of the loot chests in the game refill themselves over time, particularly ones located in or around outposts or villages. Green and red chests do not.
Skinning
Once you’ve crafted the fourth-stage upgrade (Heavy Duty) for all of your containers and pouches, commonly encountered animals’ skins are only useful as another source of income. If you end up fighting and killing a hostile animal or happening across a fresh kill, their hides’ vendor value is usually anywhere from $10 to $50 and can be an excellent source of extra cash.