Complete Beginners Guide To Red Dead Online 

Bonus tip: Don’t make your character black if you’re on PC.

Bro I was high as shit when I did the tutorial shit felt like it was four hours long

Grind money to grind more money to grind more money. They forgot to add the fun.

giant tip: exit online and enjoy the story mode

*describes 200 hours worth of grinding in 30 seconds as if its really just that easy*

Tip before going to Saint Denis: Get in defensive mode, as soon as you see a building you will be shot

Don't play on PC, mute the whole lobby, and shoot on sight if you see people dressed in all white with a lasso out.

By the time I do all of the steps I'ma be 50yrs old💀

Me: finished tutorial > find saloon > play cards for an year

skip Naturalist

If you never played the online version then by all means do play it, you have so many things to do, roles, missions etc, you have content for at least 1 year even if there's fewer players online. However once you max up all roles and do all missions there's nothing left to do they're not adding content anymore. I wish this was my first time also playing.

Seems like a whole lot of time and effort to have actual fun in the game

As someone who has reset her character like 8 times, i think naturalist before trader is better, as you will immediately have access to legendary animals for Trader. Trying to do trader without legendary animals forces you to put like 3x more work in

Moonshiner is goated. It’s literally your personal underground bar where you get drunk af and earn hundreds of dollars after doing barely anything

My advice as a relatively successful RDO player; start with bounty hunting, idk if its been patched or if it was intentional, but if you go to Benedict Station, The bounty board there will allow you to do legendary bounties without the special license. Some of them are worth like $200 and a bit of gold. I would recommend buying the special lisence, whatever its called, so you can do legendary bounties anywhere. Once you have enough gold, do moon shining. It's basically passive income and i have a legit strategy for it. When you buy the shack, choose Hennigans Stead as the location, and if you're at the bottom of a cliff beside the river you got the right location. To the left of the shack you can find raspberries, one or two bushes depending on the server. Go to Armadillo and buy a fresh peach and one can of peaches for a total of $1.50. Back at the shack, get the price of mash down and use the ingredients to make Berry Cobbler moonshine. First few times around, it won't be worth too much, but you will make profit as Berry Cobbler is 2 star and there's always a dedicated buyer for it, increasing the price. Your remote location and the shine being fragile will protect you a bit from players. Bonus tip: if revenue agents attack you, get off the wagon and take cover away from it. If you drive away or shoot from it, missed shots from the agents will damage the cargo and you'll lose lots of money. Keep bounty hunting and shining in the background, prioritise the upgrades to the brewing section, not the bar. A full load of Strong Mash Berry Cobbler moonshine will give you at least $164.50 in profit. I wouldn't recommend naturalist or collector as its slow and somewhat luck based, with mediocre rewards. Trader can be good if you dedicate time to it, but my experience is that players are far more likely to jack the trader wagon because they can quickly go across fields to deliver it, but the moonshine wagon must be driven slowly on the roads, which makes it a less desirable target, even if its likely worth more than a trader wagon

Main reason for tutorial: you get a decent horse instead of the 'scrawny nag' you get if you don't do the tutorial. You can also claim a really good thoroughbred in the stables for free.

I recommend doing the moonshiner as your third role before trader and naturalist, it’s a constant flow of money once upgraded all the way and you don’t have to buy the bar until you have enough wealth to spend on cool stuff, that have me all the money I needed along with collected

The bounty hunter role is my favorite. Had my outfit all black with dual navy revolvers all black with pearl grip and black engraving with no other weapons. The gene Beau Finley legendary bounty is the best one. It's hard once you get it to full difficulty but it pays good. I like sneaking around the whole camp with a bow and knife and get to a maximum gun and light them up

THANK YOU. Its been so rough since 3 days. I’m like a damn homeless in red dead online. But i go lucky getting into a posse because they wanted to do call to arms to help me get clothes for the winter in online. Now I have more help from you, youtuber. This deserves a like a and a subscribe from me. 🥳

Bonus tip: this will take you well over a decade if you try grinding this out Edit: Thank you for the like

I'm level 125, so I don't need these tips. But it is still interesting to see updated guides. It's great to see new players!

