Mechanics

Far Cry 6 has no manual save. That single design decision changes how you should think about its systems, because it means some of them can be tried and reversed and one of them cannot be tried at all without ending your playthrough.

So this guide is ordered by what you can undo. The permanent, irreversible things come first, because those are the ones you need to have read about before you touch them. The free and repeatable ones come last, because you will learn those by playing. The single sharpest edge in the game is a boat Clara offers you at the docks during the Libertad Rises mission, and that is where we start.

Permanent, and it ends the run: Clara's boat

Far Cry keeps a tradition of hiding an early ending in each game, and this one is no exception, though it asks for more progress than some of the older entries did. You can still reach it inside your first few hours.

The gate

Finish the opening island, the tutorial area that introduces the game's systems, then play on until the Libertad Rises mission comes up. That mission asks you to clear out two ships. Do that, and Clara meets you at the docks.

The fork

She holds out the keys to an old boat, and with them a way out: leave Yara and live quietly in Miami. The game clearly wants you to turn her down and go with Juan, which is how Far Cry 6 continues normally. Taking the boat is the alternative, and it is not a side path. It is the end of the game.

Sailing out

Get in the boat and sail away on the northwestern route, aiming for the channel that splits the two islands. Carry on until Dani starts talking, which is your confirmation that the ending has triggered, and the screen fades to black.

What you actually see

Dani on a beach, listening to the radio. The broadcast reports that Anton Castillo has crushed the resistance and executed Clara. Because you walked away rather than fight the war, the people you left behind lose it. The achievement Hidden In Plain Sight unlocks, and the credits roll.

What you gave up

This is the part every other guide skips, and it is the part worth knowing before you take the keys. Look back at the table above: at Libertad Rises, almost everything else on it is still locked.

Lola's Black Market is not available yet, because it needs you to complete a campaign for Monteros, Talia Benavidez or El-Tigre, and at the docks you have not met them. Which means no Overclocked weapons and no Moneda economy at all. Healing syringes are behind Rank 3 or 4, so you have only the free heals. And the entire easter egg list below, everything outside the opening island, is unreached, because those sit across four regions you never travel to.

None of that makes the secret ending a mistake. It is a genuine ending and it takes about ten minutes. But with no manual save, taking the boat to see what happens is not a detour you can back out of, and the honest framing is that it costs the rest of the game rather than a few minutes.

The other set of credits

There is a second reason to finish the game properly, and it is a small one hidden in the full end credits. Sit through them and you can hear two characters talking, one of whom is Vaas Montenegro, referred to in the dialogue as a smuggler and very much dead since Far Cry 3. The radio broadcast on the beach is the only ending audio the boat gives you. This one is the reward for the other path.

Permanent, but only to one weapon: the Black Market

Lola runs a Black Market out of your guerrilla camps, marked by a blue diamond floating above her head. She is not available from the start. You unlock her by contacting the group Clara sends you to meet, and specifically by completing a campaign for one of Monteros, Talia Benavidez or El-Tigre. After that she is available at any guerrilla camp you have unlocked.

What you go to her for is Overclocked weapons, which are standard guns with amped-up stats. The Overclocked mod inside one costs roughly 1 Gunpowder and 5 Industrial Circuits, and installing it raises that weapon's damage permanently. That word is doing real work: this is one of the few upgrades in the game you cannot walk back, which is why the material cost is worth planning rather than improvising.

Moneda is its own currency, earned from the Special Operations Lola hands out, and it is the only thing her shelves accept. She also stocks Industrial Circuits and Industrial Composite, both of which feed advanced Supremo improvements and mod building.

The detail that catches people out is the clock. Her stock list refreshes every 12 hours, which makes Moneda a timed currency rather than a savings account. Buying something you are unsure about because it is there right now is the wrong instinct: the list will turn over, and the thing you actually wanted may be on the next one.

Consumed on use: syringes and spray paint

Two systems here spend materials rather than earning them, and they quietly compete with each other and with the Black Market for the same stock. Our items guide covers where each material comes from. This table is the other half: where it all goes.

The Industrial Circuits row is the one worth staring at. The same material buys an Overclocked mod and upgrades your fishing line, and it is one of the harder things in the game to accumulate. If you are fishing seriously, you are competing with your own weapon upgrades.

Healing syringes are crafted at a workbench: open the Supremo menu, pick a gadget slot, and build one. The requirement is Rank 3 to 4 plus 10 Durable Plastic and 2 Supremo-Bonds, which is why the answer to "how do I heal" is completely different at hour two than it is at hour twenty.

