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Red Dead Redemption 2 is two games wearing one map. The first belongs to Arthur Morgan: six chapters, a camp that moves from Colter to Beaver Hollow, debts to collect, errands for the gang, and a stretch of country that ends at the Blackwater state line. The second belongs to John Marston, opens after the credits, and adds a desert, a second set of bounties, three shacks, a treasure map and the only shop that sells the best horse in the game. Most guides treat the whole thing as one checklist. This hub sorts our 123 pages by which of the two games they belong to, so you know what to finish before Arthur's last mission and what can safely wait.
Start here
If the opening hours feel like a simulation with a shooter attached, that is the design: Arthur eats, sleeps, gets fat, and loses stamina for it. Our beginners tips and tricks cover that first adjustment, from looting every drawer to tapping the sprint button in time with the gallop. The best foods page explains why the free camp stew is the cheapest route to a gold health core and which meats and herbs fill the rest. When a side mission icon disappears, it is not a bug; time of day, a wanted level and rival gang territory all hide markers, as the disappearing side missions page explains. And the cheat codes are all here, with the note that several only work once you own a particular newspaper edition and that no cheat session saves.
Arthur's game: six chapters and everything that expires with them
The missions guide is built as a timeline: the six chapter walkthroughs with their gold medal goals, then every stranger strand filed under the chapter that switches it on, from Theodore Levin's gunslinger commission in Valentine to Hamish Sinclair's last hunts in Chapter 6. It ends with a list of what stops existing once Our Best Selves begins, because the loansharking debts, the companion errands and Arthur's own strangers all belong to this half of the game.
Two of the buckets are about counters that tick while Arthur plays. The game systems guide separates the meters that go both ways, honor running from rank minus eight up to plus eight, a bounty capped at $300, $500 and finally $1,500 by chapter, three cores that empty and refill, from the ledgers that only rise: camp upgrades, ninety challenge ranks, horse bond and learned recipes. The items guide sorts every collectible by where it ends up, mailed to a stranger, handed to a gang member, kept in the wardrobe or sold to a fence, and it is where the six deadline errands live: Pearson's compass expires with Chapter 2, and Dutch's pipe, Lenny's watch, Mary-Beth's pen, Hosea's book and Sadie's harmonica with Chapter 4.
The weapons guide draws its line between guns that exist once and guns on a shelf. Four gunslinger sidearms, the Hermit's shotgun and a rifle dropped during Magicians for Sport can be lost for good; the gunsmith catalogue, by contrast, is the same in all five shops and simply unlocks mission by mission. The characters and vendors guide asks who pays whom: you pay gunsmiths, tailors and the trapper, fences and sixteen legendary animals pay you, and companions and special characters trade only in favors. The locations guide is the shortest of the six and answers one question, what the completion tracker actually counts: six gang hideouts, any five of nineteen shacks, and none of the 49 points of interest.
John's game: what only exists after the epilogue
Arthur can ride into New Austin, but the game is not built for him to be there, and our pages file its contents under Epilogue 1 for a reason. That is where the last three legendary animals live, the cougar at Gaptooth Ridge, the pronghorn east of Fort Mercer and the Tatanka bison in Hennigan's Stead, all covered with the other thirteen on the legendary animals page. The bounty boards in Tumbleweed and Blackwater fill after Gainful Employment, with Joaquin Arroyo and Esteban Cortez appearing only if you first watch the Del Lobo execution. Fort Mercer and Thieves Landing, the fifth and sixth mandatory gang hideouts, sit in the same territory, and three shacks, Shepherd's Rise, Ridge View and Argil Rise, are not on the map until John owns it.
Some rewards wait for the epilogue too. The Torn treasure map, pieced together from two hermits, leads to Otis Miller's revolver; Micah's own revolver lies on Mount Hagen after American Venom; every satchel upgrade goes on sale at fences from Epilogue 1; the Ram Skull Mask waits in a sheep pen at Rathskeller Fork; the fourteenth legendary fish is a Rio Bravo trip with Jeremy Gill; the nine graves only appear once the story is done; and the Blackwater stable's $1,250 Arabian, the best mount on the horses page, is a John purchase. Even the special characters split by owner: the Armadillo town crier, the Sun Worshiper and the Tumbleweed sheriff are John's, while the Chelonian Master needs Epilogue 2. One thing John cannot do is swim, a nod to the first game that the easter eggs page keeps company with two UFOs and a robot.
Shared by both halves
The four table games, the 90 challenges, hunting and fishing, the trapper's sixteen garment sets and the mailed collections of cigarette cards, dinosaur bones and rock carvings do not care who is holding the controller. Neither do the five treasure trails other than the Torn map, or the money methods on the make money fast page, which runs from the Limpany gold bar reload trick to Maximo's $10 map. The one thing that does change hands is the ending itself: the final mission forks between the money and John, honor picks the variant, and the endings page describes all four before the epilogue takes over.
Editions and platforms
A few pages depend on which copy you own. The Special and Ultimate editions add the Twin Rocks hideout, the Le Tresor Des Morts treasure with its six gold bars, and the Iguana Scale Trinket and Eagle Talon Talisman; PC patch 1.15 adds the Gaptooth Breach and Solomon's Folly hideouts; and one hatchet is reserved for players who finished a bounty in GTA Online. For the record, the 2019 remaster rumor that a next-generation version was coming is kept here as the news item it was.
Where to go next
Playing for the first time, read the missions guide's chapter table and then the systems guide's honor section, because those two decide what Arthur can still do at the end. Coming back for completion, start with the locations guide's checklist and the items guide's mailed collections. Hunting a specific thing, each bucket guide links every one of its pages, from a single legendary animal to a single treasure map, so the shortest route is the bucket that owns it.