Weaponry tip: only use the following weapons if you plan on playing red dead online: 1. Lancaster repeater (good for any kind of combat) 2. Bolt action rifle (used for killing medium-large animals without ruining the quality) 3. Varmint rifle(used for hunting rabbits and small birds without ruining the quality) 4. A bow (really useful when in combat or when hunting) It’s just a recommendation buy and use others guns if you want.

Collector is definitely good early game money but Moonshiner is where the moneys at if you are patient in late game. Also putting legendary animals into trader is worth-while.

This song never fails to get me choked up. What a phenomenal experience

*Here is the most efficient way to never go outside*

I actually started the game a few days ago. Completed all of Horleys missions. I couldn't find out what to do next because I didn't have enough money for bounty hunter role and couldn't find anything else to do. Thanks for the great advice, it will help me out alot!

Another huge tip: turn off controller aim assist. Even on K&M turning off controller aim assist gives you more experience for killing people.

Thank you! I will keep this in mind when i start Red Dead Online

This is really helpful thank you

They are so thorough with the tutorial they tell you how to do stuff that you aren't even able to do.

Blood money missions are great to do while waiting on moonshine to fill up

Nice, got the map first go as I rode to the tree. The deer didn't spawn for me, waited 15 secs on the map. Also the mission didn't pop first time, but 2nd time it popped. I just logged back into camp and the mission despawned and treasure map was on tree again 😊

Extra tip: make sure you don’t play a woman or a black person, unless you want the added difficulty of sexist and racists players targeting your back

The best way to enjoy online is by pausing and scrolling all the way down to the final option and selecting that. This will close the game, maximizing your fun!

Just remember this is the beginners guide

Love this type of content keep it up man 🙌

I did everything back before the dreaded “nerfs”, and I was able to get the moonshine business. It has been the greatest; easiest; most profitable business giving me and my friends (just me now because it only gives them 10-19$) 200-400$ per sell in under an hour. Those were the good ol days lol

People, please,play the game however you want and have fun, don't let others tell you how to play. If you want tips and guidance this video is good to explain how the real game is but don't let that take the magic alway. Great short though!

Crutial step he forgot to mention at step one: don't make your character black/female, you'll get constantly lasoed and watch an entire gang murder your horse and revive it only to kill it again and again

Me and my friend both goes for collector, we both collecting flowers etc while watching youtube guide is quite relaxing

Thanks For The Help I Appreciate It!

Ok so the trick to this game is really do main missions then hit up your level 300 friend with everything in the game so they have an excuse to enjoy the game again. It's a win win. I'm the level 300 that helps everyone 🙃

You forgot you can replay story missions with friends who haven’t completed them

Coming from a person who started from beta when the roles came into play i did actually buy these roles in exact said order granted before the roles and other missions and stuff i used to grind mail deliveries story missions and the treasure maps😢 thats how i made my living along with selling carcasses and pets

I tried to play online but a bunch of people had started to haunting me killing my horse in the middle of the desert, so after 10 or more deaths I close the game and never open again ( I mean online obviously). Thanks Rockstar games for your protection the new players!

Before the trader I recommend buy first the naturalist since if you sell the animals to crips it would increase more faster the materials line

I won’t lie, I would totally play RDRO if I wasn’t so concerned about the possible security risks that comes with it. I remember playing RDRO for a bit on my uncle’s PS4 back when I had no clue how missions in RDR worked (I have no clue why, this went on for like two years lol) and before any of these “roles”, so if I ever get back on I will prolly try and get the navy revolver, and just act as a drifter. Also this seems like a great tutorial. (P.S. I thought you could only choose one role at a time and then possibly start over via selecting another role)

For those new to the game, save up for trader, then get moonshiner as soon as possible. It takes a while to accrue the gold so it’s not a bad idea to start with bounty hunter, though it doesn’t make you much cash and gets pretty boring. After leveling up your moonshine operation a bit and getting the proper ingredients, average moonshine will cost $50 to make but can bank you over $300 for one delivery ($250 net). High tier moonshine will get you even more. This is huge money compared to the $20 you’ll get for every bounty or free roam missions.

the best way to start is to spend all ur gold on capitle since its so useful that rockstar decided to add it into this game

I would recommend getting the naturalist role last.

