Crossing California is the point at which the game stops being a shooter and becomes a journey. Transport is a whole subsystem, and it has its own economy.
Horses are purchased from livery stables scattered across the island — only four or five in the entire map, which makes finding one a genuine destination rather than a shop you walk past. Every horse you buy is a specific animal with its own stats, not a generic mount: think of them as individuals rather than tiers.
Keeping more than one horse requires stables on your ranch, which is an expensive recipe at roughly 125–175 gold of shared Company currency. Plan the economy before you plan the stable yard.
| Stat | What it affects |
|---|---|
| Speed | Maximum travel velocity on flat terrain |
| Stamina | How long the horse can gallop before needing rest |
| Endurance | Rate of stamina recovery and sustained performance |
| Temperament | How the horse reacts to danger — calm versus skittish near enemies |
On top of stats, individual horses carry perks — a Mountaineer bonus for steep slopes, or a bonus tuned for roads versus rough terrain. Matching the horse to the job is a real decision: a coastal runner and a mountain sure-foot are built for completely different routes across an 80 square kilometre map.
Bond levels up with use, and naming your horse unlocks around bond level 2. If your mount dies, expect a respawn cooldown of roughly five minutes and lost bond XP — a mild punishment that discourages riding into fights you cannot win.
Mules are available early for roughly 50 bucks — slower than horses, but a large upgrade over walking, and they serve as your first mount until you can afford a proper horse and build stables. Like horses, mules and horses deal trample damage when ridden through enemies or wildlife, which makes a charge a legitimate tactic in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 area.
Every outpost has a stagecoach driver. For approximately 5 bucks, the coach carries you in-world — not a teleport — to other discovered outposts, at a speed far beyond a mule. Two details make it more than fast travel: AI cannot target you while you are on the coach, and you can shoot enemies from it, though you must dismount to loot what you kill. A long corner-to-corner ride runs around thirty minutes, which is exactly the MMO-continent feeling the developers were aiming for.
The other road fixture is Salvador, a wandering vendor who roams the roads playing a stolen vihuela. He sells rare items including Tier 3 weapons and valuable recipes, and his inventory rerolls every in-game day — that is, every real hour. If you can hear the guitar, he has fresh stock.
Fishing is a fully-fledged side system with more depth than its reputation as a minigame suggests. Species vary by time of day (some only spawn at night), by weather (some only appear when it rains) and by location — river, lake or ocean — and the game contains a large number of unique fish. You need a Crude Fishing Pole to begin, available as a recipe from outpost vendors or as a job reward.
The catch feeds the cooking system for food buffs or can be sold for bucks. The distinctive twist is the fish head currency: a dedicated fishing vendor buys fish and accepts fish heads as a separate currency, which he then accepts for specialised fishing gear and supplies. It creates a self-contained fishing economy inside the larger economy, and the developers have openly joked about the absurdity of carrying bags of fish heads as money.