16 essential Far Cry New Dawn tips to know before you play

Having Far Cry New Dawn tips will help you thrive in the nuclear age, allowing you to flourish (as best as one can), in the post-apocalyptic irradiated landscape of Far Cry New Dawn. Hope County now has a lot of new features to offer - outposts that can be upgraded, bases you can improve, and enemies with levels that might pose more of a challenge than first thought. Check out our Far Cry New Dawn tips to find everything you need to survive this oddly colourful ruined world.

1. Do the Eden’s Fire mission ASAP 

When you first start off in New Dawn, you’ll be tasked with upgrading Prosperity, your base of operations, to level 1. Ignore that. Instead, go straight to the island where Far Cry 5 ended (you’ll find it slap-bang in the middle of the map, at the bottom of the narrow section at the top). Once there you’ll get given an easy, trippy mission to find Joseph Seed’s book. Follow the cult leader’s instructions, then do the Eden’s Fire mission that’ll be automatically marked on your map afterwards. Doing the beginning section will get you access to a level 2 blue bow, which is incredibly overpowered early on in Far Cry New Dawn when you’re just taking on grey enemies.  

2. Take out alarms at Outposts first

Before you run in and start slaying Highwaymen left and right, take this Far Cry New Dawn tip to heart: destroy all the alarms at the Outpost in question. You can tell where they are by looking out for pylons with bright green lights at the top, then just smash the yellow box with the green light at the bottom. In Far Cry New Dawn ethanol is worth its weight in gold, so completing the Outpost without any alarms going off means that you’ll get an amount of ethanol as a bonus, and you get the same reward for going undetected. However, be warned: remaining undetected is trickier than destroying all the alarms. 

3. You have to unlock fast travel by upgrading Prosperity

Fast travel is something we all take for granted, and in Far Cry New Dawn fast travel isn’t unlocked automatically: it’s part of one of Prosperity’s Expedition upgrades. Although you’ll always be able to fast travel back to Prosperity, you’ll need to upgrade the Expeditions facility to be able travel to liberated Outposts, and then upgrade it again to unlock fast travel to all discovered locations on the map. In all you’ll need 200 ethanol to get to this second (and most useful) stage, so start saving sharpish if you’re not fond of hiking.

4. Get the Tactical Binoculars perk ASAP

Liberating Outposts is the best way to get ethanol in Far Cry New Dawn, the resource that you need to upgrade Prosperity. As it involves eliminating every Highwayman currently chilling in the Outpost, and you get bonuses for remaining undetected or setting off no alarms, you’re going to want to know where every single Highwayman is to stop yourself being (literally) stabbed in the back. The tactical binoculars perk is indispensable for this, as hovering over enemies and alarms will tag them automatically, plus you can set waypoints through them too. It also saves you having to cart around Timber and hear his whimpers when he gets hurt/worry about his well-being in the middle of a gunfight.  

5. Fall damage is no joke

If there’s one thing you take away from this Far Cry New Dawn tips, it should be this: fall damage does not mess around. If you fall early on in the game, be prepared to wave goodbye to a chunk of your health or just straight-up die. So, if you’re lazy like me and enjoy taking shortcuts down the side of mountains, get the Grapple and Skydiver perk. Each of them reduces fall damage, which your knees will most definitely thank you for. 

6. Your Guns for Hire can be your personal chauffeurs

Want to go and make a cup of tea, but know you have to drive for about five minutes to get to some remote location on the map? Get one of your (human) Guns for Hire to drive you there! All you have to do is find a suitable vehicle, select where you want to go on the map so the blue route shows, then get in the passenger seat. Your buddy will do all the driving for you, giving you a break that you can use to make a hot beverage of choice or simply chill. If you’re undecided who to take with you, check out our Far Cry New Dawn best Guns for Hire guide, as it’ll help you narrow down the best person (or animal) for you based on your playstyle. 

7. Talk to friendly NPCs for quests and points of interest

When you’re wandering across the wild you’ll find NPCs with diamonds and blue exclamation marks above their heads. Have a quick natter and they’ll point you in the direction of something worth checking out.

