Staff – November 5, 2019 at 10:00 AM
Chasing a wanted criminal through a hail of bullets. Casting a fishing rod across a placid, sunset-hued lake. Drawing your bow at a passing deer, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
Red Dead Online, the vast and deeply detailed online world of Red Dead Redemption 2, brings moments like this to life across every corner of its five states, from desolate desert outposts to treacherous swamps, across heartland plains and into its bustling towns. From Posse shootouts to Texas Hold’em, Red Dead Online gives players numerous opportunities to make both friends and enemies as they carve out their own place on the frontier.
Today, Red Dead Online comes to the PC alongside the PC release of Red Dead Redemption 2, bringing with it all the latest content to date including Frontier Pursuits, a series of specialist roles for players to inhabit and new directions to pursue with a wide array of themed activities, new items and abilities to unlock as they progress, deepening a player’s connection to their character and the living world around them.
Choose the right specialist role for you
The first three Frontier Pursuits added to Red Dead Online are the Bounty Hunter, the Trader, and the Collector. Each role offers its own unique path and players can choose to focus on one or experience multiple roles simultaneously with the opportunity to level up individual role ranks by completing role-specific objectives and activities, and to earn special awards like unique abilities and items along the way.
The Bounty Hunter, for example, is great for players who are most interested in action — from gunfights to capturing wanted criminals and more, all while acquiring rewards like a reinforced lasso to better trap a bounty or intricate gun-spinning maneuvers to show off to fellow players.
The Trader offers budding entrepreneurs the ability to build a business with their camp companion, Cripps, through hunting for animal pelts and other parts to be sold at camp, which can earn them cash and additional rank rewards including the ability to train their camp dog to warn for approaching thieves.
The Collector path is tailor-made for completionists and explorers, leading to bonuses like a metal detector for finding valuable trinkets scattered across the open country. The Collector is an ideal role to take on between other activities, as you can search for rare items as you move from place to place on your way to hunt or track down bounties.
Set your play-style preferences
Red Dead Online accommodates almost any play-style. Whether on the hunt for competitive PvP action or simply to enjoy the great outdoors in peace, players can coexist comfortably alongside each other, pursuing different objectives while remaining immersed in their desired experience.
Red Dead Online’s “hostility” system is another feature designed to help players sculpt their experience to suit their needs. Instead of dropping players into a free-for-all, anything-goes environment, Red Dead Online tracks which players tend towards aggressive interactions and makes them more visible on the map than players who prefer to engage in non-violent activities.
Choosing your preferred play-style in the settings helps the game assign you the correct hostility score. Players who select the “defensive” playstyle receive less damage from PvP attacks and cannot be targeted with the game’s auto-aim feature. Killing a “defensive” player also nets you a higher boost to your hostility score than killing an “offensive” player. This, combined with the proximity-based blip system that only highlights players in your local area, makes it easy to identify aggressive players wherever they are while giving more friendly “defensive” players the freedom to roam comfortably.
Watch your honor
Just as in Red Dead Redemption 2, “honor” has a palpable effect on the way Red Dead Online’s world responds. The game’s series of story missions, “A Land of Opportunities,” tailors its narrative according to the honor score a player possesses, while Stranger missions they encounter during Free Roam will also present objectives that match that honor score (robbing a caravan vs. protecting it, for example).
Honor is affected by the decisions, both large and small, that players make throughout their time in the game. Choosing to spare a gang leader grants honor, for instance, while stealing a horse takes some away. Luckily, a character’s morality can be changed, but for a price…all you have to do is happen upon a mysterious stranger during your travels.
Join or form a posse
If you’re looking to ride with friends in Red Dead Online, players can easily form Posses to work together to tackle missions, battle enemy gangs, or compete in a wide-range of activities against other players such as Showdown Modes, Hunting or Fishing Challenges, Free Roam Events, Races and more.
Posses can either be established as “temporary” or “persistent.” As the name implies, temporary posses last as long as the leader’s play session does, while persistent posses remain even after all members have logged off. In addition, persistent posses can be given a name and can include up to seven players (as opposed to a maximum of four for temporary posses), offering exclusive inter-posse versus modes as well.
The living world of Red Dead Online is expansive and constantly evolving. Follow the tips above and you’ll be able to claim your own corner of the vast frontier before you know it.
Recommended specs:
- OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4770K
- RAM: 12GB of system memory
- Graphics card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 or AMD® Radeon™ RX 480
- Storage: 150GB of available space
