Far Cry 2 – Starter Weapon Loadout

Having a balanced weapon loadout in Far Cry 2 makes you versatile and places a number of options at your disposal when in combat or when preparing to go into combat. A good mix of long-range and close combat anti-personnel and anti-vehicle weapons is imperative for a gaming experience that is interesting and fun.

Here's a little about each weapon in the weapon loadout that I start out with in Far Cry 2:

M1903 sniper rifle

The M1903 sniper rifle - An excellent starter
long-range anti-personnel weapon

Pretty much one shot anywhere, i.e., head, body, legs, will bring down an enemy with this weapon. It's actually a lot easier to kill enemies than to wound them. With this sniper rifle, you'll have to work the bolt action after every shot which means disengaging the scope so it's advisable to keep the scope engaged for a few seconds after taking each shot so that you can:

1. Make sure you got the kill
2. Recon enemy movement put on alert by your shot

Makarov pistol

The Makarov pistol - A good starter close combat weapon

As a close combat anti-personnel weapon, this doesn't hold a candle to any of the assault rifles but you'll have to make do with this for now in order to keep your primary weapon slot open for the M1903 sniper rifle (see above). Firing 4 or 5 rounds into the upper body is usually enough to bring down an enemy although it's probably more advisable to take the time to do a head shot which will kill the enemy with one shot. And this will train you to use the MAC 10 and the Uzi properly when they become available later on.

RPG-7 rocket launcher

RPG-7 rocket launcher - A good anti-vehicle weapon that will serve you well throughout the game

You can have the RPG-7 rocket launcher as part of your default weapon loadout at the start of the game by doing the following:

1. Delete all your saved games.
2. Restart Far Cry 2.
3. Start a new game, select Marty as your character and select Normal difficulty.
4. After the opening cutscenes (taxi drive to town, Jackal's speech), all hell breaks loose in Pala and you'll be tasked with escaping town. Make sure you escape town alive and that you escape to the dock on the east side. (Watch this video to see the best way to do this.)

If you do all this, you'll be guaranteed to start in the Fresh Fish location, you'll have Carbonell as your boss and you'll start with an RPG-7 rocket launcher in your default weapon loadout (instead of the flamethrower).

Grenades

Grenades are part of your default weapon loadout regardless of how you started the game and are excellent close range anti-vehicle weapons. You get to carry a maximum of 3 by default although this can be upgraded to 5 by purchasing the Grenadier Webbing. Grenades are plentiful since many enemies will drop one when killed so there is no harm in using them liberally. The only thing to be mindful of when using grenades is that they tend to roll so account for this when hucking them around.

After doing all the weapon shop missions (a.k.a., convoy missions) in Act 1, you'll be able to upgrade to an...

  Advanced Far Cry 2 Weapon Loadout