RDR3?

Role discussion/review: The Moonshiner

The Moonshiner is the fourth role that I started, and I avoided it, even after it was officially started, for quite some time. This is a bit ironic, as it's the one that, along with the Collector, at least for the time being, I spend the most time on. Although not as lucrative as the Collector in terms of bringing in cash, it is, however pretty lucrative and it manages to be so in a much more passive way. Rather than actually focusing on running all over the map to pick stuff up, I can get a batch of moonshine started, and then go do something else for quite a while, before doing a short delivery mission, running back to the shack and starting another batch, and generally very passively earning decent money. While I won't make over $500, like a coin collection will, which takes me an hour and a half or so to pick up, I can earn a net ~$200 every hour or so, and I only need to spend 10-15 minutes of actual game time to do so.

I'll say this up front first; the moonshiner update itself is notoriously buggy, and many of the problems that people have with the online game are especially rooted in this moonshine update. While there have been some fixes, the game still remains fairly buggy today. But, that is ambient stuff around the role, not directly associated with the role, so other than saying it up front so nobody asks down the line, I'm not going to consider it in my discussion/review of the role. The moonshiner role is different than the original three frontier pursuits roles in a number of significant ways, although then similar to them after that.

• It requires not just finding the NPC that kicks off the role, but also having at least some progression in the trader role before you can kick it off. Keep in mind that I am a late adopter of the Online mode of the game, so by the time I started, all four roles were available already. But you have to either have made a delivery or two with trader, or be at level 5 with trader (although quite likely those happen at about the same time anyway) before the moonshiner can be unlocked.
• It costs 25 gold, not 15 like the other three. To be fair, there is a lot more content for these than most of the other roles have, and then once you work your way through that content, it's both more fun and easier to just keep rolling with than most of the other roles too. But that's still a lot of gold bars to gate the content, which does kind of suck. Then again, people complain too much about that too. Given that you can do daily challenges for a few weeks, a few treasure maps, and some bounty hunter missions and easily get the gold necessary to play the role, if you're patient enough to wait a week or two (or three at the most), for the most part, the complaints about it are overwrought. Yes, it is expensive, but it's not like you really have to pay actual real microtransaction money in order to do it. You just need to be patient.
• It is not centered around your camp in any way, and in fact gives you a unique property; the first in this game, although we presume that more are to be coming in the future. While the camp's position on the map is variable, even if you stay in the same region, the moonshine shack is not. For instance, I keep my camp in the Heartlands >95% of the time, but it can be anywhere from northeast of Emerald Ranch to near Valentine, to down on the river by Limpany to next to Bard's Crossing and Flat Neck Station, and plenty of other spots in between. Practically speaking, there's a bit difference between some of those locations. The moonshine shack, on the other hand is always exactly in the same place. It's not like the homes and offices and businesses of Grand Theft Auto Online, although it has some similarities, but it does at least stay in the same place. You can relocate it, if you like, but it's a little pricey ($250) so you're best served by giving some thought to the location you pick (out of five options) at the beginning. I didn't, although as luck would have it, I picked a location that I quite like, and am unlikely to move my shack.
• Especially notable, the moonshine role has story missions which are not unlike the normal Online story missions; in fact, most players agree that they are better. Not only does it assume by default that you play the missions solo, which you cannot do in the Land of Opportunity storyline, but they have unique tactical challenges for you to deal with that are kind of interesting. They're a bit difficult; wave after wave of enemy for you to deal with, but with some health tonics and some care, they're not at all impossible to do solo.

Cripps does a poor job of posing, but here he is in his Collector themed outfit at his butcher table. Take note of the pith helmet, googles, and sweater in particular, which closely resemble your own outfit choices from this role.

So how does this all work? Well, first off, you go to Emerald Ranch and meet with Maggie, the real boss of the moonshiner business (unfortunately) and pick your moonshine shack location after paying your 25 gold for... a deed to the land, I guess, or whatever. The five locations are down in Hennigan's Stead, Tall Trees, the Grizzlies up near Cattail Pond, Heartlands, although it's in the far corner north of Emerald Ranch in the hills, and Bayou Nwa between Saint Denis and Lagras, more or less. All of them are a bit isolated, by design--if you're making and selling illicit moonshine, you want to be away from the prying eyes of the revenuers, right? Let's go through the five locations and I'll discuss very briefly the positives and negatives of each.

• Hennigan's Stead--the positive is that this is far away from most player activity, and is kind of isolated from other players. That said, most of New Austin is kind of dead, and there isn't a lot of other things to do near here either, meaning that you'll be running back and forth from your moonshine shack to... wherever else you need to go to do something else. Its lack of central location puts it far away from most else of what you'd need. Also, the moonshine wagon needs a bit of a delicate touch; you'll break your bottles if you're rushing around over tight curves and roads where it's easy to get your wheel running over a rock or banging into a tree or whatever. It's not the worst, but it's not the best either in terms of the routes to make deliveries.
• Tall Trees--I picked this one based just on the fact that I felt like I wanted to spend more time in this region and get to know it better, and it turns out to have been a good choice. The roads are usually pretty good, and most deliveries end up going out into the Great Plains--although when you have to cross the Montana River that's when you need to be extra careful--and it's close to Blackwater. It's also right around the corner from Manzanita Post. Although you can already fast travel to your shack, you can't fast travel out of it, and this is the one that's the closest to a fast travel post.
• Grizzlies--while isolated and in a beautiful setting, where you see relatively few other players, making deliveries from this shack is a nightmare just based on road quality. I do not recommend. Plus, it's a pain to get to or from when you want to go do anything else.
• Heartlands--Some of the deliveries here are not good; the terrain is too hilly and fraught with too many tight curves and whatnot if they go in a certain direction, but they're OK if you go towards Emerald Ranch, on the other hand, or some of the other nearby shacks or homesteads. It's also quite close to Emerald Station with its fast travel post. For an isolated backwater shack to brew hooch in, it's relatively well connected. It does seem to be a popular one, however, so you'll see more player activity than in some of the other spots.
• Bayou Nwa--lots of players swear by this location. The place is flat (although there are lots of trees and bridges, so it's not like deliveries are super easy), it's close to Saint Denis and Rhodes, with their many amenities, it kind of has that moonshiner vibe already, being that it's in the bayou, and there are fast travel posts nearby at Lagras, Saint Denis and Rhodes. Also, depending on what kind of moonshine you're making, much of the flavoring ingredients can be found nearby. I need to stock up on vanilla flowers, for instance, every time I'm in the area anyway, but if I were already there, it'd be easier and I'd waste less time riding across the map.

Maybe there isn't a bad location per se, but the Grizzlies and Hennigan's Stead seem the least desirable, while the other three are more popular. In general, it's considered wise to set up your camp either in the same region or an adjacent one, so you can more easily get from one to the other. I haven't taken this advice, and I keep my camp in the Heartlands. I've tried a few times to migrate to the Great Plains, but I was doing this often during the peak camp bugginess, and I found that I was frequently getting bumped or losing my camp and unable to set it back up in that area, and I finally gave up. I do admit that spawning in my camp in the Heartlands, doing a few camp things, and then having to run all the way to Tall Trees to do moonshiner stuff is a minor drag, though. Ironically, if I could actually choose my site within the regions, I'd probably move my camp even further away, and put it in Calumet Ravine, or near the Wapiti Reservation (keep in mind that the Injuns haven't been relocated here yet in the Online mode). That would be even more inconvenient, but I love that area and don't have enough of an excuse to spend time there, so I'd prefer to put my camp there and see it more often. So clearly running around the map a little bit every time I log on isn't as much of an issue for me as it is for most other players.

After you pick your spot, you need to do the first two story missions (in any order) first in order to get set up. One of them has you rescue Marcel, your arrogant blowhard French guy who talks too much (like Cripps) every time you interact with him. He's the moonshine "cook". The other one is stealing a still set from a rival. After that, the rest of the story missions are optional in the sense that you can do everything else without needing to do them to unlock anything else, but I recommend doing them sooner rather than later as it is a great source of role XP (and XP generally) and the missions are pretty fun. They are like story missions from single player, in many ways, but quite imaginative; in one you take a steamboat from Annesburg to Saint Denis, fighting revenuers on boats and on the shore the entire way, in one you are in a burning fire running around killing revenuers while trying not to catch on fire yourself, etc. It's fair to say that the moonshine story missions are the best story missions in Online by far, and comparable if not even better than many of the story missions from Single Player.

