I reviewed a walk-through, apparently I've done more than I realized, because there's not a whole lot of difference from outpost captures and side-missions (go to a place, kill everything in sight, rinse, repeat).

I'm up to the first Longinus mission (I think). I keep seeing an "L" in the heads-up display (among arrows pointing every which way), so I reckon I should go towards it (?)

They're fun missions, with weapon rewards.

I did the second Sabal mission last night, along with my first Yogi & Reggi mission, the one where they drug you and send you into an arena to do battle unarmed against assorted hordes of dangerous animals and well-armed enemies (charming).

The two Sabal missions are tightly-scripted, race against the clock affairs, so share what I consider a deep flaw in FC3 main mission design. The second one involved racing back and forth across a temple complex to shoot mostly undefended bomb-planters in the back (often with seconds to spare), or simply run up and do a knife takedown. The enemy attackers were not at all coordinated in support of the bomb-planters, but arrived in waves, ran about, and directed fire at me opportunistically, mostly missing (though I did use several health shots). If just two or three planted themselves behind cover and laid down a raking fire, they could have had a perfect kill zone and prevented me from criss-crossing the complex to attack their bombers.

FC3 showed a progression in enemy tactical sophistication, and I'm hoping that will be the case with 4.

I've just done the temple defense mission, I took a slightly different tack. I mined the two road entrances then loaded up on grenades for the launcher and had a huge amount of fun lobbing explosives at trucks and people. I even took out the helicopter when it arrived with two grenades to the engines. Pretty much everything set on fire and the game lets you fire grenades at the people setting the bombs next to the sculptures you're defending. I guess friendly grenade splash damage is turned off... :J

I brought the RPG and took out a few trucks with it. I shot it at the helicopter but it had no effect (maybe I missed, I was too busy shooting the guys who got off it)

I did my first Longinus mission last night, the one where you to the himalayas and hunt for a) oxygen to keep you alive and b) shipment(s) of armaments which turned out to be a small box of large, uncut diamonds for that crazy lying bastard Longinus.

I did that one the other day - I liked the snow buggy-skidoo vehicles. I skinned some of the snow leopards that attacked as the crafting menu showed I needed some of their pelts I could then use for a holster upgrade - but it didn't save them in my inventory. I'm assuming at some point you're able to return to the mountains as that's the only place I've seen the snow leopards...

I used the snowmobile until I nearly went over a cliff. I didn't pause to skin any animals for fear of running out of oxygen. It seems there are three different kinds of leopards (not counting exotic) used in crafting, only one of which is in abundance. I'm hoping the others live on the other side. It turns out the fork isn't really a fork, because my next golden path mission I had to choose again between Amita and Sabal, on whether to defend or burn an opium farm (I went with the former).

I did careen over a precipice in the snow buggy, it was a long way down!

On this play through I'm going to keep choosing the Amita missions. I wonder if there's a route the game elects for you depending on the majority of choices you make, a bit like the star wars games where the more dark side powers you take on the more likely you are to become a sith at the end...

You misspelled "shit". Yeah, the mission structure in FC4 seems pretty loose compared to FC3. I may keep switching sides to see what happens. Not a huge difference between defending a base and defending an opium farm, except sprinklers.

Had my first decent firefight when I attacked a fort surrounded by "mine fields" (actually I encountered only three or four actual mines). I meant to just check it out, but found a way in, got up on a roof and by judicious use of arrows, fire arrows, meat bait and grenades managed to clear out a lot of the defenders before they spotted me and set off the alarm. Then I ran up into another building, did a heavy takedown and used his LMG to take down a couple of choppers. But choppers kept coming, I ran out of ammo and they got me in the end. Best combat I've seen in FC4 though.

The best use of mines is late-ish in the game, where you have to rescue a prisoner held captive in the middle of a series of mined paddy fields, with very little cover.

I really enjoyed the forts. You're going about it the right way: do as much damage as you can by stealth and avoid the choppers completely if possible, because they are bastards. If you do trip them, get to a securable building and snipe at them with the grenade launcher or a rocket launcher.  When secured, the forts often (if not always?) have a buzzer, so they're great bases from which to launch missions.

That sounds very similar to a FC3 mission, rescue prisoner from mine field. I 'm going back at the fortress, pondering whether to go in with the RPG for the choppers, or focus on killing the alarms instead.

Maybe I'm conflating the two. I haev teh olds.

Aye, you're right. That was in 3. You had to snipe the kidnappers on the edge of the mine field, then lead the prisoner through the mines and protect a village on the other side. I'm not saying there's not an analogous one in 4 though.

The forts sound fun, haven't tried one yet, but it sounds as though a rocket launcher will be an asset. That'll be the next purchase.

Yeah that's the one where he leads you up into a village so he can ransack some hut looking for evidence(?) while you fend off a heavy attack.

The fort I attacked is the one nearest the other side which is (for now) verboten. I could have avoided the mine fields completely by following a path to the right that leads up a hill overlooking the backside of the fort (the one part, you'd think, that would be most heavily defended, except it's totally undefended). AFAICT, the main doors to the fort never open, and there's no other way in, unless it's through some cave somewhere.

From there you can just drop in behind a big building and climb a ladder to the roof. The bad news is, once you're spotted, or even if you're not, they can climb the roof too. Bait, and the lions, tigers and bears it brings are your friend.

For my next foray, I'm taking the suppressed sniper rifle and try to get the two main snipers up top before going in, even though they were mostly not a problem -- I killed one with an arrow after he wandered down the stairs inside the fort, and the other had an unfortunate encounter with a jaguar. I'll leave the RPG home, and pray I won't need it.

The sniper rifle is definitely the thing for this one, I just need to block out enough time to complete the mission. Last night after a few false starts I had it down to two defenders twice, but botched the finale and they called in the choppers on me. For some reason the bait thing wasn't working nearly so well, only got a couple of leopards, no tigers or bears, before I ran out.

Here's a fuckload of user-made FC4 maps, untried by me, quality unknown. The loading mechanism seems kludgy, but I dunno.

https://maps.farcry.eu

Finally captured the fort undetected, after about 10 tries over three nights (in which I was detected, got killed by choppers, or aborted). This time my weapon of choice was the sniper rifle, I got about half the defenders from the hill, then got on a roof to take out all but the two heavies, then I went back on the ramparts and went around to the other side, and got them with fire arrows.

Last night I bagged Baghadur in one. Few opportunities for outside sniping, so I rappelled inside and managed to prevail, despite being quickly detected. This time I brought the RPG and used it on a heavy ahd two choppers, the rest were bow and "Rebel" SMG.