Mechanics

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game of hidden counters. Some swing both ways: honor climbs and falls between minus eight and plus eight, a bounty grows with every crime and shrinks only when you pay, and three cores empty as you ride and refill when you eat. Others only ever rise: the camp ledger, ninety challenge ranks, a horse's bond, the recipes in your satchel. This guide takes the folder's 23 system pages and sorts them by which kind of counter they describe, because that tells you whether a mistake can be undone or simply has to be outrun.

Counters that go both ways

Honor: sixteen ranks, forty points each

Every act with a moral weight flashes a hat on screen, white for honorable and red for not, and moves a meter that runs from rank minus eight to rank plus eight in steps of forty points. Helping strangers, sparing lives, clean kills on animals, throwing small fish back, disarming a duel opponent, donating to camp and paying off bounties all push it up. Robbery, looting the innocent dead, killing civilians or lawmen, leaving an animal unskinned, and, the honor page notes, not bathing, all pull it down. A bandana freezes the meter while you wear it, which is how you rob a stagecoach without paying for it twice.

The point values are uneven. Cracking a safe or register costs 20, desecrating a body 10, roughing someone up during a robbery 5, and looting a man you knocked out or stealing a hitched horse a single point. Paying your debts, killing rats and serving jail time each give 5; disarming in a duel and donating to the gang give 10. Story choices carry the biggest swings: letting Lenny die in Chapter 1 costs 20, returning the crucifix in Chapter 4 earns 20, and agreeing or refusing to help Sadie, Monroe or Rains Fall in Chapter 5 moves the meter 10 to 20 points either way. The endings page explains why the rank matters at the finish: Arthur's final mission splits on one choice (help John escape, or go back for the money) and again on honor, giving four variants and a wolf or a deer in the last cutscene.

Bounty and the five wanted levels

A crime that is seen starts an active pursuit, marked by the word WANTED fading out as you get clear. The wanted system page lays out what happens next. Each offence adds $5 to $50 to a bounty that is tracked per state, and the bounty is capped by chapter: $300 in Chapter 2, $500 in Chapter 3, and $1,500 once Sodom? Back to Gomorrah is done. Your wanted level is never displayed but follows the bounty: level 1 from the first dollar, level 2 above $50, level 3 above $150, level 4 above $250 and level 5 above $1,000. Levels 2 and 3 call reinforcements, and the kind depends on the town: deputized mobs in Valentine, Rhodes and Strawberry, bloodhounds in Cumberland Forest and Scarlett Meadows, marshals on horseback around Annesburg, Blackwater, Saint Denis and Tumbleweed.

Twelve distinct high-severity crimes inside 60 minutes, or a very large bounty, put a town into lockdown: shops shut, extra patrols post up, and any sighting restarts the chase until 350 in-game minutes pass, you die, or you pay. Sisika Penitentiary and Fort Wallace are locked down permanently. Witnesses are the weak point of the system: a red eye on the minimap is someone about to report you, and catching them lets you threaten, beat, bribe or silence them. Dying carries its own counter, a cut of your cash that starts at 5% and climbs to 7%, 10% and finally 20%, capped at $150, once you have died six times inside an hour.

Clearing the slate is simpler than earning it. The bounty page recommends the post office clerk, early on at Valentine or Emerald Ranch, who lists every state's bounty separately; you pay each one. The free option is to surrender: holster your weapon, let a lawman draw, and take the prompt, which skips to a jail cell and costs no money.

Cores: three meters for Arthur, two for the horse

The rings around the minimap are the cores: health, stamina and Dead Eye for Arthur, health and stamina for the horse, shown as horseshoes when mounted. A core drains with use, cold, heat and hunger, and the bar it feeds refills slower as the core empties. Food and rest bring them back; tonics do it instantly and fortify for a while, though some carry a side effect written in their description. The bars themselves grow with play, since sprinting builds stamina and healing builds health. Wearing the wrong clothes for the weather is the quietest way to lose a core, which is why the items guide sorts outfits by temperature.

