Rook Island has no native manufacturing, but over the course of its history, various warlords or armies have stolen, bought, or “acquired” a wide variety of arms and vehicles that are now available for your use. Whether it’s due to a local cultural flexibility about one’s possessions or Jason’s unspoken facility for hotwiring cars, you can get into any vehicle you see and drive off without causing a social problem.
Most of the settlements throughout the island have at least one set of wheels parked nearby, and it’s not uncommon to find an abandoned vehicle by the side of the road. You can use them to cover ground faster than you can on foot, and in the event you destroy your ride, there’s always another one relatively close by. As with loot chests, any activity that spurs a loading screen (starting a mission, fast traveling, reloading a game, etc.) also causes any fixed vehicles to respawn at their original location.
However, Rook Island does not have a lot of auto mechanics. Most of the vehicles in Far Cry 3 have problematic handling as you approach high speeds, and that’s mostly due to being old junk boxes that, in a more civilized place, would have been stripped for parts years ago. The exception tends to be the jeeps and 4x4s that you can steal from the pirates, as they’ve got more mechanical savvy and can afford newer machines. As a general rule, if you have the choice, try to grab heavy four-wheeled vehicles. ATVs and trikes are both very prone to rollover, and even sedans are hard to steer unless you’re driving like your grandmother. (You know you’re in a backwater hellhole when a cargo truck is the best of your available vehicular options.)
Early in the game, Vaas controls most of the territory on the island and his men have the roads on lockdown. It’s unwise at this point to drive anywhere, as you’re likely to run into at least one heavily armed group of pirates, whether they’re on foot or driving around in a jeep. You can avoid a lot of confrontations by simply driving past as fast as you can, but frequently, you’ll be driving through one group of pirates toward one group of pirates to get past a group of pirates. At that point, the entire thing just gets ridiculous. You’re better off sneaking through the wilderness and, as the opportunity presents itself, seizing outposts to break Vaas’s grip on the island.
After you’ve liberated a few outposts in an area, the roads are much safer, the Rakyat often patrol in jeeps or on foot, and vehicles become a more attractive option. If you’re going into hostile territory, it’s a much better idea to ditch your wheels, go in on foot, and to stay away from the roads.
Fast Travel
As Dennis illustrates in an early story mission, any safe house in the game can be used as a fast travel location. This includes villages, towns, certain locations that are important in the story, and outposts you’ve liberated.
The main story missions all have one thing in common, and that’s sending you all across the map without much in the way of warning. Fast travel locations become very valuable then, as while there are plenty of places on Rook Island that are still half a klick or better away from the nearest outpost, you can shave a lot of time off by having a travel point somewhere nearby. It’s a good idea to liberate any outpost you get close to simply for the sake of having the fast travel location.
Waypoints
You can highlight any location on your map to use it as a waypoint. This places an icon that’s visible in the game world, in addition to indicating on your minimap how far you are from a given location. Waypoints can be placed anywhere, but actual map icons—Relics, Letters, villages, outposts—are “sticky” and can be highlighted somewhat more easily.
When you’re using waypoints to help yourself hunt for hidden collectibles, such as Relics, they can often lead you directly to an empty location. As a rule, this means that there’s a way to get underground somewhere nearby, whether it’s a mine shaft, old cavern, underwater grotto, or basement access. Rook Island has a lot of old tunnels scattered across it, and collectibles are often hidden somewhere within.
Gliders
There are a few abandoned hang gliders left here and there around Rook Island. They can be used to cover ground faster than just about any other vehicle on the island, and there are no hostile forces patrolling the sky. It’s a quick, peaceful way to get around.
Then you have to land.
A glider slowly loses altitude as you move and eventually must be brought down, although that can take a while if you’re careful about keeping your nose up. To land safely with a glider, find a long, flat surface like a road and move parallel to it before gently bringing the glider down. Do not be surprised if you crash, as parking a glider without scattering it and yourself over the landscape is one of the tougher challenges in the game. You can bail out over lakes or the ocean without taking damage, however, as long as you’re careful to not land on a shark.
