FC3: Questions

[PZ]

Has anyone used the vehicle repair torch?  Is it correct that it occupies a weapon slot?

[Art Blade]

I have and yes, it is true. You can set stuff alight with it (it is even possible to burn enemies to death with it, there is an achievement for that)  :)

[PZ]

That sounds kind of cool  :-X

On another note, how did you successfully hunt sharks?

[Jim di Griz]

Love the weapon shop lady avatar Art - that's one person I'd not mess with  ^-^

[Art Blade]

Cheers, Jim  :-D

PZ, kill sharks with anything but melee weapons :) At first I used my M700 sniper, then the MS16 assault rifle and for the man eater shark I had to use the bow. Best to do it when they're either near the shore or when you're on a boat. Careful when skinning those bastards.. they usually have friends.. might as well take them out, too  :-()

[PZ]

Thanks AB; I didn't think it would be so straight forward.  :-()

[Art Blade]

neither did they.  :-()

[PZ]

 

I was working one of the outposts on the northern shore of the island and waded into the water to get behind a big rock.  Shark bit me, but then swam away  :-()

[durian]

On another note, how did you successfully hunt sharks?

tag them, used the boats and ran over them  ;D

[PZ]

Good method; I like it!  :-X

[PZ]

tag them, used the boats and ran over them  ;D

I used this excellent method and quickly dispatched a couple of sharks which allowed me to add the 4th weapon slot, which I promptly filled with the flamethrower.  ;)

[Art Blade]

nice idea, durian  :) And, nice, PZ  :)

[DKM2]

Looking like my Checklist going to be about 12 pages, this game is big, lots to do.

but my question, there is a side mission called Wanted: Dead (from the bulletin boards)
it seems as though when you activate this, a cleared outpost becomes active again.
Has anybody tried this?

[Art Blade]

I did a few of those missions but in my game the outposts stayed friendly (at least after the mission).

[PZ]

Thanks AB, and thanks again Durian for the tip  :-X

Looking like my Checklist going to be about 12 pages, this game is big, lots to do.

but my question, there is a side mission called Wanted: Dead (from the bulletin boards)
it seems as though when you activate this, a cleared outpost becomes active again.
Has anybody tried this?

Sounds like it will be an excellent checklist DKM2  :-X

I've not done any of the "wanted" side missions, but it would be nice if what you experienced was not a glitch - I like liberating the outposts, and would like to approach using different approaches.

[fragger]

Sorry to tell you, but doing an outpost's "Wanted" missions will not reset the outpost - it stays liberated.

[PZ]

That's too bad; I wish there was something you can do other than creating a specific save to redo outposts.  The way it is, I can only do an outpost again is if I start a new game.  Even though the spawn rate in FC2 was a bit high, it was nice to be able to go back to an area and clear it again using a different approach (stealth versus run-and-gun) or weapon choice.  I recall hitting the Rail Yard with flare gun one time, and IEDs another time.  Yet other times I just used a sniper.  Re-doing things using different methods was lots of fun for me.

[fragger]

Me too, I'm going to miss being able to do stuff like that. And starting a new game will mean going through a lot of scripted missions again if you want access to the entire map :-\\

[PZ]

Maybe the first of us that go through minimalistically completing the main missions until south island is available could post a saved game.  At least that would give us a chance to begin in a reasonable place.

[fragger]

I looked into that a little. Uploading saved games to the site may not be so straightforward with this game. It doesn't create a single saved game file in My Documents\My Games\Far Cry 3\Saved Games like FC2 did. The only indication of them that I can find is here:

<root drive>\:Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\ Ubisoft Games Launcher\savegames\ [a folder named with a great mess of letters, numbers and hyphens] \ [a folder named with a number]

For instance, on my PC the path is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\savegames\a5282ba8-4aef-4ba9-ad0a-83c0065a15ea\46

I have six files in that directory:

Filename                                    Size
1.save                                        33KB
1.save.extendedmeta                1KB
1.save.metadata                        1KB
5.save                                        39KB
5.save.extendedmeta                1KB
5.save.metadata                        1KB

and in this directory:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\cache\ownership

I have a 1KB file called a5282ba8-4aef-4ba9-ad0a-83c0065a15ea, which you can see is the same name as the directory name above. I would assume that this file and the folder with the same name relates to my UPlay account in some way.

I also don't know what the suffixes ".metadata" and ".extendedmeta" mean but it might be something to do with the UPlay cloud. And as you can see, they're tiny files - FC2's saved game files are usually several MB in size, so you would assume that FC3's would be of a similar size. It may be that saved games in FC3 are stored internally where you can't get at them, which may be why you're only allowed three slots.

I could be wrong about all of this, but I don't know where else to look on my PC if the saves have been stored elsewhere. I can't find anything else anywhere that looks like a saved game file. It must be stored somewhere obviously, especially considering that I've been playing and saving offline.

Damn, why do they have to make these things difficult?

[spearhead_22]

When I was at Orphan Point outpost, I got on a boat with a mounted machine gun and gunned down all the sharks that appeared nearby  :-D Saved myself a lot of ammo and got all the skins needed to craft whatever was required.
Will have to try out Durian's method. Didn't know that I could run over a shark with a boat! ???? Yet to kill a shark with an arrow though. Wish there was a harpoon gun in the game to kill sharks and crocs under water...

[fragger]

I've been doing a bit more poking around online, apparently finding the saved games is a much-queried subject.

Some claim that they reside here:

C:\ProgramData\Orbit\46\

But I have no "Orbit" directory under ProgramData. There is a directory called "Orbit" here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\cache\orbit

but it's empty.

Others claim the game resides in the directory I mentioned earlier, the one with the path like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\savegames\a5282ba8-4aef-4ba9-ad0a-83c0065a15ea\46

But others have said that the game won't recognise the files there as saved games once they've been copied over. To me they don't look anywhere near big enough to be saved games anyway, they're way too small. More likely they're some sort of pointers or indexes. As to why the filenames start with "1" and "5" I don't know either. Possibly refers to autosaved and manually saved games, based on some kind of weird programming logic. It certainly isn't numerically logical.

I was earlier going to suggest that I post the files here and another PCer download them and see what happens with them, but I don't want to risk screwing up somebody else's game, which is what appears to have happened in some cases I read about. We shouldn't try anything like that until we know what we're doing :-()

In short, I don't know where the flipping saves are stored.

Why all this drama has to exist with saved games I don't know, nor why Ubi insists on restricting players to a 3-slot save system. I call that pedantic and unnecessarily obstructionist.

[DKM2]

best I can figure out about the savegames is, if you play in online mode, your saves are saved online.

btw, I play offline, but I only have one slot avaliable, the other two are grey'd out.
Ubisoft -  :D

[Art Blade]

I guess the greyed-out save game slots are reserved for two separate "new games" aka careers.

[PZ]

I guess the greyed-out save game slots are reserved for two separate "new games" aka careers.

Exactly; FC3 is like the AC series - you have a single save with the option to have two more game slots for a total of three games each with a single save.

@fragger - that's bad news about the game save.  I was hoping to be able to easily share games, but it looks like Ubi has made it difficult.