Your first gun, purchased with a loan from Dennis, is an old M911 .45 pistol. This is completely insufficient for the job at hand and you should be looking for the opportunity to upgrade. The first option to do so is right after you bring down the first radio scrambler outside Amanaki Village, as the general store owner in town will make a couple of other guns available for free as a reward.
Both human clerks and self-serve gun vending machines share the same available inventory. Whenever you purchase a new weapon or modification from them, it becomes a permanent feature in their menu, and you can equip it for free at any point thereafter by visiting any clerk or vending machine in the game. You must purchase the gun in question to unlock it in this way; picking up an AK-47 or M133 from a dead pirate does not count as having purchased it.
The prices for new guns can be steep, particularly early in the game, but as Dennis explains to you, the local merchants would be doing a lot more business if not for Vaas. You can expand their inventory and connections by finding and disabling the scrambler devices on the radio towers scattered throughout the island. As a reward for doing so, the island’s merchants will waive their costs for most of their weapons. They’ll still charge you for ammunition, explosives, medicine, and body armor, but hey, everyone’s got to eat.
What this means to you is that unless you’re desperate, there is no real reason to actually pay for a normal gun in Far Cry 3 . By the time you’ve disabled a few radio towers, most of the guns in the game will be available for your use absolutely free. In the meantime, you can find most of the weapon types in the game on Vaas’s men. Any missions that require the use of a specific gun will also have one lying around near their starting points.
Signature Weapons
The exception to the “don’t pay for anything” rule is with the signature weapons. These are high-end, heavily modified guns that become available for purchase after you’ve accomplished certain associated tasks. They are all expensive, they are never offered for free, and they are all very much worth the asking price.
Ammunition
Early in the game, when Jason’s storing everything in the pockets of his cargo pants (we hope), you can’t carry a lot of spare ammo. It’s going to make fights short, brutal, and occasionally desperate, as it’s very easy to run dry in mid-battle.
Dead opponents drop their main weapon, which is worth half a clip’s worth of its designated ammunition (for instance, a dropped AK-47 is worth 15 rounds). You can also find small boxes of bullets in the game world, which do not respawn and which provide a small amount of ammo for every weapon type you’re carrying at once. Larger ammo stores, which can be interacted with, give a larger bonus and can be used up to three times before you expend their supply. RPG-7 and GL-94 ammunition and flamethrower fuel can be found in the larger ammo stores but not in the smaller boxes. You may also discover small amounts of ammo or a single grenade inside loot boxes or by looting corpses.
To resupply, visit the island’s vendors. You can purchase specific ammunition a bit at a time, or buy a full bandolier for every available gun and throwing item you have, with a 20% discount for buying in bulk. When you use that option, you automatically refill your supply for whatever weapons you’re carrying at the time. If you want to buy bullets for a gun you aren’t using (for instance, sniper rifle ammo when you aren’t carrying a sniper rifle), you’ll have to do that manually.
At the start of the game, you have the inventory space to carry a single firearm as well as a couple of grenades, Molotovs, C4 charges, and land mines. (Really, it’s a wonder anyone’s willing to shoot at you.) You can eventually create new holsters that let you bring up to four guns into the field with you, and unlike most of the other crafting items, the materials to do so are readily available.
You have a very low ammo capacity until you craft your first ammo pouch, which limits your choices in the field. Most of Vaas’s pirates use assault rifles or shotguns, which means you’ll be using them as well, so you can steal and use ammunition from dead enemies. Once you’ve had the chance to do some crafting, you can make a better pouch in which to store your ammunition and you have a lot more flexibility.
Customization
When you first pick up a gun, it has no attachments and comes in a standard color. When a weapon is unlocked for your use at any vendor on the island, you also have the ability to pay for certain special after-market modifications to the gun, which are permanent until you opt to remove them. You can also drop $200 apiece for one of six customized paint jobs, which differ by the individual weapon.
