Weapons

Every other weapon guide for this game sorts by how strong a gun is. This one sorts by what the game charges you before it lets you hold it, cheapest gate first, because that is the question that decides what you do with the next hour.

There are only five gates in Yara. A weapon is handed to you, or it costs a Guerrilla Rank at Juan's bench, or it costs a camp facility you have to build, or it costs nothing but a drive to a chest, or it is locked behind a named mission. Sorted that way, something useful falls out immediately: two of the strongest guns in the game, Urushi and Bullseye, sit in the cheapest gate of all.

Two rules to carry into the rest of the page. Every unique weapon shows on your map as a white chest with a gun icon, and it will surface on your mini-map when you get near it or find a clue pointing at it. And a unique weapon's perks are fixed: you cannot re-mod one the way you can a standard gun. That second rule is why gate order matters so much. A locked-perk weapon is a commitment, so it is worth knowing what it will cost before you go and get it.

The five gates at a glance

This table is 27 weapons drawn from four of our pages and joined into one list. It is the only place you can see, in one pass, that a Rank 8 resolver and a bow that costs a garrison upgrade are both more expensive than an end-game rifle sitting in an unguarded chest.

Gate 1: the guns you are simply given

The MS16 S is the strongest thing you own for the opening hours and it is not a unique weapon, which turns out to be its advantage. Because its perks are not locked, you can build it. Fit armour-piercing rounds and a silencer and it becomes a high-damage rifle that behaves like a short-range silenced sniper, which is enough to clear a base by headshots alone.

Tostador is the free Resolver, handed over by Juan as the introduction to the whole category. It is a flamethrower with more range than you expect, and its fire scatters and lingers, so a doorway stays lethal after you stop firing. The same property is its problem: the fire gets away from you, so it is a bad choice in tight interiors you still need to walk through.

Worth knowing early, because nobody joins these two up: Sharkbite is a modified MS-16s, and it ships pre-built as almost exactly the silenced mid-range build described above. It carries an American Suppressor, a Keep it Cool mod so the suppressor does not overheat, an extended magazine, Soft-Target Rounds and a 2x scope. If you like how the free rifle plays, Sharkbite is the named upgrade to go and take, and it costs one outpost.

Both of these and five more early standouts are covered on our best weapons page.

Gate 2: guns that cost a Guerrilla Rank

Resolver weapons are homemade guns with strange but genuinely useful buffs, and there are 11 of them. Juan sells them, and his stock is gated by your Guerrilla Rank rather than by money, which makes this the one gate you cannot rush. The ladder below is the whole category in unlock order.

The three Rank 3 unlocks arrive together, so that rank is where the category actually opens up. After Rank 5 the returns get thinner and more specialised: Zeusito, El Pequeno and La Sorpresa each answer exactly one problem and are dead weight the rest of the time. Our Resolver weapons guide has the full write-up on each.

Gate 3: guns you have to build a camp for

This gate is bows, and it is the only one that charges you in resources rather than time. There are four bows: two standard, the Recurve and the Compound, and two unique ones with added perks. All of them are quiet, which is the whole reason to bother.

The Recurve Bow needs a Guerrilla Garrison built at any Guerrilla Camp, using the construction table there. Once it stands, the bow is one of several basic weapons you can buy. The Compound Bow is the upgraded version and it needs that garrison taken to level 2, which is a real bill in Gasolina and Metal. Looting military camps is the fastest way to cover it. El Capirote is a unique recurve that arrives with a scope and mods already fitted and does extra damage to animals, and it needs a Hunter's Lodge instead of a garrison.

Here is the join worth making before you spend anything. Bullseye is the unique compound bow, it is the best silent long-range option in the game, and it sits in a chest in El Este behind no build cost whatsoever. If what you want is silent reach, walk to Bullseye first and decide about the garrison upgrade afterwards. Our bows guide covers all four and the build chain behind them, and if you are short on the resources, keeping Chorizo with you turns up more loot while you play.

Gate 4: guns that cost nothing but a drive

This is the cheapest gate and it holds some of the best weapons in the game. The table below is sorted by region rather than by weapon, so you can clear a map area in one trip instead of making nine separate journeys.

Four of those are easy to walk straight past, so they are worth calling out. Hi-Fi is in an alligator chest by a bed, inside a house you have no reason to enter. Urushi is behind the warehouse rather than in it. Sharkbite is not in the outpost you clear, it is in the controller room afterwards. And El Caballero cannot be reached at all until you have found the shed key, so arriving without it just wastes the drive.

Urushi deserves one more line, because it is the single best value on this table. It has a silencer, a laser sight and armour-piercing rounds that go through any helmet, and if you miss the headshot the body shots still land hard. It has no scope, so it wants precision and timing, and it is available in the early game. Six of these are written up in full on our unique weapons guide.

Gate 5: guns locked behind a named mission

These four cannot be looted early no matter how well you drive. The Autocrat comes out of Do or Die at Fort Quito and is armour-piercing by default with improved aim and better body-shot damage, which makes it the best sidearm available in the first few hours. Supercharger drops during Diesel Daisy, out on the GDP Oil Platform in Aguas Lindas, and it is the shotgun that still kills at ranges where shotguns normally stop working, thanks to improved damage mods and an extra-large classic silencer.

Lethal Dose is a treasure hunt reward from The Mongoose and The Man in Costa Del Mar. Beat the mongoose, take the stash key off it, and the pistol is in the locked stash in the main house. It looks unremarkable and it is not: Soft-Target Rounds make short work of animals, and its Reload All mod reloads every gun in your inventory at once when you reload the pistol.

La Varita is the exception in the Resolver category, gated by the Triada Blessings Yaran Story instead of by rank. It shoots through walls, and it comes out of the same chest as the Triador Supremo, whose Truesight ability marks enemies through cover. One sees through walls, the other shoots through them, and getting both from one chest is the closest the game comes to handing you a finished build.

The walkthroughs for these live in the neighbouring buckets: the GDP oil rig, the treasure hunts, the Fort Quito key and the Supremo backpacks.

Four guns, four jobs

You carry four weapons. That is the actual constraint, and it is why a ranked list of fifteen guns does not help. Pick one weapon per job, then read its gate to work out what to do next session.

The common mistake is doubling up on silent weapons. A bow and El Susurro cover the same job at different ranges, and carrying both leaves you with two slots for everything else. Pick one, then fill the loud slots.

The other one is leaving the anti-vehicle slot empty until a helicopter turns up. Zeusito is the dedicated answer and it sits at Rank 7, which is a long way off if you have not been building rank. Until then, one of Hi-Fi, El General or El Caballero has to do that job, and all three are open-world pickups you can go and get this evening.

Where to go next

Our best weapons page covers the seven early-to-mid-game standouts in detail, Resolver weapons ranks all 11 of Juan's homemade guns, unique weapons takes the best 6 of the 49 in the game with their full mod lists, and bows handles the build chain for all four.

Alongside them, our weapon skins and Black Market guides cover the cosmetic and trading side, and money farming pays for the mods and ammunition that make any of the above work.