Maximum Side Missions

[wexer9]

Is there a step-by-step guide for doing the maximum number of side missions? That is, how to get 43/40 or however many side missions by manipulating the number of buddy missions you do? Thanks in advance. :)

[Art Blade]

You have two buddies to start with, in Leboa. Best buddy ("BB"), and rescue buddy ("RB"). Your RB does not show at Mike's bar, hence you can't get his side missions. To get his side mission, he needs to become your BB. That can either happen when your BB dies or when you manipulate the history with your RB. How to do that, you can read here.

Mike's bar can only host four buddies. So you can go and free those three buddies in the base camps (Lumber,Cock-Fights,Slaughter House and Fresh Fish, one of which is yours, so no extra buddy there). If they show up at Mike's, there will be them and your BB. Now if you want to rescue the plane crash survivor, the 6th buddy, you'll be presented with a problem: He will show up at Mike's and replace one of the buddies. If you haven't taken on that one buddy's side mission, all the effort would have been worthless.

So one Leboa-buddy has to die. Since you can only kill your BB or RB, you can once again plan which one by manipulating the history if you like, or by killing one of those. Your choice. Make sure you get every side mission (two per buddy) = 6x2=12.

Now, same with Bowa. 5 buddies = 5x2=10. 12+10=22. The rest of the side missions are convoy missions and cell tower assassination missions (5+5=10 in Leboa, and another 10 in Bowa = 20). 20+22=42

If you are lucky, you can be assigned either a cell tower mission or an arms dealer mission twice or more, see: here.

Apparently the count stops once you got 43, no matter if you actually had more than 43 missions due to the infinite mission glitch as depicted in the previous link.

Hope this helps :)

[KingRat]

Art,

I started a new game on this unpatched version the other day as Hakim. Rescued Michele from CF and when I went to Mike's for the convo with Reuben my RB(Flora) was already there, along with BB Michele.......I then went to lumbercamp and freed Josip.

:)

[wexer9]

Thanks, a very complete guide.

One thing though, when I rescued the Plane Crash buddy, they didn't replace any of the buddies at Mike's Bar. I have done a main mission since then (I read someone that buddies only rotate after Main Missions or something).

Anyway, I didn't start doing buddy missions until after rescuing the Plane Crash buddy, so I guess that's out for this playthrough. I'll have to wait for my next playthrough for that, I suppose. :P

[Art Blade]

KingRat, thanks for your reply, I was thinking about the very first visit to Mike's, there's only two buddies there. You are most certainly right (can't remeber exactly but it feels right what you say) that there is another buddy "just there" when you next visit Mikes. That leaves two buddies in the other base camps to rescue.

I'll edit the first post if that is confirmed :)

wexer9, you might still have a chance in your current playthrough: take on every side mission your buddies have to offer, including the BB's missions, and then KILL either the BB or the RB. Now the vacant spot at Mike's should be filled with the one alive buddy you so stylishly kicked out before  ;) There can only be 4 at Mike's, 1 RB hidden, =5. When you got that 6th one, the Plane Crash Buddy (lol, "PCB"  ;D ;D) one buddy has to step aside if all buddies are alive.

BB and RB "rotate" after taking on a Main Mission.

[wexer9]

Thanks, so what I gotta do is:

• Perform both side missions for all 4 buddies in Mike's (BB + 3 other buddies)
• Complete main mission so one of the 3 other buddies becomes RB
• Complete both side missions for former RB
• Kill BB/RB
• Complete side missions for the last buddy who appears in Mike's to replace your new RB

Sound about right?

[Art Blade]

I think so, yes :)

You can influence who will be your new BB, if you like. Usually BB and RB "rotate" (swap) if those two are the ones with higher history point counts than the other buddies. You can injure yourself somehow and get rescued, that increases your RB's history count by 1, and the probability to become your next BB. Check your buddy list in the pause menu to compare their points. If you do that before the next main mission, they will already swap the moment you take on that main mission.

If you take on the main mission first, your BB will remain the same and his count will increase by 2 on completing that mission, takes more effort to make them swap. However, if you kill either the BB or the RB during the mission, the replacement takes place when you take on the next main mission.

It's always like this:

BB highest history count
RB 2nd highest
B3
B4
B5
B6

They climb the ladder in that order :)

Or, if they score equal, the buddy last met/rescued by you, will be RB or BB. Didn't experiment much with equal scores, but I've seen something like that happen (new buddy immediately became BB, if I remember right).