Buying all six paint jobs and all available attachments for a single weapon unlocks the Aftermarket Junkie Achievement/Trophy.
Extended Barrel: $350
Adding a longer barrel improves a weapon’s accuracy, damage, and range. It is only available for the .44 Magnum handgun.
Extended Magazine: $250
This adds a flat 25% boost to the capacity of a weapon’s clip. This also indirectly improves your total ammunition capacity for a weapon, as the bullets currently loaded into a gun do not count against your overall limit for that weapon’s ammo.
High-Power Scope: $550
This can only be applied to a sniper rifle, which gives it a zoom lens. It also improves a weapon’s accuracy, range, and mobility.
Illuminated Scope: $300
While an illuminated scope does not provide quite as high of a bonus to a weapon’s range as the high-power scope, it gives the same benefits to its accuracy and mobility. It also provides an illuminated reticule for improved vision during night operations, which is a fancy way to say the crosshair is red. In practice, the high-power scope tends to be a much better option.
Marksman Scope: $450
This high-end scope is only available for a couple of the more expensive rifles and machine guns. It provides bonuses to accuracy, range, and mobility while installing a weak scope along a weapon’s iron sights for a slight amount of magnification.
Night Sight: $100
This inexpensive attachment gives a gun a slight bonus to its accuracy. It highlights the gun’s iron sights with some bright neon paint, which helps your aim in darkened areas.
Optical Sight: $400
For raw stat bonuses, the optical sight is the best mod possible, providing a significant boost to a weapon’s accuracy, range, and mobility. It actually installs a small scope on the top of a weapon, which gives it a bonus at short to medium range.
Red Dot Sight: $300
Reflex Sight: $300
Red dot and reflex sights cost the same and provide the same flat statistical bonus to a weapon’s accuracy and mobility ratings. The difference is largely down to personal preference, as both give you an attachment on the top of a weapon that makes it a bit easier to target when you’re aiming down a weapon’s iron sights.
Sound Suppressor: $400
Your typical silencer. The utility of having silenced weapons on hand cannot be stressed enough, and it’s arguably one of the most useful modifications for any weapon that has it as an option.
Availability
Most of the normal guns in the game are available at the first vendor you see, right there in Amanaki Village.
The exceptions are the D50, BZ19, Vector .45 ACP, SPAS-12, P416, Z93, ACE, and MKG. These become available for purchase upon the completion of the “Three Blind Mice” story mission, right after you’re able to reach the South Island.
Handguns
You can use a handgun while you’re on a zipline if you’ve purchased the Line Gunner skill. Beyond that, there’s no real reason to use one besides personal preference or pure style, although the D50 does chew through normal troops.
Base Ammo Capacity: 24
1911 .45
Available Mods: None
Attachments: 0
This is the first gun you can get. It’s reasonably accurate and the high caliber gives it some decent stopping power, but the low clip size is a problem. You’ll want to upgrade as fast as you can.
.44 Magnum
Available Mods: Extended Barrel, Night Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
You cannot upgrade its capacity and it takes a while to reload, but the .44 Magnum is not just a handgun. It is a statement. It is also arguably a siege weapon. For pure damage in this category, it’s hard to beat, and is only outclassed by the D50.
6P9
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine, Night Sight
Attachments: 2
The 6P9 is probably the lowest-caliber weapon in the game and inflicts very little damage compared to other firearms. That makes it decent against unarmored humans or light game, but it’ll merely annoy someone in body armor or anything bigger than a boar. On the plus side, you can equip it with a silencer, it’s very accurate, and you can get it for free. It’s an excellent early option for players who prefer a stealthy approach, but you will rapidly acquire better weapons.
D50
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Night Sight, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
Sometimes you want a personal sidearm that is capable of taking down an angry finback whale. That would be the D50. It is not a subtle gun, but for sheer damage, it is arguably the best possible use of your handgun ammunition. It’s accurate, stable, and provides a truly ridiculous level of raw stopping power, without the low capacity and reload time that plagues the .44 Magnum. For some reason, you can use this while you’re on a zipline, thus proving that Jason Brody is some kind of cyborg.
