Red Dead Redemption 2 – Online [Achievement Guide]

Overview

Slightly in-depth guide for completionists like myself for Online section of Red Dead Redemption 2.Details for each achievement and few tips and tricks.

Introduction

Wanted to compile various information scattered everywhere into a handy quick go-to guide for achievements for Online section of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Story mode achievements have been covered in other guides.

Total of achievements: 17
Difficulty: Easy [minor grind and map awareness]
Time needed: 50-150 hours

Breakout

Breakout – Complete the Intro

Difficulty: Unmissable
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Complete the Intro

Picked to Perfection

Pick 25 herbs

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Gather any 25 herbs your come across.

Butchered

Sell 20 items to the Butcher

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Easy as it gets, sell 20 animal parts to any butcher

Master Craftsman

Master Craftsman – Craft 20 items (excluding ammo)

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Simple enough, while at camp or any campfire craft any 20 items, such as cooking meat, making tonics etc.

Non-Regulation

Non-Regulation – Craft 25 pieces of ammunition

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: 22 +
Cost: 325$ +

Achievement itself is easy, you just need enough money and rank.
You can purchase recipes for various ammo at Fence[reddead.fandom.com] once you are high enough rank.
Easy and common way would be Small Game Arrows.
Buy recipe at Fence, go to any local gunsmith for regular arrows and shotgun casings and craft 25 Small Game Arrows (don’t forget the Flight feathers from flying birds)

Tip: Buying bow is not required in order to craft arrows

Home Comforts

Home Comforts – Purchase 5 camp improvements

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: 10+
Cost: 1000$ +

You need to purchase any 5 camp improvements.

Such as:

• Butcher Table – 15 Gold bars (Trader Role)
• Stew Pot – 650$ (Trader Role)
• Deluxe Campfire – 500$
• Upgrade tents – 100$ and above
• Full list of upgrades can be found here[reddead.fandom.com]

Buckle Up

Buckle Up – Achieve 5 gold belt buckles from awards

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Gold belt buckles are trophies awarded by achieving various goals such as gather herbs, kill animals, kill enemies, sell items, ride a horse xy miles etc.

You can keep track of it under Menu > Progress > Awards

Gold belt buckle itself is a trophy which you can show around as cosmetics but it always awards you with experience and is not a bad way to earn extra experience.

Here is my personal list of easy buckles, you will obtain them through normal gameplay without any effort

To name a few:

• Reach maximum honor
• Achieve maximum bond level with your horse
• Survive a fall of 10 meters with your horse -> I’m a reckless horserider so this came rather natural to me
• Sell herbs to a Doctor -> 100 needed to gold buckle
• Sell an item to 3 shop types -> sell at least one item to Butcher, Fence and Doctor
• Taste herbs -> Herbs are often in clusters, gather 20 types and eat one per type
• Spend cash in shops -> 1000$ for gold buckle
• Earn 100 gold nuggets (100 nuggets) -> This will happen through natural gameplay

Eventful

Eventful – Play 5 Free Roam Events

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Free Roam Events happen periodically in Open World (Free Roam) every 45 minutes or so.
Pop-up will appear in upper left corner inviting you to join in an instances event with various goals (Hunting, Archery, Fishing, various brawls, etc.)

Participate in 5 of them and you are set.

Series Major

Series Major – Take part in a Series

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Series are instanced mini games with various goals such as Racing, King of the Hill, Battle Royal, Team vs Team, etc.

Participate in any Series once and you are done.

There are 3 ways to join them:

• In main menu, scroll down and choose one of the Series
  
• In Free Roam, interact with flags located on map
  
• Press Log button “L”, scroll down to “Quick Join” and choose your preferred Series
  

Strength in Numbers

Strength in Numbers – Complete a Free Roam mission as part of a Posse with at least 2 members

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

This one should happen naturally, I myself got it after finishing a story mission where people join.
Just keep doing Story missions those usually fill up fast and you’ll be done.

Should you still not get it, you can always:

• Main Menu -> Posse Up (This will put you in an open Posse doing something, often it’s Story mission or Stranger missions)
  
• Under Log “L” -> “Quick Join” -> “Story On Call”
  
• Under Log “L” -> “Players” -> You can try to Posse up with various people currently in the world
• And of course having friends in your Posse will make this rather natural 😀

Gun for Hire

Gun for Hire – Accept 10 Free Roam missions from characters around the world

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Free Roam mission would be “Stranger missions”

Once you finish at least one mission per location they will no longer be Stranger and each will have a name and description of the type of missions they offer.
(You need to zoom in closer to icon to get additional information)

Missions differ from Good Honor and Bad Honor missions depending on individual.
Missions are either things like escorting caravans, retrieving supplies, delivering mail or kidnapping people, assassinations, robbery etc.