Still poor at posing, but here's Cripps in his Trader themed outfit while whittling around camp. While there are design cues common to that of your own outfits, this is a little bit more distinctive looking.

Maggie, who sits upstairs in the shack at a desk, not only gives you the story missions, but also bootlegger missions, which benefit your business, and some of them are quite fun too. One variant is helping clear a drunk patron from a bar and getting him home, my favorite one is getting into a fist-fight with a rival gang in a saloon, including a big boss boxer. Sadly, all of the bootleg missions I've done and those two have only come up once or twice each. Most of the time, you just go to a roadblock of revenuers and kill them all, or go to a rival still operation and blow it up. In theory, you can sneak in and poison their moonshine, but realistically, I almost always get seen, so it just turns into a "kill everyone and blow up the still." Which is fine, because then I have a good dozen bodies or so to loot, which is nice, because they tend to have moonshine related stuff and moonshine recipe items on them which is helpful.

Maggie is also the store for shack upgrades. There's not a ton of these, but there are some. I'll talk about most of them in the list of unlocks, because most of them do have to be unlocked before you can buy them anyway. Some of them are essential, and some of them are merely cosmetic. And after that, you'll get to the point where all of your business is downstairs with Marcel. I, actually, almost never see Maggie anymore. I enter my shack from the side door, not the front door, and just head immediately down the stairs to talk to Marcel about making and delivering moonshine. Once you have the still and Marcel, you can start making moonshine, but you'll want to unlock all of your options, because making better moonshine is very much worth it. Making unflavored weak moonshine is almost certainly not even cost effective; I think I even made a batch or two where I literally lost money. But you will want, as soon as you can, to get to strong moonshine, and you'll want to do either a two or three star flavored version for best financial results. Curiously, it's not a given that you'd do three star over two star, although most likely you will.

All of the three star recipes require a collectible as one of the ingredients. Because it only gives you twenty dollars more per delivery than the two star recipes, the net profit difference between the two is only about $10-12 or so (the ingredients are either flowers or antique alcohols.) It is also my experience that the Wild Creek three star always has a buyer, but that the other three star recipes may not have a buyer. Making a batch and then finding that you don't have a buyer other than cheapskate Bert Higgins kinda sucks. Having that happen and then waiting an hour or two (two full hours is the max amount of time for the buyers to reset) and then still not having a buyer for that particular flavor really sucks. But again, the Wild Creek seems to always have a buyer, so that's the one I make.

The bounty hunter themed outfit has less common themes with the player outfits, although he does sport an eye patch and a wide-brimmed hat. Honestly, I think the mercenary outfit that I got from the Outlaw Pass 2 looks at least as bounty hunterish as this one, though.

All of the flavored moonshines require three ingredients to add the flavor, and these are mostly things that you find out on the map in free roam. Wild Creek, the three star one, for instance, requires the creek plum flower (a collectible; you can only grab a maximum of three per day before the collectibles reset), a vanilla flower, and wild mint. The evergreen two star moonshine requires winterberry, evergreen huckleberry, and ginseng (if I remember correctly, either Alaskan or American is fine.) For quite a while, I was making the evergreen moonshine and selling it, because I didn't want to spend collectibles to make three stars, but I decided that getting creek plums wasn't too hard, and was worth the trouble. You can pick up up to three every day, but you can only carry ten at a time. If they change the collector role making finding creek plums more difficult, I'll probably revert back to the evergreen moonshine, which doesn't require any collectibles, only "regular" ingredients that reset every few minutes and can be picked up much more easily (the winterberry is the most difficult to find, but I know several locations in Cumberland Forest behind Valentine, as well as some up near Brandywine Falls near the observatory or mad scientist lab. The payout for a delivery of three star moonshine is $247 and some change, while the payout for two star is $226 and some change. For only twenty dollars, and ten dollars (roughly) net, you can see why I don't think making three star recipes is essential. The two star recipes are almost as good, and getting the ingredients is arguably easier, and will absolutely be easier if the collector role makes finding the collectible ingredients more difficult.

Of course, now that I have my own bar, making the three star stuff has another value; I can drink it and get all three of my stat rings turned gold. If you make two star, you only get two rings turned gold (health and stamina is what I remember from evergreen.) Drinking your own product is best when it's three star, but that's a minor thing. I usually drink every time I'm downstairs, but it doesn't last super long, and mostly only matters for my delivery mission.

Now, those costs are gross revenue for every batch sold, assuming no damage to any bottles. The net cost takes the cost of moonshine mash out. When I was focused on leveling up the moonshiner role, I did enough bootlegger missions between batches to keep my mash price down. Now that I've reverted to a more passive way of doing the role, I just buy the mash at full price. That means that I need to take $50 out of the sale price, and that's my profit; it's less than $200. Just under for three star, and closer to $175 for two star. Because I'm doing it so passively, it's worth it to me to not feel the need to spend the time doing bootlegger missions, and I just make less per delivery. But still enough that it's a steady stream of income; I can make enough to buy what I want, after a few deliveries at most, without having to spend very much time doing it. It's ideal for me. I love having moonshine batches brewing in the background while I'm doing whatever else I'm doing, and when it's done, I go make a delivery and start a new batch brewing.

A few other tips on making deliveries. Most of the time, you'll be stopped by a roadblock of revenuers. Not every single time; occasionally I'll have them wave me through, I've had them stop me but then let me go, and sometimes the roadblocks don't actually have anyone at them. (I presume this is because some other player helpfully came by and killed them a few minutes earlier, in order to loot their bodies and pay it forward to make the delivery easier.) Most of the time, they want to stop me, will see my illicit moonshine, and start shooting at me. To avoid damage to your wagon and its cargo, the best way to handle these roadblocks is to stop your wagon just before you get to the little yellow spot and then just shooting all of the revenuers, looting them, and getting back on your wagon and continuing your delivery. Otherwise, your cargo will almost certainly be shot by the revenuers, and you'll lose some of your cargo and have a massive decrease in the amount of money you make from the delivery. You want to avoid having any bottles break, and its worth it to go to somewhat extreme lengths to avoid it.

Another tip is that the AI will drive your wagon for you without error or damage if you pull up your gun as soon as you start your wagon and put it in aim mode, and keep your gun aimed while you're moving. You'll want to go back to manual steering when you get to the roadblock and probably also to your destination to make sure that the AI doesn't screw up and hit something (which has happened, and routinely happens at some destinations), but other than that, it's a pretty good way to protect your cargo. Do it again after clearing the roadblock, but keep your gun trained behind you, and you can pick off revenuers who gallop up to attack you from that point on, which is almost every single delivery. Again, if you don't, they'll shoot at you, they'll hit your cargo, and they'll damage it. It doesn't take much damage at all to significantly reduce the amount of money you make from your delivery.

The tier one moonshiner outfit. I tried to do the best I could with color schemes to mitigate the awfulness of this outfit, but you can only do so much. I'll never wear this, I don't think, unless I'm just in a mood to be silly. Speaking of color schemes, I do notice that I tend to lean heavily towards dark ones, and my character wears a lot of black.

Anyway, I have plenty more to talk about, but I think it can be saved for the various unlocks, because much of it relates to those items and if they're worth getting or not, and how they impact your moonshiner business itself.