SMGs
The name of the game with SMGs is accuracy by volume. An assault rifle or LMG provides greater damage per bullet, but SMGs tend to offer a greater rate of fire. If you prefer to spray and pray, an SMG is useful for that purpose. Most are also small enough that you can use them one-handed, and with the Line Gunner skill, that means you can fire them while you’re using a zipline. There is a certain level of raw style involved when you riddle a location with bullets while you’re sliding down a wire, and that’s probably the single best reason to carry an SMG.
Base Ammo Capacity: 40
Skorpion
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine
Attachments: 1
The Skorpion is carried by a lot of enemy snipers as a fallback weapon for short-range work. It’s inexpensive, easy to find, and is clearly worse than every other SMG in the game. If you like SMGs, find the first upgrade you can.
A2000
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
The addition of a suppressor and some upgraded sights makes the A2000 an all-around better performer than the Skorpion, particularly if you’re trying to avoid attention. It’s an excellent weapon for when an infiltration goes sour on you, but it’s a middle-of-the-road option between the Skorpion and the MP5. You can sometimes find one for free on an enemy sniper.
MP5
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
Yet another incremental upgrade from the previously available SMG, the MP5 has a long and storied history in video games. It’s reliable, precise, and lethal, and is a clear upgrade over the A2000.
BZ19
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
The BZ19 seems like it got lost on the way to rifle class. It has the edge on accuracy and raw damage over the MP5 and has a 64-round standard clip, but it doesn’t fire as quickly as any other SMG. It’s a classy option for seasoned professionals.
Vector .45 ACP
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 3
The Vector pairs the highest rate of fire of any SMG with the highest accuracy, as well as room for up to three attachments. With an extended magazine, optical sight, and sound suppressor, it’s whispering death at close quarters and does well at up to medium range. Weirdly, given its higher-caliber rounds, it doesn’t do quite as much damage per hit as the MP5 or BZ19, but it makes up the difference by volume. The major drawback of the Vector is that even with an extended magazine, you can empty the clip so quickly that it seems like you’re always reloading.
Assault Rifles
Maybe two-thirds of the pirates and mercenaries around Rook Island carry assault rifles, which means you’re likely to be using one for at least the first quarter of the game, if only to scavenge ammunition from dead opponents. Fortunately, they’re a good all-around choice for most fights.
Base Ammo Capacity: 60
AK-47
Available Mods: None
Attachments: 0
There’s a reason this is a classic. Most of Vaas’s men throughout the island carry these distinctive, durable rifles. Round for round, it delivers more punch than the STG or F1, and at full automatic, you can throw enough bullets downrange to ruin anyone’s day.
STG-90
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Red Dot Sight
Attachments: 1
The STG is superior to the AK-47 in only two categories: rate of fire and having the option for attachments. In most other ways, it’s a flat downgrade, but if you install the red dot sight, it’s a competitive choice with the AK.
F1
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
The F1 can be equipped with an optical sight, giving it big bonuses across the board, and the addition of a silencer makes it an excellent weapon for both hunting and cleaning out pirate outposts. As a trade-off, however, the F1 only fires in three-round bursts, which can take some getting used to. It remains a solid go-to weapon choice for the midgame.
MS16
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
An excellent fallback weapon for the trained sniper, the MS16 has very impressive stats and is a pure upgrade from the F1 in almost every regard. Its one real drawback, if it can be considered such, is that it only fires single shots. It still beats out the previous rifles in most categories, but if you’re looking for that satisfying full-auto roar, this isn’t your gun.
P416
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Marksman Sight, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
This reliable and highly customizable assault rifle is the weapon of choice of Hoyt’s mercenary cadre on the South Island, and unlike the F1 and MS16, it can be used on full-auto. With the addition of the expensive Marksman sight, it also functions as a low-end sniper rifle. Its edge over the ACE is thus its flexibility.
