This guide is a compilation of advice that I would give to players looking to 100% RDR2, and more generally how to optimize your start in RDO.
Disclaimers
This guide was made by a player intending to play Red Dead Online (RDO) in order to complete 100% Steam achievements for Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2). While my main goal was to get the achievements quickly after completing the main game, it should be said that there are legitimately fun activities that only a multiplayer setting can offer and are unique from the main game, but RDO does require a considerable time investment to access much of these activities. I do not know how much time I spent in RDO, and I did not buy in-game currencies or extra content with real world money.
RDO’s time investment is not limited to needing to grind out XPs to reach the Rank 50; it will require multiple weeks of playing every day and completing a routine of challenges, roaming between locations to find collectibles, work with and against other players, hunt, fish, and complete missions in order to have steady RDO Money and “Gold” collection.
Familiarity with RDR2, its game-play, and world space are recommended for playing RDO. While RDO inherits some of the same systems from the main story, many have been re-contextualized and adapted for online play. Notably, in-game money is not as easy to come by as the main game and cannot be used to buy everything, instead requiring “Gold” and “Role Tokens”, which require more time investment to acquire.
In short, going for the RDO achievements will take some time, patience, and coordination with strangers or friends.
On the other hand, 100%ing RDR2 past the main game may not be a fun activity for some players, and it is totally acceptable to recognize this before committing to a long term, sometimes torturous, if not asinine, experience.
This guide was also written in retrospect, not while currently playing or having the game installed. Exact descriptions or photos of game systems will likely be missing, however the general advice should still apply. RDO’s early game tutorials are a bit overwhelming due to subsequent updates, but the player will get a handle on how to operate the menus and RDO features with practice.
RDO and its gameplay features are subject to change as it continues to update with special events or adds/removes content.
Warnings
To the best of my knowledge, RDO uses the same online functionality as Grand Theft Auto Online and is susceptible to the same security flaws that plague that online space. From what I’ve heard, hackers can use this to monitor your playtime across servers, even if they are not visible to you. Likewise, your computer or internet router could be attacked by these hackers.
In my experience on RDO, hackers are commonly seen through out servers. I’ve seen hackers mostly after midnight (in the US), so finding playtime during midday reduces your chances of being on the same server. Some hackers are malignant, who attempt to kill players in the middle of missions, or otherwise annoy the player. A common activity has been setting off explosions at player coordinates, which could set them on fire if they aren’t moving and spooks their horses. Others are simply using hacks in order to play the game differently, such as being able to hear and broadcast voice chat across the entire server or spawning in custom structures.
As examples of hacker activities, I’ve seen hackers launch massive fireballs/meteorites to kill me and my horse, spawn hostile animals in towns, commit to server-wide role-play as Dutch Van der Linde, spawn legendary Sturgeon while saying “I am a Sturgeon,” set off dangerous explosion particles while on horseback, spawn a custom fight arena, hijack competitive Player vs Player modes with invincible armor and auto-lock aim assist, and spawn random props, like the UFO or statues from the main game, on top of the player’s model. I also suspect that at one point, a hacker may have shut down the internet to my building.
RDO has many bugs and problems that make simple, essential activities irritating, broken, or game breaking. The most noticeable of these problems is the Horse Stable glitch: upon entering any stables, the trader UI may be unable to load up properly, leaving players stuck inside the stable while the camera is a far shot of the building or the trader without the menu to navigate or exit. Players will have to force shut down the app and reload RDR2. The solution to this issue is for players to shoo away their horse before entering the stable, watching them completely leave the field of view of the player, then walking, not running, into the stable.
RDO also has several other minor bugs and issues that I don’t have a complete list of, but any experienced player would know and expect. Some of these issues are minor, such as weirdly long load times for missions or finicky game controls, which players can and have adapted too. Others directly obstruct players or ruin missions and online events, such as vehicles spawning incorrectly leading to damage to cargo and causing mission penalties, missions not starting properly if at all, or NPCs spawning improperly causing missions to fail. Above is an instance where copies of the player model spawn when exiting a mission, and below is an image of a headless bounty target in an online event, making the event impossible to complete fully and moderately wasting everyone’s time. These “NPCs that should be dead but aren’t” problem is not unique to online events and have ruined regular missions.
