flu007

Yeah, that's definitely not the case for me. Mine would default to much higher settings, but I set them lower just incase. (I7 6700 with 12 gb RAM here, btw, if that matters. I dont know much about all that stuff, but the system is 4 yrs old, vid card a more recent addition.)

I play it with a GTX 1050 TI, and have had no such issues. I'm on an i7 desktop though. I do run it on mostly low with a few medium settings, but could probably safely bump it up a bit. (I played it safe in the beginning with all the crashes, and I also just don't care that much, still looks great to me on low-ish settings.) Game generally runs smoothly, apart from occasional crashes, but I'm pretty sure those aren't GPU related. (In Online mode the game locks up from time to time, have to Task Manager out of it. In story mode it was different, "unexpected error" stuff I believe.) So if your issues were worse than that, it was likely not down to the GPU?

Yep, already had the nacho saddle on the Kladruber, moved it to the Arabian for now. Suppose I should get them one each for easier switching, not like I'm strapped for cash. And "a quiet Sunday drive" is about 90% of my non-mission free roam time, heheh. I often ride to my destination at "Eagle Eye speed" - if that makes sense - with the .22 cal in my hand and pop all the small game that moves, heheh. Gotta keep that satchel full! And for that, the Kladruber feels a bit more right. But indeed, the accelleration and handling of the Arabian certainly have their advantages.

Yeah, I've grown quite fond of my Kladruber, but she sure is a bit of a nervous nelly. I do like the way she feels though, with the max health and stamina, slightly clunky, but still quite fast when needed. I'll probably go back to her, but - partially because of this discussion - I decided to get a black Arabian last night. Still have to put him through his paces, but certainly doesn't seem more skittish than the Kladruber so far, and the agility is a plus. I do wish it was slightly bigger though. I do a lot of hunting, and the turkeys damn near drag through the grass...

I still visit the butcher regularly, find him much less annoying than Cripps, heheh. (I don't use the hunting wagon, I'm more a "kill anything that moves" kinda guy, so I usually have a satchel full of all sorts of skins and plumes, and a few pelts on the back of the horse. So then I have to sell off all the excess raw meat from time to time.)

Seems everyone with a rifle been hunting these of late.

Yeah, I stopped doing the Master Archer one. The fishing and animal kill events are usually fine. (The fishing events have combat disabled.) And I've not had many issues with idiots during the role specific events either.

Apart from a few odd instances - no alligators at all in the swamps one time, for instance - I've had no real issues with animal spawns. As such, the Trader role is my main money maker. Especially once you progressed a little and upgraded to the large wagon, it's $500 or $625 per trip. I've not made nearly as much with the Collector stuff. Perhaps if I'd use that online map to complete collections, the income could rival that of the trading, but without that I've only managed to complete 2 collections so far, so I mainly sell off all the common duplicates. It's a nice bit of bonus income, but the trading earns money way faster. I often combine the two, though - do some chill hunting to and from a collector search area, stuff like that. If I'd really focus on bringing in the high points carcasses, I could speed up the money making even more, but I see no real need to at the moment, not exactly strapped for cash.

In online, I named the starting horse Geezer (he was gray and I imagined he was old.) Now riding a something-gray Kladruber, so I stuck with the theme and named her Biddy. Tha camp's black labrador is named Jonesy, after my cat.

Yeah, I haven't paid close enough attention to it to have discovered the system behind it, but sometimes I have to switch back to defensive, sometimes I don't. Definitely after some of the Free Roam events, but perhaps not the missions, not sure. In any case, yeah, I check every time.

I like it well enough, but more as an occasional inbetween thing. I like the bulk of my playing time to be a bit more chill, ride around at a casual pace, do some hunting and stuff, with occasional moments of action here and there. The game already provides those moments in various forms though, so the bounty hunting is just one more of those options for me. I did do the Day of Reckoning event a few times the last few days, and that's a fun little romp as well.

Just to make it extra clear: while in Free Roam, the L key brings up the Free Roam menu. Then it's indeed under Online Options (the bottom item in the menu.) (Keep in mind that some missions or events revert you back to Offensive mode, so you'll have to switch it back after the mission.)

