Items

Red Dead Redemption 2 fills Arthur's satchel with things that are not really his to keep. Cigarette cards go into an envelope for a stranger at Flatneck Station. Dinosaur bones are never picked up at all, only their coordinates. A fountain pen is carried straight back to camp and handed over. Only gold bars and a few trinkets stay with Arthur to the end, and even the gold is only worth something once a fence has it. This guide sorts the folder's 31 item pages by that destination: mailed, handed to a gang member, kept, or sold. It is a more useful split than material or rarity because it tells you what to do with the thing once it is in your hands.

Mailed away: four collections with a postal address

Four strangers each want a complete set of something, and each pays out in stages as the envelopes arrive. Two of them also drop the rare crafting parts that the talismans further down depend on, so these hunts feed the rest of the inventory.

The cards are the only set you can buy your way through. Every cigarette pack at a general store costs $2.50 and holds one card, so the fastest route is to fill the satchel, discard the cigarettes, keep the cards and repeat; duplicates sell back to the trapper for $1.50. A single complete set is enough for the Collector's Item trophy. The bones and carvings are simpler: nothing is carried, Arthur notes the spot in his journal and a post office does the rest. The fish need the Special Lake, River and Swamp Lures and a patient rhythm of pulling the rod up and reeling slowly in bursts, because the line will snap if you fight them continuously.

Visited rather than carried

A few collectibles are places, not objects. The nine graves of the gang's dead only appear once the story is finished; paying respects at all of them earns the Pay Respects trophy and none can be missed. The five post scripts are letters and belongings that finish a character's story: the Braithwaite outhouse, the letter behind the Gray house, Micah's camp in the gap between Blessed Are the Meek? and the mission An American Pastoral Scene, Catherine Braithwaite's body in the burned manor with an emerald brooch and a lockbox holding a gold bar, and Micah's corpse on Mount Hagen after Epilogue 2. Visit the Braithwaite outhouse before Chapter 5 ends and its resident is still alive.

The seven homestead stashes are robberies with a puzzle each: Chez Porter's chest is up in the barn loft, Lonnie's Shack needs one of four men left alive to talk, the Aberdeen pig farmers only open the door if you walk in with them, Van Horn Mansion is best hit at night while its owners sleep, Catfish Jacksons gives up its hole when you threaten the son with the living-room shotgun, Watson's Cabin means stealing the basement shotgun and coming back a day later for her four sons, and Willard's Rest opens in Chapter 6 after a shooting lesson and a contest. Robbing four of them is the Breaking and Entering trophy; loot every room, not only the stash, or the house will not register. The unique collectible items page is a map of the one-off pickups needed for full completion, one of which is only there for players who ran the matching GTA Online bounty.

Handed to a gang member: six errands with a deadline

Gang members ask for dozens of small things across the story, and our companion requests page lists all of them. Six of the requests are for a specific object hidden somewhere on the map, and those six have their own pages because the descriptions in the game are vague. They all count toward the Errand Boy trophy, and every one expires: five at the end of Chapter 4, one at the end of Chapter 2.

Two traps catch people here. Chapter 2 contains a different pen that Mary-Beth will not accept, so if the gift prompt never appears you have the wrong one and need the Osman Grove cabin further east. And the Watson hut route to Lenny's watch is a reload lottery: the table by the bed holds a silver bracelet, a silver necklace or the watch, so save before you clear out the family.

Kept: wardrobe, satchel and stable

Hats and masks

A hat only survives in the wardrobe if it is a unique one: it glows on the ground and its name appears at the bottom right when you reach for it. Ordinary hats knocked off strangers are gone the moment you change outfit, however long you wear them. Six unique hats are placed in the world: the Tricorn in a shipwreck on the big island of Flat Iron Lake, the lamp-fitted Miner's Hat deep in Beryl's Dream mine beside a unique knife, the Morion Helmet on the frozen settler atop Mount Hagen, the Nevada Hat in the cave behind the waterfall by Window Rock, the Civil War Hat in the basement of the old house west of Van Horn Mansion on the Kamassa, and the Scarecrow Hat, which you shoot off a scarecrow in the fields by Caliga Hall.

Masks are practical rather than decorative: worn during a crime they hide Arthur's identity and protect his honor. The common ones (Metal Skull, Executioner Hood, Cloth, Canvas Sack Hood, Psycho) are sold by the fences in Rhodes, Saint Denis and Van Horn. Four rare ones have to be found: the Pagan Skull Mask among the ritual marks northwest of Owanjila at the map's edge, the Pig Mask hanging outside the butcher's in Butcher Creek, the Cat Skull Mask above a crate in a sunken Lakay shack, and the Ram Skull Mask in a sheep pen at Rathskeller Fork, which is only reachable once the story is done.

