RDR Online updates

This last week there were two major updates to RDR to fix things with Online play. How did it work out? I tend to be able to find animals more now, but it's still harder than in really light sessions or in single player. That said, if I spend ten minutes wandering around, I can usually run across several small animals—jackrabbits, mostly, but also raccoons, badgers, possums, etc. plus some ravens or other birds, and a little band of coyotes, deer and/or antelope. If I'm up more in the mountains, sometimes it's a bighorn sheep. So, I'd say that the animal spawn issue is... improved, although I don't know if it's still as good as it's meant to be, and it does take more time and wandering around to find fewer animals than I think most people think it should. But it's not hopeless with animals. There were times when I played for an hour or more without seeing anything other than a couple of birds in the past. If a "better" fix doesn't come, I'll survive. I actually thought hunting was too easy sometimes in single player, unless you wanted a very specific animal, of course, which sometimes was harder.

I also have not had any issue with camp spawning since the upgrade. It's always been there, in the region that I last left it (although sadly, not the exact same spot) since the second fix, at least. After the first fix, it wasn't there, but then when I went to pitch the camp, it let me do it, which under the broken unpatched version, I couldn't do.

And finally, after the first patch, I actually got kicked off the servers more than I have ever before, but after the second patch, that doesn't seem to be as much of an issue. Granted, I haven't played it as much either, but the data, scant as it is, is what it is. It really does seem that the fixes are in, and the game isn't nearly as broken anymore. One can hope. I'm optimistic.

That said, I don't know how much more of the grind I can take before I start finding it tedious, too. I'm almost at level 20 with my trader, so I can get the cool trader horses, and I'll eventually get one, outfit it with the trader saddle, etc. That's likely to be my go-to horse; in fact, given that my current horse is still the horse I started with, I may just get rid of him altogether and have the trader horse.

My collector rank is 16 or 17, so once that's up to 20, I'll get the good horse from that track as well, and have those two horses going. My moonshiner and bounty hunter ranks, on the other hand, are still in single digits, so those won't be ready to go for quite some time. But that's one of my big collectible goals right now; one of the top horses for each role. Given that a fifth role is probably imminent, as well as another outlaw pass, I'll have more to work on. And I do still need to keep just plain leveling up and upgrading my camp, of course. Although I don't find that quite as compelling in its own right as it was during single player, for whatever reason.

I've so far not really dived too much into bounty hunter and moonshiner. I did think I'd like the bounty hunter, but I've often found that doing the missions are frustrating, both due to glitches and issues I've had (getting kicked out in mission, the bounty spawning right next to the edge of the map and "escaping" before I could even leave town after picking up the poster, etc.) but I think once I get to the level that I can do the legendary bounties, it'll be more predictable and therefore more enjoyable. I also find that the "feature" where it's actually hard to see the bounty on the mini-map is frustrating; I've either accidentally killed the bounty because he was standing near another enemy and I couldn't see it, or had them run and be very difficult to find sometimes. I really expected to like that role the best, and I don't, sadly.

The moonshiner is the one that probably has the most potential because of the additional story missions, but for whatever reason I haven't really gotten into them. I actually had a lot of frustration in that I had to go rescue Lem three times, and even though I had rescued him and brought him back—and gotten the XP and whatnot for completing the mission—it still showed it as undone, and I had to go do it again. Finally, the third time, it 'caught' and showed me the next mission, but I've been a bit reluctant to do it since because of that.

So, I guess I've got plenty to do, but the trader and collector were the easiest to get into. I know, I know—I'm not done when I reach max rank in those roles, because I probably still want to do them for the relatively good money that they bring in. But when I get to the point where I'm talking about having multiple horses, wanting the camp upgrades and themes to flip between, and I'm actually spending more money than any rational person would to buy a bunch of outfits for my cranky old coot camp butler dude, then it's not surprising that my eye is starting to wander just a bit when I log in. But, with new content, new roles, and stuff that I actually have but still need to dive into to explore, I'll probably keep playing this for months, at least, before I get ready to move on.