Ethical Concerns
Before beginning your RDO journey, players should know and expect that Rockstar, the developers of Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto and their online spaces, have all but confirmed that RDO will not be a major focus of the company and its developers. This is all to say that Rockstar does not have many resources going toward RDO and, by most indications, players should not expect major content updates or fixes in the near future. The consequence of this is that RDO remains blighted with glitches, bugs, and security issues since its launch in 2019, with no hint that they’ll address these issues.
So, why the “Ethical Concerns” heading? Well, RDO is still a money making venture to Rockstar, and new players should know and expect that RDO has micro-transactions to make the game easier for players in gaining money, gold, and XP.
The major point of contention is that Rockstar has not demonstrated its willingness to fix many of the issues of RDO, yet will continue to dangle micro-transactions as a solution to irritating and repetitive game design choices.
If players intend on playing RDO at all, let alone for the 100%, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND TO NOT SUPPORT RDO BEYOND THE INITIAL PURCHASE. Rockstar are not unique with this monetization strategy, but that doesn’t make it right, and they don’t deserve or need the support with how they treat RDO.
Optimizing Your Start
What will happen when you start up RDO
When the player starts RDO, they will be introduced with a prologue session where you customize your plain avatar and start a couple of tutorial missions. You’ll be introduced to some story characters, pointed to Story mission quest givers, then unleashed into the full online space.
Between figuring out what the player can do and what you should do, RDO’s tutorial automated notification system may come off as overwhelming or moving too quickly. I recommend looking at the Help menu option and spending some time going through menus and testing buttons to see what has been adjusted for RDO from RDR2.
You will have very little to do when you start up RDO. Most of the in-game activities are restricted to higher levels or locked behind gold paywalls. The most you can do are complete “Free Roam missions” from NPCs, a limited number of “Daily Challenges” generated every day, compete in Multiplayer Modes, and completing Story missions. The player will also have very limited equipment and money, and there will be some adjustment moving from RDR2’s single-player systems into RDO’s counterparts. Below is an example multiplayer mode:
General Advice and Starting the Story Missions
Players looking for a great time to start should be looking for events that double gold in Story missions, and should start completing Story missions are soon as possible. Story missions give gold and money as rewards, in addition to money and ammo that players can loot off bodies. Compared to Free Roam, Story missions can be much more enjoyable and, if boosted by an event, can be more worth the time investment. To be clear, events could also boost Free Roam missions and can also be worth doing, but there is very limited story elements or variability in their design, making them not as fun.
Other event features may include discounts on certain guns or the price of Roles. Players should immediately take advantage of this when they are active. When I started, stagecoaches, the RDO fast travel system, were completely free, making getting around the map and starting out much, much cheaper.
An important rule to remember for RDO is that it is much easier to gain Honor than to lose Honor. In RDO, you could sneeze and gain Honor. This is a joke, but seriously, nodding at any stranger, patting your horse, brushing your horse, feeding your horse, completing missions, letting fish go, etc., very easily wracks up your Honor level. To get low Honor, you actually have to try to get low Honor, and even then good luck, because it usually involves killing entire towns of NPCs several times, and then you get a bounty on your head for other players to collect.
This brings us to our next important point on starting Story missions: There are branching Story missions based on your Honor level. There are certain Story missions that are reserved for high Honor players, and other which are reserved for low Honor players. Since our short term goal is to complete all the story missions, this means we’ll need to go from one to the other.
