With everything from stone club-wielding tribesmen to sabretooth tigers freely roaming around, just staying alive through the night is no small task in Ubisoft’s new 10,000 BC survival simulator.
It might be a Far Cry game, but there’s nary a PKM or Skorpion to be found, so you’re going to need some extra help avoiding death by spear or claw in Primal’s pre-historic, mammoth-hunting environment. For those still on the fence about the setting and mechanics in this unexpected twist on the series, you can read our full review here.
The Basics Of Far Cry Primal Exploration
Before heading out to explore the open world apart from the main quest, be sure to find and recruit Wogah to unlock the grappling claw, which greatly expands the areas you can effectively reach. Finding all the various main Wenja tribe members provides access to new upgrades, but Dah in particular is one you want to recruit to make life easier on the combat and survival front.
Recruiting missing tribe members is critical
While the specific skill-related tribe members are important, your village’s overall population goes up on its own when you complete quests, capture outposts, or light bonfires. Increasing your tribe’s population provides daily stash bonuses (meaning less time spent foraging for needed items). Those bonuses increase at specific population tiers: 20, 40, 60, and so on.
When you start exploring Oros in earnest, there are points of interest you specifically want to head towards. Rather than fixing radio towers or destroying a base like in Far Cry 3, you’ll have to take over outposts and light bonfires in Primal to expand the map and have new fast travel locations.
Since there’s no humvees or speed boats for quickly getting around the world map, you’ll want to take the time to get new fast travel spots whenever possible.
Bonfire, radio tower, what’s the difference?
Outposts and bonfires are at fixed locations, but animals are found randomly in certain ranges indicated on the map. Keep your eyes peeled in any given area, as the yellow scent trail visible while using Hunter Vision leads to rare animals. You want to drop what you’re doing and chase after them, as rare skins are needed for certain upgrades.
Far Cry Primal Skills
There’s a staggering 80 different skills available during the course of the game, and as expected some are more obviously useful than others.
To make different sections of the skill layout available, you first have to find and recruit specific tribe members (as mentioned above), and some skills are only available after you further upgrade that person’s hut.
- Recruit Tensay to unlock Beast Master skill section
- Recruit Jayma to unlock Hunting skill section
- Recruit Karoosh to unlock Fighting skill section
- Recruit Wogah to unlock Crafting skill section
- Recruit Dah to unlock Melee Resistance, Primitive Heal III, and Double Berserk Bomb
- Recruit Roshani to unlock the fire-based skills
For critical skills, Hunter Vision (unlocked automatically during the story) is a must, and of course the extra health and health regeneration skills should be accessed as soon as possible. The various taming skills are among the highest priority, allowing you to tame ever more dangerous creatures until you’ve got a retinue of bears and sabretooth tigers ready to be called on.
80 skills are available for combat, crafting, and more
The real goods for surviving combat are from Dah’s skill tree, which significantly increase your resistance to damage from either animal attacks or angry primitives with clubs. In terms of utility, the Craft Arrow skills are incredibly useful, allowing you to make more ammunition while using fewer resources.
Since the Tag Enemy and Tag Animals skills are permanent, they make hunting down a specific animal or lone straggler much less frustrating. When combined with the owl companion, you can effectively recon an area ahead of time and tag all the enemies before heading in to throw spears or fire off a few arrows.
Far Cry Primal Combat
Recruiting Karoosh provides access to crafting the devastating two-handed club — and while it’s a slow weapon, it lets you dominate in up-front melee combat.
When dealing with human opponents, stealthy head shots with your bow and arrow are the way to go whenever possible, although the humble spear is surprisingly effective as a short distance ranged weapon. Two or three spear throws will take down difficult enemies more quickly than repeated melee swings / stabs.
He’ll teach your tribe to survive the harsh Oros lifestyle
When you’ve been spotted or there’s a large number of opponents, its time to put your animal companion to use, distracting enemies while you either take them down at range or rush in for melee. The animal riding skills also give you a huge advantage in combat later on.
While exploring the wilderness, don’t underestimate the power of fire. It’s one of the few advantages you have over the many feral animals to be found in Oros. A flaming club can keep the aggressive nocturnal predators at bay, while flaming arrows can damage large and powerful enemies like bears and keep them from charging directly at you.
Besides fire, crafting and laying traps is helpful for taking down larger creatures that are difficult to outrun (the Vicious Traps skill increases their effectiveness). But in most cases other combat-related skills or health increase skills will be more useful overall.
Launch one of these into an enemy camp and watch the fun begin!
By following these stone age guidelines, you should be well on your way to rebuilding the Wenja and taking on the rival tribes. Let us know if you have any other Far Cry Primal tips and tricks that have worked well for keeping Takkar alive!