Tier 1: Novice
Level 1: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 2: Berry cobbler moonshine recipe, plus two unlock tokens.
Level 3: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 4: Bootlegger opportunities (allows certain free roam bootlegger missions to pop up on the map; notably roadblock clearing and rival still smashing.) Plus two role unlock tokens.
Level 5: Bold dance unlock, plus two role unlock tokens. The dances can be done at various places, but are mostly for your moonshine bar.
Tier 1 unlocks: 

• Toxic moonshine pamphlet ($500) allows the creation of toxic moonshine which can be thrown like a Molotov cocktail, and creates a green cloud that damages everyone in its range.
• Holme Gloves (8 gold) I bought some on sale, because they're pricey for an outfit, cosmetic item, but they do look pretty cool. They are two-toned padded leather with a lattice pattern on the backs of the hands, in a variety of bold colors.
• Levens gun belt ($215) A good looking gun belt, with triple Xs on it, the universal symbol for hooch. It's pricey, but looks good.
• Norfolk Roadster - Speckled gray and black coats ($150) I'll talk more about this horse breed in the top tier, but I'll say now that it is a fan favorite, and considered one of the best horses in the game.
• Bar Expansion ($950) This is VERY pricey, and it's even more pricey to update the decor (the cheapest alternate is 10 gold; the other two are 15 gold each). And while it's really cool, it's worth noting that it's mostly just cosmetic. You don't make any money for having your speakeasy here, although you do open up the possibility of drinking your own product, and inviting other players to your bar to serve to them and interact with them as well. There are a number of daily challenges that pop up routinely that involve this, so while you don't make your money back in terms of cash, it does open up lots of opportunities for making gold bars back as parts of daily challenges. Plus, it's just really pretty cool for its own sake.
• Ivers Saddle ($550) Very expensive, and honestly, not one of the best-looking. It has an art-type pattern on it, but the colors are not attractive. The best thing about the saddle are the shine bottles hanging from it.
• The Gatlinburg ($250) (Presumably named for the town in Tennessee at the gate to the Smokies national park, and famous for its hillbilly moonshiners of the past.) All of the moonshiner outfits are fairly "dressy" and fancy looking, but for some reason, the first two have aprons on over their actual clothes, which look ridiculous. One of the least attractive of the outfits, and I don't even like the hat. I only bought it so I could take a picture for this review series.

The tier two moonshine outfit. Given how similar it is to the tier 1, I tried to go with a different color scheme while still avoiding the white apron, but I don't know that it looks any better.

Tier 2: Promising

Level 6: Wild Creek moonshine recipe, plus two unlock tokens. I actually think this is the best recipe. At strong level, it's a top price moonshine, plus it has easier ingredients to find than the other three star recipes, even though the sale price is the same, and it always has a unique buyer available, unlike the other tree star recipes. I make this almost exclusively after I graduated up from the evergreen moonshine.

Level 7: Ingredients satchel upgrade. I haven't double checked, but I presume that this stacks with the trader ingredients satchel upgrade. I can carry 30 of all ingredients in my satchel, I believe. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 8: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 9: New buyer order. I don't remember what it was like before I had this, but now that it's unlocked, I always have Bert Higgins, who will buy anything you want to sell, but at a reduced rate, and a specific buyer who wants a specific recipe at a specific strength, and will pay full price for it. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 10: Two role unlock tokens.

Tier 2 unlocks:

• Darrow Buckle (6 gold) a belt buckle for your gun belt. Not as attractive as some others that I got for less, but still... if you like buckles, here you go. I haven't bothered buying this one either.
• Flammable Moonshine ($20) Like fire bottles, but not exactly. You pour it first and then shoot at it to set it on fire. This features heavily in the last story mission, but I otherwise haven't used it for anything.
• Sawed-off Shotgun Varient ($450) Although I've kinda been meaning to, I still haven't bought any sawed-off shotguns, so I haven't used the variant skin, obviously. It's really pricey, especially considering that if you carry sawed-off shotguns, you probably carry two. It does look nice, though. If I had the guns, I'd buy the variant skins for both. One of these days I'll get around to it.
• Nevin hipflask (8 gold) A gun belt decoration. It costs twice as much as the collector's compass, and honestly, I don't like it as much either. I haven't bought it yet, because I just always use the compass.
• Band expansion. There's no listed price, and I didn't pay for it either, although I wasn't sure if that was a limited time thing or not. This comes with the moonshine bar, and is half the fun of the bar. (That's because I didn't buy the bar until after I'd passed this level, though.) You can play all of the instruments and you can dance to the music too. It doesn't really have much tangible benefit, although just today there was a daily challenge to play for four minutes with my band, and another one to dance for four minutes. One gold bar for taking a few minutes to do something that's kinda fun anyway. These come up pretty regularly; at least two or three times a week, so again, you make pretty decent gold by having this. 
• Condenser upgrade ($825) Although expensive, this is a must have purchase. It allows you to upgrade from weak to average strength moonshine, and is also a necessary component of eventually getting to strong moonshine. Your income will be seriously limited until you get this, which will bump up your sale prices considerably.
• The Dagenhart ($348.25) While marginally better than the Gatlinberg, because the apron is waist down, this just looks like the Gatlinburg with a less obvious apron. I don't like it any better than the Gatlinburg, and I can't imagine I'll ever wear it, or even the hat from it. Ugh.

The tier 3 moonshiner outfit, a fancy one for a night dancing and drinking in my bar, perhaps, or for walking the streets of Saint Denis while trying to look like a local. Doesn't really look appropriate for a camp out in the Heartlands in the mud, but whatever. 

Tier 3: Established

Level 11: Cheerful dance; another option for when you're dancing with your band, plus two unlock tokens.

Level 12: Spiced Island Moonshine recipe; one that at three star I've not always been able to sell. It also requires a collectible alcohol to make. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 13: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 14: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 15: Master distiller reduces the time it takes for a batch of moonshine to brew by 25% at all strengths. This turns strong moonshine from a 60 minute process to a 48 minute process, for instance. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Tier 3 unlocks: 

• Savatier monocle (8 gold) It's a monocle. Either you think that's awesome, or you don't. Needless to say, I have one. I'm thinking about getting some more, but the color differences are probably not really very noticeable given its small size. Some of them, though, have tinted glass which will show up more.
• Norfolk Roadster Piebald Roan and Rose Gray Coats ($550) I quite like the piebald roan. I should point out that the real horse breed, which is now extinct, although it contributed to several existing breeds, was more commonly actually called the Norfolk trotter, but it's still the same breed.
• The Pittsburg ($446.75) The first good looking moonshiner outfit, although it seems much too fancy for day to day running around doing free roam stuff. Maybe I'll try it anyway, just because, though. It'd be fun to hunt animals in a super fancy dress suit and top hat.
• Neat Center Parted (2 gold) The moonshiner haircut. Sadly, it doesn't come with a facial hair variant, and it's really nothing special anyway, other than the prominent widow's peak that it features.
• Polished Copper Upgrade ($875) Upgrades your moonshine strength to strong. Again, despite the high price tag, this is an essential purchase.
• Levens holster ($150) As always, if you're going to buy the gun belt, you need the matching left-hand holster.

The even more exaggerated tier 4 moonshiner outfit. Really fancy. Because my hats are the same color (or nearly so, anyway) for tier 3 and four, I can swap them between each other and still look like it fits; and the default color Stuart top hat would match this color scheme quite well too.

Tier 4: Distinguished

Level 16: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 17: Materials satchel upgrade plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 18: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 19: Protection. Greatly reduce the risk of attacks. Attacks on what? Your camp? Your moonshine wagon during deliveries? I'm not actually sure what this does. I rarely get attacked, although I do usually fight the roadblock, and that always prompts follow-up attacks while I'm finishing the delivery. Maybe this changes the percentage that the roadblocks will hassle me. Plus two unlock tokens.

Level 20: Rowdy dance, plus two unlock tokens.

