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Every price in Red Dead Online is quoted in one of three units, and once you notice that, the whole game sorts itself. Rank is the number that rises whenever you do anything at all, and it is what gates guns, ability cards and treasure maps. Dollars are what missions, hunting and moonshine pay, and what nearly every shop takes. Gold bars are the scarce one: they buy the roles, the moonshine shack, a change of face and the odd shortcut, and our pages find them mostly at the bottom of treasure chests. This guide walks through the game in the order a new character meets it, and at each step says which of the three units is being asked for.
| Unit | Where it comes from | Doors it opens on our pages |
|---|---|---|
| Rank | XP from almost any action, from brushing a horse to a shootout | Weapons up to rank 50, ability cards up to rank 50, the fishing rod at 14, the first treasure map at 10 |
| Dollars | Missions, Showdown and race series, hunting, fishing, hideouts, moonshine, sold collectibles | Guns from $50 to $1,000, camp fees, shack upgrades, a $50 starting Dead Eye card |
| Gold bars | Treasure chests and Call to Arms, on our pages | Three role licences at 15 each, the moonshine shack at 25, a new look at 10, Capitale at 3 per ten, the Bolt Action Rifle at 15 |
The first hour: a face, two points and a tutorial
You begin by building a character, and our tips and tricks guide makes the case for choosing carefully, since the first redesign is free and every one after that costs 10 gold bars. You then get two skill points to place across Health, Dead Eye and Stamina (the guide leans towards Health), and a compulsory opening mission before Free Roam opens up. From then on rank climbs off everything you do, and each rank brings more skill points for those same three stats. The same guide is also where winter clothing, honor and the argument for never riding alone are covered, and it is the page to read before any of the ones below.
Earning dollars: jobs first, then a trade
Cash is the unit you will chase hardest early, and our money farming guide is the page to open first: it names the single story mission worth over $250, explains why replaying it earns XP but no cash, and then runs through fishing (a rod at rank 14, and a spot near a butcher so the catch sells quickly), gang hideouts for gold watches and treasure maps, the Collector role, the Showdown Series, and two exploits involving a loot cabinet west of Wallace Station and a deleted first character. Its buying advice is short: the $240 Springfield after your first mission, then the $360 Bolt Action Rifle for perfect pelts.
The missions themselves are in our guide to the story missions and Call to Arms, which puts the six missions on our story missions walkthrough into the order their own prerequisites imply, from the horse theft that opens straight after the tutorial to the two-part hunt for Alfredo Montez, and notes which three carry an honorable-or-dishonorable fork. Alongside them sits Call to Arms, a ten-wave defence of one of five towns that arrives as a telegram at your camp or a post office and is one of the few activities on our pages that pays gold as well as dollars and XP, with the reward scaled to how far you get, and the page says it can be played again whether you finish or quit.
Spending dollars: a gun for every rank
Our weapons guide prices twenty guns and, just as usefully, ranks them: the Cattleman Revolver, Carbine Repeater, Bolt Action Rifle and Pump-Action Shotgun are available from the start, the Varmint Rifle follows at rank 8, and the ladder climbs through the Bow at 10, the Lancaster at 12, the Springfield at 38 and the Semi-Auto Shotgun at 42 to the Carcano Rifle at rank 50. Price and rank do not move together: the Springfield is one of the best rifles on the page and one of the cheapest at $240, while the Mauser Pistol asks $1,000 at rank 34. The Bolt Action Rifle is the only weapon on the page with a gold price, 15 bars against $360, and it is the one purchase our money guide calls the best long-term investment.
Spending rank: the card slots
Rank has a second job beyond unlocking guns. Ability cards fill four slots, one Dead Eye and three passive, and apart from three starter Dead Eye cards every one of them is tied to a rank between 10 and 50; the cards have to be bought from the Abilities tab before they can be slotted, and each climbs three tiers on the XP you earn while it is equipped. Our mechanics guide lays out the whole unlock ladder and points out which cards only pay off when there are teammates around to share the effect.
Spending gold: the roles
Gold's main use is the Frontier Pursuits. Our tips guide lists five roles: Bounty Hunter (15 gold, from the Legendary Bounty Hunter in Rhodes), Collector (15 gold for the bag, from Madam Nazar), Trader (15 gold, by mail at the post office or your camp lockbox), Moonshiner (25 gold bars for a shack, and only once you have made progress as a Trader) and Naturalist. The Naturalist is the one we cover in the field: our desert habitat animal locations page places all fourteen animals of that set across New Austin, from iguanas around Mercer Station to cougars below Rathskeller Fork, explains that each one is shot with a Varmint Rifle, its sedative ammo coming either from Harriet or from your own crafting, and prices the completed set at $80 and 1,000 XP, repeatable.
Moonshining is the role with the most pages behind it. Our Moonshiner business page takes you from Cripps's introduction to Maggie Fike at Emerald Ranch through the rescue of Marcel and the choice of five shack sites, then into the loop of picking a moonshine type and a flavouring at Marcel's table, running supply missions and driving the finished batch past checkpoints to a buyer, at roughly $30 to make and $50 in profit. What the still can produce is decided by two upgrades from Maggie, the Condenser at Moonshiner rank 5 and Polished Copper at rank 10, which our stronger moonshine guide prices at $825 and $875 plus tokens and describes as the jump from weak to average to strong. What goes into the bottle is on two more pages, moonshine ingredient locations and moonshine recipes, and our items guide joins the two to show which recipes can be brewed entirely from things you can buy and which send you to three different bushes.
Blood Money and the fourth currency
Capitale sits outside the three units, and the cleanest way to see it is as gold in another form: the fence sells it at 3 bars for ten. Our Capitale page also covers the slow route, which runs through Guido Martelli in Saint Denis and four Crime contacts scattered from Blackwater to MacFarlane's Ranch, whose missions never pay Capitale directly but leave it lying on bodies and in chests. It is spent on Opportunities at 15, 20 and 25, and the items guide works out how far each source stretches against those prices.
Other players: with you, and against you
None of the units above is needed to play with friends, but dollars keep the camp running. Our posses page describes the two posse types (four players and free, or seven players, a fee, and stats that persist) and the camps that go with them at $1 or $2 a day, which is where outfit changes, tonic crafting and fast travel live and where a word with Cripps changes the camp's theme. The other half of the multiplayer picture is the stranger who will not stop shooting you. Our Feud and Parley page explains the prompt that appears after four or five deaths to the same player, and the choice it offers between ten minutes of enforced peace and a private duel. The mechanics guide sets all four of those systems side by side according to how many other people each one needs.
What our pages do not yet cover
It is worth saying plainly what is missing. We have no page on where Madam Nazar is on a given day, although two of ours send you to her; nothing on daily challenges, legendary animals or outfits; and the Naturalist coverage stops at the desert set. Within those limits, the order above holds: spend your first dollars on a Springfield, your first gold on a role licence or the shack, and nothing at all on a new face until you have read the roles section twice.