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Far Cry Primal drops Takkar into Oros with two health bars and a spear, and our six pages on the game are, between them, a list of the things that then try to take those bars away. The north is cold and full of Udam. The south burns and belongs to the Izila. The caves breathe rot. The animals bite until you make them yours. And on PC the game sometimes refuses to start at all. Rather than walk through the pages one at a time, this guide takes each hazard in turn and points at the page, the recipe, the skill or the hut that answers it. The two longer guides that sit under it cover the same material from other angles: the resources and recipes guide sorts every material by how far it sends you, and the skills and village guide works out which specialist to house first.
Cold: the north and what Karoosh sells against it
The northern edge of Oros is where the village page sends you for North Cedar, North Black Rock and North Clay, and the caves page treats the same country as frozen: the Freezing Caves sit at the northern tip, Charnga Cave is an ice cave, Hagwi Drink Cave opens with ice walls to break, and Yachawha Cave has icicles to knock down and ice to shatter before its Daysha Hand. The one item our pages name against the cold is the Winter Clothing that Karoosh's Hut hands over at level 1, after Brother in Need, and the resources page adds that Rare White Yak Skin, found rarely among the white yaks of the north, is what upgrades it. Fire is the other answer, and the caves page uses it constantly: an arrow into a frozen grapple point or an ice wall opens the way in Charnga, Cold Swim and Hagwi Drink.
Fire: the south, Batari and the Fireproof recipe
The food page is blunt about where fire hurts: Fireproof is good inside Izila regions, especially against Batari. It is one of the three recipes Sayla teaches as soon as her hut stands, two Meat and one South Purple Leaf, and that leaf is the only cooking ingredient that grows solely at the southern edge, so the cure for the south is gathered in the south. The lasting answer is Fire Resistance in the Izila tree, 2 points and tagged highly recommended, which needs Roshani in the village, which needs Fire Screamer Fort captured and Seeds of the Sun done. Fire also cuts the other way. Animal Fat sets any weapon alight, Fire Master I removes that cost for 6 points and the skills page recommends it specifically for the caves, where thorns to burn come up fourteen times in the routes and floating wood set alight is how you see underwater.
Rot fumes: the Antidote and the caves that need it
Three caves come with an explicit instruction to bring Antidote: Charnga, with poisonous gas in its ice, Hagwi Drink, and Wisya Hurt, where the fumes share the pit with snakes. River Bagwi Cave also has rot fumes on its route. The recipe itself is the hardest-won on the food page. It opens only after Into Udam Land and a word with Sayla, and a dose costs one Meat plus a Rare North Yellow Leaf, which is a lucky pull from the ordinary North Yellow Leaves growing at the northern edge, so the cure for the caves is a northern errand with luck attached. Ultimate Boost does not clear poison; among the nine recipes only the Antidote does.
Beasts: tame them before they eat you
Six caves on the caves page name a resident animal: a Cave Bear sometimes in the Cave of Hasari, Bitefish in Charnga's water, a Brown Bear that chases you round Chishta Cave, crocodiles in the flooded River Bagwi, snakes at Wisya Hurt and a Sabretooth Tiger in a side tunnel of Yachawha, which the page suggests you tame or maim as you prefer. Taming is Tensay's business. His hut is the cheapest on the village page at two of everything, and the Beast Master tree it opens runs from Canines, which come free with the Beast Master mission, through Wildcats at a point and Apex Predators at 2 once you have tamed five beasts, to Cunning Beasts, which includes Cave Bears, at 3 once you have tamed eight. Six of that tree's twelve skills are tagged highly recommended, the most of any tree. For the beasts you cannot tame there is Melee Resistance I and II in Dah's Udam tree, and for the ones you can, Red Leaf revives a downed companion, Meat heals it and Beast Reviving in the Gathering tree makes the revival cheaper.
