Far Far West Bounty Types: Every Objective Shape

Far Far West contracts look alike from the town board: a map, a main objective, a boss at the end. In the field they are five different games, and a squad built for one shape can lose another in two minutes.

Run phases are covered in /guide/bounty-hunting-guide; this page is about what kind of objective you took.

The five shapes

Every reported objective fits one of five patterns.

The distinction that matters most is whether the objective timer is attached to a place or to a thing that moves. Everything else is a variation on those two.

Stationary defense: the timer is the boss

A drill or ritual site does not care how many enemies you killed. It cares whether anyone was standing next to it.

This is the shape that punishes aggression hardest, because the natural instinct — push out, meet the wave early, feel productive — is exactly what stops the timer. Assign one player to the objective and treat that assignment as unbreakable. The other three fight on a short leash.

Moving escort: leash discipline or nothing

An escort objective converts a firefight into a walking problem. The payload advances whether or not your squad is ready, and it takes damage the entire time.

Three rules handle it. Someone is always on the payload, even during a fight. Nobody runs ahead to clear — clearing ground the payload has not reached is wasted work. Front and rear are different jobs: the front clears the path, the rear kills whatever is following, and the rear player is usually the one who dies.

Escorts are also where spell choice shows. A roaming fire tornado or another self-sustaining area effect is worth more than burst here, because you cannot stand still to aim.

Multi-step machines: a checklist, not a fight

The multi-step objectives — a missile, a cannon, a staged firing sequence — are the only contracts you can fail while winning every engagement. The failure mode is procedural: a valve not turned, a code not found, a leak not plugged.

Treat these as a logistics contract. Send one player to run the sequence while the others hold a perimeter, and accept that the runner will contribute almost no damage.

Reportedly, some of these sequences scale their coordination requirements with party size rather than their difficulty — more players means more charges to load and, on at least one objective, a shorter window to complete the same interaction.

Wave survival: attrition is the enemy

The totem-style objective announces itself and then sends waves until you break the source. There is no route to optimize and no clever angle — only whether your squad can sustain.

That makes it the one shape where sustain effects outrank damage. Healing candles, defensive deployments, and anything that keeps a player standing through wave three matter more than a bigger burst window. It is also the shape most sensitive to party size: reported per-wave kill quotas scale with both player count and difficulty, so four players face a genuinely harder contract.

Do not treat the counter as a target. Kill what is between you and the totem, and spend spare seconds on the source.

Sabotage and build objectives: route efficiency

Producing explosives and planting them is a supply-chain problem wearing a shooter's clothes. The cost is travel time, so plan the route on the approach rather than mid-fight.

Whoever takes this job should be the most mobile player, not the best shot.

Matching a squad to a contract

You do not need four specialists. You need everyone to know which column they are in before the deploy button, because the argument happens at the objective otherwise.

Choosing a contract to skip

Skip escorts when your squad is down a player — the payload does not scale down, and every lost body hurts the rear job. Skip wave objectives when you are low on consumables rather than low on time. Skip multi-step contracts on a first attempt at a new biome, when terrain and prompts are already competing for attention.

Take stationary defenses to farm: the objective does not move, the waves come to you, and the fight is the reward. Bring a gun you have actually upgraded — see /weapons/weapon-upgrades-guide — because nothing in a defense contract rewards a fresh unlock.

Boss behavior at the end of each contract is in /bounties/boss-fights. Squad roles in more depth are in /guide/coop-guide, and the early-game version of this list is in /guide/far-far-west-beginner-guide.

The short version

Ask one question at the board: does the timer live on a place, or on something that moves? Place means anchor and hold. Movement means leash discipline. Checklist means one runner. Waves mean sustain. Everything else is detail.