I recommend starting with the high Honor missions and getting financially secure, then committing mass atrocities in one of the towns, completing the low Honor missions, then very quickly moving back up to high Honor. Both branches only have a few missions, and should be easy to queue up for. Story branch missions will both converge into one finale once both are completed. It should be mentioned that there are Story missions after the first part, however, they are not required for 100% achievements, and iirc, they are behind a paywall*.
Generally speaking, in both RDO and RDR2, you are going to have a lot of downtime riding around the countryside shooting bandits. I would recommend taking the opportunity to play long podcasts or music during these periods. This will be a serious time commitment but that doesn’t mean you should neglect your other entertainment, if not to maintain your sanity. Remember, this process should be enjoyable, and if it isn’t for you, its okay to quit.
Awards, Getting to Know Them
Awards are found in the Player menu, and are RDO’s adaptation of RDR2’s Challenges. In RDR2, there are certain challenges to complete with a variety of rewards, along different themes of game play, like Gambling, Thieving, Horse Riding, etc. RDO replaces this system with statistical trackers and one-off challenges. Some Awards may look like the single-player challenges, such as riding between locations under a certain amount of time, but others are tracking how much the player does something, such as shooting head shots, killing enemies with each type of weapon, buying or selling items, or how far the player rides by rail. If I had to describe it, I would say it could very easily fit into a hardcore RPG or MMO. In other words, players should expect to complete most of these naturally and over time.
Gold buckles are cosmetic items for completing Awards; these are necessary for an achievement. Some Awards can only be completed once, others are designed to be done repeatedly, by doing one task 1000 times. If an Award is completed, players will get an XP bonus. Awards for tasks done 1000 times are listed in stages, with each stage also giving an XP bonus.
Awards for tasks done 1000 times can be reset, meaning you’ll still have your gold buckle, you’ll get a little bit of gold, an extra prestige marker in the menu, and you can continue to work on the Award and get more XP. This is especially useful for Awards you’ll be doing your entire play through, such as shooting any type of gun or getting head shots.
But why do them at all? For new players, Awards are a great source of gold and XP, other than completing missions and Daily Challenges, which are needed to unlock specialist Roles. Quickly taking the time to look through the Awards in the player menu, at least once, will help guide the player in recognizing what they can be doing to quickly make some more gold. This will be helpful especially for players who do not start their 100% attempt during an event that boosts rewards for early player missions.
Ability Cards
Ability Cards are a unique feature to RDO, which give a variety of passive strengths to the player. Players will gain more cards and card slots with higher ranks. When players gain XP, they will be working towards leveling up these Ability Cards, each with 3 levels. Players can get stronger passive effects by paying hundreds of dollars to level them up.
In my experience, these cards are a drain on early game money, but can be useful in helping a player create their play-style. I would recommend experimenting with them, but not focusing on leveling them all up, and to not upgrade them past level 3 until the player is financially stable and knows how they want to play. These ability cards are not part of the 100% play through, but they are a mechanic worth knowing about.
Gameplay Priorities
Beyond the Story Missions
So, now that you’ve started and completed the Story missions and know what Awards can do for us, now it’s time to plan out your next steps so that you can complete the achievements comfortably. I have listed the order of some short and long terms goals to hit as you play through the game:
- Start Blood Money Missions
- Buy weapons needed for Daily Challenges
- Get 15 gold bars
- Buy the Bounty Hunter License
- Complete Bounty Missions to Rank Up
- Collect the Reinforced Lasso and Bolas
- Buy the Collector’s Satchel for 15 gold bars from Madam Nazar
- Rank up by collecting items across the map
- Collect the Field Shovel, Metal Detector
- Start the Naturalist Role, complete tasks
- Start the Trader Role, complete tasks
- Collect the Prisoner Wagon, Refined Binoculars
- Start the Moonshiner Role
Because of the way RDO is set up, gold is the most precious currency we need to advance. Gold should very rarely be used and only used on important items on the list above. Money will be needed to buy guns, ammo, and some of the same supplies as in RDR2. It’s important to get a lot of money, as prices are greatly inflated for things like weapons and crafting recipes compared to RDR2, however not as important as gold, which opens up new game play opportunities and accesses important equipment.
