Just Cause 3: How to Liberate Outposts and Bases Easily

Just Cause 3 has a lot of mayhem you can get into. One of the main forms involves liberating locations such as towns, bases, and outposts where the controlling military has planted its flag. Towns are simple enough to deal with since Di Ravello’s soldiers never really put too many defensive measures in place, but bases and outposts can prove to be a nightmare to the un-initiated. While they may be lax elsewhere, they certainly don’t want you taking out their strategic operations, and they will fight you tooth and nail to prevent it from happening.

Luckily there are ways to make Rico’s life, and by extension yours, much easier. A few tips that will keep the bases crumbling and your Chaos score rising.

Know Your Targets

When liberating a base, it can be easy to succumb to the madness and just lose yourself in the killing and exploding of all things. Taking pot shots at snipers, stealing vehicles, hiding as they go insane looking for you, it’s all fun. But you must remember that you’re there for a specific purpose. You must destroy all the military equipment.

Don’t know exactly what that stuff is? Look for the stuff with red bands on them. They’ll be either white or grey (metallic or matte) objects. Destroying them will give you Chaos points and remove them from your checklist on the left side of your screen. 

Tethers Are Your Friends

Your grappling hook does more than just get you around. It can be used to create tethers between any two things, even if one of the things can’t be moved. You can use this to save yourself bullets or to do some really neat tricks. It’s possible to destroy just about everything in the game using this nifty gadget and it will help you out a lot when taking over bases and outposts.

The only time tethers will be useless in Just Cause 3 (at least early on) is when trying to take out extremely large Chaos Items such as those huge satellites, or large communication towers (the ones with all of the radio receivers on them). But everything else is fair game as long as you give it enough leverage. Don’t be afraid to use all of your tethers on one item to ensure destruction. 

Grenades Rock, But Rocks Don’t Grenade

Grenades are a quick way to clear a lot of obstacles quick and easy, but they come in limited quantities. Even when you obtain all of the upgrades, you can only carry five of these deadly throwables. One way to put these things to better use though is to obtain the Glass Grenade mod, which you can get pretty early on by doing a couple of Frenzy challenges.

This makes your grenade explode as soon as it makes contact with something, making life much easier. No longer will you have to deal with enemies running for cover or your bomb exploding after it has already rolled out of range of that fuel tank you were trying to destroy. It’s good to have these nifty items on hand in Just Cause 3 – they’re more common than other types of  explosives in the game, and that’s not too bad of a deal. 

You Have Unlimited C4, Use It

Well it isn’t called C4 in the game, it’s actually called GE-64, but you still have an unlimited amount of the stuff. Now that doesn’t mean you can place it all willy-nilly. You can place only a few at a time, and at first you can place three but as you unlock the necessary Mods, that number increases. Naturally these things are extremely powerful (enough so to take out a bridge). They can bring down pretty much any structure as long as you’re willing to get close enough to plant it. If you’d rather use them against enemies, they make for useful traps as long as you can remember when to detonate them. There also happens to be a Proximity Mod so you don’t even have to worry about timing anymore; talk about a lazy merc’s tool of the trade.

One fun thing to do in Just Cause 3 after you’ve unlocked the Rocket booster mod is to place your explosives on unsuspecting, or strung up, soldiers and watching them blast off. You can even place them on things like animals and use them as rockets (fully organic of course, none of that GMO weaponry here).

Hack SAM Missile Launchers

These are often reserved for bases, but you may find one in an outpost every now and then. They exist for one purpose – to blow up incoming enemy aircraft, and they are damn good at it. If a base has a couple of these, there is no way that you’re going to be able to rain hell on your adversaries in peace. The good thing is that whenever you see one in Just Cause 3, you can walk up and hack it. Doing so will cause them to target your enemies instead, as well as let you get all up in that air space with whatever vehicle you choose.

You’ll want to do this as your first course of action because it will be useful during the halfway point of liberating locations, which is when things can get really hairy. 

Things Change Halfway Through a Liberation

As you’re out there having fun liberating all the places, you may forget that you’re destroying the property of the nation’s dictator. Just Cause 3 is all about fun and mayhem, but even its enemy needs to draw the line somewhere. When liberating a base or an outpost, the military will call for backup about halfway through the invasion. This comes in either land, sea, or air form (usually the first two since many bases are inland). Tanks and choppers are nasty little buggers, but you can deal with them easily.

If you hacked all of the SAM installments in the base first, the choppers will go down as soon as they appear and the missiles will also take out any fleeing commanders. As for tanks, they mark their area of attack, making their fire easily avoided. You can also easily hijack them by landing on top of one and entering it.

Nothing is more annoying than the marine support. Their armored boats deal massive damage with heavy machine guns. Luckily, locations prone to naval attack tend to have bridges with huge gates that block their actual entry. Just stay away from the base’s border and you’ll be alright.

Red is Sniper, Green is Rocket

When liberating enemy positions in Just Cause 3, you will come across two different laser sights aiming for you. One is red the other is green. This isn’t just a matter of preference between enemies, it actually tells you what kind of weapon is being aimed at you and whether or not things are about to get really sour, really fast. Red means a sniper is looking at you. They are physically weak and can often be taken out with a single grapple kick or one punch. A hit will hurt you, but it won’t cause too much of an issue (though being hit in mid-air is annoying). It’s the green ones that should cause panic.

Green means rocket, and those pack a serious wallop. Don’t think you can hide behind the rocket wielder’s comrades either. They care about them less than you do; their priority is killing you. When you see a green laser, find its point of origin quickly and kill the wielder. Keep in mind that unlike the snipers, rocket enemies are always armored. So prepare for a fight or slingshot them to high hell. 

You Can See Targets On Your Map After Doing A Bit of Cleaning

This final tip is for those who can’t find the targets they’re looking for. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of flames and murder, it’s easy to lose sight of your targets. Luckily you have a trusty map. I know that some of you are thinking “you can’t see targets on your map fool,” because I too once sang the same tune. The things is, they don’t show up immediately. Spend a little time in a location and do a bit of clearing targets out. Eventually, the rest will show up in your map.

They’re a little difficult to see since Just Cause 3 uses red icons on a red map (no idea why), but they’re there and you will be able to knock out each and every one of the targets with ease now. How you decide to do so is entirely up to you, just know that it’s no longer a game of hide and go seek, just pinpoint and destroy.

Are you enjoying liberating all of the bases in Just Cause 3? Have any other tips for your fellow Ricos? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

More Just Cause 3

• Just Cause 3 Review
• Just Cause 3: 8 Beginner Tips and Tricks for Maximum Destruction
• Just Cause 3 REALLY Wants You to Get Online
• Just Cause 3: How to Stop Having to Log In Every 5 Minutes