Thirith on 26/11/2018 at 07:30
I'm only 1-2 hours away from where I was when I restarted due to the Great Vanishing. All in all, I'm quite glad I did restart, because I think I got more out of chapter 2 because I'd already learnt how the game works and what its idiosyncrasies are.
One thing I was wondering: do any of you have any tips concerning hunting and in particular getting all the required materials for the satchel upgrades? With most of the animals I wouldn't even know where to look for them, and even just obtaining the required number of perfect deer skins strikes me as quite the endeavour. Or does it make sense to wait and do these things later in the game?
Malf on 26/11/2018 at 09:53
Deer are quite common, and when you see one, there's usually 3-4 of them, with one pretty much guaranteed to be a pristine specimen. You can take them out from horseback using the Springfield and focus.
Boars are a little less common and harder to target, but again, the Springfield pretty much guarantees a perfect pelt if you hit them in a critical spot.
Also, while you can only carry one large pelt (elk, alligator, moose, etc.), there doesn't seem to be a limit on smaller ones, and they can sit underneath a large one on your horse.
And I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but if you're going out specifically to hunt, it's worth taming a wild horse while you're out and about, as you can use that to store an extra large pelt and more normal ones.
As to where to find animals, once you've killed one, it'll generally mark that area on your map as being the habitat for that animal.
The hardest ones to find are the large predators. While black bears can be quite common in certain areas of the map (and less dangerous to hunt as they almost always run away from you), grizzlies, cougars and panthers can be a pain in the arse to find, and once you do, good luck getting a pristine kill if they spot you. If you somehow manage to sneak up on one, an improved arrow to the head is a guaranteed kill. Well, it is on cougars, for sure. Haven't had the chance to sneak up on a grizzly.
The special predator bait doesn't seem to help either, as it typically ends up attracting a damn coyote or fox.
The exceptions to those are wolves and gators. Wolves generally find you, and are pretty easy to deal with as long as you keep your calm. And gators stay still most of the time and are incredibly common around Saint Denis. You can't walk more than a few yards without stumbling across one.
Snakes and small birds however are a pain in the arse. Snakes because they're frequently swimming, and getting a clean kill on a swimming snake is nigh on impossible, and trying to tell the difference between small birds is a pointless endeavour. So if you need a specific small bird, pretty much just kill every small bird you some across.
Thirith on 26/11/2018 at 10:41
Thanks, those are all very useful. I have this habit with open-world games offering such upgrades that I tend to get carried away early in the game trying to get most or all of them, which means that you'll get inexperienced greenhorn Thirith trying to face down bears three times his size with a varmint rifle (or, in other games, trying to kill a Great White Shark with a toothpick).
Malf on 26/11/2018 at 11:01
I know what you mean. Most of my time playing the game has been hunting, or getting distracted from what I should be doing by hunting, all in order to get those satchels.
I'm currently working on getting the very last one, but it requires 5 pristine cougar pelts, and I've got one. I've been killed by more cougars than I've killed.
The one pristine pelt I got, I had been killing lots of large animals around the western-most trapper. I circled back around to a carcass I'd skinned earlier, only to find a cougar feeding off of it. That allowed me to shoot it in the head while it was distracted by food.
So yeah, large animal carcasses are probably the best bait for cougars. Definitely easier to find than the specific fish meat you need for special predator bait.
Thirith on 4/12/2018 at 07:43
In the meantime I've become better at successfully hunting for perfect pelts, mostly thanks to the buck antler talisman. I've even crafted my first upgraded satchel, and bison have finally begun showing up, so I foresee some hunting in Arthur's future.
I also foresee a lot of work to get the money to pay the $300 bounty I got thanks to that no-good asshat Micah. I wish I could've left him to rot in jail.
Goethe's Ghost on 4/12/2018 at 11:29
With this success, do you believe it's possible that they may port over the first game as well? I'm not speaking of streaming the game.
Malf on 4/12/2018 at 11:42
There's not even anything solid about there being a PC port of the second game, mostly just wishful thinking on the community's behalf.
And from what I understand of it, the codebase for RDR1 was a bit of a tangled mess, which was the main reason it never got ported to PC.
So yeah, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Sulphur on 4/12/2018 at 11:46
RDR2 will most probably be ported to the PC, because god knows people have been whinging about RDR1's lack of a port long enough. Also because R* would be stupid to not mine the additional revenue from the platform once RDR Online settles down, just like they launched GTA 5 a year later on PC when the infrastructure was complete.
RE: that leak about some code pointing to a PC version, it could just be from a lack of development version housecleaning, but it could also be because they're actually working on it.
Also whoops, didn't read that close enough. Yeah, forget about getting a port of RDR1. They would've done it by now if they were going to.
demagogue on 7/12/2018 at 07:57
So, since I'm in the waiting-for-the-PC-port camp, quick question to get an idea of where this game falls in the pantheon of open world games... How does this compare with Skyrim & GTAV as an open world game? Does RDR2's world feel as big/not as big, as alive/not as alive, etc, and is its gameplay, missions, & story as fun/not as fun, epic/not as epic etc, etc?
henke on 7/12/2018 at 08:42
It's frickin huge. I think partly because traveling by horseback being slow, and fast travel being practically nonexistent. I've played for 30-40 hours and I think I may have uncovered less than half of the map. There's so much stuff to do outside of story missions that I'm still not very far(only just did the Valentine bank robbery). Characters are well written, tho I'm not sure about the overarching story. Story missions have plenty of cool setpieces and variety but are frustratingly linear and allow for no creativity from the player.