ACE
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Marksman Sight, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
The P416 beats it on accuracy, range, and rate of fire, but the ACE delivers more pure damage per round than any other assault rifle. The P416 is a better all-around contender, but if you prefer punch over versatility, the ACE is your gun.
Shotguns
When you’re forced into close quarters, shotguns provide enough raw damage to drop most enemies in one or two shots. At medium to long range, however, they aren’t entirely useless, but you’re better off with any other kind of gun. Putting an expensive modified sight on a shotgun is largely a waste of money.
Shotguns also make good hunting weapons against small to medium game. If anything bigger than that, like a bear or tiger, is close enough to be within a shotgun’s specific range of efficacy, they’re also close enough to tear off your entire face. It is thus not your best available option unless you’re using it as a last great act of defiance. (This does not apply if you’re using a Bull, however.)
Base Ammo Capacity: 6
M133
Available Mods: None
Attachments: 0
This pump-action shotgun is the favored choice of chargers, and is designed for close-range devastation. It’s the generic brand-X option for shotguns, and there’s no reason to use it if you’ve got an 1887 or better handy.
1887
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Night Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 1
You lose out on the cool pump-action from the M133, but the 1887 gives you better all-around stats and its damage doesn’t drop off as rapidly over long distances. The extended magazine’s a lifesaver.
SPAS-12
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Night Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
It’s not a real modern first-person shooter until the SPAS-12 is included. This distinctive Italian shotgun features a higher rate of fire than any other weapon in its class, but a lengthy reload and a very low range. It is expressly made as a street sweeper and does you very little good at anything other than a personal distance. If you’re looking to clean out a building or mine tunnel, though, this is the best standard firearm for that purpose.
Sniper Rifles
It’s always a good idea to have a sniper rifle with you. With a high-powered scope and a sound suppressor, you can use it for hunting, for quietly eliminating distant targets like enemy snipers, and for disabling alarm panels in outposts. It doesn’t really come into its own until you can pick up the Steady Aim skill, but you can do that very early in the game.
Most of the pirates on the North Island are too stubborn or intoxicated to die from a single body shot from a sniper rifle, so when you’re using one, always aim for their heads. The South Island mercenaries and privateers are all wearing light body armor, but by the time you’re routinely fighting them, you should be able to get your hands on a Z93, which makes body armor irrelevant.
Base Ammo Capacity: 5
SVD
Available Mods: None
Attachments: 0
A Russian surplus weapon, this is the favored rifle for Vaas’s snipers and has average stats across the board. It’s a semi-automatic, which means you don’t have to reacquire a sight picture after each round, but the lack of an available silencer means it’s not a subtle weapon at all. At best, you can get one shot off before everyone in the time zone knows exactly where you are.
M-700
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine, High-Power Scope, Illuminated Scope
Attachments: 2
This lever-action rifle lets you install a silencer and a high-end scope for excellent visibility and range. Without the Aimed Reload skill, you must take your eye away from the scope between each round to work the action, which can be a drawback. Even with that, however, this is the best option for a sniper up until you reach the South Island.
Z93
Available Mods: Sound Suppressor, Extended Magazine, High-Power Scope, Illuminated Scope
Attachments: 3
The Z93 is superior in every way to the M-700, right down to having one more slot for attachments, and you don’t lose your sight picture while chambering a new round. It has the highest damage and mobility of any sniper rifle, which means it often goes straight through an enemy’s body armor, but also has the lowest rate of fire.
Light Machine Guns
Sometimes you do not want to utilize tactics or subtlety, but instead wish to kill everyone and everything you see in a loud, satisfying, and expedient fashion. That is where a light machine gun (LMG) comes into play. They feature high rates of fire paired with a decent level of damage per bullet, but using one slows you down to the point where you might as well be mounted on a tripod.
