I believe you start to suffer bad effects past chapter 4, So you might want to plan to do challenges while in Chapter 4.
Some of the challenges are kind of annoying. I got stuck on the herbalist challenge that requires you to make 7 things that need sage, mainly because I had a really hard time finding sage. And not all sage counts - creating poison knives with oleander sage doesn’t, but making horse revives with hummingbird sage does.
Anyway, after that I had to feed my horse five mushrooms. No problem, I had those in my pack. Next was making 9 things with Indian tobacco, I had like a dozen of that so I banged that challenge out too. So as long as the sage took me, I knocked out three in a row just like that. I guess that’s just luck of the draw.
Both Herbalist and Survivalist had a challenge that requires a recipe you can only acquire in Chapter 4 or later, at least as far as I could tell.
If there is something that I would recommend doing early in the game it’s getting the Satchel of the east wind upgrade. That is a complete game changer, I am running around with 40 dead eye tonics, 99 chewing tobacco, 46 thymed big game meat…
Woah, I didn’t realize it increased your storage capacity that greatly. Glad I’ve been working towards it these last few playthrough!
Interesting. Those satchel upgrades require perfect game skin, right?
This apparently is the case:
I’m a bit disappointed by this article, because I was enjoying working through the challenges, which I think are a creative way (though stolen from Hitman 2016) to guide the player toward interesting game content. I get the sense that some of the overarching goals for the gameplay (open, measured pace, no urging of the player, upgrades generally incremental or cosmetic) conflict with some of the systems and I wish a bit more care had gone into meshing the challenges with the “feel” of the game. I’d love to see more unlockable hunting or fishing targets or whatever for master hunters or fishers. An uber-elite horse for master horseriders. A set of sweet pistols for a master bandit. An uber-high-stakes casino only accessible to master gamblers, etc. Oh well, the game is still incredible–probably the best I’ve ever played. Looking forward to checking out the beta tomorrow.
I haven’t done a single challenge intentionally precisely because it is so gamey. Like doing inane achievement stuff. It has no place in immersive simulator like this.
Then again, those insane shootouts during some (many) missions should also have no place in this. I do wish the mission design was more measured.
Yeah, I’m a 100% completion sort of guy, but I’m not going to bother with challenges. Which is a bit strange - I liked the challenges in the first game. But like with other things, they’ve just gone too far with what’s required to master them. What that article described with blackjack - that’s a perfect example. There is nothing you can do to ease that along. At least when you had to bust everyone out of a game of Texas Hold 'em in the first game, you could cheat to make it a little easier. Not here. Just have to play for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours until you get 3 five-card hands and win them all.
As much as I love the game, they just went too far with so much of it. And not in a good way.
I appreciate the challenges are in there and that they are actually challenging, but I also appreciate the rewards are very skippable.
It’s going to take one bitch of a bad challenge to make me drop them, but I have to agree that the gambling ones are a particularly special type of anti-fun. I spent a decent chunk of time working on the one that requires you to bust out an opponent at three different poker tables, and let me tell you that’s a sharp little heartbreak when you see another player win the hand and bust an opponent that you spent an hour whittling down his winnings.
Yeah, not going out of my way to do challenges even though I’ve naturally accomplished a few steps in some. They’re immersion breakers IMO.
Springfield vs the Lancaster? I’ve got them both, completely modded out by the gunsmith but I’ve been using the Springfield.
One’s a single shot rifle and the other is a repeater so that’s not exactly a 1:1 comparison. So in answer to your question: yes.
LOL! My go to weapons, fwiw, are the Springfield repeater with scope and all improvements, dual Scholfields with all improvements, Rolling Rock sniper rifle with scope and all improvements, varmit rifle for getting perfect varmit skins, and semi auto shotgun. I haven’t figured out where the Lancaster fits in that set.
I’d love a way to take weapons I never use “off the horse” so I don’t have to cycle through them.
Wait, so is there a Springfield repeater in the game that I haven’t unlocked yet? I see there’s a Litchfield at the gun store but I can’t buy it. I love my Lancaster - it punches harder than a pistol but has a 17 shot clip, and it makes me pretty much unstoppable. If there are even better repeaters out there oh yeah baby, bring it on.
I think he means the carbine repeater you start the game with.
Sorry I meant the Springfield rifle. It has a decent rate of fire and upgraded all the way including the scope I’ve started using it instead of the Rolling Rock to take out random camps of bad guys. Doesn’t have quite the power but I can fire a lot faster.
Bolt action rifle, dude
That’s the rifle i use, because it fires reasonably fast, and can have both iron sights as well as a scope.
Iron sights are infinitely better for killing stuff in a fast fight, whole the scope is good for sniping.
I’m near the end of Chapter 4 on my second playthrough, and boy is the broken-ness of the game’s economy apparent this time around.
That bank mission in Valentine just throws any concerns about money out the window, and it’s a MANDATORY story mission to boot!
But even just beyond that, it’s unnecessary to buy anything but upgrades from the gunsmith, because you receive nearly all of them FOR FREE via story missions. The remaining stuff you can get for free by helping out the people with snake bites in the world. And the upgrades don’t cost enough to meaningfully eat through your funds.
So you’re left with the clothing as the only significant money sink in the game - but unless you insist on buying everything, chances are you have a few outfits you like, and that’s about it. Maybe you’re occasionally throwing a bit of money at the Trapper too.
But the economy gets EXTRA SUPER broken, if you complete the treasure map side missions. I’m only at Chapter 4, but I’ve got a maxed out Arabian horse, and fully upgraded everything, I’ve bought most of the clothing items in all colours for the heck of it, and even spent nearly 2K on premium cigarettes from the store to complete the card sets.
At the end of all of that, I’ve still got just over $4000 left, and almost nothing left to spend it on. They really needed to introduce some bigger money sinks into the game - like premium upgrades for your camp, or crazy-expensive outfits, or something.
I don’t disagree, but it seems to me that it’s not broken so much as not at all a game design priority. It’s barely even an element of the game. Red Dead Redemption just doesn’t care about an economy. Just like it doesn’t care about leveling up. That stuff is there if you want to mess with it, and to offer a sense of, I dunno, immersion. But it’s pretty much optional.
As near as I can recall, that’s been Rockstar’s approach all along.
Wait until you get to the post-game open worlding. There is literally nothing to do with all your money. It’s just a sum that you can rack up that’s no more meaningful than a score on a pinball machine.
-Tom
Yeah, it’s pretty standard for Rockstar, other than maybe Vice City (when even having an economy was something of a novelty). It’s no more or less broken than GTA IV/V. Maybe fewer super high end money sinks, but it’s not like those money sinks actually did anything.