There's islands to the west of Rhodes (out in that bay area) that have tons of iguanas. There's also crabs, and it's the only place I know of for crabs. Crabs are required for one of the Herbalists challenges. That's also a good spot to hunt owls at night.

To get there, you can just ride your horse through the water.

You know what, I haven’t checked that part out yet. That’s something I need to do and you just reminded me to take a boat out and have a look.

Thanks mate I’ll stick a marker in it and explore

No boat needed. Your horse can "swim" there pretty easy.

Legend cheers man

Yeah... the other thing I picked up on that didn't know at first is.. the game prefers head kills for animals. That's not really true for real hunting, but that's what the game wants for instant kills and less risk to ruin the pelt.

After playing the online beta for around 8 hours my initial thoughts:

It's bare at the moment. No gambling mini games, can't have a bath or get a meal in a saloon, which I can only assume will come in the live game.

The game is hideously unbalanced. Getting any sort of cash together is a ridiculous grind. A box of crackers costs more than a gold wedding ring fenced.

Weapons are expensive, well actually everything is ($400 for a lancaster repeater) and at the time of writing, I had around 70 bux to upgrade the default revolver and repeater.

To unlock any weapons and clothes, it takes gold bars and when you earn 0.01 gold bar per mission, to unlock anything will take weeks, months and years. You don't start with any clothes for the cold climates so going north is not an option.

To get around buying food, I spent 4 hours on a hunt picking herbs and taking out any wildlife I could find and then crafted tonics and meat.

The missions with other players are okay. Same for each one I played. Pick a guy up from a bandit camp, deliver him to the sheriff, earn $8 for your trouble and 0.01 gold bars.

Server crashed a few times but that's to be expected.

The game takes camp and stable "rent" between $1-2 a day and when you have fuckall cash, that's an issue. To just get a haircut costs around $10

So money is a problem, gold bars are a problem, keeping yourself and your horse fed and maintained is either going to keep using up your cash or spend most of the time hunting for food.

You can tame wild horses for holding hunt meat, but you can't keep them. Stabled horses only can be your horse and you can only buy them.

I get that this is a beta so I'm trying to go easy, but if the gold bar system remains as it is, then it's clear that for those that want to spend $100's of real money on gold bars will have a massive advantage over the grinders and will just shoot them up all over the place. I hate pay to win models so much.

I also understand that they want this game to have years of longevity, but if they don't address the unbalanced money system, I will get bored of doing the same thing for weeks on end to get a rifle. it gets old pretty fast.

Apparently to get some cash together a bit faster, jump into the quick join missions which will mess with your own story a bit but I need money now. The mission "Kill Them All" dishes out around $250

It has potential for sure and I'll keep playing for a bit, but I think I will be finishing off the story first.

If anyone is on PS4 and fancies a posse up to do some missions or I'd like to see what the take is on robbing a train, add me up on the PSN: Rooky79

I did too. I'll have to shoot a 2 star and see now. This could be a game changer for me

I just shot a 2 star and it didn't upgrade to 3. I'm reading it has a 10-20% chance to increase but not automatic

Worth knowing as the money system is so bad

Red dead redemption 2 would make a good Pin.

Yeah, you still need to use the correct weapon and get a clean shot, too.

I don't like it when I get ambushed by highway men, I kill them out of self defense but if a passerby sees me looting the bodies I'm wanted for murder?

Also was doing a debtor mission and he said "find my money in a tree" So I hog tied him to my horse and took him there, which seems like what any reasonable loan shark would do, but I'm spotted and wanted for kidnapping!

Sometimes the Old West seems more restrictive than modern American cities!

The whole witness system is broken. It's not fun, doesn't work right, and in general is a pain because it keeps flagging you in situations it created. It rewards you for running away a lot of the time when people attack you, which is dumb.

Basically they need to flag highwaymen as "OK to kill and loot" same as they do O'Driscolls and the old Confederates.

In the case of the latter 2, you can for instance stop them from robbing a coach, and then loot their bodies in plain views of others and nobody cares.

I whistled for my horse and he ran in front of the train and died. I’m so pissed! I took the saddle off him and had to walk for miles to the nearest town. And now it just told me I lost my legendary pelt?!

always keep stock of horse reviver Killing your horse can happen easily if you are bold with walking them along cliffs, etc

I lost a mission one time where my horse got killed. I wasn't even on him, I was on a train. I didn't even know where he was, somehow he got killed while I was a long ways away, automatic mission fail, lol. I was just firing away when all of a sudden mission failed comes up.

