Challenges difficulty

[V.4.7™]

Is it just me or the game need godlike skill in order to 5 star challenges ?

I'm ok if it's the shooting challenges, i can 5 star that in no time. However, flying, airplane, boat, and air fortress challenges are just almost impossible to 5 star....unless there are some luck involved.

What the hell dev think putting such a high standard for a challenges in single player game ?
Is it not enough to hide the gear behind the challenge-wall ?

[B.Ombama]

this is a console game hence using controller makes most of wingsuit, plane and helicopter challenges much easier.

[V.4.7™]

Originally posted by B.Ombama:

this is a console game hence using controller makes most of wingsuit, plane and helicopter challenges much easier.

Not complaining about the control, the only thing i'm complaining is its' high standard to get 5 star.
5 star literally need near-perfect execution with no room for mistake at all. Out of many wingsuit challenges, only 3 of them are 5-star, the other are stupidly difficult.

[deeper]

I sympathise, I'm not a natural controller user and struggle to 5 star many of em. To be honest I don't really care for challenge based game play at all and have mostly given up on them, hopefully I can still get to the end of the story missions. I only tried one airplane challenge, it made me want to throw up.

[siftycat]

It just takes a bit of practice. Aside from the bavarium wingsuit challenges, the hardest ones are the longest wingsuit challenges. It took me a while of trying to nail some. Monte Dracon, Mountain Marathon, Maxime, they all require almost every ring perfect, and you have to be really close to scenery at some point, including flying through machinery and through the middle of trees. The bavarium wingsuit challenges need you to use boost and air brake, but you have to use them really sparingly - just tap on the boost and the brake. Also, when you get really close to the ground, tapping left and right actually gives you a bit of lift, so you don't need to apply lift.

For the destruction challenges, for some five stars you have to do things in a very specific order to get it. You have to get and maintain the destruction multiplier early or you won't get it. That's especially important in some, like Tank Frenzy II at Alte Potentia, which bugged me for ages and where I only scraped in by 50 points. For that one before I started shooting I had to get all the vehicles out of the garages and put them in places I could destroy them easily to keep my multiplier up until I got to more chaos objects.

And for the plane challenges you can actually cheese it. Timer doesn't start until first destruction, so get a helicopter and use that instead. Remember the only thing you're restricted by in the challenges is that you can only use what's in your immediate environment, or in the weapon challenges, what you're allowed to equip. But if that immediate environment includes a more powerful or more useful weapon, why not go for it.

[Polaris™]

Ok, I totally understand where you're coming from but I can promise you it really isn't so bad once you get used to the controls in the game.

Regarding the wingsuit challenges, notice you still gain a small amount of points every second as a low altitude bonus. The closer you are to the ground, the higher this bonus is. Use that to your advantage. Try flying somewhat close to the ground between rings - this has the bonus of giving you a little more control and speed as you get air under your wings, as well as the bonus points. Once you do more wingsuit courses, you can unlock the Air Brake mod which will help you slow down quickly in an emergency - very helpful for making some sharp turns or preventing a faceplant. Just make sure you turn off the Quick Close mod once you unlock it, at least during the challenge. This mod auto closes the wingsuit when you go too slow and you should turn it off during challenges to prevent premature failures. I used the wingsuit a lot in free roam instead of fast traveling short-medium distances and I found it extremely useful in getting comfortable with it. Medici has a lot of variation in its environment and going through it without the added stress of a timer and a point challenge is excellent practice!

The first 3 rings of most tours and the final 1-2 rings are usually very easy to perfect, and the final (green) ring actually gives you 7000 points for perfecting it. That's an instant 13-15k for free, right there. So you can use that in your mental calculations to roughly tell how many points you actually need in the middle and whether you can mess up one ring to position yourself better for the next one. You can also 'cheat' on most, if not all, of them, by using the altitude bonus alone in an an open stretch of the course, and just making loops. Make sure not to fly through the rings, and not to go too far from them (the game tells you when you're leaving the challenge bounds), and you can trick the game into thinking you're still doing the course without completing the rings until the very last minute. There are tutorials on YouTube for this, and this is especially helpful for the super long tours like Maxime and Mountain Marathon.

For destruction challenges, many of them have a tank or armed helicopter available on the premises. Just hop into one and go to town ;). Be wary, though, as some frenzies are very tight with their scores and you need to make maximum use of your multipliers. Notice your multiplier increases by 1 every time you destroy any military asset, not just big chaos objects. So start off your challenge by searching around for a bunch of vehicles, preferably jeeps and buggies, and if you need a quick boost to your multiplier score, just take a few shots at one. Also note the timer only starts on the first destruction. So if you know there's a more resistant object you need to break (e.g. a large Satcom Dish) which could halt your progress and waste your multiplier, you can just take a few potshots at it before you blow up some smaller objects and come back to actually destroy it.

