Guide: Far Cry 5 Beginner's Tips and Tricks: How to Liberate Hope County

If you've played a Far Cry before, you'll feel right at home in Hope County. While not an awful lot has changed since Far Cry 3, Far Cry 5 might still prove challenging to those who haven't played one in a while.

In this guide, we'll walk you through your first few hours, to help provide a bit of direction. There's a lot to learn here, so it should help ease you in a little more gently. Enjoy!

Far Cry 5 Beginner's Tips and Tricks

Liberate and destroy stuff

The tutorial walks you through the basics of liberating stuff quite nicely, then throws you out into the world proper. At this point, just pick one of the three zones and carry on doing what you've just done in the tutorial. That's the game.

To give you a bit of direction, head towards one of the big named outposts on the map, like "Rae-Rae's Pumpkin Farm", and liberate and destroy all cult outposts and properties along the way. Soon, you'll have cut a lovely path through the cult.

Talk to everyone and read everything

This is something we wish we'd known early on – talking to people and reading everything is hands down the best way to learn about new cult outposts and properties, and will often leave a nice map marker for you to run towards.

If you make a habit to do both of these things everywhere you go, you'll find your map filling up with stuff to do much faster. Considering that the tips you get might lead to an outpost in another zone, you'll actually save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run too.

This is also a good reason to liberate captured civilians as you pass them. Often, they'll have handy information for you.

Level up your resistance level

The best way to force an encounter with a high ranking cult lieutenant is to level up your resistance level. There are four levels in each region, and getting to level four results in a showdown with that particular area's big bad boss.

Every time you kill a cult VIP, liberate an outpost or civilians, or destroy company property, you'll earn resistance points. You can also earn a big chunk of these from story missions, so don't neglect those.

Really, this should be your focus over earning money or being a completionist. You can still complete missions and do all of the other stuff when an area is liberated, but you actually earn more cash for completing them after you've saved the area. Nifty.

How to liberate outposts in Far Cry 5

Scout the area

As soon as you've located a cult outpost, head on over there and scout the area. This is best done from a height so you can get a proper lay of the land. If you press up on the dpad, you can whip out your binoculars, which will automatically tag any enemies in the vicinity.

Try and get a good look at the outpost from all directions in case there are enemies hiding. You don't want to accidentally bump into one and lost that undetected bonus!

Shut down alarms

Also, keep an eye out for alarms. If trigged, you'll lose your undetected bonus and will have to fight off more cultists than before. It's never really worth setting off an alarm.

There's usually up to three of them, and your binoculars will also pick them up. Once you're happy with your scouting, plot a route through each of the alarms and disable them. That way you won't have to deal with reinforcements even if you're caught.

Make note of environmental hazards 

Finally, make note of anything you can use to your advantage, like caged animals, stuff you can blow up, or cover you can use. Often, outposts have vents you can crawl through, ladders you can climb, and windows you can hop through.

You can also set traps yourself. Try throwing bait to lure a hungry bear in to take out a few cultists for you, or set proximity mines and lure hapless cultists into them. There's a bunch of different systems lurking about in Far Cry 5, and you should use them to your full advantage.

How to make life easier in Far Cry 5

Hire help

You can bring up to two soldiers with you while playing Far Cry 5, and they can be an absolute godsend. The easiest way to get one, is to liberate a civilian and then hire them as a soldier. The vast majority of the population of Hope County are homicidal maniacs with guns, so you should be fine.

Failing that, you can complete a mission for one of the 'Specialists' to unlock them as hired help. You can easily find these by heading to an outpost with an avatar above it. Liberate these, complete the appropriate mission, and bam. Hire them any time from the 'Roster' section of the menu.

Finally, you can hire real life help by enlisting the support of a friend. That's right, Far Cry 5 is fully playable in co-op!

Get bigger guns

You don't just have to use any old gun lying around in Far Cry 5. No, you can purchase even bigger ones from gun stores located across the map. You might have to liberate an outpost to find one, but it's worth it.

Not only can you buy a range of shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and pistols, but you can also modify them with attachments to your heart's content. This will help improve your aim, increase the ammo count of your weapons, and even reduce the noise you make when you fire.

You can also buy weapons for specialist purposes, like flamethrowers to destroy crops, rocket launchers when up against vehicles, and bows for hunting animals.

Perks of the job

Finally, it's worth getting perks to drastically improve your character in a number of different areas. You can boost everything, from your shot to the amount of materials you'll gather when hunting.

Some perks can even help you get around easier, offering parachutes and wingsuits, or letting you fix broken vehicles. Have a gander through the list of them to help make a map.

How to get around faster in Far Cry 5

Drive angry

You should get yourself a ride. Much like guns, you can find these dotted about the map, or you can nick them from hapless cultists.

But, as with anything in life, you can drop cash on some bigger and more effective rides. There are nippy little quads for off-roading, speedy roadsters for getting around faster, and even massive trucks to plow through roadblocks.

If you want to get around a bit faster, you can even grab yourself a plane or helicopter and just straight up fly to your destination. Or, you can get the jump on your opponents by arriving by water. There's a host of aquatic vehicles for that.

Short on cash? Not to worry. There's a bunch of missions you can complete to unlock a free vehicle!

Get some better equipment

There are plenty of perks that will help you navigate the treacherous environment a little smoother. We recommend the 'Parachute', 'Wingsuit', 'Airdrop', 'Repair Torch', 'Auto Repair' and 'Grapple' if you want to be prepared for everything.

Parachute, Wingsuit, and Airdrop will all allow you to travel far faster from height. Heck, the parachute in particular will help you survive long falls so you don't have to take an incredibly long path back down.

Repair Torch and Auto Repair will help you hold onto vehicles much longer, which helps during long journeys in dangerous areas. Finally, Grapple is incredibly useful as a swinging and climbing tool in many areas of the game.

How to make lots of money in Far Cry 5

Raid prepper stashes

The absolute easiest way to earn extra cash in Far Cry 5 is to track down and raid prepper stashes. If you've been following this guide so far, you'll know the best way to locate them is by talking to people and reading stuff.

Once you've picked up on a location, you can find it on your map as a diamond icon. Head there and complete the mission to earn a ton of cash and some perk points to boot.

Go hunting

Another way to make money is to hunt wild animals. The best way to do this is to get yourself a bow, because you'll loot the most resources from them if they're undamaged. Chucking a grenade at a bear probably isn't the best way to preserve its fur, after all.

You also want to get the 'Harvest Master' perk, which doubles the number of resources you'll get from dead animals. Take your pelts back to a shop and sell them for huge cash.