Tier 4 unlocks: 

• The Wilksboro ($545) Similar to the last outfit, except with a tail on your coat and an even higher top hat.
• Hangover ($300) An emote. Similar to that of the collector, this is certainly appropriate for the role. And it'd good for a laugh here and there. Otherwise, though, I'm not quite sure who would use this and for what.
• Norfolk Roadster Dappled Buckskin and Spotted Tricolor Coats ($950) The roadster is a fan favorite horse. While it doesn't have max anything, I don't think, it has near max stamina, really good health, and near max speed, and I have no complaints about its demeanor when under attack (just this morning I got attacked by a cougar and then a wolf pack back to back, and my roadster handled them both like a champ.) It's one of the best all-rounders, being really excellent at everything. In order to get better at any one stat with another breed, you have to sacrifice things of equal value. I got the dapple buckskin, because the spotted tricolor looked too similar to my Criollo, and while I don't necessarily really love that coat pattern, it's worth pointing out that the white face mask markings do make it very distinctive looking. Again, as with all top tier role horses, you actually need to completely finish the role before you can buy it.
• Stuart Top Hat ($250) A very odd looking and tall hat that unlocks once you finish the moonshiner role. It's very distinctive, and the fact that you can buy it for cash instead of gold is attractive, but I also think it looks kinda silly.

Role discussion/review: The Collector

The Collector is the last of the original three Frontier Pursuits roles that I picked up. I have a strange relationship with this role. I largely think it is boring and tedious, yet much of that is our own fault as the player base for not playing the role as the designers intended. It is also the one that collectively we probably spend most of our time on because it is so useful as a source of income that it's hard not to. Persistent rumors, fed by comments from Rockstar developers, suggest changes to the role that will "nerf" it, and yet which ironically should have been in place from the beginning.

The Colonial; using a slight modification to a trader outfit to create a Daniel Boone type early Colonial frontiersman look. 

The collector is started when you find Madam Nazar, a curiously exotic Gypsy woman with a traveling wagon who spends her time dancing to music from a gramophone next to a little wagon and handing out hundreds if not thousands of dollars to treasure hunters who bring her stuff. She moves her wagon every 24 hours and you don't see it on your map until you find it by coming close enough to it, but the first time you find her, if you spend your 15 gold to buy a collector bag, you become one of her treasure hunting agents. These treasures come in various categories: rare wildflowers, antique alcohol bottles, rare old coins, lost jewelry, etc.

What you are supposed to do is buy her collector maps which show you where three items from one of these collections are, go find them, and then buy another map. You get a higher payout for selling her a full collection than just isolated pieces of a collection, but it would be very time consuming and expensive to find everything using these maps. You probably weren't actually expected to sell full collections very often, and if you did, the cost of the maps would seriously eat into the profit of doing so. But, of course, players discovered fairly quickly that all of the items' locations were in repeating cycles, so they documented them and players were easily able to find entire collections without buying any maps or spending more than a couple of hours running around collecting them. This effectively broke the role by making it too good and easy as a source of income as well as removing most of the fun of a challenging treasure hunting experience by turning it into a lucrative grocery shopping trip.

The first tier collector outfit and collector camp theme. Of all of the four roles so far, the collector provides the best looking outfits across the entire spectrum. I really like the explorer vibe, and I think that they all look really good. 

Rockstar reacted by doubling the number of cycles for each collection from three to six and randomizing the order in which they would appear, but all this did was take a few weeks for players to crack the patterns and document them all over again so anyone can easily find the treasures again. Like I said, it is commonly believed that among the updates expected is a nerfing of this role, possibly by truly randomizing not the cycles but the locations so that no pattern exists to be exploited and people will have to buy the collector maps like they were probably always intended. If this is indeed the way that they will go, I expect most likely that other than people attempting to still max out the role that haven't, it will not get much use anymore. Like Thermidorian Reaction, the pendulum will swing from one broken situation to a likely overly nerfed one that players who have maxed out the role will see little further use for. The collector maps at their current cost are too expensive to be worth it, and if we get to the point that you need them to do the collector role, I doubt most people will spend any time on it anymore.

All that said, the role as our exists now is kind of devoid of the spirit of fun that it likely was probably meant to have, but not entirely. I do enjoy that it sometimes takes us into interesting little corners of the map that we otherwise wouldn't see, and I've found lots of interesting little scenic details while looking for collector pieces. But like I said, mostly I'm always doing collector stuff because in an hour and a half to two hours I can get well over $500 in game just by running around the map picking stuff up and then taking it to sell. The most time I ever spent at one time was between three and four hours,  but I got a full coin collection, the three most lucrative lost jewelry collections and a few other items that serve as moonshine ingredients or daily challenge things to find. As well as clearing a gang hideout or two, and fighting off at least three wolf pack attacks. I got almost $1,700 in that one run. Like I said, it wasn't super fun. It was kind of tedious and occasionally frustrating, certainly time consuming, and it kept me from doing something else that I probably would have enjoyed more. On the other hand... almost $1,700.

The tier two outfit as well as a pretty good look into the tent. While I really like the details of this tent (it even has that weird fortune telling machine that Marston can find in the crashed circus wagons near Beecher's Hope) the gauzy material of the tent itself makes it look more like mosquito netting than actual tent material. Everything inside must  be soaked all of the time given how much it rains in game. 

A few other notes before I dive into the level unlocks. As I noted in the picture captions, the collector probably has the best outfits. I love the look of most of them, not just the hats. They have this great explorer vibe, with pouches, pockets, and a kind of Golden Age of Exploration vibe to them. This vibe is strengthened by some of the extras you can get: a pith helmet, leather rimmed goggles, a compass to hang from your gun belt, a role saddle covered with bags and boxes, etc. They spent plenty of time getting the aesthetics of the role right. It's a shame that the gameplay has been broken for it, and that the likely solution will be to break it in the other direction.

Anyway, let's begin.

Tier 1: Novice
Level 1: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 2: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 3: Divination skill page, which allows you to sense certain collectibles when you're near. Mainly this means that as you're walking around town, your controller will vibrate if a family heirloom, tarot card, antique alcohol or other non-buried collectible is around. This also applies to rare flowers as you're running around the landscape. And two role unlock tokens.
Level 4: Collector free roam events are unlocked. Plus, two role unlock tokens.
Level 5: Two role unlock tokens.
Tier 1 unlocks:

• Pennington Field Shovel ($350) One of the most important purchases you can get as a Collector, as it allows you to pick up buried loot like coins and arrowheads and jewelry. You can start using immediately with some of the maps and the divination skill, but you need to pair it with the metal detector to really get the full benefit.
• The Wentworth outfit ($250) All of the collector outfits are actually quite good looking. I also used the hat from this outfit for my early ivory colored outfits. But regardless of the hat, the outfit itself is attractive.
• McKinney Saddle ($525) One of the most distinctive and good-looking of the saddles in the game. But, not a Nacogdoches saddle, of course.
• Criollo horse - dun and blue roan overo coats ($150) The tier 1 Criollo horse. I won't beat the dead horse anymore of what I wish they would do with different coat and tiers with horses, but again, not many will buy tier 1 horses, I don't think, unless they so love the color that they don't care about performance. To be fair, I sometimes think that horse performance is over-rated. I spent a lot of the early game with the horse that they gave me for free in one of those early missions, and I don't know that it really was all that much worse than my really expensive top tier horses. And in single player, I loved my tier 2 Dutch Warmbloods for a time. But if you can have a top tier horse, I'm sure most people would prefer to.
• Webster gun belt ($100) One of my favorite gun belts. It has loads of pouches, pockets and other functional appearing decorations, while the belt and holsters themselves are lacking in other garnishes. It's one of the most tasteful and attractive belts in the game, certainly so for the role weapon equipment.
• Voyager buckle (4 gold) If you like this kind of thing, it's fine. In my opinion, it's a little plain. The Viper buckle from the bounty hunter is the most attractive of the role buckles, but as I was doing these roles, I was also doing Outlaw Pass 2, and it gave me several buckles that I thought were more attractive than this one anyway. I haven't gotten around to picking this up, even though it's relatively cheap, because it's just too plain for me to care about.
• Lancaster repeater variant ($350) One of my favorite alternate weapons. It's got an interesting color scheme that isn't obvious and just plain leather, or whatever, but which is still attractive and looks good with almost everything I could imagine wearing in game.

The tier three outfit. For very few outfits do I have more than one color variation, and often the color I like best isn't the default one, so you'll see different colors on most of my images. 