Il correct you sir. How to start rdo is to just don't it's buggy AF and dead the company of rockstar is not what it once was they abandoned a gold mine before it had a chance to produce it and they broke it it's nigh unplayable with game breaking bugs and cheaters in every lobby

THANKS if been meaning to start online once i killed all the legendary animals and fish now i know where to start

Fact: the more you play the more you realize rockstar doesn't give a damn about the game

Also a tip: chexk your mail daily for treasure maps as they not only give you $100 each but also a lot of gold almost a full bar

Red dead really could’ve been the next gta online

I did Bounty Hunter: Trader: Moonshiner: which got maxed out and now makes me a lot of money

Thanks

Glad i stumbled onto this, i actually needed this

When he says to pick naturalist over two of the most fun roles in the game, which is moonshiner and bounty hunter 💀

What I would recommend is Bounty Hunter, then Moonshiner, then just have a blast without worrying about the other roles. These two are the most fun and have the most output for money (besides Collector, but that is extremely boring) I’ll leave a quick tip below to avoid the 5 gold bar fee to buy moonshiner before trader. (to bypass the fee of 5 gold bars to buy moonshiner before trader, simply do a large trader wagon delivery with a friend in a posse)

How to play Red Dead Online: Don't. Play Single Player.

Step 1: Get enough gold bars for Collector Step 2: Farm the interactive collectible map for all of the collections Step 3: Profit

This game is a lot of grinding. I think they saw how many hours people spent on gta V online and how easy it was to buy things, so with rdr2 they not only added the realism of it being extremely difficult to survive in 1899, but also extremely hard to get better gear so that those who spent hours on the game can have some bragging rights. I just started, I’m only level 27, I’m also using free aim because you get 20xp for a kill instead of 10, doubling your kill xp and leveling you up a bit faster

I found a hacker and he gave me 14k money and 160 gold

You should definitely start with colector then bounty hunter. Get the metal detector and always have it out wherever you go you will be semi-passively getting money by getting collectibles from the detector or just looting people. Bounty hunter is good for fun and easy money when you can just wait out the timer for extra money. Both very newb friendly and can solo.

I aint got no hour for a tutorial 💀

Or if you want to have fun. After doing the tutorial get into the trader role. You can do some hunting and donating it to later sell it for around 60 bucks a pop. Do some missions to get the bounty hunting role. Do some bounty hunting since its fun. After a while buy the moonshiner role so you can have your own bar.

"Here's the most efficient way to START Red Dead Online" Play the game for 100 hours.

If you keep deleting your character at the beginning it will add $15 each time. You can soon build up a little stash this way to start you off. I got the character deletion down to about 2 mins a pop so its a fairly easy way to make dollars at the start but very repetitive. I did it for about 90 mins to make $600. When you're ready and you've had enough just set up the character you're finally happy with and begin your game. It helped me a lot and gave me enough $ to get me a half decent horse and and some guns. Will save you a lot of grinding to begin with as well. 😮

Fun fact: it takes over 800 HOURS to be able to buy the best horse

The order I went was Trader, Moonshiner, Bounty Hunter, Naturalist, Collector. Trader and moonshiner were my favorite.

The Waffle House has found it’s new host

I recommend getting trader before collector collector takes way more time and is a bigger investment.

The waffle house had found its new host.

All you need is bounty hunter, trader and moonshiner, collector will take your time away, naturalist is worthless, bounty hunter will give you gold and the legendary bounties are quite fun to do they also give a big amount of cash, Trader gives by far the most ammount of cash and can be chained with other people since you always get 50% of the total ammount, slow to start but eventually you'll be making more money than you actually need, Moonshiner is perhaps the best passive role to earn money and experience since you'll only visit the shack twice, once to start the still and second to deliver.

I skipped the story missions completely at the beginning and completed the blood money missions, which earned me 15 gold bars and bought my dream role of collector and later bounty hunter. Now I'm lvl 49 and just starting the story missions. Thanks to which you can see that there is no specific scheme for playing RDO. You can do what you want.