Because money is quite precious early on in RDO, I would not recommend buying clothing for your character until you start getting higher paying missions. Looting as many bodies as possible in every mission you complete goes a long way to becoming financially stable. Clothes are quite expensive, and can better be used on buying weapons. Likewise, having more than 1 horse increases your regular stable fees, meaning you’ll have to work harder for cash, when you only need the 1 horse. Inexplicable cloned horse photo below:
1. Starting Blood Money Missions is going to be your first short term goal, as it opens up new activities and increases your money and gold collection over Free Roam missions. These missions are given by similar NPCs to the FRM, however they have more story and more in-depth game play opportunities than FRM, making the grind more tolerable. By completing Blood Money Missions, we are hoping to collect money, gain XP, and especially gold faster so we can get to 15 full Gold bars. When completing Blood Money Missions, you may get “Capitale,” which can only be used to get one time access to a more intricate, elaborately designed missions. These missions can be fun, however, they are not required for the 100%.
2. Buying select weapons for the Daily Challenges are going to prove crucial to keeping up a daily streak and maximizing XP and gold collection. Daily Challenges are going to be random activities that will require the player to have certain weapons to kill certain animals properly, just like RDR2’s hunting system. Additionally, expanding your arsenal opens what Awards you can complete.
Players will be given a revolver and a repeater, so they should get the Pump Shotgun, Bolt Action Rifle, Varmint Rifle, the Bow, the Volcanic Pistol, and the Tomahawk. If you are money rich and there is some sort of weapon price sale event going on, feel free to upgrade to weapons you prefer, but the goal is to diversify your arsenal. This is an ongoing process, but these should be early goals. To save on money for ammo, make sure to loot bodies after missions. Never use gold to buy weapons
3. Getting 15 Gold bars now opens us up to buying into a RDO specialist Role, which opens new activities and equipment that will make the achievement collecting much, much easier. Once you have gotten 15 Gold bars, you are going to go to Rhodes to buy a Bounty Hunter License.
4. Buying a Bounty Hunter License immediately opens up the game to new money and gold making opportunities on the sheriff bounty boards. This will also open up Bounty Hunter Role Daily Challenges, which can double your daily XP and add rewards for completing basic tasks. Completing lots of bounties will fast track your collection of money, XP, and will help you rank up.
5. Ranking up your Roles will unlock new, helpful abilities, such as Divination, which tells the player if they are close to a collectible, or expands your satchel. Rank ups also gives you Role tokens, which can be used across any Role to unlock equipment and cosmetics.
6. As a Bounty Hunter, your first equipment unlocks from your Role should be the Reinforced Lasso, which will make lassoing enemies much easier. A new weapon, the Bolas will also eventually be unlocked, which may be a part of your Daily Challenges, and gives a farther ranged way to lasso an enemy.
7. Continuing the Daily Challenge streak and completing missions will eventually lead you to another 15 gold bars, meaning another Role. The Collector is the easiest way to make tons of XP and fast money on a daily basis, by picking up collectible items found in the wilderness and every major and minor location. It is critical that you start the Collector after the Bounty Hunter, as it would be harder to collect gold in the opposite order, and is necessary to completing the achievement for getting to Rank 50. The Collector Satchel can be bought from Madam Nazar, a roaming NPC with a different daily location. She can be found on the in-game map or at the linked map later in the guide.
8. As you play the Collector Role, you will slowly unlock different types of collectibles, starting with Tarot cards, moving into whiskey, jewelry, then fossils. You can sell these individually to Madam Nazar, or collect a whole set and sell those for much higher prices. I have always found multiple copies of the same item from doing regular runs of locations, so I tended to sell them individually, however, with online resources you can also target specific items and complete whole sets faster. You can also buy maps for money from Madam Nazar to show 3 item locations by type, but using maps is often a Daily Challenge for this Role, plus its quite easy to find them if you know where to look.