Tier 2: Promising
Level 6: Upgrade to the provisions satchel and two role unlock tokens.
Level 7: Potential skill page; learn to detect certain collectibles that are buried when they are nearby. Works best for lost jewelry and arrowheads; I've never seen this give me a coin. You can see the disturbed earth as a little pile of dirt, but mostly it gives you controller vibration and those gold motes in Eagle Eye.
Level 8: Two role unlock tokens
Level 9: Intuition skill page, which "narrows your search area" and makes it easier to detect collectibles on the map. Plus two role unlock tokens.
Level 10: Two role unlock tokens.
Tier 2 unlocks:

• Collector saddle bag ($125) A special improved saddle bag that improves on the normal improved saddle bag. Sadly, it only comes in one color, and while it looks good with most saddles, it doesn't look good with any of the Nacogdoches saddles. It's a dark brown leather with extra pockets and pouches.
• Witford Compass (4 gold) A gun belt decoration that hangs down just to the right of your buckle. I really like the look of this, I bought it fairly early, and I haven't really ever replaced it with anything else on all of my gun belts.
• The Wallingford ($348.25) Again, a pretty good looking outfit. Although I recommend not getting the strange pale green default color. When I bought it I was more interested in hat color but I do actually quite like the color scheme of my copy of this outfit. 
• Refined binoculars ($450) Generally considered a waste of money, this will allow you to use Eagle Eye through the binoculars at great distance. Depending on the changes that are made to the collector role and how you find stuff, this may become more useful in the future, though. I haven't bought it yet.
• Aguila machete (6 gold) I bought this when it was discounted to 2 or 3 gold. It's pretty cool looking, but honestly--how often do you use a machete anyway?
• Metal detector ($700) Along with the shovel, this item is the key to getting the most money out of the role. The coin collection, for example, is the most lucrative to gather, earning $545 a day if you spend the time (except when that one cycle comes up that has one coin twice and therefore is missing one of the coins). Those two items, especially if you're using data offline that shows where stuff is, pay for themselves in just a day or two.
• Collector camp theme ($700) A cosmetic change to your camp, especially your tent. There is a collector Cripps outfit that can complete the collector look at camp; he has a green sweater not unlike that of your outfits, balloonist goggles and a pith helmet. I'll attach an image of the Cripps outfits next time, but see most of the images here for the camp theme look

And the tier four outfit. Unless I forgot which was which and got the order wrong between three and four, which is certainly possible. (Update: I didn't. This is correct.)

Tier 3: Established
Level 11: Two role unlock tokens
Level 12: Equine assistance skill page and two role unlock tokens. This skill allows your horse to pick plants for you without you dismounting. As useful as this often is, I also find that it's trickier to get your horse lined up so that you can pick it than it is on foot, so it doesn't always save time like it seems it should.
Level 13: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 14: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 15: Two role unlock tokens.
Tier 3 unlocks

• The Gladewater ($446.75) The tier three outfit. Again, I like it, although curiously in this case I like the outfit much better than the hat, and when I use it, I swap the hat out for a different one.
• Lantern ($350) An attachment for your saddle that turns on like automatic headlights when it gets dark. I tend to forget that this is a collector unlock, because I use one for every saddle I have, regardless of what kind of horse or saddle it is. I think it's an essential, if pricey, accoutrement to your saddles to enable you to see better at night. I have heard at least one or two people complain that you can't see well with this in foggy conditions at night, but then again, you can't see well without it either. That's the point of the foggy conditions; to make it harder to see.
• Balloonist goggles (9 gold) Look for a sale, because this is expensive, but they are pretty good looking. For the most part, the differences in color are minor, so there's no need to buy all of them, even if you want to make them a routine part of your outfits. I have a dark leather one and a light gray or whitish leather one, and I doubt I'd ever care for another.
• Knotted bandana and the pioneer (2 gold) The collector haircut and beard. The haircut is a bit of a misnomer; it actually means covering your hair with a bandana. There is, however a small fringe at the back and the temples so you can see your hair color. The "beard" is actually a sweet up-curved mustache and some bushy big sideburns.
• Webster holster ($75) As typical, if you're going to get the gun belt, you probably need the second holster too, unless you refuse to dual wield.
• Volcanic pistol variant ($500) Very expensive, and while I love the look of it, honestly, I don't have any volcanic pistols. Oh, well.
• Criollo horse sorrell overo and bay brindle coats ($550) Same routine as with all of the role horses. I'll discuss how the top tier Criollo is, at least, in the top tier when I get there.

Because I've already posted plenty of pictures of my Criollo, I'll finish up my images for this post with a recent outfit. Although it doesn't look particular warm, not even sporting a coat, I actually couldn't even use my lightest gloves without bumping it into cold territory. The turtle-necked Donegal sweater paired with an Ortega vest is a warm combo. And the pants and boots aren't the lightest either. While I like this as it is, I also like that clearly even a light jacket will make this cold, giving me better options for good looking cold weather clothes without having to always turn to big hairy coats and chaps. 

Tier 4: Distinguished
Level 16: Valuables satchel upgrade and two role unlock tokens.
Level 17: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 18: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 19: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 20: Two role unlock tokens.
Tier 4 unlocks:

• Look to Distance ($200) An emote that... I'm not quite sure what you'd use this for. Although it does certainly have that explorer vibe going, when would you ever do this to another character or player? The only thing I can imagine that you'd care to use this for is to pose for a picture that some other player took of you to send to you, which, honestly, I've never tried to do (if I had a persistent posse of friends, maybe.) I tend to not think the emotes are all that useful or entertaining to own to begin with, but this one may well look cool, or at least coolish, but I still can't imagine where or why you'd do anything with it.
• The Londonderry ($545) A curiously somewhat plain outfit for a top tier outfit. Again, I tend to like all of the collector role outfits; I think they are all surprisingly good looking. Surprising, because so few of any other role outfits look even half as good as most of these do.
• Criollo bay frame overo and marble sabino coats ($950) The top tier horse. The bay frame overo is an interesting look; white and dark brown big patches and pale blue eyes. That's the one I have, which you will have seen in other pictures I've posted in the past. The Criollo is almost exactly the same, statwise, as the Missouri Foxtrotter, which was largely considered to be among the best, if not the best, horse in the game prior to the launch of the role specific horses. Curiously, though, nobody seems to really love the Criollo; probably because they are the same as the Missouri Foxtrotter, and most people already had one, the Criollo doesn't appear terribly popular. I didn't have a Foxtrotter yet, because I was a late starter, so I basically see this as an opportunity to have a couple of different colors with the same (basically) stats, but the amber champagne Foxtrotter is still the best looking of the four options, in my opinion. As with all top tier role horses, you actually need to be level 20 to unlock this.
• Expedition hat (6 gold) Despite the name, this is a pith helmet. Not one of those really tall ones with a badge or trinket on it, but a basic one that looks exactly like your typical safari guy during the Golden Age of Exploration would wear. I have three of them and will probably buy at least one more. I really like this hat. I did buy most of them at a discount, though. I had one, but when the collector clothing discount came out I ran to Madam Nazar and bought two more. I should have bought at least even one more, because I don't have the basic color one, which is the most iconic coloration, and would match some of my outfits quite well. Need to be all the way to level 20 to unlock this.

Role discussion/review: The Trader

The trader role is the second one I unlocked, and the first one I finished. It's a challenging one in some ways because of the glitches and bugs that have been rampant in the game recently, but despite that, I was able to complete it easily enough before that became a major, major issue; I mostly haven't been as successful with it since.

Trying out my new MacBay coat up at the Millesani claim. This doesn't have anything to do with the trader, but what the heck. More images is always good, and I don't need too many of all of the outfits.

That said, the instance of bugs and glitches that would impact trader progression seems to have dramatically lessened after a series of updates and patches, and I don't hesitate to recommend getting into the role at all. The trader is one that has some fun elements, but it does get to be monotonous after a while. That said, it's still worth doing, because the payoff is pretty good. In fact, just this morning, I dumped a bunch of donations on Cripps' table and did a run from my camp up near Emerald Ranch to Saint Denis, where I killed about five or six NPC raiders and made $625 dollars. I had enough after that to go pick up the remainder of the trader outfits that I still hadn't bought yet, and even one of the moonshiner outfits, which are the last ones I need to buy. You can see my character sporting these new threads in this post.