Dirt and rust

Two more meters are never shown. Hygiene drops when Arthur is shot or stabs someone, carries a carcass, wades through deep mud or lets his beard run wild, and townsfolk respond in stages, from muttering to refusing side quests to running away. A hotel bath costs 25 cents, the deluxe version 50, a barber or the shaving kit by your camp bed handles the beard, and a quick swim works if you get out before the stamina core drowns you. Weapon condition falls with use, rust and dust, and a dirty gun hits softer, reloads slower and fires slower. One can of Gun Oil, $1.50 from any gunsmith's accessories tab, cleans one weapon: inspect it from the weapon wheel and press the clean prompt.

Ledgers that only rise

The camp ledger

Camp keeps three stock meters, for ammunition, provisions and medicine, and turns red when one runs low; morale has no meter, people simply come and complain. Upgrades run through the ledger, which does not exist until Money Lending and Other Sins is finished. That means collecting three debts for Strauss, from Wrobel west of camp, from Lilly Millet at Emerald Ranch (her friend Cooper picks a fight) and from Chick Matthews, who bolts on horseback and has to be lassoed; hand the money to the donation box and the book appears by Dutch's tent. From there the camp upgrades page lists what money buys.

Leather Working Tools is the gate everything else waits behind: the seven satchels and every pelt-based decoration for Arthur's wagon, John's tent, the chuckwagon and the campfires need it. A free campfire of your own, for sleeping and cooking anywhere outside town, unlocks after Exit Pursued by a Bruised Ego.

Ninety challenge ranks

Nine challenge trees hold ten ranks each, each rank unlocking the next, and all ninety are required for 100 percent. Finishing everything awards the Legend of the East outfit, which cuts melee damage and core drain and boosts XP. Along the way each tree hands out a bandolier, gun belt, holster and off-hand holster at ranks 1, 3, 7 and 10 in a different order per tree, sold by the trapper once earned; the other ranks pay XP and a few dollars.

A few ranks are timed rides worth planning: Valentine to Rhodes in five minutes, Strawberry to Saint Denis in nine without touching water, Van Horn to Blackwater in seventeen. The Master Hunter tree is what gates two legendary animals, covered in the characters guide.

Equipment and the extra core levels

Any gunsmith sells the plain reinforced set: an upgraded bandolier for $69.50, gun belt for $58 and holster for $45.50. The named sets from the challenge trees cost less, from $12.25 for the Weapons Expert holster to $34.75 for the Explorer bandolier, and the equipment upgrades page prices all 36 pieces. Their real value is hidden: owning all three pieces of a set permanently adds a level to one core whether or not you wear them, with the Horseman, Sharpshooter and Weapons Expert sets tied to health, Bandit, Gambler and Master Hunter to stamina, and Explorer, Herbalist and Survivalist to Dead Eye.

Horse bonding

A horse's bond has four levels and never decays. Level 1 lifts its health and stamina, level 2 lets you whistle it from farther away and mid-fight, level 3 opens rough ground and deeper water, and level 4 makes it hard to steal. Each level also adds a trick: rearing at level 2, a hard stop or turn at level 3, the piaffe at level 4. Bond grows from riding without emptying the stamina core, which the cinematic auto-ride to a waypoint does for you, from feeding without overfeeding, calming it under fire with a pat, and brushing it whenever it is dirty. Breeds, stables and the XP each action earns are on the horses page in the items guide.

Hunting and fishing

Hunting is a quality game. Study an animal to log it and read its stars, one for poor, two for good, three for pristine, and only a pristine animal killed with a clean shot yields a perfect pelt. Damage comes in three grades: fatal on the vitals, which Dead Eye shows in red from rank 4, critical on organs like the lungs, shown from rank 5, and ordinary. The weapon should match the size class.

A horse carries three carcasses, one medium across the back and two small ones at the sides, and three following horses stretch that to twelve. Carcasses rot, faster in bad weather, so sell, donate or cook them soon; whole carcasses fetch more than skins, and donating to Pearson also raises honor. Fishing starts when A Fisher of Men hands over the rod. The bait and tackle shop at Lagras sells worms and crickets for 50 cents, crayfish for 25, lake, river and swamp lures for $2.50 and their special versions, the only ones that hook legendary fish, for $20. Overcast and rain are the best conditions, a clear sky the worst, and deep water beats the shore. Where each legendary fish lives is in the items guide.