9. The best equipment in the game is hands down the Collector’s Field Shovel and Metal Detector, as it unlocks buried items and turns every ride through the countryside into a profitable scavenger hunt. Its an unstoppable XP combo that can’t be ignored.
10-11. After Bounty Hunter and Collector, you’re really open to doing either Naturalist or Trader. Starting Trader is like starting a business simulator, but it isn’t all that profitable or easy compared to Collector or Bounties. Naturalist might be a better choice, as players constantly find themselves in nature and around animals, which need to be sampled for study. Again, these Roles will open up more Daily Challenge opportunities, so at least starting them will boost your gold, money, and XP.
12. The Bounty Cart, while incredibly helpful in completing bounties, is also expensive, unwieldy, and vulnerable (like a lot of RDR2’s carts). While it will certainly help in catching bounties with several targets, I’ve found that certain bounties can be completed with just a horse. The Refined Binoculars are a later unlock for the Collector, which are a slight improvement, but the ability to see collectibles at a distance isn’t all that practical. I recommend getting them both later, but other guides might disagree on the cart.
13. Lastly, the Moonshiner role is an offshoot of the Trader role, as you need to progress to a certain point in order to unlock it. It will see you starting up your own business in moving alcohol and fighting rival gangs. By this point in the guide you should be fully set up, so its not essential, but people quite enjoy it for its extra story content.
Daily Priorities
Getting 100% achievements in RDO is not going to be easy; in fact, it’s going to be very time consuming. RDO is designed to retain players over long periods of time, and this contributes to asinine economic constraints and the necessity of daily play. While RDO can be fun, it is designed to get people coming back everyday and to spend money on micro-transactions to circumvent these obstacles. I did not give Rockstar the satisfaction of gold purchases, and I don’t think you should either; however, this does mean you will need to prepare to login every day and play for 30 minutes at least.
Below are what you should do be doing every day:
- Completing Daily Challenges
- Completing Role challenges
- Completing bounties
- Finding collectibles
Completing Daily and Role challenges are really easy to get into the habit of. Routing which activities you can complete efficiently becomes a skill that evolves over time, especially when Dailies include activities like “needing to kill bandits with head shots” and Roles include needing to complete “go on 2 bounties in an hour;” both can be worked on at the same time. There should be at least one that can be easily completed each day. As stated before, getting all the equipment necessary to complete more Dailies will make this a lot easier.
Other Routing Tips:
- Looting as many bodies on every mission you complete or bandit hideout you clear can dramatically increase your money gains, but watch out for the mission timers.
- Using the server swapping mechanic to change regions, such as moving to the remote north or from opposite ends of the map, is a cheap alternative to stage coach fast travel.
- Often when completing a bounty, the bounty location may have at least one collectible nearby. If not, where you turn in the bounty will.
- At higher Collector ranks, collectible items like jewelry and whiskey can be looted off dead bandits.
- Whiskey collectibles can also be drunk for enhanced status effects, and may be a Daily Challenge. Always having a surplus of every collectible will be helpful.
- Always be picking up herbs, especially Creeping Thyme, Wild Mint, and Oregano, and always have different types of meat in reserve. Dailies love cooking seasoned meat challenges.
- New Austin, the southern desert state, is a lot more empty and harder to travel through efficiently. If you were needing to complete a lot of tasks quickly, I would not recommend starting in New Austin. Likewise, crossing the river north of Blackwater will never not be difficult.
- You can ride directly between any two points in New Hanover or the non-swampy parts of Lemoyne. Knowing this greatly helps with timed missions, or even losing players after your bounty.
- Some dailies specify animals to skin, their meats, or certain herbs. Knowing certain locations for certain animals will be helpful, especially if they are near to fast travel points.