I once had both my BB and my RB killed during a main mission, so I had two replacements for them, as in a new set of buddies in my pause menu to look at, once I had taken on a new main mission :)

[wexer9]

All right, thanks.

[fragger]

Geez, this buddy business is complicated... I think I'll stick to trying to get my head around superstring theory ;D





(Just joking - it's actually very enlightening, and only slightly less confusing than superstring theory)

[wexer9]

Ha ha ha. :P

[Art Blade]

it's easier when you've done some of that a few times. Here's the complete package, but you can use parts of that tutorial for fun (kill BB or RB and have him replaced, get rescued a couple of times by the same RB, that sort of thing, the rest is game mechanics) :) If you string that together, it's a good thing  ;)

[wexer9]

I'm glad Warren became my RB - I had to kill someone so I could get Michelle's side missions - and I've always had a little hatred for him as being the first buddy who really betrayed me in my first playthrough at the LZ. I shot up Pala, got killed, Warren rescued me, and I shot him in the head with his own pistol. Woops! ;)

Now the comparatively lovely Michelle is ready for me to do her side missions! :)

[Art Blade]

 ;D well done  :-X

Funny how you can change stuff like that if you know how to. I remember a playthrough when I went through my buddies like a hot knife through butter, because I wanted a certain buddy to become best buddy. I killed them all, literally, to get the one I wanted. Yet I failed. I ended up going back in savegames and tried to find out why someone becomes BB or RB, and eventually found out. I had played around with rescue buddies a bit (get rescued, wound him on the spot, rescue him, wound him again, rescue him, and whoops, he turned into a drug-addicted drooling vegetable on the ground demanding more... and died) that sort of stuff. From all that I learned and composed some tips, and now the tutorial seemed to be coming out of my head and onto the screen without thinking much about it. I hope you and all our members enjoy the game using some of that for fun :)

[wexer9]

Nice! And thanks again. :)

[Yxklyx]

Can you get the extra buddies just by going to their location or do you need to get a mission to free them first?

[mandru]

Yxklyx, you can go straight to their locations and free them at any time but to maximize the mission stats I try to wait until one of the faction doormen sends me out for one of them. After I've freed that buddy I typically will head straight to the other so that I can get their missions too.

I tend to go through the steps of the game's story line pretty methodically which means I'm  probably in more of a routine than many of the other players.

[Art Blade]

If I'm not terribly wrong, going to free a buddy without being assigned a mission first doesn't change a thing, the stats will count it either way as "done"  :)

[PZ]

It still amazes me that a person can ask a question, and someone at OWG will have an excellent answer in a short time - I've had to wait days when I've tried posting at other sites in the past.

Less than two hours and the question has been answered - welcome to OWG, Yxklyx  ;)

[Yxklyx]

Yeah, this is definitely the best site for all sorts of FC2 info!

Playing through the third time now - only on hardcore though.

Do you get Reputation if you free them without a mission in advance?

On a related note...So, is it Reputation that upgrades your safe houses - or is it only the Blue missions? Or perhaps it's only Reputation with your Best Buddy that upgrades them?

If it's just Reputation then it makes sense to do the buddy ones first so that your safe houses will be well stocked for the other missions.

[deadman1]

It´s only the buddymissions ( or blue mission as you call them) that will upgrade your safehouse, the reputation only changes the way the other mercs will treat you.

[Art Blade]

And reputation doesn't change if you go ahead of schedule, and confirming deadman's statement, it would have been a faction mission (not a buddy mission). By the way, if you go free a buddy without being assigned a mission still results in a "Mission accomplished" sort of pop-up message, just as if you had been assigned.

And indeed, welcome to OWG, Yxklyx  :)

[mandru]

Yxklyx, I'm tossing this in just in case it wasn't clear about how the safe house upgrades are awarded.

When you get a faction mission from one of the bosses, your best buddy (BB) calls and asks you to come to a safe house for a briefing and gives you a subverted mission where you perform a different action for the BB first before proceeding to complete the original mission.

If you follow the BB's requests during faction missions you get the upgrades.  :) :-X

[fragger]

Just sticking my head in to say welcome, Yxklyx :)

And PZ is right - questions are answered far faster at OWG than at any other site, due to the preponderance of "FarCryologists" here ;D

Well, actually, not just FC2 questions. Ask anything and you'll get an answer - it's better than Wikipedia ;D