1508

Ah, well there are aspects of GTAisms in the way that creatures appear.

Often, if you aren’t actively tracking a creature, and look away from it, it’ll just despawn. The game really only worries about keeping stuff in front of you, to preserve processing power.

It’s similar to how GTA handled cars and other random civilians.

1509

I’m not sure, but I think hides you leave in camp are stored somewhere, in the corner near the horses? So perhaps it wasn’t stolen, just tidied away?

1510

You should definitely hunt more legendary animals. The trinkets and talisman’s you get are the main reason in my opinion. Chose craft at a fence and see what you are missing out on, there’s a fence right near the trapper in St. Denis.

1511

I’m a few missions deep into Chapter 6 now, played quite a bit over the weekend (no cable, no internet since last Wednesday will give a guy a lot of time to catch up on reading, comics, and recorded TV let alone an offline game like RDR 2). So good. I’ve done so many crazy follow up stranger quests and line up with previous quests and are just so well written. I wonder how much of my characters reaction and the reaction around me is tied to my maxed out Honor. It feels like quite a bit. Makes me want to try a dark/no honor run.

1512

Do you unlock climbing equipment later in the game?

A stranger gave me the first part of a treasure map, but when I went to the spot indicated by the map, I can’t climb up there. So I was thinking maybe later in the game, Arthur gets some climbing equipment, or maybe he gains the ability to stand on his horse, which are the only two ways I can think of to climb up to the spot indicated by the map.

1513

No, you can do all the traversal you need from the start. You must just be missing a trail or something. Maybe hit up YouTube?

1514

I just looked it up on Youtube. I was misinterpreting the map. The two pillars were just there as a reference, the treasure isn’t there but close to it. Thanks Scott. Good to know traversal doesn’t change later in the game.

1515

I was playing dress up last night and noticed that you can tab left and right to show the different hats if you’ve gained any others than what you start with. There’s a tab for “stolen hats”, etc. Works with masks, as well. Also, in the change clothes menu you are given further customizable options with your collar, shirt sleeves and boots.

I only noticed this when I went looking in my inventory for a really creepy mask that I stumbled upon around what I thought was Indian burial grounds. It was not Indian burial grounds.

(Sorry, should have put this in the “Tips and tricks…” thread).

1516

A thing that happened last night:
I was up in the northeast, and got suckered into an ambush by some of the Murphree’s Brood guys (the cannibal hillbillies).

So I’m fighting them off, but I’m pretty close to Butcher’s Creek.

All of a sudden, while I’m fighting off all these nuts, I suddenly get a negative karma ding.

What I believe happened, is that I think maybe a random “normal” hillbilly from Butcher’s Creek just happened to wander over, and I shot them.

What happened next was pretty terrible, in that I guess I pissed off that whole town or something. At no point did I get a wanted level for anything, but I was assaulted by a seemingly neverending swarm of hillbillies. Literally dozens of them were coming at me, and no matter how many I killed, they seemed to just keep coming. What’s worse, periodically, I kept getting more negative dings to my karma.

I then decide that I need to just get the hell out of there, because I don’t see this going well, and while I’m killing tons of these guys, I don’t want to tank my karma. Also, I’m not confident I can win this fight, because they’re coming from every direction, and I’m barely keeping my health up.

So I call my horse. It had run off because it was freaked out, but it came back to me. I hop onto it, and immediately run directly into a tree, full speed, and fall off. I am then killed.

So that was fun.

Other things to note:
First person view, I believe I mentioned, is pretty cool for a bunch of things. Specifically, searching houses is more easily done in 1st person.

But there are things which are extremely cool in first person.

Like if you’re fighting a group like the Skinners, where they periodically come up and grab you from behind. Getting grabbed in first person, and then wrestling on the ground, is a lot more intense in first person.

Probably the most crazy thing is getting mauled by a grizzly bear in first person. That crap is nuts.

1517

The horse running into trees thing is so annoying. If they programmed in horses getting freaked out by predators why not also program in an aversion to running into trees. Running off a cliff I can see if they don’t know it’s there but running into a tree?

1518

I’ve had my horse halt and rear up at every cliff that would have been for certain fatal. I have hit quite a few rocks/trees though, every time it’s my own fault but it doesn’t make it feel any better knowing that.

1519

Weird-- the other night I was showing my sis the game and kept trying to run into trees but there seemed to be some AI preventing it. Maybe you have to have a really fast horse at a full gallop? I’m still riding fairly pokey ones.

1520

I was trying to rob a train last night, galloping my horse next to the train getting ready to jump on, but my horse was too fast. It kept getting in front of the train, some sloppy handling and we ended up across the tracks…

…I woke up from being dead and looked for my beautiful white Arabian, but some strange brown horse was standing there with my saddle on it and my stuff in the packs. A tear leaked out of my eye. I raged. I almost shot the new horse in my despair. This was the most emotional response I’ve had to a game character death since Aeris. I slogged back up to the mountains to find Phobos II (my warhorse is Deimos, the Arabian is (was 😭) Phobos) and now have to spend a few hours breaking her in.

So pro-tip: try not to get hit by a train while on horseback.

1521

Yeah, that’s a good point - if you are going at a trot or slower I don’t think it’s possible to run into stuff. Only going full bore (cantor?) can it happen, and even then it has to kind of be something unavoidable by the horse AI.

1522

My horse was killed by a train, just got clipped as I got to close to it while getting off of it, and I reloaded the previous auto save which was thankfully just 3 or so minutes earlier.

1523

Every time I’ve ran into a tree (it’s happened to me twice), it has been hilarious. It’s a great addition to the game.

1524

Try taking the horse up a steep muddy slope. The sight of Arthur and the horse tumbling and sliding in a flail of limbs down a steep hill is always exhilarating. (Beware: they may not survive.) The horse physics in this game are incredible.

1525

Funny you should mention that. I was watching a recorded stream by our own @Jason_McMaster and he hit a tree and fell off twice within about 20 seconds. It WAS hilarious, especially because it was the same tree.

1526

Yeah, for the most part my horse has been pretty good about avoiding trees on its own. But there was this one time I found a couple guys trying to open a safe by the side of the road. So naturally I killed them, set my dynamite on the safe, lit it, then jumped on my horse and hammered the A button to get out of there. And slammed right into a tree. At least I didn’t get blown up!

1527

Oh man, I didn’t mean to get those two mad at me, but they almost killed me. So I was forced to kill them. But then I had the same problem they did. I tried shooting off the lock of that safe with various weapons, and just couldn’t get the darn thing open.

(I haven’t encountered any dynamite in the game yet).