Just Cause 3: Complete Guide

A practical guide to Just Cause 3: traversal with the grapple, parachute and wingsuit, liberating Medici, the challenge and gear system, which mods to unlock first, the three DLC packs, collectibles, and fixes for playing on a modern PC.

Researched September 2026 — current as of Patch 1.05 (July 2016), the last official update, with all three Air, Land & Sea DLC packs released. Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Game Status

Just Cause 3 (Avalanche Studios / Square Enix) launched December 1, 2015 (November 30 in some regions on Steam). The final official patch, 1.05, arrived in July 2016 to prepare for the Bavarium Sea Heist DLC. There have been no updates since, and there won't be. Just Cause 4 followed in December 2018.

The game is complete and stable. On PC you can also play the free, community-made Just Cause 3 Multiplayer (JC3MP) mod by Nanos, which was released on Steam in July 2017 as a separate free download for owners of the game. It is unofficial, and Square Enix doesn't support it.

Quick Start

• Grapple + parachute + wingsuit is how you travel. Grapple to the ground, open the parachute, grapple again to pull yourself along, then switch to the wingsuit to glide. You'll rarely need a car.
• Liberate settlements for fast travel and Rebel Drop. Destroying all the red-striped Chaos objects in a settlement or base liberates it.
• Do challenges to earn Gears. Gears unlock the gear mods that make Rico much stronger. Easy gears early are worth it.
• Unlock more tethers and tether strength first. Tethers are your main tool for destruction and combat.
• Use Rebel Drop. Once unlocked, call in weapons, explosives and vehicles you've unlocked, almost anywhere.
• C4 on everything. Rico's GE-64 explosives never run out; you can only have a few placed at once, and Explosives mods raise that limit. C4 plus tethers is how you clear bases fast.
• Take out SAM sites before flying. They'll shoot you down in jets and helicopters.
• Heat drops if you escape. When the military is after you, grapple out of sight or use the wingsuit to lose them.

Traversal Basics

Rico's movement toolkit is what makes Just Cause 3 different:

Tool | What it does

Grappling hook | Pull yourself toward any surface or pull objects/people toward you

Tether | Attach two objects to each other and retract them together

Parachute | Open mid-air; grapple while under the parachute to keep momentum

Wingsuit | Glide fast and low; grapple the ground to keep speed

Vehicle hijacking | Grapple to a vehicle, then hijack it mid-air or at speed

The grapple-parachute-wingsuit loop: Jump off something high, open the wingsuit, and when you get too low, grapple the ground and pull yourself up again with the parachute, then switch back to the wingsuit. Once you get the rhythm you'll cross the island faster than any car.

Liberation

Medici is divided into three regions — Insula Fonte, Insula Dracon and Insula Striate — made up of provinces. Each province has settlements and military bases to liberate.

Chaos objects (marked with red and white stripes) include:

• Propaganda speakers and billboards
• Di Ravello statues
• Fuel depots and transformers
• Radars, SAM sites and communication towers
• Military vehicles and generators in bases

Destroy all of them to liberate the location. Liberated locations turn blue on the map, unlock fast travel, and count toward liberating the whole province.

Bases are harder: they have SAM sites, heavily armed soldiers, and helicopters. Clear the SAMs and turrets first, then work through the rest.

Challenges and Gears

Challenges are optional activities scattered across the map. Each one gives up to five Gears depending on your score. Gears unlock gear mods in the matching category.

Challenge types include Wingsuit Courses, Races (land, air and sea vehicles), Destruction Frenzy and Shooting Gallery, among others. Each challenge type feeds a specific mod category (for example, wingsuit courses feed wingsuit mods and races feed vehicle mods); the Mods menu shows which challenges unlock which mods. Liberating a province also unlocks the challenges inside it.

You don't have to max every challenge. Pick the mods you actually want and aim for enough gears to unlock them.

Best Mods to Unlock First

• More tethers and stronger tethers. Tethering two things together and retracting them is the core of the game's destruction and combat.
• Grapple Retractor mods — pull objects together hard to tear things apart.
• Explosives mods — more C4 and stronger explosions make liberations far faster.
• Vehicle nitro and ram mods for challenge races.

Weapons and Rebel Drop

Once you liberate your first settlement, you can call in a Rebel Drop: a supply crate with weapons, explosives and vehicles you've unlocked. Drops use beacons, and liberating more of Medici gives you more of them and more to call in. Collect new weapons and vehicles by liberating locations, beating challenges, and finding them in the world.