On a side note, Black Friday has caused me to totally drop this game for now. I started playing AC: Odyssey and am having way more fun than I was in RDR2. I didn't even like AC: Origins, I thought it kind of stunk, but this one seems way more fun so far. I also tried out Sniper Elite 4 on the game pass, how did I miss this series before? It's totally fun (and ironic that the whole game revolves around being able to complete a mission a 100 different ways whereas RDR2 is only one way every mission). Bought Battlefield V but can't get on due to server issues so far it seems.

Much of this chat makes me just want to play RDR1 instead.

That just gives me and excuse to kill the witness and loot their body too.

I love the games but the fact if you bump into someone in town on your horse and the cops just open fire on you is ridiculous

The witnesses don't know they highway men were bad guys

Totally. The "Wanted" thing isn't permanent. You can make it go away by eliminating the witnesses or escaping without the law recognizing you. Wear your bandana!!

I was riding my horse through a logging camp after I gave them a ton of medical supplies. I bumped into a dog with the horse and suddenly everyone started shooting at me. ridiculous!

In town and around people you can't run or ride at full speed - proceed with caution. It's not what people want to hear, but it's consistent with the game.

Why should NPCs want to get run over by a horse?

It won't let you run full speed anyways in town, it's one of those bizarre limitations in the game...you can do anything you want, but speeding through town is strictly not allowed. It's kind of like playing frogger with people coming out from both sides in front of you, and you're trying to avoid them the entire time. Playing AC with the horse after playing RDR2 with the horse, it's pretty obvious how much less fun the RDR2 system is. One makes the horse always useful and easy to get around, sometimes at the slight expense of realism, while the other makes the horse kind of a chore and something that's a pain a lot of the time.

You can galop in town (varies).. it's just futile. Usually you want to be at a trot... and get off your horse before approaching a building/sidewalk/etc. You can't ride your horse through the market or park without trouble... I don't think that's out of character. Making you go on foot is part of staging.

What I hate is when you are limited to walking in a town/location. I HATE having to walk around camp.

I'm sure the slow walk in camp is to promote you interacting with all the characters.

Sure, and it's not like you'd actually be sprinting around your home base in real life. That said, it's annoying as hell since sometimes you just want to race to your tent, grab that can of pomade, and be on your merry way.

This may not be where to post this and not trying to get the thread off topic, but I’m not going to play RDR2 until January. Playing Skyrim right now and finishing up, is Witcher 3 a good game that is comparable to these two? Or Unchartered? Or a different one? Looking for suggestions!

Witcher 3 is awesome, definitely play that especially if you're into Skyrim. Horizon Zero Dawn is another awesome game to play in that genre. Uncharted 2, 3, and 1 were good (in that order) but 4 was kind of depressing and not all that great. I liked all of those games better than RDR2 (except Skyrim, which was too monotonous for me).

I also recommend Last of Us. One of the best games ever made.

Witcher 3 is one of the top 3 games I've ever played. Absolutely amazing.

Last of Us was what got me back into video games, love that game, great story. Thanks for the feedback, Horizon Zero Dawn looked cool, hadn't seen that one before, but going with Witcher 3!

I've heard nothing but amazing things about Witcher 3, but it sounds like an absolute time suck. I guess I just got too old and 100+ hour games are now daunting instead of exciting.

Huge time suck. All the expressions are great too. I bet I spent 40 hours just playing gwent and searching for all the cards

So...Witcher 3 seems a bit complex. Am I officially old?

Apparently alligator meat is super good for you. And if you have that sniper rifle one shot to the head of a non moving target is super easy.

I absolutely loved Horizon Zero Dawn. Not only is the story super cool but the game mechanics are very deep, how you take down robot monsters, various techniques etc. It's not just "hide behind walls and pop out to shoot occasionally"

Yes. You get to see boobs. Does that help old timer?

Yes, Horizon Zero Dawn is one of my favorite games of this generation. That and Witcher 3. I also really liked:

Overwatch
Divinity Original Sin
Dragon Age Inquisition
Forza Horizon 2
Xcom 2
Tomb Raider 1 and 2
South Park Stick of Truth
and some others.

Right I'm going to give RDO one last shot since the update..........

I about lost my mind today trying to beat the five finger fillet challenge

I thought I was done with RDR 2, but then came the Epilogue, and the Epilogue is looooooooong (but super fun !)

I am tempted to just start over and play through the story again. If I was retired I would start this today.

If I was retired, I would go for 100% completion. Although I have a month and a half until the next mass wave of juicy releases. 2 releases actually but quite amazing (Resident evil 2 and Kingdom hearts 3), until then I have nothing to play so I might just keep wandering in RDR2 but I've also been looking at redoing Nier automata, tough choices.

Only just realized last time I played that you need a barber to cut your main hair.

Also why does my facial hair have to grow naturally but my horse can magically have any style it wants?