As a player since day one, I definitely recommend this it seems like it would be great for starting. Bounty hunter really is the most enjoyable role if you're solo, collecting is good both solo & w/ friends but trader is only really good with friends

The waffle house has found a new host

Or find a friend who has all the rules and then you do the mission with them getting you gold and money real quick yeah when I was with him I did like for bounty missions in a row and there's a one glitched mission where are you do is have to wait until she says one word and then you jump out and attack then you turn around and you get like five hundred and something bucks and we do traders then we go around doing naturalist and collectors I was collecting things before I got collectors which got me a lot of money whenever I got it's a lot easier if you have friends who plays with you.

Thanks for this. Might give it another chance

I have 250 hours on read dead and that’s just from the story getting all the trophy’s and I’m just starting online to get the platinum now

The most efficient way is to do all the online story missions without spending any money, deleting your character and rinse and repeat until you feel comfortable starting out with a thousands of dollars and plenty of gold bars since money and gold are the only things that will transfer over as you’ll lose any bought items which is why spend no money until your ready to keep your character

This dude is smoking that za😂 litchfield is literally goated. 16 round mag almost rifle amounts of damage and it’s accurate. And it looks badass. It’s lowkey the best all around gun in the game

It’s crazy cause I tried to play online but couldn’t do the story cause no one plays. Sounds about right for how online is going

Every time I see a tutorial I see people say madam bazar then bounty but I as doing the opposite glad to see someone else do that

My only tip is to invest all your money into Trader role. Trader gets alot of money quicker than all those. Perfect Whitetail bucks and perfect cougars are the best animal materials in the game so find the locations. Daily challenges give gold if you dont want to buy a bounty hunter licences. Keep doing the daily challenges everyday to double your gold. Those are easy ways to get gold/money faster as a beginner.

Trader and naturalist synergies very well together

I really needed this befor I started red dead online I don't know if you can restart the game because what I first did was finish the tutorial then go to Valentine get killed alot use all my ammo and start fighting people and keep getting bounty and etc.

In my opinion the Moonshine Business is the absolute best. I was lucky and got it when you got 2x money I got 15k so easy

You sir are a fish * Aurthur Morgan* 😂🎉

Everyone hates on the naturalist but it’s actually an easy money earner simply collect a sample from animals for cash it would take up like an hour to collect 10 of each animal if you know the spawns of the animals but for instance the Rocky Mountains collection is so easy and once you sell it all you get a minimum of 1700$ and 10k xp you could do that a lot quicker than doing a few full sets of the collectors role

Honestly go moonshine after bounty and collector. The missions are worth doing imo and its pretty passive

I started playing rdo 3 months ago, I already got a bunch of guns I need inlcuding dual navy revolvers that are great, just did it with bounty hunter and I just got collecter, trying to get trader role so I can get those nice glasses

First actual good guide

I would recommend using your cash on some basic guns to help you through your bounties as well as a semi decent horse, just something reliable to also help you through your mission ofc. Don't forget to have fun either, it isn't a full time job

I played a bit of RDO back when it came out, but for some reason I kept getting disconnected and couldn't play fir more than 5 minutes without always getting disconnected, so I didn't play for so many years. At first I thought it was my internet, but other online games seemed to work fine. Then I thought it was the Rockstar servers. One day my PS4 got bricked for some reason and my brother gave me his PS4 because he switched to PC. So I decided to install RDR2 And I could play RDO without getting disconnected. So I guess now it was my old PS4 that was the problem. So now in 2023, I'm going to start trying to play RDO and use this guide.

Remember how basic yet extremely fun the first red dead redemption online was? Now its this mess in red dead redemption 2 its been a while since I seen the first red dead redemption servers if they aren't still glitched to all hell id love to play it again

I personally thing it’s best to buy naturalist also use lassos for perfect pelts

All I see are people complaining about how long it takes to complete everything. Umm but like y’all realize that’s the point right? Like if I could play for 3 days straight and still not have 50% of everything unlocked or done that’s a game I know I’ll keep playing. Constantly doing new missions or even the same missions with new people is fun the community is fun for the most part and pvp is really not that hard to learn. You have slow and steady builds slippery builds and paint it black builds then a few run focus fire builds but that’s more of a posse build

I will def play this game again when I get a new pc