Outfits

The outfits page counts 62 sets and 127 individual pieces. Twenty complete sets hang in stores, and every one of them is rated for average or hot weather only: five at the Rhodes general store (Chevalier, Corsan, Earl, Gambler, Heartlands), three at the Saint Denis tailor (Bretagne, Deauville, Saint-Denis), four in Strawberry (Cumberland, Dolton, Faulkton, Millesani), four in Valentine (Clairmont, Dewberry Creek, Valentine, Vaquero) and four at Wallace Station (Calumet, Drover, Estate Boss, Roscoe). The cold-weather answer is the Winter Gunslinger from Arthur's own wardrobe. The sixteen legendary sets are crafted rather than bought: each is a hat, coat or vest, chaps or boots and gloves that the Saint Denis trapper assembles from pelts, and eight of them need at least one legendary animal, which the characters guide pairs with its hunt.

Talismans and trinkets: the permanent perks

Talismans and trinkets are crafted once at a fence and work forever without being equipped. A trinket needs one legendary animal part. A talisman needs a legendary part, a piece of jewelry, and one of six curios that only come from a particular job, which is where the mailed collections above pay a second time.

Satchels, tools and kits

The base satchel is small and cannot grow until Horseshoe Overlook. Every upgrade is built by Pearson, and Pearson builds nothing until you have bought the Leather Working Tools for $225 from the camp ledger, which itself only exists after Strauss's Money Lending and Other Sins. From there each satchel asks for a camp task and three perfect pelts, and a perfect pelt means a three-star animal killed cleanly with a single shot to the head or neck. If you would rather skip the hunting, every satchel is on sale at the fence from Epilogue 1.

The tools and kits page catalogues the rest of that inventory tab: the bandana and binoculars handed over after Outlaws from the West, the crafting tools Hosea gives you during Eastward Bound, the Lock Breaker from Friends in Very Low Places, and the Ancient Arrowhead, which doubles stamina while the bow is drawn and only appears once all twenty dreamcatchers are found. Cooking recipes sit alongside them: fifteen classes of meat, from stringy to big game, each seasoned with thyme or oregano for health and mint for stamina, but only on the grill that appears at camp after Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego and only when you camp from your main saddle.

Horses

A horse is the one item Arthur can lose for good. The horses page covers all 19 breeds and every coat, which stable sells each one and in which chapter, the four bonding levels and the XP each action earns, feeding, grooming and the Revive Tonic that brings a downed horse back if the red icon is still showing. Its picks: the Blackwater Arabian at $1,250 for all-round stats, the Turkoman for fights, the Missouri Fox Trotter as a tireless working horse, the Reverse Dapple Roan Nokota from Saint Denis after Chapter 4 for racing, and the Brindle Thoroughbred from Strawberry after Chapter 3 for acceleration. Stables hold four horses at a time. Bonding itself is a system rather than an item, so it is explained in the game systems guide.

Fenced: gold bars and six treasure trails

A gold bar is worth $500 to a fence and nothing to anyone else, and the gold bars page counts more than thirty in the game. Five are fixed: one in the sheriff's desk at Limpany, which can be farmed by saving and reloading while the pamphlet is still in the box; one in a lockbox in the charred Braithwaite Manor from Chapter 4; two in the wrecked train carriage on the ledges above Cotorra Springs; one under a small stone between two rocks southwest of the Rhodes station water tower. Three more come from the Strange Statues puzzle: read the feather counts under the eagles at Window Rock clockwise (7, 6, 3, 4, 5, 8, 2), then press the buttons on statues 2, 3, 5 and 7 in the Donner Falls cave to open the panel before the winged figure.

The rest are at the end of treasure trails, each a chain of maps that has its own walkthrough.

The Manito Glade hermit is also the only source of the Rare Shotgun, so take it in the same visit; it and Otis Miller's revolver are among the weapons the weapons guide lists as one-time pickups. Poisonous Trail wants the Noblest of Men, and a Woman strand started first, and its hunt for Flaco Hernandez leads to the same Cairn Lake hut.

Item questions

Which errand items can I miss?

All six. The Naval Compass is only available in Chapter 2; the pipe, watch, pen, book and harmonica can be delivered until Chapter 4 closes. Miss one and the Errand Boy trophy is gone for that playthrough.

Do gold bars respawn?

Some do and some do not. The Limpany bar can be taken again and again through the save-and-reload trick; the treasure caches are one-time finds. Sell them to any fence, which is also where the fences page shows the trinkets being crafted.

What actually counts for 100 percent?

One set of cigarette cards, all 30 dinosaur bones, all 10 rock carvings, the 13 mailed fish, the nine graves, four homestead robberies and the unique collectibles. Hats, masks, outfits, trinkets and horses are for Arthur, not the checklist. Which places count is covered in the locations guide, and the missions that hand out most of these items are in the missions guide; the Red Dead Redemption 2 hub holds the rest.