As you recapture parts of the island from Vaas and Hoyt, you’re also giving the Rakyat and the other natives the all clear to move back into the area. Some of these people have extra work they’re willing to pay you to do, and that’s where side missions come in.

Most of these are simple fetch or kill quests that are difficult in direct proportion to how much of the area you’ve managed to clear out. Random encounters or a high pirate/privateer presence in the area can both make a side mission much more interesting. Alternatively, if you wait to complete a side mission until late in the game when the Rakyat have retaken most of all of Rook Island, it’ll be over before you know it.

Dog Soldier

Unlock: Liberate the Nat’s Repairs outpost.

Matti, who lives down the west road from Nat’s Repairs, wants you to track down and kill his dog. She’s gone rabid and has become the alpha of a pack of like-minded dogs.

This sounds straightforward, but as you’ll be able to tell when you get close, the “pack” is more like a small battalion. Matti’s dog stands slightly apart from the pack but doesn’t differ from the others in any immediately obvious way, so your only real method of finishing the mission is to kill them all until your objective’s completed. Fortunately, since they’re just dogs, you can stand about 90 meters away and plug them at will with a silenced rifle. One or two might get close enough to attack, but it’s possible to kill Matti’s dog with zero risk to yourself.