A quick word about the outfits for the roles. Because they don't break down into constituent parts, which at first frustrated me a fair bit, they can add a lot of texture that would be difficult if they were all separate elements. They can, therefore, make outfits that look quite a bit better than they would otherwise. However, that's no guarantee that they actually, in fact, do look better. As I said for the bounty hunter outfits, they are a mix of both really cool and really silly design cues. The little capes or mini-ponchos on the bounty hunter being the most notable example here. In many ways, the trader outfits look a little better; they have a kind of buckskin and leather trapper look to them. See my pictures of my character in them, although due to bad weather in game, I ended up having to take them later in the evening than I would have liked, so the lighting isn't always great.

And that's really the gist of the trader role; it's not really well named. The main activity that traders do is hunt animals; shoot them and bring them to Cripps at your camp, who renders them into "goods"--whatever that is (tanned hides, I think is mostly what it is). Once you have some made, preferably a full wagon load, because taking only a handful isn't worth the time, you make a delivery to a buyer somewhere on the map. These delivery missions involve driving a wagon full of bags, crates or boxes, and are potentially open to attack by other players--although that's only happened to me once. It was frustrating, but when I went back to camp, I could start the delivery over again, at least. Also, when you arrive at your destination, your buyers are often under attack, so you need to dismount from your wagon and shoot some NPCs before pulling it in. The trader is a fairly lucrative business; like I said, if you grind enough animals to be able to do a full large wagon load to a distant buyer location, that's $625 bucks. However, as camp disappearing glitches and poor animal spawn rates in the past have dogged the game, I've gotten used to not bothering to grind this role much anymore, and now mostly casually bring in animals when I'm conveniently close to my camp and they're spawning. After doing a few, I usually go do something else, and if I make a delivery after many hours of play, that's fine. There are slightly faster, and more importantly, more reliable ways to make money. It really blows to have spent a bunch of time hunting, have your horse loaded up with some pelts and carcasses, and roll back to camp only to find that it's disappeared and you can't give Cripps your stuff.

The nice thing about the role is that unlike the trapper and Pearson's camp upgrades in single player, one-star animals are still worth turning in. Better quality animals, of course, are more efficient in terms of getting your count of "goods" up faster, but it's more efficient hunting to just blast everything you see with your bolt action rifle with express ammo, which will tend to mean more lower quality donations to Cripps' outfit.

Having the trader role enabled also means the addition of two things to your camp; Cripps' butcher table, and a pallet where he builds up the goods as he makes them. You can get a quick at a glance idea of how close he is to being ready for a delivery by looking at the pallet; if it looks like he's got nearly a wagon load on it, you're probably almost ready to go.

One of the trader role outfits and a decent view of the trader tent.

In addition to making wagon deliveries and hunting lots and lots and lots of animals, the trader role also has another type of mission. In order to tan and preserve animal hides, Cripps needs "supplies" which are vaguely defined, although some kind of tanning fluid is obviously one of them (although bags of... whatever is another.) In order to give some variety to this, there are a number of different types of missions you can undertake, and you'll need to do it every so often or his work will shut down. Going and stealing a wagon of supplies is the most straightforward; you show up where suppliers are and gun down the other guys who have it, and then drive it back to your camp. This can be difficult if it's the tank wagon full of fluid, because it's very difficult not to damage the wagon and end up bringing a less than optimal size load in.

Other times you go to one of Cripps' buddies who has a wagon he'll give you if you bring him a specific type of animal, which always seems to spawn near where he's waiting. Why this guy doesn't just shoot the buffalo, or a couple of wild turkeys, or whatever it is that he wants that are hanging around a hundred yards or so away from where he is on his own is beyond me, but the point, again, is to add variety to the missions. Sometimes, you go to where some buddies of Cripps' are who are under attack and help them defend their campsite. If you do, then you can take the wagon as a gift.

Other than the tank wagon, the most difficult, but sometimes the most fun is robbing a train. For whatever reason, I always seem to have to do this when the train is up in the northern regions where the tracks run through the mountains and are kind of inaccessible, but that's probably just my bad luck. In any case, for some time, I always did these missions, because it saved money and I'm a cheapskate, plus it gave me both role XP and of course regular XP (and Outlaw Pass XP, which I still needed at the time.) But there is another option where you just buy a batch of supplies for $20, and they'll show up in your camp in a few minutes and Cripps will get back to work. I've now gotten to the point where I automatically do this. Doing the missions for resupply would be great if I wasn't doing something else, which I usually now am, so to save time, I consider it part of the cost of doing business, and I'm OK with taking four or so $20 payments out of my net profit in order to save time for every 100 goods delivery. My engagement with the role is much more passive now that I've maxed it out. It's still worth doing because sometimes you just like hunting animals, sometimes you get attacked by bears or cougars or wolves and have animals anyway, and after all, the payout is pretty big. But it's not worth putting a lot of time and effort into it now that I'm done with it. It's not so fun and exciting that I'd do a lot of it for its own sake now that I'm finished.  But at a certain phase in my character progression, this was one that I spent a fair bit of time on, I enjoyed it still long after I maxed out the role, and it was one of my best sources of income back when I didn't have a lot of good sources of income yet. In spite of the fact that the role hasn't aged terribly well once you've been done with it for a while, it's still a success and a worthwhile endeavor. It's much less frustrating than the bounty hunter ended up being to do, and it pays much better. Of course, the caveat here is that the disappearing camp and lack of animals made it even more frustrating when those glitches blocked your progress, but that didn't really turn into a major issue for me until after I'd already maxed out the role. It probably contributed a fair bit to my loss of interest in the role too; if I hadn't had that happen, I'd probably still be a bit more aggressive about grinding out hunting, at least, if not doing resupply missions. If the bounty hunter desperately needed the legendary bounties to not be a tedious grind, this one not only doesn't have anything equivalent, but it also doesn't really need them as badly either. Keep in mind that the legendary bounties were added slowly over time as part of the drip feed of weekly new content. The trader role, on the other hand, is successful enough to stand alone without needing drip feed updates.

The level one trader outfit looks surprisingly good, at least in this color, with the Pittman tricorner hat, brown Tappscott gloves and my brass spectacles. I call that outfit my Colonial and I might use it for a while as a default hot weather outfit. 

The role, as all of them do, also provides a convenient source of gold bars as part of the daily challenges; I always have three daily challenges associated with this role. Some of them aren't really reasonable for being done easily, but some of them are really easy (like eat three camp stews) and some of them, if they line up with being on on a day when you've got a delivery to make, can be convenient too.

As with the other three original frontier pursuits roles, there is a camp theme associated with the role that you can buy, as well as a specific Cripps outfit. The moonshiner offered neither of those, but the moonshiner isn't really associated with your camp, so that's probably why. I'm really curious to see what the new batch of roles that'll get rolled out over the next year or two end up being like. Other than that, what else does the trader role give you? As with the bounty hunter (and all of them really) the twenty role levels are divided up into four tiers of five levels each. There are rewards for every level that are automatic, and then there are rewards for each tier that you have to first unlock with your role unlock tokens, then buy with either money or gold. And, the final top tier horses and another cosmetic item are part of the tier system, but you can't just be in the top tier, you actually have to have maxed out your levels all the way to 20 to unlock them. Anyway, let's go through the list. As you'll see, compared to the bounty hunter, there are more unlockable items and less "free" items in general. Although given that much of the free items for the bounty hunter were cosmetic gun tricks that you really only do when you're standing around not doing anything, in practical terms, they're probably not all that different, except this just has more unlockable items.

Another of the pretty good looking outfits in front of my trader tent.

