Well, I did end up grinding through the five bounty hunter levels, although I mostly did it without doing the generally kind of frustrating Legendary Bounties. Most of those are still out there for when I feel like I want to do them, but now that I've got a maxed out bounty hunter role, and the cash payout for bounties isn't very high... I don't know. Maybe I won't do any more. That's kind of a shame; the bounty hunter is the first role I got, expecting it to be my favorite, and it ended up being by far the last that I finished, and I consider it generally often the most frustrating. Some of the missions are fun to do, but many of them are not. I also don't know how many times I've started a bounty only to have the bounty spawn really close to the edge of the map and he "escaped" long before I had any chance at all to catch up with him. Sometimes I hadn't even had time to leave the town I picked up the bounty in, having just barely gotten on my horse, ridden a couple of hundred virtual yards, and then told the mission failed.
Even when that didn't happen, the fact that you can see your enemies on the minimap but that bounties only flash in and out (mostly out) meant that runners were always frustrating. By the time I realized that they'd run, especially if I was in the middle of a battle royale with their cohorts, I had a big and hard ride ahead of me to chase them down. The reinforced lasso also didn't always work as advertised; I had bounties manage to wriggle their way out of it many times and need to be rechased, when the whole point of the reinforced lasso was that they couldn't do it. Certainly it was better than the regular lasso, but it wasn't always foolproof.
The moonshiner, on the other hand, was the role that I was reluctant to dive into for some reason, but now it's the one that I probably put the most effort into. The fact that I can easily make two or three moonshine wagon runs with strong, flavored moonshine for nearly $250 every hour or so means that it's an easy avenue for cash. Not as much cash as a full trader wagon, or a coin plus lost jewelry run to the collector, but one that is considerably less time intensive; rather than running all over the map constantly grinding, you can start Marcel making up a batch, go do something else, and then come back in about 45 minutes to an hour, or next time you log in, or whatever, make a quick 5 minute wagon run, and be $250 bucks the richer ($200 net, because I don't spend the time reducing mash cost anymore. It's too much trouble and not worth it.) This is nice, because while I'm never flush with cash, I do have a decent steady stream of it. I often do this around daily challenges, so I have a decent steady stream of gold bar fragments too; usually I get a net $400-600 from the moonshiner, and 3-5 gold bars from daily challenges, depending on how many are relatively easily and quickly done. I tend to spend that nearly as quickly as I get it, but that's because I can; and when I want to save up for a bigger purchase, like a new expensive camp theme (I have one left) or horse, or the moonshine bar, etc., I usually do it after I've found time to do a trader run or coin run. I still do about one of those a week too, which is a bigger chunk of cash in one go. With an average ambient cash level of a couple hundred bucks, I can take that $545-625 additional money, hold back spending a couple of moonshiner runs, and have a good $1,000 or nearly so at my disposal.
On the other hand, I'm also not sure what I'm doing other than earning money for it's own sake to buy on cosmetic things. I've maxed out all four roles. I've just hit level 100, I think (maybe I'm still 99, but if so, not for long), so there isn't anything to "unlock" for me to do anymore; just money to be made and spent on cosmetic updates. And even then, I'm starting to feel like the new shiny feeling of buying something new is wearing off. I've only got a handful of Cripps outfits left to buy, only one more camp theme, and one additional camp upgrade (the weapons locker, which I've held off on because I'm not sure that I understand exactly what the benefit of having one is other than to keep your weapon wheel trimmed down. Considering that I use the same weapons pretty much all of the time anyway and have them in my default load-out, it doesn't seem particularly important.
What else do I even want to buy that's available right now? I'm not exactly swimming in clothes options, but I do have quite a few, and only relatively rarely come across something now that I really, really want to buy. Although when I do, it's often pretty pricey. So, there's some of that, plus the role outfits to buy (although other than for the hats, I don't know what I'll do with these. I really dislike that the role outfits aren't capable of being broken down to their constituent parts like most other outfits in the game and all of the outfits in single player.) Like I said, I do have the Collector camp theme to buy, but I doubt I'll use it much. When I bought Traveling Opulence, I had it on for one session of about an hour, and then changed back to the Bounty Hunter, which I think is by far the best looking theme, and now that I have it, I doubt I'll ever change except to meet a daily challenge, or occasionally just for a bit of variety. It hardly matters, as in game you don't really hang around camp like you would in real life anyway.
I've got the four role top tier horses now, although the Breton still needs to be fully broken in, i.e. horse bonding maximum. That'll no doubt happen relatively soon, though--it doesn't take much other than riding around on it to hit a new level of horse bonding every other day or so. I'm already halfway to three, so I've only got a level and a half left to do. My stable is maxed out, though. I'll probably want to spend a decent chunk of money getting a spare stall free so I'm ready for the next role horse when it comes out. I'm also thinking of getting a non-role but really good horse, like the white or black Arabian or a Missouri Foxtrotter, along with a Nacogdoches saddle. And fully upgraded stirrups, collector saddlebag, and a lamp. All told, that's a good $3,000 or so investment on its own for a good horse, including stable stall, and fully kitted out saddle.