Heavy machine gunners are relatively rare throughout the game and do not appear at all outside of scripted encounters. That means it’s difficult to resupply LMG ammunition in the field, so if you want to use one, you may wish to wait until you’ve had the chance to craft a couple of ammo pouches. Once you can carry a good amount of reserve LMG ammunition, it’s a much more useful weapon.
Base Ammo Capacity: 80
PKM
Available Mods: None
Attachments: 0
The PKM has a 100-round magazine and a very high rate of fire, but limits your mobility significantly. It’s your call as to whether that’s worth the trade-off. This is the gun favored by enemy heavies throughout the game.
U100
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 1
This is less a light machine gun and more an assault rifle chambered for LMG ammo. It’s a significant improvement on the PKM in every regard, and allows you to carry a significant amount of bullets both in and outside of the clip. It’s a good go-to weapon for players who prefer an open assault.
MKG
Available Mods: Extended Magazine, Marksman Sight, Optical Sight, Red Dot Sight, Reflex Sight
Attachments: 2
The MKG continues the process of blurring the line between assault rifles and LMGs. It limits your mobility a bit more than the U100, but you can get most of that back by installing a Marksman sight. It’s the best standard weapon in its class.
Launchers
You’ll almost always have grenades and C4 on hand, but sometimes you want to blow things up that are a little farther away. That’s where launchers come into play.
RPG-7
Base Ammo Capacity: 3
Available Mods: None
The classic anti-tank rocket. An RPG-7 has the usual parade of advantages and drawbacks that you may remember from other games: using it at anything other than long range is suicidal, you can’t carry that much ammo for it, the rockets fly relatively slowly, and whatever it hits will detonate explosively and beautifully. It’s arguably not worth carrying an RPG-7 around if you’re just exploring the island, but for specific purposes like fighting helicopters or hunting large game (yes, a rocket launcher is appropriate equipment for bear hunting), you can’t beat it.
GL-94
Base Ammo Capacity: 6
Available Mods: None
A fully loaded GL-94 carries four impact-fused concussion grenades that detonate on contact with a surface or opponent. You can carpet-bomb a distant target with them by firing in a high arc, which can make it a useful (or at least entertaining) option when you’re looking to soften up an outpost or enemy facility, and the four-round magazine allows you to dump a significant amount of damage into an opponent in a short period of time. This makes it a slightly more effective weapon than the RPG-7 against ground targets, but its main drawback is that it has one of the longest reload times in the game. If anything is left alive to shoot back at you when your clip runs dry, you’re better off switching weapons entirely.
Specials
This section in the vendor’s inventory encompasses a few odd items that don’t fit anywhere else.
Repair Tool
Available Mods: None
A blowtorch on a long stick, the Repair Tool is used to return damaged vehicles to a drivable condition. You can provide this service for any stranded Rakyat you find for a $50 reward, but on your own, you’re better off finding a new vehicle than repairing the old one. The other use of the Repair Tool is to set an enemy on fire by holding it to the enemy’s head for a few seconds. Doing so unlocks the Improper Use Achievement/Trophy.
Flare Gun
Base Ammo Capacity: 3
Available Mods: None
This is a great improvised weapon if you’re going after somebody you really hate. Whatever the flare strikes is usually set alight, whether it’s an enemy, an oil slick, or a patch of grass. Most targets that are on fire will panic and run in circles until either you or the flames finish them off.
Recurve Bow
Base Ammo Capacity: 5
Available Mods: Reflex Sight, Red Dot Sight
Attachments: 1
The bow is silent, its arrows are instantly lethal against humans and small animals, you can usually reuse the arrows, and you can rig up explosive or flaming arrows by combining them with grenades or Molotovs. Conversely, nobody else in the game uses a bow, which means once you’re out of ammo in a story mission, you’re out. Playing the game with a bow as your primary weapon is a bold personal choice and a self-imposed challenge.
