Red Dead Online is an exciting action-adventure shooter game set in the early days of the American Frontier. The open world involves exploring the Frontier, chasing down bounties, hunting, and shooting down enemies. This guide will provide you with tips and tricks to help players master and dominate the game in PvP (Player vs. Player) and PvE (Player vs. Environment) modes. Without further ado, let’s jump in.
Leveling Up Health, Stamina & Dead Eye Bars
The foremost priority for any player is to level up their Cores. The Stamina Bar is the easiest one to upgrade. Players must run with acceleration for long periods, and their stamina bar will level up. Many players won’t even notice it increasing, as it increases instantly.
The Dead Eye Bar is a little more complicated. Players will have to aim and kill enemies using headshots. Upon successive Headshot kills, players will notice the Dead Eye bar filling up. It doesn’t matter if you kill NPCs, animals, or other players as long as you aim for the head, the Dead Eye bar will increase.
Increasing the Health Bar is slightly more complicated. It can be exponentially increased by using your Bow to kill enemies. The more kills you acquire with your Bow, the faster will your Health bar grow. The Health Bar can also be increased by using melee weapons and successful fishing but using your Bow remains the quickest and easiest way to level up your Health bar.
Weapon Familiarity & Upgrades
The second tip is to Level up your weapons. Levelling up can be done by purchasing weapons and taking them to the Gunsmith for upgrades. This method will cost money, so ensure you have enough before visiting the Gunsmith. Upgrades will boost the stats of the weapon.
In Red Dead Online, players can increase their weapon stats significantly by utilizing the hidden stat, Weapon Familiarity. This stat can be seen by checking the weapon parameters. Do make sure that the gun is clean first. The grey area in the weapon parameter denotes the Weapon Familiarity.
Boosting Weapon Familiarity can be used to upgrade your weapons more. The only way to increase weapon Familiarity is by acquiring 200–250 kills with your gun. Alternatively, 80 successful Headshot Kills with your weapon will do the trick. After completing the required kills, the weapon’s accuracy, reload speed, and range will be increased to their maximum. This approach will boost the weapon parameters of your weapon reasonably.
Clean your Weapons
It’s mighty important to clean your guns before a fight. In Red Dead Online, guns deteriorate after being immersed in mud or water. Firearms can be cleaned cheaply at a Gunsmith‘s, but buying Gun Oil and doing it yourself is more efficient. The difference between a clean and a dirty weapon is vast as the damage, reload speed, range, and accuracy of a dirty gun are reduced substantially.
A red bar will display this in the weapon parameter preceding the grey bar. Cleaning the gun will reduce the red bar and increase your weapon statistics to the normal level. Additionally, using Leather or Clothing wraps on your weapon slows the weapon’s degradation rate. These can be bought from Gunsmiths and Trappers.
Weight
A player can be underweight, perfect, or overweight in this game. It is recommended to become overweight in Red Dead Online because heavy characters take reduced damage from enemies. 15%, to be exact.
Players can check their weight status by opening the pause menu and selecting the ‘Player’ option. In the Player option, choose your character and select the ‘General’ option. Under the ‘Conditions’ table, players can see if their character is underweight, overweight, or perfect weight. The only drawback of being overweight is that Stamina reduces at an increased 7.5% rate, which is unimportant.
Players can maintain maximum weight by eating whenever their Health core diminishes. Additionally, players should not run when their Health core is empty. Alternatively, players in a Naturalist role can drink the Potent Weight Gain Tonic to gain weight extremely fast. This Tonic can only be purchased from Harriet Davenport if the player is in a Naturalist role.
Ability Cards
Ability Cards in Red Dead Online provide the players with attributes that affect the damage they deal with and how it’s dealt. They are super-important in combat and, when used correctly, are incredibly advantageous.
There are four different Ability Card Slots. The first slot is for Dead Eye Abilities, while the rest are Passive Abilities. The Dead Eye Slot is unlocked at Rank 2, while the three Passive Abilities slots are unlocked at Rank 10, 20 & 40. The Passive Abilities have three different abilities; Combat, Recovery, and Defensive Abilities. For a PvP (Player vs. Player) build, it is recommended to stack up on Combat and Defensive Abilities, and for PvE (Player vs. Environment) builds, choose the Recovery abilities.