But mostly, I'm waiting for the update to come, with it's new role(s?) and new outlaw pass. Honestly, that's another reason that I was reluctant to finish all of the roles; it felt nice to have something to come back to besides just grinding money to spend on cosmetic things like new clothes and upgraded camps and horses, etc.
As cringy as it kinda sounds, this is my blog, so what the heck--let me tell you a bit about my character. Sure, this isn't a true role-playing game, with a real characterization options available, but I've kinda evolved into a kind of sort of characterization for my guy after all. I named him Joshua--not very original, but what the heck; it actually sounds like a period appropriate name too, when Bible names that have fallen out of fashion were more common (besides, that name has really come back into style in recent years anyway.) Although he has my same first name, I never intended him to be an idealized Mary Sue gamer-insertion character, and I didn't make him to look like me, necessarily. I originally gave him the athletic build, but curiously found it often too skinny looking, so I switched to average (none of the character build options really look like the good, big and athletic Arthur Morgan build, who's tall, very broad-shouldered, etc. I kind of like the leaner, underweight Arthur option, but ideal weight Arthur looks good too. In Online, it seems like you either look a little fat or a little skinny. My guy isn't skinny exactly, but he's a bit too round and weak shouldered.
He also looks young, although that's mostly just to smooth out the face without all kinds of "features" on it, and he's a sandy blond. I was blond as a kid, but I'm a darker brown now, that's gone quite salt and pepper, making it look lighter. There isn't even an option for that color, but again; I picked blond and very clear eyes, not brown and hazel eyed like I am in real life.
On the other hand, once I got the brass spectacles unlocked, I bought a pair and wear them with most of my outfits. I wear glasses in real life, and I like that--it's kinda sorta part of my character's look now, and without glasses (or at least a monocle) he doesn't look right to me anymore. I also started with a rather long pony tail look, but once I unlocked the bounty hunter haircut, I got that and haven't looked back. Even my daughter said that the swept-back fade looks a lot like my actual haircut. Whoops. My not at all Mary Sue idealized version of myself actually does look a little bit like an idealized version of myself in some ways after all as the haircut and glasses evolved. And like I said, even though I know that I'm not blond-blond, I do kind of think of myself as blondish. In fact, it's a long-standing argument I have with my family, where they as little kids would draw my hair with the black crayon, and my wife would say I was much darker than I thought, etc. I told them that because I wear gel most of the time it looks darker, but it's not actually as dark as they think it is. It's probably not really as blond as I think it is either.
My default, average everday look keeps my head bare, both because I don't like how it creates a "custom" outfit when you lose your hat, and bumps something off your horse (I should probably just by default only carry six outfits so I have a spare, and clear it out in the camp or stores whenever I'm in them.) He wears a bulky but surprisingly cool leather jacket, a leather vest, a dark shirt with a bandanna around it, and a pair of leather chaps over his pants, so you can't really see them anyway. He also has a rotating set of outfits that I make up and keep for a while, but eventually replace because I'm never quite as happy with them as I am with the Everyday, and I haven't yet found any hot and cold weather outfits that I love so much that I don't swap them out from time to time.
I've also developed, kind of by accident, but now I'm really running with it and love it, an alter ego for this Joshua, called the Black Mask. (No relation to the Batman villain of the same name, the Victorian anti-hero A. J. Raffles who also went by that name, or the Jet Li character from that mid-90s movie.) Inspired by someone's attempt to create Lone Ranger characters in RDR Online, using the balloonist googles available from the collector as a stand-in for the mask, my Black Mask character was originally an outfit used specifically to do bounty hunter missions, where I kind of flattered myself that he hid his identity and did it as a masked vigilante. He was dressed all in black; a black hat, the mask, a black bandanna, black shirt, black vest, black coat, black pants, black boots and black chaps even. (I realized only recently that I didn't have black spurs, so I've added them just now.) I found that I was doing a lot of bounties in the south and southwest, so I also created a hot weather version of it, using mostly all different elements, but still all black and still using the same mask. Recently, some limited time clothing options came up like a black leather winter coat that looks awesome, and some furry black chaps, so I also created a cold weather version of the outfit. In fact, I wore it all day yesterday while we had the one-off snow all over the map weather and had to wear cold weather clothing everywhere (which was a great idea, because otherwise, I don't really use my cold weather gear very often at all. I know Rockstar often does that around Christmas time for a week or so, but they should have odd days like yesterday interspersed through the year here and there. Maybe one a quarter there's a cold day, and then in December do a full week or even two.)
So now with three Black Mask outfits, I've really embraced the Black Mask alter-ego of my character. Right in time to finish with bounty hunting entirely; so I'm not quite sure what to do with them from now on. I could of course adopt it to criminal enterprises, like my moonshine runs, or whatever, but I dunno. We'll see.
I'll also see if I can't get some kind of screen grabs of my outfits and my character, so I can post them, or even a full-on YouTube video of me doing a mission, or something. But mostly likely, I'll go with screen grabs first. There is a decent photography mode in the game, so I could take pictures of my character and figure out how to export them from the PS4 to the general internet so I can post them, I suppose.
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