Flamethrower
Base Ammo Capacity: 100
Available Mods: Large Fuel Tank (+100 fuel capacity)
Attachments: 1
Fire does a lot of damage and bypasses enemy armor, which makes the flamethrower lethal. It’s also a short-range weapon, unfortunately, which makes it dicey to use against anything that can shoot back. Its real benefit is in setting grass, plants, trees, and buildings alight around you, which can turn an entire hillside into a firestorm in seconds. This is useful for flushing enemies out of cover, detonating vehicles, taking out heavies, or indulging your already barely restrained pyromania.
Type10 Flare
Available Mods: None
This is a flare gun, sometimes called a “signal pistol.” But the last thing you would use a flare gun for is signaling for help. Why would you want to attract attention to yourself? Flare guns can be used to save your life though, such as when you shoot someone in the face or groin. Remember, in a fight between a flare gun and someone’s groin, the flare gun wins.
Tribal Knife
Available Mods: None
This dagger comes from Ancient China. It was left on Rook Island ages ago, but the history is unimportant. It is a weapon combining substance and style.
Consumables
This category on the vendor’s inventory encompasses the two items that you’re likely to need vast amounts of: medical supplies and body armor.
Medicine
For $100, you can refill one of your syringes with a medical solution. This acts just like the version that you can craft yourself, right down to being affected by the skills that improve a syringe’s output. It’s a little pricey early on, but you’ll rapidly reach a point where $100 is nothing.
Body Armor
You can find a few bulletproof vests out in the world, but they don’t respawn. Your primary source of protection throughout the game is going to be picking up a $200 suit of body armor from a vendor. While worn, any damage you incur from enemy gunfire is deducted from the armor’s health before it ever touches your health bar. You’ll want a suit of it whenever you’re planning to start something with the pirates or privateers.
Knife attacks, fire, an animal’s claws or teeth, explosions, and sniper fire all partially or entirely bypass body armor and inflict damage straight to you.
Explosives
When guile and stealth fall through, it then becomes time to blow everything up. Everything.
Grenade
Base Ammo Capacity: 0
Grenades in Far Cry 3 are ridiculously powerful. The explosion from a single grenade can total a car or truck and kills any unarmored human opponent within its blast radius. Two or three grenades can reduce an enemy vehicle to shrapnel, and they’ll even go off underwater.
Most of the enemies you’re up against are smart enough to run like hell when they notice you’ve thrown a grenade, which means you’ll want to either cook the grenade (once you have that skill) for a second or two before you throw it (hold down the throw button and listen to the ticks) or save them for situations where your enemy can’t move away very fast (such as heavies, heavy flamers, or the unlucky enemy reinforcements who just pulled up to you in a jeep or patrol boat).
Land Mine
Base Ammo Capacity: 2
Mines tend to be a bit more useful against animals than humans, since animals can be relied upon to move in more predictable patterns. Once you annoy a tiger or bear, it’s going to head straight at you, which means you can lead them over a mine with little difficulty. Humans tend to duck and weave, so they have an irritating habit of not setting off mines.
Even so, land mines really come into their own during certain missions where you’re called upon to defend a particular location or individual. You can save yourself a lot of pain by setting up a few mines in obvious places around your defense perimeter, like at entrances to the room or in areas where enemies are likely to take cover. Even if they don’t set off the mine, you can fire at it from a distance to trigger the explosion.
Molotov
Base Ammo Capacity: 0
The first thing to realize when using any fire-based weapon in this game is, as noted when discussing the flamethrower, that the local fauna is very flammable. A Molotov in the right place will either kill an opponent outright or reduce them to a screaming panic, but the fire can and will spread to any grass, trees, bushes, or oil slicks in the immediate vicinity. Obviously, this isn’t a big deal if you’re in a cave tunnel or urban area, but in the countryside, a single Molotov can trigger a whole host of unintended consequences. This is both a warning and a tactical advantage, particularly in the more overgrown parts of the island. If an enemy has decided to take cover behind a tree, it is possible to teach him a valuable lesson in fire safety.