A Greatly Helpful Resource: https://jeanropke.github.io/RDOMap/
This is a fan-made, interactive map showing RDO’s daily collectibles, bandit hideouts, train and boat locations, and the regular event clocks. This is an invaluable resource in finding any random thing the Dailies ask of the player, including heat maps of specific animal locations.
If you have longer time to play than just 30 minutes, I would also recommend jumping into the regular server events or queuing up for any of the multiplayer game modes, as they will break up the experience nicely. Races can be quite fun too, so long as everyone is playing fairly. Even if they beat you by 9 hundredths of a second!
Achievements
The order of the achievements may or may not be the order which you get them; I tried to list them in what I thought could/would be done first and last.
Breakout
Complete the introduction to RDO
This includes some cinematic cut-scenes with important story characters, character creation, and completing one mission. This achievement is nearly impossible to miss.
Gun For Hire
Accept 10 Free Roam Missions from Characters around the world
As previously discussed, new players will have very little to do in RDO when they start out. New players have 2 main options to progress, completing the Story missions, or completing Free Roam missions. Talking to strangers around the map will give players a choice of missions to complete, after needing to complete one introductory mission. Strangers can be found in every town and train station, represented with a white icon of a person.
Eventful
Play 5 Free Roam Events
Free Roam Events are special server activities where many players compete or work together in a special game mode. Every 45 real-world minutes, one of these events starts, with about 3 minutes for players to accept the invite. The event doesn’t need to be full to count towards this achievement, but it would be less fun. A good activity for gold and XP, if not for breaking up challenges and Story missions.
Picked to Perfection
Pick 25 Herbs
RDR2 players would know this is pretty easy. Herbs are located everywhere on the map and can be located using eagle eye. For RDO, picking herbs and selling them to doctors is an easy way to make money, but remember to hold on to some of every type for crafting challenges.
Butchered
Sell 20 Items to the Butcher
Another easy achievement for RDR2 players. Butchers are located in Blackwater, Strawberry, Valentine, Rhodes, Tumbleweed, and Saint Denis at the same places as in single-player. Players can sell a full carcass, meat, skins, or items like teeth and claws at any of these vendors.
Getting Started
Reach Rank 10
At this point, having completed many story missions, Free Roam Events, Free Roam Missions, and doing any activity with boosted XPs, this should be an easy task for players. Other easy ways of gaining XP for early players include getting head shots on horseback, completing Role missions, and completing Awards.
Master Craftsman
Craft 20 items (excluding ammo)
This achievement can be completed quickly and early with the seasoned meat recipes that every player gets at the beginning of the game. The player will need at least 20 of the seasoned herbs, Oregano, Thyme, or Wild Mint, and nearly any meat type. Animals and fish, like deer, elk, boar, rabbit, bear, salmon, pickerel, will be some of the most common animals to get meat from. The player will need a campfire to cook the recipe, which can be at either the player’s camp or any number of campfires around the world map. There’s one open campfire in at least every town or on the outer limit of it. Seasoned meat recipes are often one of the daily challenges, so waiting to complete this is also acceptable.
Buckle Up
Achieve 5 gold belt buckles from Awards
In RDO, instead of the challenge paths of RDR2, Awards are numerous possible activities that the player can progress at any time by doing nearly any action. Gold belt buckles are cosmetic items for completing these activities either once or some tasks 1000 times. Looking through the Awards and picking 5 activities that one need to be done once will be the fastest method. In my opinion, the easier gold belt buckles are the time trial challenges on horseback, visiting every town, every train station with a post office, and visiting 50 stores (all 6 of these can be worked on at the same time). Working on Awards is also a great way to make XP and some Awards can be restarted, gifting the player gold pieces. Resetting Awards is especially useful for getting kills with certain weapons or in certain ways, buying a dollar amount of items, or picking herbs.