Tier 1: Novice
Level 1: Two role unlock tokens
Level 2: Two role unlock tokens
Level 3: Two role unlock tokens (this is a bit sparse of a start on this role)
Level 4:  Invitation to participate in trader events. There was one of these for bounty hunter, and when I made that post, I didn't know what it is. It turns out, though, although I hadn't paid attention, that when you sometimes get those free roam invites to events, that some of them are related to your role, and if you don't have the role, you don't get the invite and don't know about those. So, this allows you to participate in the Trade Route event when it comes up on the event schedule. I did some of these when I was fairly early in the game, and they're kinda fun sometimes. I don't normally do them now, but if I get to the point where I don't have much else to do, I might start it up again. I don't normally like much Pvp, but these structured events aren't so bad. I've never actually done the trade route event, so I don't know how it works, though. Also, two role unlock tokens. I can see myself forgetting to note that, so I'll say up front; every level of every role automatically gives you two role unlock tokens. Many levels give you only that, but even the ones that give you something else also give you two role unlock tokens.
Level 5: Two role unlock tokens.
Tier 1 unlocks:

• The Fletcher Saddle ($525) I already discussed my saddle strategy at length, but this is the second saddle I got, I think, and as soon as I had it, I put it on my Kladrubar and used it a lot. It's a good looking saddle, but none of the role saddles really give you the stamina drain improvement and speed and acceleration improvement that the Nacogdoches does, so I probably won't really use it much anymore.
• The Monterrey ($250) The tier 1 trader outfit. It's pretty plain, so I doubt I'd wear it ever, and the hat is actually really bizarre and ugly, so I don't think I'll use that either. Other than because I'm naturally kind of compulsive about collecting things and because I wanted to have all of the outfits for character selfies for this post, I'd probably not have bothered picking this up at all, and even if I did, it'd be a very low priority.
• Stew pot ($650) This is a camp upgrade that allows Cripps to have stew always ready to eat at your camp. Even without this, you can get stew at the Blackwater and Valentine camps, and I think a few other places here and there on the map. But it's nice to have your own personal pot in your camp. I eat at least a bowl of it every time I spawn, and every time I'm in camp, which has cut down tremendously on my hunting or fishing for game meat to eat (which I still have for when I'm injured or are away from my camp for several days of in-game time and my cores start to fall.) You can use different recipes to to get improved stew that gives you gold cores. Mostly it takes big game meat, but if you're like me, you get attacked by enough packs of wolves just riding around that if you stop to skin them and put the best quality one on your horse to take back to camp, you not only have materials to donate to Cripps without having to take time hunting, but you've also got plenty of game meat to make improved stew with. I actually stopped doing it when I was having too many camp glitches, because I didn't think it was worth it if I wasn't going to be able to come back and still eat another helping of improved stew later because it would reset, but now that I'm not having camp glitches anymore, maybe I'll start up again. Starting your play session with gold cores, and being able to refill them every time you come back to camp is a pretty nifty thing, and certainly worth it. Plus, it creates another fire, which makes your camp easier to spot at night, and I actually kind of like a camp with lots going on. Makes it look more like a home of sorts. Although it's kinda pricey, I recommend this item, and I've heard other players consider it one of the more under-rated game items in general.
• Goodman gunbelt ($100) Not my favorite of the gunbelts; it has a lot of cut leather fringe on it. I can't remember off hand which of the single player challenges had a gunbelt that looked very similar, but it was the hunter, or whatever it was called, I think. That said, I do have one of these. 
• Kladrubar black and white coats ($150) These basic tier 1 horses are very large. While not fast, they have incredibly good health and stamina and their demeanor in the face of danger is really good. You should be warned that the breed, which comes originally from the Czechs, is considered a bit funny looking by some; there's a ridge or hump of sorts along the face that gives it an unusual profile. I actually quite like this horse, and I use it a lot. A bit less now that I'm spending most of my time on my horse traveling, because of its slower speed, but it's still a really good horse, and I think it may well be the best horse to take into combat if you're doing a mission where you can plan ahead for that. Of course, the tier 1 aren't as good as the later ones, which is a bit of a shame, because pure black and white are good looking horse colors. That's why the Arabians come in those colors, for instance. I'm not saying that they're my favorite colors, but again, I'm always frustrated that there isn't some way to level up your different coat colors to all have tier 3 stats. Every horse of the breed should have the same potential, otherwise all you'll really see most of the time are the top two colors. I dislike the semi-enforced conformity of appearance.
• Filigree Buckle (4 gold) A pretty sweet looking belt buckle for your gun belt. Not as cool as the Viper buckle from the bounty hunter, but still pretty good. I really should use a bit more variety in my buckles for my outfits. I usually don't even think about changing it.
• Hammer ($75) A basic tool like this is ridiculously overpriced at this cost, but let's be honest; it's not about being a basic tool, it's a melee weapon and money siphon to keep players having something to spend on. I don't use melee weapons all that often, but this is a cool one. I have seen videos of guys who do legendary bounty missions trying to just use the hammer, for instance, and I think that's actually pretty cool.

The top tier trader outfit as the sun goes down. And my trader horse Little John behind me. 

Tier 2: Promising

Level 6: An upgrade to the amount of ingredients your satchel can hold, plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 7: Awareness skill page which allows you to identify rival trader missions you can interrupt at a greater range. Be honest, though--this is Rockstar specifically encouraging griefing, and it sucks. Luckily, I think most players ignore this facet of the trader role most of the time, but every once in a while you'll run across some douchebag that wants to steal your wagon from you, and his posse of layabouts. When that happens, the game blows. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 8: Canine warning skill page, in which you can train your camp dog to warn of incoming raiders. My camp has literally never been attacked, which I think is another griefing activity, so I don't actually know much about how this works or why it's a good thing. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 9: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 10: Two role unlock tokens.

Tier 2 unlocks:

• The Sunderland (348.25) A pretty nice improvement over the Monterrey. This is actually a decent outfit in its own right, and has a decent hat. A bit plain, but not too bad.
• Medium Delivery Wagon ($500) This allows you to make deliveries of up to 50 goods at a time (as opposed to 25, which the small delivery wagon you start with allows you.) While this seems fine, it actually sucks. I think I only used it once or twice before I unlocked the large delivery wagon, and then this became pointless. Unfortunately, it's a prereq for buying the large one. Nice, one Rockstar. Way to stick it to us.
• Weapons Locker ($575) Another camp upgrade you can buy that puts a little case next to your camp. When you start to get a lot of weapons, it's nice to keep some in your locker so that your weapon selections on your weapon wheel don't take a long time to scroll through, but you can also not have that problem by just not buying tons of weapons. I admit that I do use this, and mostly I've just put my older, cheaper weapons in here that I don't bother using anymore because now I have better ones, but it's a bit pricey for what is a very minimal luxury.
• Tapscott Gloves ($100) These are the only role gloves that you can buy with cash instead of gold, so they were the only ones I had for a while when I thought my gold was too precious to spend on gloves. They look pretty cool, but because I had them way before I had most of the other gloves that I have now, I'm kinda over them honestly, and don't use them much. But that's not really fair to them; they are a good looking pair of cavalry type gloves with a pattern on them.
• Lance Knife (5 gold) A "bespoke" reskin for your hunting knife. I actually haven't bought it yet, although I keep meaning to. One of these days I'll remember. It's a bit pricey, and I wish it was cash instead of gold or I would have done it long ago.
• Trader Camp Theme ($700) Not my favorite of the camp themes, but all of the role camp themes are better than all of the other non-role camp themes, let's be honest. I'll also admit that part of the reason I don't like this quite as much is because there's piles or buckets or whatnot of bloody animal offal right outside your tent. I know, I know--it's not a real tent, and even if it was, it's not like I'd actually be sleeping in it, but the fact that there's no way any normal person would be OK with that is a turnoff on the theme for me, I admit. Anyway, look at the images to see what the tent looks like, at least, with this theme in place.

Tier 3: Established

Level 11: Efficiency Skill Page increases the amount of material that Cripps is able to get from perfect carcasses. Nice, I suppose, for those who hunt carefully with bows and stuff, but I don't turn in enough perfect carcasses for it to really make much difference. That said, you don't have to buy it, you just have to hit level 11, and you get it anyway. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 12: Two role unlock tokens

Level 13: Materials satchel upgrade, which increases the amount of materials you can carry. Plus two role unlock tokens.

Level 14: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 15: Two role unlock tokens.