You need to accept and finish 10 of them.

Tip:

• Missions have cooldown, most likely 24 hours in-game
• Mission can sometimes be done alone or need a group, if you come to NPC and he doesn’t offer you a mission you probably need more people to do it.
• NPC’s might not interact with you during certain times of day (such as night)
• I didn’t like the idea where you automatically accept any mission given by NPC (being it good or bad), the moment you come to NPC you just get the mission and are stuck with it.
  (This happens only when you interact with them for the first time)
  (Example being: I don’t want to help those crazy hillbilly cannibal couple)

Posse Up

Posse Up – Form a Persistent Posse

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: N/A
Cost: 200$

Pretty straightforward:

• Have 200$
• Press Log button “L”
• “Posse”
• Hold Space bar to “Form Posse”
• Switch from “Temporary” -> “Persistent”

Choose any additional options such as name and you are done.

Getting Started

Getting Started – Reach Rank 10

Difficulty: Easy
Rank: 10
Cost:

Self explained, farm experience until you reach Rank 10.

Notorious

Notorious – Reach Rank 50

Difficulty: Easy (Just put the hours in the game)
Rank: 50
Cost: N/A

As stated before, farm experience until you reach Rank 50.
I average around 1 Rank per 2 hours played, depending what I do of course.
So you can expect a minimum of 50-100 hours until you reach this Rank.
This achievement will most likely be the last one you will obtain.

As long as servers don’t kick you every now and then and camp doesn’t randomly disappear all the time; playing Online is a rather enjoyable experience and reaching Rank 50 won’t be much of a hassle.

Tip: There is a decent steam guide for fast Rank and Cash farm here

All’s Fair

All’s Fair – Successfully counter a rival Posse’s Free Roam mission

Difficulty: Medium / Hard
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Ok this one can be tricky depending where your moral compass is.
It’s kinda simple, you need to sabotage another players mission.
Mission can be anything; bounty, trading, escorting in stranger missions.

So I’ll cover how I suggest you do it:
Once you pick a role Trader or Bounty Hunter one of the things you gain is awareness of your competition within same role.
So for example if you are a Trader everytime you decide to deliver Goods to your buyer every other Trader in near vicinity (range depends on your Role experience) is alerted to that and can sabotage you and of course vice versa.

Example of “enemy” trade caravan

So what you can do for example is attack said traders caravan, shoot him and steal his carriage and destroy it some ditch or river or whatever it takes to destroy it (it’s amazing how fragile those carriages are so don’t worry) and unlock the achievement.

Horses for courses

Horses for courses – Concurrently own 5 horses

Difficulty: Easy / Medium
Rank: N/A
Cost: 1500$ + value of horses

This one requires only money.
Goal is to own 5 horses at the same time in stables.
You need to unlock 5 stalls which costs 1500$ and fill them with horses and that’s about it.
Any horse breed will do (I used 50$ horses and it worked)

The Real Deal

The Real Deal – Achieve MVP 3 times (in a round with at least 4 players)

Difficulty: Easy / Medium
Rank: N/A
Cost: N/A

Could be tricky depending on your skill level.
Goal is to achieve MVP rank at the end of any Series (Riding, Takeover, Shootout, Elimination or Featured)
It happened naturally to me, try all Series and find the one you enjoy the most.
Riding is rather fun for me personally so I had no problem getting 1st place often which will often award you with MVP, having best time to finish race, but being fastest isn’t enough sometimes, often times even within racing, somebody with most kills might take MVP under you.

So keep playing Series and you’ll get in sooner or later it isn’t all that bad.

Epilogue

Overall RDR2 Online achievements aren’t too big of a deal, normal gameplay will finish most of them naturally, no need to tackle bears 18 times or grind Gold medals.

Most of all try not to rage too much, Online is bugged and there are still glitchers and hackers lurking around; and random DC while you have 1st place in race or when your camp just disappears when you have 20 pelts on your horse can make anyone go crazy.
Patience and try to enjoy yourself as much as you can.

Hope it helps 🙂