Besides, my brother's had one problem after another with the computer he's building for me, so almost two months after I expected it to be running on my desk in the alternate bedroom (which now that my son is in Peru will probably gradually turn into a more or less permanent library/study type room anyway) I'm still waiting on it. So, no Old Republic and no Street Fighter on Steam yet, and no ETA on either. But once I do have them, I'll no doubt play a lot less RDR than I have been doing the last several weeks.

UPDATE: I probably spoke too soon. I had loads of camp loading issues last night and this morning, and in fact, I now have even newer camp loading issues that are not the same ones that I'd had before. It's one thing when you load the game at your camp and its not there, but its another altogether when it disappears as soon as you look away, or if the map says that your camp is there, but it isn't really.

I have, on the other hand, done reasonably well with animals. Finished the last of the trader XP I needed, in fact. I'll still keep hunting and doing trader, because it's a pretty good avenue for big chunks of cash in one go, and I'm pretty close to topping off the collector levels too, but it's time to start getting more serious about bounty hunting and moonshiner. To that effect, I did my first legendary bounty last night as well as the second moonshiner story mission. They actually both felt very similar; raid a camp of enemies, hide behind trees and crates and shoot about thirty bad guys before finishing up and moving on.

And because I have the shovel and the metal detector, I decided to get a set of map images that show me all three cycles of collectibles, and I'll go for complete runs of coins every time I have about an hour or so to do it (my guess for how long it will take) which is another relatively easy source of big cash. And I need it. After leveling up to 20 in Trader, because I had just over $1,000 on hand, I went and bought one of the top rank Kladrubar horses. It—curiously—looks quite a bit like my gray Kentucky Saddler that I've had since the beginning of the game, especially with the same saddle and mask on, just with much better stats (even without leveling the horse up yet.) I ditched the Kentucky Saddler, because really—why would I ever want to ride that again? I named my new horse Little John because he's actually fairly big and I'm going to go for a Robin Hood theme for my animals (my husky at camp is named Alan-a-Dale.) When I get a Breton (either Steely Gray or Mealy Dapple) I'll call him Friar Tuck, I'll probably have a Criollo in just a few days (bay frame overo) I plan on calling Will Scarlet (although marble sabino might look the part better, since it's reddish) and the Norfolk Roadster, of whichever of the two top colors I end up picking, will be my first female horse, and I'll call her Maid Marian.

If new roles add new horses, I'm not quite sure where to go, because I've about run out of Merry Men that are worth mentioning. Do I really want Much the Miller, or Arthur a Bland? Who in the world even knows who they are? Maybe I do need to start using Ivanhoe names too (my Kentucky Saddler was named Ivanhoe.) From that, I've got; what—Cedric (of Rotherwood), Ivanhoe, Rowena, Locksley? I can even have a Jewish horse, Isaac of York. Gurth and Wamba I think I'll pass on for the same reason that I don't like Much the Miller. I can dig into the Norman names, like Brian de Bois-Gilbert, or Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, Maurice de Bracy, etc.

Besides the role horses, I probably will want a Missouri Foxtrotter and maybe a black Arabian, with Nacogdoches saddles. I want all of the role horses to eventually end up with their appropriate role saddle too, although so far the bounty hunter saddle is the only one I have, so my trapper horse is sporting a bounty hunter saddle. Maybe that'll be an easy first purchase after I get my cash back up again in the next day or two.

But I presume because every role so far has a unique horse and unique saddle that as new roles are added, they will also have new horses and new saddles, so I'll probably mostly focus on getting them once I have the four current roles and one or two other elite horses in my stable.

UPDATE 2: I wasn't aware of some of these, but most of them don't really matter to me, either. Didn't know about the catalog to keep from being kicked for idling, and didn't know about the stew and stuff at the town camps. Nor the apples. I need to go by there anyway for coin pickups, so why not?

The lantern equip seems kinda silly, although I didn't know that either.



Also; this, this week. Good thing I tried out one of the new legendary bounty hunter missions last night; now I know I can focus on doing the other nine (at 1 star difficulty still) this week and maybe max out my bounty hunter rank. I'm at 7th? 8th? I still have a ways to go, but +50% XP will get me there a lot faster.