Spray Paint Cans are the game's only weapon-skin currency, and they have exactly one source: jewelry boxes. Those show up as white boxes on your map and as brown crates with an alligator symbol on top in the world, and each one holds either a sidearm or a few cans. They turn up naturally, but they are densest at FND bases and checkpoints, and weapon caches produce them occasionally.

The real unlock for farming them is not a location, it is a dog. Keep Chorizo with you and he automatically tags valuables in your vicinity once he is levelled up a little, which turns a scavenger hunt into a route. Reading notes as you go also marks boxes permanently on your map. To apply a skin, open the Arsenal menu, select the weapon, press Inspect, then head to Appearance and pick one. Do note that unique weapons with their own exclusive appearance cannot be repainted at all.

One easter egg lives inside that exact menu. Open Appearance on your Side Arm and you will find a skin called Wood Panel, a straight reference to the Atari 2600, down to the Power and TV Type labels printed on it.

Free and repeatable: healing, anti-air and fishing

Everything from here down can be done as many times as you like, and costs nothing you cannot get back.

The three heals that cost nothing

Manual healing is Triangle on PlayStation, Y on Xbox and Z on PC, and the number of refills you are holding is shown at the bottom of the screen. You start with a single heal and the recharge count grows as you progress, so early fights are genuinely tighter than later ones for reasons that have nothing to do with enemy strength.

Automatic regeneration refills the bar on its own, but slowly enough that pushing forward while it works is how people die. Take cover, let it top off, then move. And health packs are scattered across military bases, on the bodies of dead soldiers and throughout missions, so a long fight usually leaves you better stocked than it found you.

Five ways to kill an anti-aircraft cannon

Anti-aircraft guns make flying miserable and they are immune to bullets. Not resistant, immune: gunfire and machine gun fire of any sort do nothing at all. Only explosives work. That is a problem early, when grenades and explosive rounds are exactly what you do not have, and the fix is that two of the five methods cost nothing.

The car trick is the one to remember. The cannon is immune to your bullets, but the car is not, and the cannon has no immunity to the car exploding next to it. Later on, the simplest habit is to just carry grenades or dynamite as standing kit. Clearing these sites also pairs neatly with hunting Depleted Uranium, since the crates sit at the same installations, and a captured military vehicle solves both problems at once.

Fishing, which costs only time

You need the rod before anything else, and it comes from Fuel the Revolution on Isla Santuario, where a fisher named Benito Menguez sets you a task and hands it over when you finish. After that you can fish at any seawater source: equip the rod from the weapons wheel and look for the fishing points marked on your map.

The loop itself is six beats. Hold RT and release to cast, and the longer you hold the further the line goes. Reel slowly to attract a fish. When one bites you will hear the line snag and see a prompt. Hook it with RT, reel with LT, and push the stick in the opposite direction to whichever way the fish is pulling, adjusting as it moves. Keep reeling until it is in.

There are 18 species and each one has a fixed home, so the way to find a particular fish is to search your map for its icon rather than wander the coast. Snook, for instance, live on the coasts of Prado Meadows. What you catch can be traded at any workbench for crafting material or kept to cook.

The orange tackle boxes at fishing points work as a workbench for the rod, and there are three upgrades worth knowing. The Alluring lure is the one that brings in rare fish. The reel socket shortens how long each catch takes. And the line socket controls line strength, which is the fix if fish keep breaking away from you before you land them.

Nothing to undo: the easter eggs, by region

The last tier costs only travel. Sorted geographically rather than as a list, most of these cluster into two or three trips.

Two of those are worth planning around. The Emerald Skull is a full treasure hunt rather than a prop, so our Emerald Skull guide walks it properly. And the banana crates are the one entry that needs four separate stops, so it is worth ticking off as you pass rather than making a trip of it.

The questions people actually ask

Is the secret ending the same thing as the alternate ending? Yes. Both names describe the same outcome, Clara's boat to Miami, and the split in naming is why searching for it turns up two apparently different things.

Can I go back afterwards? No. The credits roll and that playthrough is finished. This is what the lack of a manual save actually means in practice.

How early can I get it? Within your first few hours, but not from the very start. You need the opening island done and Libertad Rises reached, which is later than the equivalent moment in some earlier Far Cry games.

Which way do I sail? Northwest, towards the gap between the two islands, and keep going until Dani speaks. Guides disagree about whether any direction works. We are describing the route we verified.

Does it give an achievement? Yes, Hidden In Plain Sight. It is the only reward, and it is the reason most people take the boat on a second run rather than a first.