Series Major
Take part in a Series
Series are Player Vs Player events that players can join in by either selecting the quick join feature in the player menu or going to specific totems around the map to start searching for a match. These totems can be found on the map, the most convenient ones are just outside of Strawberry and Armadillo. There are Showdown series and Race series. Showdowns are traditional gun fight game modes, and Race are a variety of horseback races. Race series seem to get boosted XP from events more often, but are the less populated queue. These events are some of the more enjoyable parts of RDO, so learning how to race and gun fight is a must for any player.
Non-Regulation
Craft 25 pieces of ammunition
This is a harder achievement because, unlike in RDR2, RDO’s recipe pamphlets are incredibly expensive for early players, mostly being above $400. This will have to be a longer term goal for early players. The cheapest ammo pamphlet is the small game arrow at the Fence, for $350, and this should be what the player should prioritize after getting higher paying Roles like Bounty Hunter and weapons like a rifle, a bow, a varmint rifle, and a better revolver. The small game arrow is also one of the easiest and most useful ammo to craft, only requiring an arrow (which can be bought), a flight feather (which can be collected from nearly any bird), and a shotgun shell (which can be collected or bought easily), and allows the player to get perfect pelts from smaller animals. Crafting small game arrows can be done anywhere, and does not require a campfire. If you have ingredients but can’t craft anymore, that means you’ve hit your limit; so, quickly shoot off some arrows and finish up.
Posse Up
Form a Persistent Posse
Posses are another social element to RDO, allowing players to gang up and complete missions and any other activities together. By accessing the Player menu, you can form a Temporary or Persistent Posse, the latter being required for the achievement, pick its size, type a name, choose the camp location, and whether it’ll be a closed or open Posse. Persistent Posses’ will be more expensive than Temporary, but can be tied to the leader’s account and allow for a custom name to held across servers and sessions. Closed Posses can only be joined by invite, while open allows anyone to join. This is another great social feature of RDO that allows friends to easily join up and work together. Posses will also be able to voice chat with each other, regardless of distance, and see each other on the mini map, so coordination should be easy.
Strength in Numbers
Complete a Free Roam mission as part of a Posse with at least 2 members
This can be done with any type of Posse, and can be completed with at least one other player as leader or member. In other words, you can complete this achievement with 2 total members. After forming your posse and having at least one other member join, you will be able to talk with them in voice chat, and start up a Free Roam Mission from a stranger. Some missions will leave you vulnerable to attack by other players, which is a mechanic tied to the All’s Fair achievement. Obviously, this can easily be done with a friend, but in my experience, random players can be friendly and join open posses without an invite, so finding players shouldn’t be an issue.
All’s Fair
Successfully counter a rival Posse’s Free Roam mission
This is easily one of the hardest achievements in RDO, as it requires coordination that you can’t control naturally. Free Roam Missions have a unique feature that allows for other players to attack the mission player after a certain objective or time limit is reached. Once a player reaches that objective, a server wide notification goes out, alerting players that “a rival is completing a Free Roam mission.” By killing them and completing the mission or simply destroying the wagon, if possible, the intruding player will get the achievement.
YOU AND THE TARGET PLAYER DO NOT NEED TO BE IN A POSSE. I don’t know why the achievement is written that way, but if you want extra insurance, you can be in a closed temporary posse, which is what I did.
The achievement sounds simpler than it actually is. Firstly, some of the Free Roam mission are better for this than others, so there is no guarantee that a player will choose one that you can attack. Second, RDO is buggy, and even if you are standing there, stalking the target player accepting the mission, it may not let you get the notification of the mission. Third, Free Roam missions are mostly activities for newer players, as higher level players have more opportunities for different, higher profit, fun activities. This means that not every player in the server will naturally want to do a Free Roam missions, limiting your opportunities. These things combined make it very hard to randomly find a player completing a mission, and thus complicates the 100% attempt.
There are three strategies to maneuver around this problem. The first uses a friend, and the other 2 uses strangers.
- This achievement can be easily completed with a friend. If you’re already friends in the Rockstar Social club system, friends can join each others’ servers, ensuring that you are on the same server. This option controls the coordination needed for the achievement.