Tribesmen: Udam in the north, Izila in the south
Seven of the 22 Lost Caves are held. The Cave of Bones, Cut Mamaf Cave and Shanma Cave are Udam lairs, and the Cave of Sun Walkers, Chanting Cave, Sharp Stone Cave and Split Rock Cave are Izila. The Lost Caves page recommends slipping past where it can and describes the bypass where there is one: a climbable path right of the entrance at the Cave of Bones, a stealth entrance on the roof at Sun Walkers and Cut Mamaf, one by the waterfall at Marsa, pillars and deep water at the Chanting Cave. The skills that make that possible are the two the skill page tags essential, Tag Enemies in Jayma's Hunting tree and Heavy Takedown in Karoosh's Fighting tree, the latter being what lets you perform a takedown on a Chieftain, plus Quiet Sprint and Crouch Sprint from the Survival tree. Both hostile tribes eventually supply a specialist: capturing Big Darwa Fort leads to Dah and his Udam skills, and Fire Screamer Fort to Roshani and the Izila tree.
Falls and the dark: what the caves demand of your kit
Every cave holds one Daysha Hand and one Cave Painting, 44 collectibles across the 22, and the page's opening advice is a grappling claw and plenty of Antidote. The claw is Wogah's, part of his level-1 haul after Blood of Oros, and the caves page uses a grapple point more than thirty times in its routes. Hunter Vision, which you have from the start, shows the red footprints and fireflies that mark the way in mazes like the Cave of Strength, the one cave the page calls enemy-free and easy to get lost in. Reduced Fall Damage in the Hunting tree is a single point. The page also warns that the Charnga swing is a fall you do not survive.
Your own body: two bars to six
You start with two health bars. Extra Health I through IV, spread across the Survival and Fighting trees, add one bar each, up to six bars, the same figure the two best recipes, Full Health and Ultimate Boost, restore. Below them the recipes climb from Primitive Heal's one or two bars with no ingredients at all, through Basic Healing's two for a single Meat, to Rugged Healing's three after Deep Wounds. Primitive Heal III in the Udam tree lifts manual healing to three bars, Health Regeneration refills partly drained bars on its own, and the Crafting tree's Food Boosts stretch every side effect from 60 seconds to 150.
The PC: eight things that go wrong before Oros loads
Our troubleshooting page was written while the Steam reviews were arguing about performance, and it lists eight problems. A game that will not start, and error 88500014, both point at the firewall blocking Uplay, with offline mode or compatibility mode as fallbacks. Sound faults get the Far Cry 4 fix and, failing that, a DirectX reinstall from the game's own Support directory; the page's other suggestion, deleting audio files from System32, is one we would leave alone. Low frame rates get shadow quality lowered, SLI or Crossfire switched to a single card and a laptop plugged in. Unresponsive mouse and keyboard means unplugging other controllers. Crashes in the same spot mean verifying game files. A fatal file system error means running Uplay as administrator, and strange colours mean setting PhysX to the processor in the Nvidia panel.
Where to start reading
Start with the village building page and the skills and village guide, because the Beast Master mission and the first two huts are what turn the rest of the game on. Move to the resources page and food recipes page once a build asks for a material you have not seen, and to the skill tree page when the first points arrive. Keep the Lost Caves for when you have the claw and a stock of Antidote.
FAQ
What should you do first in Far Cry Primal?
Complete Tensay's Beast Master mission, which is what lets you build the village, then speak with Sayla and Tensay and build both their huts. Those two huts standing is what unlocks Attack of the Udam and, after it, the mission that brings Jayma.
What are the best skills?
The skill tree page marks two as essential, Tag Enemies and Heavy Takedown, and eleven as highly recommended, with six of those in Tensay's Beast Master tree.
How many Lost Caves are there?
Twenty-two, each with one Daysha Hand and one Cave Painting. Seven are occupied by Udam or Izila and three ask for Antidote.
How many skills does the game have?
Eighty, in eight trees, each tree tied to one of the eight village specialists.