Ah yeah, the honey badgers. Vicious little buggers in real life and the game.

You realise you're complaining about a game where shooting an animal in the face doesn't kill it instantly, but healing yourself (instantly) from a bullet wound is as easy as digging out the offending shell from your arm and wrapping a bandage around it. As well as all the other stuff that suspends your belief in reality.

Anywho, I suspect you're being a tad faceitous.  :-P

That may be true, but I liked the animals better in FC3, and I like the FC3 guns (and nades) in Ziggy's mod, which deal [more] realistic damage than the pea shooters of 4.

Killed a bunch of rhinos last night (enough for a bigger wallet + bait bag). Grenades definitely helped, but I still had to follow them about and dodge their charges while pumping arrows and bullets into 'em. (strangely the exploding arrows had no effect) A couple I got with handily-emplaced stationary MGs. I went to the Kryat fashion week thing but I missed the interminable and inescapable cut scene where it is all explained while I went for coffee, so I was left clueless as to where these allegedly special critters might be. OK, I get it now, the hunts are initiated at captured bases like in FC3.

Re the story - which fork did you go down? I'm at the point where I've got to choose between the woman and the man, save the people or save the information. Which one did you pick? I've no afflilation for either party, so thought I'd go for the opposite of what you've gone for. We can see how the game pans out.

I went with save the people. I've seen a spoiler since hinting the ending will get real nasty to wit:in this fork you have to kill the nice lady who turns out to be a bad person, and maybe her nice, teenage daughter too. I also see there are a couple of DLCs for FC4, for which I'd have to pony up more than I paid for the game  :-@

Are they an extended Hurk quest and Valley of the Yeti?  The former's a laugh and the lattter's a few hours' play in a whole new map,

The Fashion week accessories are well worth pursuing - they're pretty much an essential part of role progression..

Yeah those are the DLC. If they go sale I might try 'em out. Have you played around with the map editor?

The "rare" animal skins are needed for several wallety/bag upgrades, and quite a few of the better weapons. I went back to several captured bases but didn't see any posted. I got the "warrior" suppressed AR last night and I'm packing explosive and fire arrows, my load out is looking pretty good now.

I got the warrior ar a few days ago, it's best I can get at the moment. I've been getting all the animal skin upgrades I can and have liberated all the bases in the south region (can't go north as yet, it's 'too dangerous').

I'm liking the exploring element and have lost a lot of time to flying around the mountains in the little helicopters just seeing what's there. I started the first mission at the plot fork last night and had to get some intel from dead members of the Golden Path, it referenced some temple complex, not sure what it all means as yet though. The mission was a poorly disguised base liberation and an intro to the hunter bad guys, but I'd already come across loads of them in the base assault tasks, so knew how to deal with them.
 

So you're doing the intel fork? The few story missions I've done since the fork (and it may be just one) involved rescuing captives. I can't even remember if that succeeded, ISTR they all died but I still finished the mission (wtf?).

I'm playing on "normal" difficulty which, apart from some significant new aspects I haven't completely mastered, is a notch below the difficulty of FC3+Ziggy's Mod (reduces stealth, and takes away enemy tagging, seeing through walls and such).

The exploring element is in many ways the best part of the game (IMO), and now I've got the 'swing' of it, I'm really liking the grappling hook. I also like stumbling on hidden caves in random locations.

Aye, I'm on the intel missions, the first one had the golden path members lying in puddles of their own innards while I picked off pirates and looted their bodies for the info. I'm playing on normal as well and apart from the odd rhino encounter I'm finding it fairly easy and though the base liberation missions are an easy win on the surface, it's difficult to win one over without tripping an alarm or alerting anyone.

I hadn't remembered they were part of the DLC (which is/are worth it for Valley of the Yeti alone).  I don't think they're posted. You have to find Mr. Chiffon's fairly unlikely fashion house, whereupon - as I remember - he phones requests to you intermittently.  If you thought your average rhino was a tough bastard, just wait...

Yeah I found my first one last night (the wild dog). Not posted on a bulletin board like FC3, but a map lying on a table. There was an elephant head icon on the outpost after I captured it. I read through a cheat sheet on how to kill each rare animal, they sound pretty tough.

I blowed up the DemonFish®, blowed him up good. Also got the magic whatever "dhole" [dog]. The cheat sheet I read about hunting exotic animals: when there's a whole pack of 'em, it's legal to kill all the others with any weapon of your choosing, you just have to kill the target animal(s) with the specified weapon. So that makes it a whole lot easier.

I ended up on the roof shooting the dhole full of arrows (IIRC, it took 4 or 5) from a safe distance after dispatching his pack brethren with the sawed-off sidearm shotgun up close (a truly spectacular weapon), and sniper rifle from a distance.

You fashion icon, you.

I'm afraid I'll never compete with Min...

He's glorious in pink. I'm quite interested in his portrayal. He's as camp as Christmas, but with no suggestion that he's gay, which is quite grown-up in game characterisation terms.

I did the demon fish hunt thing last night too. Using a grenade launcher to blast them out of the water is some real good fun. When I switched to a rifle to dispatch a boat full of bad guys that showed up half way through it failed the mission saying I'd not used the appropriate firearm. :C

Maybe once you've dispatched the target animal you can use whatever you want. You said you'd shot the target one with arrows first, then moved onto the heavier arms for the other dogs.

Really. Those guys came roaring up just as I arrived at ye fishing hole, I grenade launched them into flaming death, which attracted dude screaming "YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!!!" from the far shore, and proceeded to hose me with a stationary machine gun. Luckily he was very far away, and I had body armor on so I was able to pick him off with my sniper rifle before taking too many hits. Then, while I busy skinning the demonfish underwater, others kept swimming up and biting me. Like, why wouldn't you just haul it up on shore to skin it?