Crafting and the pamphlet map

Crafting happens in two places. The crafting tools in your satchel make ammunition, arrows, throwables and bait anywhere; a campfire makes tonics, horse medicine and food, anywhere outside a town. Both need pamphlets, and about half are handed over at the start of Chapter 2. The rest are hidden in chests and under floorboards, and every one of them also goes on sale at a fence after a set mission, which is the easier route.

Tables, duels and the road: where cash and honor change hands

Four table games

Camp rotates one table game a day between poker, blackjack, dominoes and five finger fillet, but the permanent tables in town are where the money is. Poker pays the most and the Saint Denis saloon is its big table; its page walks through hole cards, the flop, turn and river, hand rankings from high card to royal flush, and the observation that the AI reads a large raise as a bluff and calls it. Blackjack lives in Rhodes and Van Horn: stand on 17 or more, hit below 12, and read the dealer's up card in between. Dominoes runs to 100 points at the Saint Denis table, and the advice is to play doubles early. Five finger fillet has three permanent boards, west of Van Horn, south of Valentine by Cumberland Forest, and south of Strawberry near Hawks Eye Creek, with the Valentine one the softest; classic gives five attempts, guts twenty seconds of unlimited attempts, burnout one attempt in thirty seconds. The Gambler challenges above are built on exactly these tables.

Duels

A duel is three presses of the fire trigger: hold to draw and fill the meter without overcharging, press again to enter Dead Eye and aim, press a third time to shoot. Losing is always death regardless of health. Aim at the hand to disarm for an honor gain; some opponents cannot be disarmed and killing those costs nothing. If the draw prompt never appears, switch Third Person Controls to Alternative in the settings.

Random encounters

Grey dots on the minimap are scripted random encounters, and their honor pattern is consistent: about +10 for a rescue, +2 for an attempt, -5 for riding past, -10 for watching someone die and -20 for saving a person and then killing them. Several open other content. The Treasure Hunter with binoculars starts the High Stakes trail; three Night Folk sightings in the Bayou unlock A Fine Night for It; the murder scenes near Wallace Station or Valentine unlock American Dreams; saving the snakebite victim unlocks a free item at a store and a town encounter; the injured rider and the drowning unlock Public Hanging; and watching the Del Lobo execution in Tumbleweed after Epilogue 1 adds two bounty targets, Joaquin Arroyo and Esteban Cortez.

Getting around

The transport page covers the three ways to skip a ride. Fast travel is a map on the side of Arthur's wagon, bought with the Lodging upgrade, and only reaches towns you have already visited: Valentine, Strawberry, Emerald Ranch, Rhodes, Lagras, Saint Denis, Van Horn, Annesburg and Blackwater. Trains stop at eight stations from Annesburg to Wallace Station and need a ticket at each, stagecoaches wait at eleven stops including Armadillo and MacFarlane's Ranch, and the Saint Denis trolleys only circle the city.

Secrets

The easter eggs page is the folder's catalogue of things the counters ignore: two UFOs, one above Hani's Bethel at 2 am on the 15th of a month and one over Mount Shann, the Witches' Cauldron liquid east of Donner Falls that knocks Arthur out and moves him, the serial killer Edmund Lowry traced through three map pieces to a cabin outside Valentine, the mutant west of Van Horn reached through a second-floor window, the donkey woman south of Armadillo, Francis Sinclair's birthmark, the Bully engraving on Calloway's revolver, and John's inability to swim in the epilogue. The full list of hideouts and shacks those secrets sit near is in the locations guide.

System questions

How high can a bounty go?

It depends on the chapter: $300 in Chapter 2, $500 in Chapter 3 and $1,500 after Sodom? Back to Gomorrah. Each state keeps its own total, so the practical ceiling is that cap in every state you have offended.

Does honor change prices?

Yes, at three thresholds: 10% off at rank 2, 25% at rank 5 and 50% at rank 7. Low honor pays out differently, with better Dead Eye tonic, alcohol and tobacco drops and higher bounty payments from lawmen.

What resets and what does not?

Bounties reset when paid, honor moves with every act, cores refill with food and sleep. Camp upgrades, challenge ranks, equipment bonuses, horse bond and learned recipes are permanent. The missions that trigger most of these unlocks are ordered chapter by chapter in the missions guide, the guns those bounties are earned with are in the weapons guide, while the Red Dead Redemption 2 hub ties the six buckets together.