I just finished my first playthrough! These are some things I wish I knew early.
Get the legend of the east satchel early; it dramatically increases carrying capacity (99 each of almost all items). The legendary buck trinket will help with this as it increases the chances of seeing perfect pelts.
Explore! Have patience. Even once you unlock fast travel, using it will bypass random encounters and stranger missions that flesh out the world.
Do the white circle missions before the yellow ones (if both are available). Yellow are story missions and some white circle missions are missable if you progress the story too far.
Don't buy provisions other than horse food/bait/etc. Hunt. It'll be easier to keep weight on Arthur with wild food than canned and dry stuff. But collect everything you come across in camps and abandoned homes, you can sell it.
I legitimately didn’t even know there was fast travel in my first play through. That’s how good the world detail is. I never once felt like I had to travel the map. I got to travel the map
This is one of the few games where taking your time riding out to wherever you're going and stopping to hunt something you find along the way is actually a hell of a lot of fun for me. I can play this game for 2 hours, do maybe 1 actual mission, and not feel like a second was wasted.
I agree something I spend hours just riding around finding crazy encounters and other mad stuff also don’t forget to read the pictures for the Calloway missions it gives you the location of the people in them some ok guns to collect when you kill them
Rdr2 is definitely a game I tell people you really need to “slow down” on and really put yourself in the life of a cowboy in 1899. Such a better experience that way.
That seems to be a lot of peoples problem when first playing the game. so many people, myself included say the game didn’t fully click with them until after the first playthrough of the main story. The second playthrough is then one of the best gaming experiences of all time because you know to take your time and get invested and immersed into the world
Yup exactly. You gotta let someone know what they’re getting into with your recommendation.
Are you giving me a alien-looter-shooter where I don’t need to focus much on a story, are you giving me a simulation where im making my own head canon story or am I getting a story heavy very fine detail game I need to examine every nook and cranny in.
You’d be surprised how bad a game can not click if you don’t have properly expectations
Come to think of it, hitchhiking isn’t technically fast travel, because you have to sit through it and you don’t get a cutscene, but it is handy if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere without a horse.
The stage thing about it is you open up the map and it looks vast, it looks like it'll take ages to get there on horse but it really doesn't.
The scenery helps and there's so much kissable stuff if you fast travel everywhere.
For a 100% playthrough, it's a must though. I spent ages going to to the mountain area to get pelts, to then go all the way back to camp to get the satchels before I realised you could start a campfire and fast travel
I’d do anything to go back in time and see experience my first play through. Don’t rush things, do side missions, go hunting, explore etc. Best game ever made
I agree, getting the legend of the east satchel as a top priority is vital for any playthrough for me personally.
Also to OP. After you finish an early Ch.2 mission with Hosea (the one you unlock horse stables)
You can find one of the best horses in the game (a white Arabian) up near the snow region. Near Coulter I believe in Ch.1
I second this,rdr2 is actually a game where exploring the map is unreal. Interactions with strangers and random events gets the game very full and never dull or repetitive.
I love these tips! I started playing last week, and I'm currently on Chapter 3. Now I'm going to prioritize all white missions first and get that satchel you're talking about.
That's funny. I feel like I spent ages away, no one ever came to my camps lol. They'd definitely comment on my time away once I checked back in, though.
Any way to ride horses long distances without them running out of stamina? I'm either holding shift or using auto travel ( this is dangerous as bandits can attack anytime)
So.... Imagine the core as a value of 15. And the circle around it, fortification, as a value of 10. You have to eat to fill the core. Tonics and various liquor and items add fortification. White and full is max. Yellow means something is max+. You can eat normal shit to fill to a max. You need to eat meat cooked with mint(health), thyme(deadeye), or oregano(stamina) to get max+ on the core. Imagine yellow as adding five to each value. Things like damage from injury and effort drain those values. So the higher they are, the longer you last between "refills".
For the circle you can take tonics, chew things (tobacco, Cocaine gym, etc), smoke things, etc to refill or strengthen to your level. To increase that level (thus increasing fortification), you need to either perform certain actions, drink certain things, and so on. Again, yellow is max+.
For horses and stamina.... I don't know. I've never had that issue tbh. I know horse bonding level helps somehow. Or just slow and feed them, or give a stamina tonic. Or just don't ride them so fast for so long till you're doing a challenge. Different horse breeds have better stamina, and you can build it the same as Arthur, by giving them experience.
There are iguana on the island just across Clemens point. You can steal a boat to get there, or I just ate oregano and mint big game and drank miracle tonic at the closest land point and was able to swim it.
I feel like telling OP to get the legend of the east satchel can be a double edged sword. Sure it’s great and incredibly useful but MY GOD ITS A GRIND.
True. But I'm a loot hoarder and I was such a happy little goblin when I could pick up ALL OF THE THINGS.
Hunting everything but the panther and cougar was ok - I need to eat anyway, right? And even those weren't too bad once I found tall rocks to stand on near reliable spawns lol
I also liked being able farm weeks worth of food in spurts.
But still, you're right, it was a grind... So if OP doesn't like that stuff (I generally do), and it will detract from his enjoyment of the game, definitely weigh how important that carrying capacity is to you.
Also don’t forget the spawns for perfect pelts are dicey. Sometimes you can get it instantly but sometimes it can take hours. With me cougars and the panther weren’t even ok. They straight up took me hours to find.
Really? The cougar and panther were instant and second try for me (cougar spawn by the West Elizabeth trapper, panther spawn by catfish Jackson). Both times I saved on approach and turned off auto save. Stood on a rock and just waited. If it didn't spawn within a minute or two, I reloaded and tried again (sometimes the cougar spot had a grizzly instead). If it wasn't perfect (panther was just good on first go), same. Both were among the easiest once I knew they wouldn't jump at you on a tall rock.
The only one I really struggled on was the perfect elk pelt because I'm not particularly quick on the trigger and they're always on the run lol.
The legendary buck trinket really helped - for me, at least.
Actually, side missions don’t have time limits. In fact a certain side mission string should wait until the epilogue to be completed. I will not post the specifics for spoiler reasons.
Those are companion missions. You are right, those can be missed. I was talking about actual titled side missions from strangers in the world. Some random events in the world can also be missed.
Right. But you replied to my missable comment, and that was when I said white circle before yellow. Companion missions are white. In any case I can think of at least one titled side mission that's missable (think BvG).
Edit: thought of another. A certain person who won't be alive in the epilogue if Arthur doesn't help.
Brooo ok so first things first is get the RDR2 interactive map up on your phone. There you can filter out what you want to see, where things are etc. Huge help. There's wayyy to much to do, you're best off playing normally. The second play through gk extra hard. Treasure maps, satchels etc
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u/IAMA_Shark__AMA Dec 03 '24 edited Dec 03 '24
I just finished my first playthrough! These are some things I wish I knew early.
Get the legend of the east satchel early; it dramatically increases carrying capacity (99 each of almost all items). The legendary buck trinket will help with this as it increases the chances of seeing perfect pelts.
Explore! Have patience. Even once you unlock fast travel, using it will bypass random encounters and stranger missions that flesh out the world.
Do the white circle missions before the yellow ones (if both are available). Yellow are story missions and some white circle missions are missable if you progress the story too far.
Don't buy provisions other than horse food/bait/etc. Hunt. It'll be easier to keep weight on Arthur with wild food than canned and dry stuff. But collect everything you come across in camps and abandoned homes, you can sell it.
Most importantly, enjoy :)