Tier 3 Unlocks:

• The Worthington ($446.75) Another step up from the past outfit, both for the outfit itself, and the hat which I think will get a decent amount of usage from me. It's a good looking hat.
• Kladrubar Cremello and Gray coats ($550) The Cremello makes this horse look an awful lot like Buell from single player, but of course, hardly anyone gets him because he's a mid tier horse. I'll try to stop... ahem... beating a dead horse on this issue. Personally, I wouldn't have bought either of these colors either, but I know my daughter really likes the Cremello. She'd buy it anyway, but her progression in the role is so slow that she still hasn't unlocked it.
• Shoulder Waves and the Beaded (2 gold) The trader haircut and beard/mustache set. The mustache in particular is really big and poofy and has beads tied into each end. The haircut is a slicked back long hair look.
• Large delivery wagon ($750) Allows you to make deliveries of up to 100 goods. Plus, it looks notably larger and is covered, which is nice. Its super important to buy this as soon as you can, because it only takes a couple of deliveries to pay for itself, after which you're making much more profit from this whole operation.
• Goodman holster ($75) The off hand holster to match the gunbelt unlocked earlier on. While I tend to think that it's a given that I'll carry two guns, there are aesthetic reasons not to, and honestly, I usually use my bolt action or my Lancaster much more than my revolvers or pistols anyway. If you don't have an off hand holster, your longer coats will actually hang down like they're supposed to in front rather than being swept back to make room for you to draw your gun.
• Hunting wagon ($875) A wagon that you can take around with you and load more animals into it than you can on your horse. It's actually a pretty good deal if you plan on using the trader quite a bit to grind for money, because otherwise you're too limited in terms of what you can actually bring back to camp. Unless the animal spawns are so incredible that you're literally hunting just a few hundred yards away from camp, of course.
• Rawback Ring (4 gold) I kinda like these little cosmetic things like this, although of course, the rings are almost impossible to see except maybe on the closeup of your hand as you're opening the catalog or skinning an animal. Plus, I almost always wear gloves. That said, I still get these anyway.
• Pump action shotgun variant ($450) I have a pump action shotgun, but I almost never use it, and I don't keep it equipped; it's in my weapons locker. That said, if I used this more, I'd certainly go for this variant. It actually looks really good.

I should probably take this. It's too dark. A trader outfit for me and for Cripps.

Tier 4: Distinguished

Level 16: Protection skill page teaches you to reduce the chance of raids on your camp. It must work; I've never had my camp raided ever, either with or without this skill. Plus two unlock tokens.

Level 17: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 18: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 19: Two role unlock tokens.

Level 20: Two role unlock tokens.

Tier 4 Unlocks:

• The Tyringham ($545) An interesting role outfit. The hat is kind of ugly, but the outfit itself is a kind of weird rustic luxury. I actually kind of like it. As an aside, as with the Carthage (bounty hunter outfit) you actually get a "secret" ring as part of this, which like the hat is usable without wearing the entire outfit.
• Hat Tipping ($200) An emote. A friendly one, so more generally useful than the one that the bounty hunter gave us, although I still prefer my go-to of thumbs up to this.
• Kladrubar Dapple Rose Gray and Silver coats ($950) My first really good horse, I think (although I ended up maxing out trader and collector right about the same time.) It's still one of my favorites, although as I've said, it's a bit on the slow side. That said, it has max health and stamina, and is great in a fight. If you're not racing, then this is the best horse in the game. But because traveling across the map is an important part of what you're doing, getting max in health and stamina is sometimes not worth the compromise in speed and acceleration. These two coats are a kind of not quite black and not quite white, which is interesting since black and white are the tier 1 colors for this horse breed. For quite a while, I thought maybe I'd get a second one of the other color here, but I'm not interesting anymore in having two of the same breed, plus the Breton steel gray is almost the same as the dapple rose gray. Although the default mane and tail color on the Breton is white, while here it's black.
• Brass Spectacles (5 gold) Must be level 20 to unlock. I love these. I only have one pair, in brass color, but I use them on most of my outfits. If I'd started the game early enough to have gotten the first outlaw pass two, which had the steel spectacles, I'd probably use them and not have cared quite as much about these, but I didn't so these are my basic glasses.

Another shot of the weird graveyard up by the Riggs Fort ruins.

Tempest Rim

I said I wasn't going to keep posting RDR stuff, but hear me out on this one...

If you look at Basement Gamer Bros Exploring Beyond videos, which he made some months ago after getting "outside" of the normal map, and discovering some other things, it's clear that Rockstar made a significant change in the beginning of the story, and hence the map, but after they had already developed all kinds of stuff. I've always felt like the snowy part of the Grizzlies is criminally under-utilized, especially considering how big it is, but there's a huge chunk of it that's actually in the map itself, but which you can't access, called Tempest Rim.

But watch these videos.

The first shows how the Tempest Rim area actually has paths and roads clearly modeled in terrain, but which don't show or activate on the map.



The next one shows an flat, relatively empty spot that was originally going to be the location of Colter, according to a leaked early map.



This next one shows that the Adler Ranch was originally going to be more or less where Barrow Lagoon is now, which would have made it part of the "Tempest Rim orbit" rather than a place way out in the middle of nowhere and super isolated.



And the fourth one speculates, although it's very educated and convincing speculation, that there was originally more material that we were meant to play as a kind of prologue that was the gang's flight from Blackwater up to Colter, utilizing terrain that's just barely to the west of what you can access on the map of Grizzlies West today.



So... if this stuff was developed, and is mostly just sitting there unused in the game files and there on the map even, why not finish it as part of the next RDR Online update? Open up the western area and Tempest Rim, but a town back in the Colter location, but make it a real town with actual businesses that are open, and stuff. Make one of the next roles really focus on the area. Give us a reason to go up there. Looking for animals? Bigfoot? Injuns? I dunno. But it would be relatively easy to give us that, because it's already right there except for the models for a small little town, and maybe another homestead or two.

For that matter, there are places that look like they should have been paths or roads but which aren't between Cattail Pond and the Millesani Claim mine area. Good! Give us multiple points of entry into the Tempest Rim area and the fringe frontier beyond so we don't have bottlenecks of dozens of players all on the same road running into each other and stuff.

Of course, the biggest problems with RDR Online are still the glitches and bugs, although they do seem to be significantly better than they were. But to really keep it fresh? The moonshiner was pretty cool, but how about a role that has a whole new map area to explore along with it?

Future similar updates could be a gunrunner or smuggler, which gives us back the Nuevo Paraiso section from the first game. It's all there on the map already, although it's also lacking towns and structures and probably a bit of the plant life texturing. If you watch videos of people exploring beyond the map, you'll see that there's actually tons and tons of half-finished map area already in the game. A bit more texturing, some structures and people and missions, and you've got stuff ready to go. Perfect updates for new roles; explore new areas while we're at it!

And honestly, I'd like to have more of an excuse to go up to the Grizzlies and wear my coat, etc. It's always been one of the places that you just don't go to much, because there's not much reason to. The East Grizzlies and Cumberland Forest, and frankly, even much of New Austin is kind of like that too; it really needs to give us more reasons to spend more time there other than a few towns and collectibles to chase. But roles that focused specifically on those areas and gave us a ton of stuff to do specifically right there would be very welcome.

While they're at it, they can add more of what's already in the game to those areas. Why not a couple of new moonshine shacks while they're at it? More fences, and other unique shops? For that matter, actually new unique shops that can only be found in the new areas?

Anyway, that's how I'd do it if I were suddenly put in charge of the Online game. Obviously bug/glitch fixes would be the first priority, but then a few minor surprise and delight features would be nice. Private lobbies would be nice, and if you have a private lobby, why not be able to actually pick not just the region of your camp but the specific camp site within the region?  But mostly, I'd focus on adding to the map. Most of the stuff is actually already there, so relatively speaking (which sounds like I'm being tone deaf; I do recognize that it's a lot of work, it's just not as much work as if so much more of the map wasn't already built) it would be easy to add.

Bonus: They did more work on building the Mexico section than we realized, including a full ambient score for it! I hope they do something with this stuff.