Useful weapons:

• Assault rifles and shotguns for general combat.
• Rocket launchers for vehicles and helicopters.
• DLC weapons such as the Eden Spark lightning gun (Bavarium Sea Heist) for massive damage.
• Sniper rifles for picking off soldiers on towers.

Story Overview

Rico Rodriguez returns home to Medici to overthrow the dictator General Sebastiano Di Ravello. Allies include Mario Frigo (childhood friend), Dimah al-Masri (the scientist who studies Bavarium), Tom Sheldon (Rico's old Agency handler), and Annika and Teo. The story progresses through the three regions; many story missions are gated behind liberating certain provinces.

The story is short compared with the open-world content. Liberation and challenges take far longer.

DLC: Air, Land & Sea Expansion Pass

Pack | Where | Highlights

Sky Fortress | Above Medici | The Bavarium Wingsuit with guns and missiles; fight the eDEN corporation's floating fortress

Mech Land Assault | The island of Lacos | Mechs with a gravity-gun-style weapon; liberate Lacos from the Black Hand

Bavarium Sea Heist | The waters of West Medici (Scolio) | The Loochador rocket boat; steal the Eden Spark lightning gun from the Stingray base

Bavarium Sea Heist released for Expansion Pass holders on August 11, 2016 and standalone on August 18, 2016.

The Bavarium Wingsuit from Sky Fortress is the biggest change to the base game: it lets you fly with weapons and drastically speeds up liberation. Sky Fortress is the DLC to get if you only buy one.

Collectibles

Collectibles are optional but give lore, achievements, and completion progress:

• Di Ravello Tapes — audio logs of the General.
• Vintage Parts — parts to restore an old car.
• Shrines — hidden around Medici.
• Tombs — ancient crypts with rewards.
• Daredevil Jumps — vehicle stunts off ramps.

Some are marked on the map once you're close or after certain progress. A completion-tracker screen shows what's left per province.

PC Performance and Fixes

• Frame pacing and stutter were common complaints at launch. Patches improved it; the last patch (1.05) also changed thread scheduling. If you still get stutter, cap your frame rate and try fullscreen instead of borderless.
• Long load times — installing on an SSD helps a lot.
• Online "feed" features (leaderboard comparisons) are optional and can be ignored.
• Mods — PC players use community mods for things like infinite tethers, improved graphics and bug fixes. Back up your save before installing.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Driving everywhere. The wingsuit is faster and more fun.
• Ignoring challenges. Without gear mods, late-game liberations are a slog.
• Flying into SAM range. Take out SAMs before attacking a base by air.
• Fighting on foot in the open. Stay moving, use the grapple to reposition, and use cover.
• Forgetting to call Rebel Drops. You don't need to scavenge weapons.
• Chasing every collectible early. Many are easier after you have more mods and the wingsuit mastered.

Advanced Tips

• Tether soldiers to gas canisters or to other soldiers for chaos.
• Tether a statue to a vehicle and drive off to rip it down.
• Use the parachute as a firing platform. Open it, then shoot while hanging in the air above enemies.
• Hijack helicopters by grappling to them.
• Chain C4 on transformers and fuel depots to take out several Chaos objects at once.
• Retractor mods + multiple tethers can tear down radar dishes and towers in seconds.

FAQ

Is Just Cause 3 still updated? No. Patch 1.05 (July 2016) was the last update.

Is there multiplayer? Not officially. The free community mod JC3MP by Nanos adds online multiplayer on PC.

Which DLC should I buy? Sky Fortress for the Bavarium Wingsuit. Mech Land Assault and Bavarium Sea Heist are fun but less essential.

How long is Just Cause 3? The story is relatively short; full liberation and challenges take much longer. How long depends on how many challenges and collectibles you chase.

How do I unlock more tethers? Complete challenges to earn Gears, then unlock tether mods in the Mods menu.

Should I play Just Cause 3 or 4? Just Cause 3 is often preferred for its map and destruction; Just Cause 4 has extreme weather and a different gear system. Both are single-player open worlds.

Sources

• Just Cause 3 on Steam
• Just Cause 3 Steam news (Patch 1.05, Bavarium Sea Heist, JC3MP)
• Just Cause 3 — Wikipedia