Each type of chaos object has its own base score, so prefer to destroy the bigger objects with an 8x multiplier only. Most vehicles (jeeps, boats, helis, tanks) are worth 75, Satellites and Doppler Radars are worth 100, Fuel Tanks and Transformers are worth 200, Core Electrical Units and Large Satcom Dishes are worth 800, etc, when destroyed with a 1x multiplier. Maybe my numbers are slightly off, but you get the point. Blowing up a Large Satcom with a full multiplier nets you 8 x 800 = 6400 points. That alone is 1 whole gear, or more, for most challenges. Also, running out of time doesn't always mean the challenge ends. Having an active multiplier will let you continue destroying stuff, though the boost will run out more quickly. If, despite knowing this, you still have trouble with a particular challenge, I'm sure many others would have had trouble too, and there's probably a tutorial on YouTube for that.

Land races are generally very straight forward. Although the driving in JC3 is long reputed to be very poor, the single best car for these is the Mugello Farino Duo (lookalike of a Formula 1). There are some spawn points with their own drop rates, but the most reliable method to get one is to liberate Citate Di Ravello in the province of Regno and start the 'City Sprint' race. The default car is the Farina Duo, and you can just drive it to a rebel garage without even needing to complete the race. It is very poor at off-roading, though, so for challenges with a lot of off-roading, the best car is the one they usually give you by default, the Urga Ogar (military dune buggy). If you don't get it by default and you haven't unlocked it in Rebel Drop, you can get it by liberating the Le Tutor military base in Sirocco Nord. If you're forced to use a bike, either just go with any of the options (all the bikes are equally trash at handling) - there are only 2 such races and they aren't very strict on timing, or 'cheat' and drop in a Rebel Drop car just before starting the race. You can't use Rebel Drop during challenges, so call it in just before starting and any car should do the trick. You could also just hijack a civilian vehicle if there's a road nearby (I did this for at least 1 if not both of them.)

There isn't much to be said about Air and Sea Races. The single best boat for all water races is the Pescespada SS, which also happens to be the default for almost all of them. It's one of the fastest boats in the game, barring the Loochador and the Squalo X7, but it's far more maneuverable than either of them. You can get it in Rebel Drop by easily finding one in a coastal region or driven by a civilian in the sea. The single best plane for air races is the CS7 Thunderhawk, which you can unlock by liberating the Griphon airbase in Costa Sud. There are 2 helicopter races, out of which Volo Metropole is the more notorious one. Using the Urga Mstitel or the CS Navajo is your best bet and there are guides online for this as well.

One thing to be noted: some races (land, sea and air) are simply impossible without the respective Nitrous and Boost Jump mods. You will see which ones very easily just by attempting them for the first time. Luckily, unlocking these mods doesn't require 5 gears in all the challenges, getting 3-4 in most should be enough, and then you can retry for a perfect score :).

Crash Bomb challenges are what I found the toughest. The most notorious is the Laguna Blast, which is unfortunately bugged, and probably won't be patched considering it hasn't been fixed in the last 4 years. There are several workarounds on YouTube, but these methods are nonetheless unreliable. If you really want those 5 gears, be ready to attempt these methods dozens of times. There is sadly no foolproof way of getting 5 gears on this. The other blast races are mostly fine, and the only thing of note is to look around for faster routes to your destination. The timer starts even before you enter the vehicle, so make sure you know what you're doing and where you want to go. Many of these take place on roads, but there are often shortcuts and obstacles - just be careful you don't flail off your wheels or fall into a ditch and you should be fine. You do get a small bonus for blowing up more of the actual target - though its only a few hundred to a thousand-odd points, this can often be the key between a 4 and 5 gear performance. Some targets can only be approached from a particular angle or direction, just be wary of this.

You mentioned you had little difficulty with Shooting Galleries, so I'll not go too much into it. The only tip I'd suggest, if you aren't doing it already, is to consider using mouse + keyboard for these specifically and controller for the others (especially the wingsuit ones). You should be fine either with MKB or a controller for most challenges anyway, but since many controller users get used to aim assist while shooting, it can be difficult to get the bullseye consistently.

Scrapyard challenges are, in my opinion, some of the easiest challenges in the game. The default Humvee they give you is more than enough to protect you from the soldiers that turn up every now and then, and offer you enough speed and control to gather the Bavarium. The timer is very generous if you do it right: just attach the magnet with the tethers, activate it, and start driving around. Warehouses contain tons of the ore and you can gather a massive stockpile in 30-45 seconds and just dump it all in the first time round. You should gain a massive time boost and gain anywhere from a third to a half of the required points. Just rinse and repeat, and you can finish most of them in 2-4 hefty trips with 20+ seconds to spare after getting the 5 gears.

I hope you found this helpful, I tried my best to be as descriptive as possible. I really enjoyed this game and I think the challenges felt appropriately challenging in this game without getting too grindy, repetitive, or plainly easy (save for the bugged and obviously miscalculated ones), and it did feel quite rewarding to get the full 5 gear trophy. I wish you luck in 100 percenting this game, and I promise it isn't a hard game to perfect. It just needs a little practice and patience ;).

[V.4.7™]

Originally posted by Polaris:

I wish you luck in 100 percenting this game, and I promise it isn't a hard game to perfect. It just needs a little practice and patience ;).

Quite a wall of text there, but thank you for thoughtful reply. I will try to perfect the score later when i finished the DLCs.
I love traveling by wingsuit too, especially when it's enhanced by the jetpack. However most of the time i always end up headbutted either ground or tree. Lol.