Far Cry New Dawn is now available on Xbox One and enhanced for Xbox One X. This time around, the adventure takes place in a superbloom-covered post-apocalypse that’s as vibrant as it is chaotic, but a healthy coating of pink flowers and graffiti isn’t the only thing that’s different about Hope County. To help you get the lay of the brightly colored land, we’ve assembled eight things you need to know before you venture out into the post-apocalypse either by yourself or with a co-op buddy.

Live Long and Prosper(ity)

Nearly everything you’ll do in Far Cry New Dawn begins and ends with your homebase, Prosperity. Here, you’ll take on missions, get to know the locals, upgrade your gear, and even travel outside of Hope County on Expeditions. When you first arrive in Prosperity, you’ll be tasked with heading out to find local Specialists to help you upgrade your homebase. These Specialists won’t go out into the wilderness with you to fight back against the Highwaymen. Instead, they’ll take up residence in Prosperity and allow you to upgrade everything, from weapons to vehicles to explosives.

Using the most valuable resource in the apocalypse, ethanol, you’ll upgrade stations around Prosperity that will provide you with the means to improve your gear. Upgrading your Workbench allows you to craft more powerful weapons, improving your Garage will improve the quality of vehicles available to you, and buffing your Training Camp strengthens your Guns for Hire. And then there’s the Healing Garden, Explosives Lab, Infirmary, and Cartography station; the people in Prosperity are eager to lend a hand against the Highwaymen.

Build Your Roster

While the Specialists needed to build up Prosperity are clearly marked on your map, Guns for Hire are not. If you want to take out the Highwaymen with Hurk, Pastor Jerome, or Timber the adorable genius dog by your side, you’ll have to explore Hope County and take on side missions from captured Outposts. Want Nana, the sniper, to take out your enemies from afar? Or Horatio the massive boar to bulldoze Highwaymen? You’re going to have to find them.

Travel the World

After you earn enough ethanol, you’ll gain access to Expeditions, earning the ability to leave Hope County for smash-and-grab missions at Highwaymen strongholds across the country. Expeditions are missions that take you to a wide variety of memorable locales across the US, including abandoned amusement parks, stranded aircraft carriers, and desert canyons, among others. They are rollicking and raucous adventures, with more enemies to outwit, special packages to search for, and mad dashes through heavy fire to an extraction point once you’ve grabbed your prize.

Expeditions are also excellent ways to acquire many of the resources you’ll need to upgrade and craft your gear. Just make sure you have a varied arsenal for the job. It’s best to try and go in as quietly as possible because once you grab the target package, a GPS tracker attached to it will notify the Highwaymen of your exact position, at which point you’ll have plenty of enemies on your tail and will need all the stopping power you can get. And as an added bonus, upgrading Prosperity’s Expeditions station also means upgrading your helicopter, which opens up the ability for you to fast travel around Hope County.

Level Up

You may notice that your rank one (white) assault rifle isn’t doing much damage to those rank two (blue) enemies and is barely tickling those rank three (purple) and four (gold) baddies. That’s because in Far Cry New Dawn everything, from weapons to vehicles to enemies and wildlife, has ranks. They’re also packing health bars so you can see exactly how effective your weapons are on your current target. If you find yourself up against some Highwaymen that are more than one rank above you, it’s best to retreat and wait until you’ve upgraded your arsenal to take them down. You’ll also need to spend some Perk Points on the Advanced, Expert, and Master Takedown perks if you want to be able to stealthily take down enemies that are rank two and above (which you definitely want to do).

Loot Everything

You’ll likely notice that new weapons and vehicles aren’t exactly coming fresh off the supply line in the post-apocalypse, that means that if you want a new Saw Launcher, sniper rifle, or truck, you’ll need to craft it using various crafting materials. Collecting resources like components, gears, springs, copper, and titanium is your ticket to better gear. Fortunately, locations now show you how much of a coveted resource they hide, so you’ll know just how many rolls of duct tape to look for before packing up and moving on to the next spot.

As mentioned above, you won’t get far without ethanol. While you won’t find it just lying around like you will other resources, there are a few reliable ways to acquire it. The first, and most efficient, is by clearing Highwaymen Outposts. Defeat all the Highwaymen at a particular Outpost, and you’ll claim it for yourself and earn a healthy dose of ethanol – and if you take the Outpost down without triggering alarms or being spotted, you’ll earn even more for your troubles.

While wandering the open world of Hope County, you’ll occasionally see nearby Supply Drops falling from the sky; if you chase them down and claim them before any nearby Highwaymen, you’ll net yourself additional resources, including ethanol. Also, be on the lookout for ethanol truck shipments moving from Outpost to Outpost; successfully highjack one and return it to one of your Outposts or Prosperity, and you’ll secure more ethanol for your cause.

Perks of the Apocalypse

Make sure you’re not so busy upgrading Prosperity, your weapons, and your vehicles that you neglect your Perks. Like Far Cry games of the past, Perks allow you to expand your capabilities and do things like grapple up to high points, hold more weapons, perform takedowns on tougher enemies, and repair broken vehicles. You’ll naturally unlock Perk Points through your progress, but there are a few ways to earn some more. Head to the Challenges menu to find weapon, exploration, hunting, and kill challenges that you can complete for bonus Perk Points (simply killing a bunch of enemies with every new weapon you find is a great way to grab Perk Points early on).

You’ll also be able to get Perk Points by completing Treasure Hunts. Marked with a diamond symbol, Treasure Hunts will task you with solving an environmental puzzle; success will earn you three Perk Points and a nice bundle of resources. Lastly, Highwaymen across Hope County are terrorizing civilians and kidnapping them; save a civilian caught in a tricky situation, and you’ll earn yourself another Perk Point.

Scavenge Outposts and Expeditions

Once you take out an Outpost or complete an Expedition, you’ll have the option to scavenge it, essentially abandoning it to the Highwaymen. Doing so will get you a small dose of ethanol, but also means that the Highwaymen will reclaim the area and repopulate it with tougher enemies and more alarms. At that point, braving the tougher challenge you’ve created and reclaiming the Outpost will earn you even better rewards. Just be sure not to tackle a challenge too early; trying to take down an Outpost or Expedition that’s ranked above your current weapon loadout will likely result in your premature death.

Also, if you set off an alarm at any scavenged Outpost, you’ll trigger the arrival of an Enforcer, a rank four enemy that will make short work of you if you’re packing inferior weaponry. Moral of the story: Scavenging Outposts and taking on higher-rank Expeditions can be lucrative, but be sure your arsenal matches the difficulty rank or you’re in for a rough ride.

What’s that Beeping Sound?

Highwaymen vehicles – with their steel cages, LMG turrets, and graffiti paint jobs – may look like a tempting ride, but beware: if you enter or even approach a Highwaymen ride and hear a beeping sound, it’s best to distance yourself from it as quickly as possible. The beeping indicates the vehicle is booby-trapped and rigged to explode any second, and the blast is enough to kill both you and your Gun for Hire if they’re anywhere near you. If you’d rather not worry about blowing up anytime you get behind the wheel of a car, it might be worth investing in the Hotwire Perk, which will automatically disable Highwaymen booby traps.

Far Cry New Dawn is available now on Xbox One for $39.99 on the Microsoft Store. And if you haven’t played Far Cry 5 yet, you can purchase both games as part of the Far Cry New Dawn Complete Edition and Ultimate Edition bundles.