One Molotov dropped on an enemy vehicle is usually enough to render it inoperative. Naturally, throwing a Molotov into water extinguishes the wick and wastes the Molotov.
C4
Base Ammo Capacity: 2
Good old reliable C4 is one of the hardest-hitting weapons you have available to you. Always carry a couple of charges while you’re exploring for demolition purposes, as you can use C4 to knock down weakened walls in some of the island’s ruins.
In combat, C4 has a wide enough radius of effect that you can easily use it to take down enemies who are in pursuit of you. This is very useful against heavies, who tend to walk straight at you with guns blazing and, as such, can be easily led into an area where you’ve planted charges. If you drop multiple C4 charges in an area, you can detonate them in the order in which they were planted.
If you’re feeling really clever and/or sadistic, the sound of a thrown package of C4 hitting the ground has a reasonably similar effect to that of a thrown rock. Guards can be lured over into a given area to investigate whatever that sound was, and often do not realize what they’re looking at until they’re rag-dolling across the landscape.
Unlockables
These weapons are made available through various optional side missions. With the exception of knives, they appear at vendors under the “Signature Weapon” category.
Japanese Tanto
Unlock: Find six Letters of the Lost.
This short WWII-vintage blade lends considerably more power to your normal melee attacks. Most human enemies will drop in one or two hits. It really comes into its own against heavies and other highly armored opponents, since knife attacks bypass their Kevlar.
Shadow
Unlock: Liberate 17 out of the 34 outposts. Pay $2600.
The preferred sidearm of Jason Brody, guerrilla assassin. The Shadow has a maxed-out accuracy rating and its damage per round is closer to that of the .44 Magnum. It’s probably the best stealth weapon in the game.
Shredder
Unlock: Find 10 out of 20 Memory Cards. Pay $3275.
You can produce a similarly kitted-out Vector .45 ACP on your own, but the Shredder has generally higher stats, and in a weird twist of fate, can be unlocked well before you gain access to the standard Vector. Most of what was said before about the Vector also applies here, only moreso.
Bull
Unlock: Find 10 Relics. Pay $3010.
This M133 comes with a higher capacity, rate of fire, and accuracy than the standard version, and is coupled with the somewhat faster reload rate on the M133 compared to the more expensive models of shotgun.
The fancy sight on the M133 is actually a drawback, as when aiming along iron sights, it makes it difficult to see what you’re shooting at. When you’re firing from the hip, however, this is excellent for all situations in which a shotgun excels. At close range, it can drop a tiger or buffalo in one shot.
Ripper
Unlock: Find and survive six Trials of the Rakyat. You do not have to break UbiSoft’s high scores on each one, but you must live until time runs out. Pay $4200.
The Ripper is a heavily modified PKM LMG that boasts one of the most impressive sets of raw stats in the game. It’s still an LMG and still isn’t suitable for anything but standing still and pouring lead into a target zone, but for pure damage, it’s difficult to top this.
AMR
Unlock: Find 20 Relics. Pay $4800.
The standard model Z93 is already nearly topped out for accuracy and damage, but this goes the rest of the way there and throws in an extended magazine. Against any human target, the AMR is complete overkill. Its one drawback, which is significant, is that the AMR has no silencer. It will kill whatever it hits, but it also puts up a big neon sign advertising your current position. In certain story missions (such as “Ambush”), this is not a problem.
Bushman
Unlock: Disable the scramblers on all 18 radio towers. Pay $4400.
The Bushman is one of the single best all-around firearms in the game. It features enough stability and accuracy that you could probably put every bullet in a short burst through the same hole, the attached silencer means you won’t alert the entire surrounding countryside to your presence, and it simply chews through opponents. Even if the scramblers didn’t provide so many bonuses on their own, it’d be worth disabling them all just to get your hands on this thing.