It’s crucial to level up the Ability Cards to get the most out of them. There are three tiers, and players should contact the third tier for maximum effect. For example, if a primary tier combat ability card provides 5% increased damage, the third tier of the same card will provide 15% increased damage. Be aware that it costs $50 to buy a card and $850 to upgrade it fully. This section is for higher-level players as this endeavour needs considerable finances to upgrade all four ability cards.
Increased Ammunition
Players can increase their ammunition capacity by purchasing Pamphlets from Fences worldwide. There are Pamphlets for each weapon type, such as pistols, rifles, revolvers, repeaters, and shotguns. After reading these pamphlets, players can carry twice as much ammo as before.
But it’s just the regular ammo capacity that is increased. For a PvP scenario, this method is useless unless you’re using a Shotgun or a Bow, as all other weapon types use Explosive or Express Ammunition type. This method works miracles for players in the PvE scenarios and provides a considerable advantage in fights, especially in the Call to Arms/Survival game mode.
Increased Tonics & Food
The next tip concerns increasing the quantity of Food and Tonics your character can carry. This approach will require you to get Role Rewards from many different roles. Starting with the Bounty Hunter role, you’ll first need to acquire the license for the Bounty Hunter. It can be obtained in the early game or by visiting the boards outside the Sheriff’s office.
By default, a player can carry only 20 Tonics of each type, but by unlocking the Bounty Hunter role rewards, you’ll find the Tonic Satchel Upgrade. After opening the upgrade, your character can carry 30 Tonics of each type. Alternatively, this reward can be found in the Naturalist Role rewards, too.
By completing the quests in the Collector’s role and levelling up, the Collector Role rewards will throw up a Provisions Satchel Upgrade. By unlocking this upgrade, your character can carry more food than previous capacity. Alternatively, getting to the prestigious Bounty Hunter role will also throw up the Provisions Satchel Upgrade.
Special Ammo
In PvP (Player vs. Player) scenarios, the quality of your ammo matters a lot. This tip deals with crafting special, powerful ammunition. Although Explosive and High-Velocity ammunition deal extensive damage, the specially crafted bullet is far more deadly than any ammunition in the game.
Firstly, you have to buy the Pamphlets at the Fence. Get the following high-rank pamphlets:
- Express Explosive Pamphlet (Unlocks at Rank 90)
- Dynamite Arrow Pamphlet (Unlocks at Rank 93)
- Incendiary Buckshot Pamphlet (Unlocks at Rank 80)
You’ll need to gather the ingredients and craft this kind of ammunition to equip all these special ammunition. This ammunition is advantageous for tougher fights in the Free Roam multiplayer mode.
Crafting the best Food & Tonics
Red Dead Online places a lot of emphasis on food as a hungry player’s health will diminish slowly, leading to his untimely death. Although players using the Minty Big Game recipe will be alright, a better and superior option sustains a player’s health for far longer.
Players should purchase a Stew Pot from JB Cripps. This process involves levelling up your Trader role to buy the Stew Pot. Next up, crafting the Superior Level Stew or any recipe from JB Cripps will fortify all your cores at once, but your Cores will remain fortified for three game days. Talk about the best food in the game.
The best Tonic can be crafted by purchasing the Special Health Cure Pamphlet from the Fence for $595. Next, players must visit Madame Nazare to acquire all the ingredients listed in the Pamphlet. Obtaining them will help you craft the Level 3 Health Tonic, which heals health much more than any other tonic in the game.
Trinkets & Wilderness Camp
This guide’s last tip, and tricks will help players gather critical ingredients for food and tonics faster. Firstly, players must buy the Wilderness camp from Harriet Davenport; this involves choosing the Naturalist’s role. Next, buy the Wilderness Travel Skill page from the Fence for $1,280. This purchase will help you Fast-Travel between different settlements with the Wilderness Camp.
The Efficient Cooking Skill Page, which costs $950, available at the Fence, will allow players to craft three pieces of food in a single cooking session. Additionally, the Ram Horn Trinket, purchasable from Gus, will allow you to gather twice as much Wild Mint as you previously could. This trinket is vital for the preparation of Minty Big Game food. Players must also purchase the Beaver Tooth Trinket from Gus for $477. which helps slow down the deterioration of your weapons. These tips benefit higher-ranked players but will significantly help those struggling with the game.