8. Bring The Judge when you need to hunt Monstrous Animals

The Judge is strong, silent, and sneaky, but turns out that animals are kind of into that. As long as The Judge has killed at least 15 Highwaymen animals won’t attack you unless you attack them first. So when you’re trying to hunt Monstrous animals for their rare resources, you can set up bombs and prepare before initiating a fight, which comes in mighty handy if you’re slightly underpowered. The Judge’s calming effect on animals also helps during various missions when you have to kill bears, wolves, or wolverines, and stops you being ambushed in the wild when you’re trekking to a quest marker. 

9. Always bring bait when you’re hunting animals 

Stumbling around the wild just hoping for a glimpse of a cougar, wolf, or boar is a tiresome affair. But if you bring some bait with you (which requires meat and Yucca, the orange plant) and chuck it down, you are guaranteed a wild animal appearance within a couple of seconds. Plus if you kill that animal you then have meat for the next lot of bait you need to craft, which you can use to lure another animal, and so on and so on...

10. If you see an animal carrying something in its mouth, follow it (from a distance)

Animals have dens in Far Cry New Dawn, and they’re much more than just a nifty environmental detail. Inside each den you’ve got a chance of finding a lootable bag or even sometimes a gun, but finding them can be tricky. So if you see a cougar or a wild dog carrying something in its mouth, instead of killing it follow it from a safe distance and it’ll lead you straight to its den. 

11. Completing challenges is an easy way to earn perk points

Treasure hunts are your main way of getting perk points in Far Cry New Dawn, with each one netting you three to spend. In Far Cry New Dawn perk points let you buy special abilities in Far Cry New Dawn, but if you’ve done all the treasure hunts you might find yourself seriously lacking in them. In the challenges section of the main menu you’ll find - well, challenges. They range from killing five Highwaymen with a sniper rifle to finding all the music players in the game, and you can see how many perk points completing each challenge gets you. As a rule, regularly switch up the weapon you’re using to tick off challenges as you go, and change your Gun for Hire every so often too. Saving hostages from prison vans also gets you one perk point per go. 

12. Completing treasure hunts gets you ingame currency

Treasure hunts in Far Cry New Dawn put your problem-solving skills to the test, but completing them gives you far more than just resources: you’ll also get 45 Credits for free, the in-game currency. Don’t spend them on outfits, though (however much you might want that unicorn hat). Instead, save them - yes, all of them - as you can then spend them on elite tier weapons. 400 - 600 credits can get you anything from a handgun to a unicorn flamethrower. Yeah, you read that right. 

13. Expeditions will get you circuit boards, which you'll need for the best weapons

In Far Cry New Dawn circuit boards are a bother to find as they’re the rarest material in the game. To get them either do Expeditions - which will get you 15 on Tier 1 difficulty - or kill Monstrous Bison and Monstrous Cougars to get their skins, which get you 10 each. 

14. Timber is the best if you want to be sneaky or hate searching for crafting materials

Crafting is a big part of Far Cry New Dawn, so you’re going to want to loot every single plant, gear, and box of components you come across. To save you searching until your eyes bleed, spend some time with Timber (psst: here's our guide to how to get Timber the dog in Far Cry New Dawn), who will tag and dig up crafting materials, making your life a whole lot easier. He also tags all enemies and alarms (very helpful when you’re trying to take out an Outpost while remaining undetected). Oh, and he does it all while looking absolutely adorable. 

15. Use the Ubisoft Club to get free stuff

If you’re part of the Ubisoft Club you get a ton of free stuff just by signing up and spending coins you accumulate by playing any of their games. Go to the main menu and then select Ubisoft Club to see what stuff you can grab. In Far Cry New Dawn you can get a yellow shotgun named Sin Eater D2 if you’ve completed Far Cry 5, and the Rook outfit from Far Cry 5 for free, a survival pack if you sign up to the Ubisoft newsletter, a car in exchange for some coins (you’ll earn them by getting the in-game achievements), and a blue-rarity shovel for coins too.  

16. You can switch your ammo types and firing type in the weapons wheel

If, like me, you get incredibly frustrated when your SMG/assault rifle only fires in intermittent bursts, don’t worry: you can change how your gun fires by bringing up the weapon wheel, hovering over your gun of choice, and pressing R2/RT. Pressing R1/RB will change your ammo type too, so if you’re facing off against Enforcers consider switching to piercing ammo, or explosive if you want to go out with a bang.

Want to know more about Far Cry New Dawn? In Far Cry New Dawn Joseph Seed is still lurking somewhere on the map, or you can read about how to find your character from Far Cry 5 in Far Cry New Dawn.