mightyhokie

Thanks for the advice. I crossed all the way west and got the deer trinket last night. I tested it and got a few 2 stars that turned into 3 stars and that made me happy. Since I went all the way to St. Denis to see the fence and I had to ride my horse back to camp I decided to see if I could get an alligator pelt or two. I killed literally 25 gators and never got a perfect pelt. Even when they were 3 star to start with. I shot them in the head and shot them in the heart but it kept knocking it to 1 star or whatever. I looked that up and it says the sniper rifle is the best to use for alligators. So either my gun was not powerful enough (the Winchester you get from the basement of the general store in Rhodes) to kill gators with one shot to the heart, and I guess if you shoot them in the head and kill with one shot that it destroys the pelt. Oh well. I'll try and find a sniper rifle somewhere that I don't have to pay for it. I barely have any money. Anyway, thanks for your help guys. I appreciate it.

I hope I get past this rut. I do want to love it like I did the first one. And I see a great game in there. Its just lots of little things making it harder than it should be. My mistake was playing the awesome Assassin's Creed Odyssey before RDR2. Much more fast paced. I put like 640 hours into Witcher 3. I loved everything about that game. So I get it. I'm sure this game is great. I just need to keep pushing through this stuff. At least I hope. Thanks for the help.

I get it. It is gorgeous for sure. But some of the game mechanics are really tainting my experience. It's always "one thing leads to another". For example, the master hunter challenges: I've been having a hell of a time getting 3-star pelts. When I do find them and shoot them in the head it nearly always knocks it down to 2 star. It's maddening. I am currently on the second challenge, getting 3 3-star rabbit pelts. Well, of course at first I tried the bow, but clearly that is too strong, even with small prey arrows. So I looked it up and got the varmint rifle. Whenever I see one dart across my path I shoot it. Well, that's not totally easy to make happen either because of the way they have the weapons set up! Many times Arthur has put his gun away or another type is selected. So I have to quickly go into the menu wheel and switch. By then the rabbit has darted 30 feet away. So I get the gun out and do red-eye (which early in the game takes most of my deadeye core and ring), find the rabbit, and shoot it's head. Still...as of yet I've killed 20 rabbits and have yet to get that 3-star pelt. They, much like my opinion of this game, keep getting downgraded. So, the cure? I read where I can kill the legendary buck and use his horn as a trinket that will allow me to keep 3-star pelts more easily, so I've been told. Well, in order to do that, I need to ride my horse all the way to the farthest west of the map. Why? Because that is the only way to get there. Want to upgrade equipment? Need deer antler that's needlessly all the way across the map. Rockstar had to know that people would need that trinket but made is so difficult to get to early in the game. Barrier to fun. Want to upgrade satchel? Can't get the 3 star pelts until you get the deer horn. Barrier to fun. Want to go get the deer? Set your destination and put it on cinematic mode...it's going to be a slog. Also, hope that you don't get killed or have to start from a previous save for some reason or you might lose the pelts you do actually have. Barrier to fun. Also there have bene many times where I've been killed or just restarted playing the next day and lost the handful of perfect pelts that I DID manage to get. They just disappeared off my horse. So I have to load a previous game, many times it won't fix it with the previous save so I have to go back several saves, sometimes losing 30 minutes or more of progress. The whole core/ring mechanic is a mess. Unlike nearly all other games I've played I'm constantly having to recharge them. I don't know. For every time I do something where I think "okay, that was cool" I find 2 things that I have to ask "did they even play their own game?" Yes, it is jaw droppingly gorgeous. Yes, the voice acting is incredible. Yes, there are fun moments here and there. The writing is great. I love all these things about this game. But compared to Assassins Creed Odyssey it is really slow. Lots of barriers to fun that are just unnecessary. And as much as I would love to just tool around looking at the scenery, when you finally get several 3-star pelts, which are really, really ridiculously hard to get this early in the game, and there is a chance that if you stop and save that they will disappear, and all you want to do is get to a trapper which is all the way south, a 10 minute-plus ride, all that scenery just goes by. I keep seeing stuff around Arthur and thinking "I want to come back here after I drop these things off". Its just a lot of stupid little stuff that is killing it for me. Shame.

I know that I can just set a marker and set my horse off and do cinematic view from one side of the map to another. But is there a better way? I have most of the eastern map open (I'm in chapter 2) by just riding around trying to find legendary animals. I also have fast travel in the camp. But I want to open up the western part of the map and would reeeeeeeeally love a way to do so without spending 4 hours riding all around. I thought you could go to the train station/stagecoaches and select a city to go to. However, unless you've been there you don't see those locations. For example the train station in Valentine currently doesn't show Strawberry. I want to get over to that side so I can find the legendary deer so I can get the trinket that will allow me to more easily get perfect pelts. I tell you, this damn game is beyond frustrating sometimes. It's like Rockstar wanted to go for more realism than fun. Lots of quirks that are doing their best to separate me from enjoying it. I want it to be a great game, but it's a shadow of RDR1. The graphics are obviously better (I have the Xbox X and 4k HDR), voice acting, etc. All that is great. But there are many, many things that make me shake my head as to why they included this in the game. Like only being able to fast travel from the camp, and not from your own tent when out in the field. Stupid.