- Simply ask a stranger with voice chat to help you do this one asinine achievement. This might annoy some people, but there’s always a chance that at least one person will be charitable.
- Wait for a random player. If you can’t coordinate with the target, then you will have to rely on controlling the location and server. When I got the achievement, I chose the Lemonye server option, and checked that there was a lower level player on the server in the player list of the player menu.
Next, make sure you and your partner/target are not in a posse together, and I strongly recommend going to Saint Denis. At the trolley station, there is a stranger who will offer a mail delivery free roam mission to players. You should be able to watch at a distance as the target player walks into the station, and shortly after walks out with a mailbag; if this doesn’t happen, they may have chosen a mission that prevents you from stalking them.
The trolley station is the ideal location, as there are limited routes out of the city and plenty of opportunities to kill the target before the second destination. This mission is ideal because the mission requires that the player arrive at a first location, triggering the notification, before needing to reach a second location. Other missions, such as ones involving a wagon ride, seem to remove the target from the current server, making it impossible to stalk and kill the same target.
Follow the target to the first destination, and once the delivery is made and the notification is sent out, kill the target and steal the mail bag. This may cause a wanted level, possibly another player’s intervention, or the target’s vengeance to flair. Regardless, your only goal is to reach the second location and complete the mission for the achievement.
Horses for Courses
Concurrently own 5 horses
While this seems like an easy achievement, it can also be an inconvenience if the player does this too early. Horses are expensive for early players and the stable upkeep fees can set back the player before they can start making money. Realistically, the player only really needs one horse for the 100%, except for this one achievement. Buy cheap, free them if you don’t want the fees afterward.
Home Comforts
Buy any 5 improvements to the player camp
Player camps are one of the adapted systems to RDO from RDR2. Instead of being able to set up nearly anywhere, they can only be set up in certain locations, and may move during a play session. To buy improvements, talk to JB Cribbs, the NPC at the camp. The easiest and cheapest improvements to buy are the different flag colors, each at $50. If you don’t care much for the posse elements and are hopefully cash rich, buy 5 flags and be done.
The Real Deal
Achieve MVP 3 times, in matches with at least 4 players.
This is a more random achievement, as it entirely depends on who you are queued with and with how many. I would recommend doing this on Race Series, as its pretty easy to queue up, make money, XP, and gold from events, and due to the limited combat, a much cleaner game mode to win. The only issue is having enough players, which can be countered by queuing up sometime in midday or afternoon. Even if you don’t win some rounds, you’ll only get better at racing, and might find that you’re better at some of the race variants like target or open races. It takes patience and skill, but it’ll get you the achievement eventually.
Others recommend the hostile territory mode, and for players to just stand still in a capture zone for the whole match, but these modes are prone to have hackers, require combat, and are more up to chance than races.
Notorious
Reach Rank 50
Reaching high ranks is going to be about maximizing your XP collection by utilizing RDO’s Daily Challenges and the Roles system. Simply completing boosted XP events and getting headshots is not going to be as helpful. Instead, players should be completing as many of the Daily Challenges as possible every day. Players should also be acquiring and ranking up their Role Daily Challenges everyday. The more challenges you complete everyday and the longer you hold your streak, the higher your XP benefits are going to get. Additionally, completing bounties and completing the buckle challenges and resetting them will greatly help in getting XP, gold, and money.
Easily, the best way to get money and XP fast and quickly will be through the Collector Role. To be clear, players should only get the Collector Role after the Bounty Hunter role. While the player is completing Daily Challenges, the player should be using the opportunities of traveling around to collect any and every possible item at any location you come across. If your Daily Challenge is to go hunt for a certain type of meat, then ride out to that location and stop by every building to get a cigarette card or whiskey bottle, or hold out the metal detector while riding around. There are website resources that shows every location of every item for every day of the week on the map, and can greatly help optimize your XP grind. With rigorous effort and daily grind, eventually, you will pass Rank 50.