Wingsuit
Late in the game, you’ll receive a wingsuit. This means you’re running around with deployable flaps under your arms as well as an attached parachute.
What this means for your travel abilities is that you’re now capable of surviving very long falls without any real damage. When you’re wearing the wingsuit, any fall that’s more than about ten feet triggers an onscreen prompt to deploy the suit, which slows your fall dramatically and allows you to control your descent. Once you’re close enough to the ground, you can then deploy the parachute to land safely.
The wingsuit still pays lip service to things like momentum, however, which means a fall realistically has to be from a very high place in order for it to help you in any way. If you fall off of a radio tower or something, the wingsuit will deploy just in time for you to smack into the ground and die. You can use the wingsuit as a method of safely dismounting from gliders, or to jump off of mountains and cliff faces. It’s actually a lot of fun.
Vehicles
Dune Buggy
Dune buggies are useful for off-roading and travel across the rocky beaches and bluffs. They handle uneven terrain well, but aren’t great for sharp corners.
Darrah
A simple four-door sedan that has gone from being rusty to being held together mostly by rust, the Darrah is easy to find and just as easy to wreck. It’s a reasonable means of getting around the island, but the steering goes out at high speeds and the vehicle is already on its last legs. Bail out before the shooting starts and expect that it won’t survive a hostile encounter.
Jet Ski
Rook Island has “acquired” quite a few jet skis over the years from nearby resorts, and most are still in good working condition. They’re fast, easy to find, and excellent in rivers, on lakes, and on the ocean, but have exactly zero defensive capabilities and capsize easily.
Patrol Boat
These can be tricky to find, as most of Vaas and Hoyt’s men favor the RHIB. The patrol boat has the edge in durability and thus longevity over its inflatable counterpart, but there are no more than a handful in working condition throughout the island. Its mounted turret provides significant and portable firepower, which is handy both for hunting sharks and dealing with pirates.
RHIB
As you might expect from an inflatable boat, the RHIB can’t take much punishment before it sinks. It rides higher in the water than the Patrol Boat, which makes it a much better choice for navigating rivers, and that in turn makes it helpful for handling the occasional inland assault. If a group of reinforcements arrive at an outpost in a boat, it’ll be in an RHIB, complete with turret.
Styrus
The Darrah has a bit more weight on its side, which means the Styrus is faster, but harder to control once you put a little extra gas behind it. This is not a great car for anything but strict transportation.
Cargo Truck
These were built to last, and everyday use on Rook Island has tested that design. Cargo trucks don’t have a great top speed, but they’re durable, stable, and heavy, which is a big advantage on these often-treacherous roads. If you’ve got a choice in the matter, always go for the truck when you can.
Glider
It’s unlikely you’ll encounter real trouble on a glider, since most enemies aren’t watching the sky for you. If you’ve purchased the right skill, dropping from a glider onto an enemy triggers a Death From Above Takedown, which both cancels out any damage you might have taken from the fall and earns the Never Saw It Coming Achievement/Trophy.
Quad
If you’ve ever wanted to do a barrel roll in a wheeled vehicle, the Quad can make that happen. It’s rollover prone at high speeds and in sharp turns. It has got great traction, which makes it an excellent off-road vehicle as long as you keep one finger on the brake button.
Scavenger
Vaas’s pirates favor these durable all-wheel vehicles for their patrols, so for most of the game, you’ll associate the sight of these jeeps with imminent armed conflict. If you get the chance to drive one, it’s a solid, useful vehicle for everything from simple transport to vehicular manslaughter.
Technical
These inexpensive, fragile jeeps are driven by many of the guard patrols on both the North and South Islands. They’re stable, accelerate smoothly, and can be taken off road with little difficulty. Even better, many of them come standard with a mounted 12.7mm turret, providing firepower that is both extreme and portable. On the negative side, as you may have noticed when fighting other people who are driving them, it’s a repurposed civilian vehicle and is much less durable than you’d think it would be.