Ok, I'll try my hand at a basic how-to-fish for PC... - First off, bait determines what type of fish you'll catch. To put it simply: the food bait (bread, cheese etc.) is for small fish, the lures are for medium and large fish. I think the crickets and worms can catch medium fish too, but I never bothered with those beyond the story missions where they make you. Once you can get the lures, I use those for medium and large fish. (There are river, lake and swamp lures.) - Once you cast, you use the space bar to reel the bait in very slowly. The R anf F keys determine the speed of the reeling-in; R to speed up, F to slow down. In practice: usually when you cast, it'll automatically be on the slowest reel-in speed, so you just cast and keep the space bar pressed and it'll slowly pull the bait closer to you... - Until the fish bites. Usually it'll nibble a little first, then it bites. When it does, click the left mouse button to hook it. Figuring out the right time to click takes a little bit of practice, but not all that much, the visual and audio cues should be pretty obvious, and once you get the hang of it, it's really easy. - Then, very important, once it bites, release the space bar (stop reeling it in) until it stops trashing about. When the fish goes quiet, start reeling again. When the fish starts trashing again, stop reeling. That's how you break the line. - When you've hooked a fish and are reeling it in, that's when you need the R key to speed up the reeling. Otherwise it'll keep reeling in very slowly and it'll take forever. - So in practice: you hooked the fish, release the space bar until it stops trashing about. When it goes quiet, hold space again and tap the R key a couple of times to speed it up. When it trashes again, release space bar. Goes quiet again, hold space again, and press R a few times again. And so on, until you land it. That's the basics. - Then also: you'll see this tip pop up in the top left corner of the screen every time you hook a fish, I think. Something like, move the stick back and then reel in quickly while moving forward, or something. What this means in practice is: so you hooked a fish, it stopped moving, so you hold the space bar and press R a few times to reel in faster. Then start moving the mouse left and right. This will make your dude pull the stick back to the left, then move it forward again then back to the right, then forward again, and each time you do that, the fish gets pulled a few feet closer, and it'll considerably speed up the time it takes to reel it in. (I hope this makes sense, but I'm sure it will once you actually try it.) This is especially important when you hooked a big fish, otherwise it takes forever. And that's pretty much it, really. It's very easy once you get the hang of it. Oh, one more tip: if you use Eagle Eye (CAPS Lock) with the rod equipped, or even while fishing, you can see the fish under water. This is very useful to determine if there are fish, and what size they are, so you can decide on what bait to use. Hope this helps. Happy fishing!

I guess I can answer my own question now, a few weeks later. (I'm level 20 trader and collector, level 4 bounty hunter.) In short: all three roles would have been acceptable choices to pick first, really. They're all fine for solo play. I went trader, collector, bounty hunter, in that order, and for me that was the right order. The Trader role is my favorite, as I expected. It's also the most fleshed out. Not that it's particularly deep, but at least there's a process with a few different steps, and some camp upgrades to work towards. The Trade Route event is fun as well, even for a crap shot like me. (Unfortunately it seems bugged half the time where it ends before it starts - You earned 0 goods, yay.) The Collector role was fun the first few days, but it's already starting to get a bit old. It's a bit thin to keep my interest long term, I think. But it's a good secondary role - pop a collector's map to give me a few locations to visit, nice and chill, and do some hunting along the way to fill Cripps' stock, that sort of thing. The Condor Egg and especially the Salvage event are fun too. Bounty Hunter is as expected, at least the core of it, as I've not dug into it much yet. Nice if you want a bit more action, but for me it's been a once in a while, when I have nothing better to do, sort of thing. Can't see myself doing that all day. The combination of all three works quite well, though. Nicely varied, so something to do for whatever mood I'm in.

The L key brings up the Free Roam Menu. Then indeed, Offensive/Defensive mode is under Online Options, which is the bottom option in the menu.

I like the fishing challenges. They're the only Free Roam events where I have a half-decent chance at winning. Today there was one up north at Brandywine. As the event gets underway, I hear screams in the distance. Male and female. I think maybe some idiot is messing with people somehow and briefly roll my eyes at kids these days, but focus on the fishing. Halfway into the event, I landed two 18 pounders and am narrowly in the lead, but my spot isn't great, so I decide to move up the river a little. Turns out the one messing with people wasn't some idiot kid, but a panther. And since combat is disabled during the fishing events, i spent the second half of the contest getting mauled over and over again by an angry cat, taking no damage, but also unable to fight back. At one point I managed to start fishing again, hoping it would leave me alone once I was in the fishing animation, and I even hooked another fish, but nope, the panther got me again before I could land it. I finished 2nd. PS. And just as I finished typing this, my cat threw up on the bed. Not a good cat day today...

Naah, I'll stick with the game maps. I'm normally not much of a collector, never 100%-ed a game etc, because that kinda requires you to google stuff, and that seems rather boring to me. But with the Collector's maps, that's just enough gamefication to make it fun for me. But I get it, different strokes for different folks, no judgment here.

Worked fine for me earlier today. (on PC) It's not that you already have the max amount of those cooked, right? (I'm guessing that's not it, because then it would show but greyed out.)

If that last part is the case for you, that sounds like a bug. For me, it may take umpteen attempts before the camp spawns, but the 2 bucks only gets paid when it actually spawns. And I'm pretty sure the 1 dollar fee only gets paid when the camp is up as well, not when it disappeared and I play without camp for a while.

Thanks! I assumed as much, but then I couldn't find the damn thing, so I started wondering...

This must've been asked before, but can't find the answer. Anyone know the mechanics behind the Collector's maps? Specifically: Is the marked item only available to the player who owns the map, or can someone else find it too? And if someone else finds it, would the marker then disappear? (Yeah, I can't find this stupid wildflower in the swamps. I'll probably eat my hat later, but I swear I've searched every inch of this area three times now.) Update: found it... Or at least the marker cleared, because the flower I found was well outside the yellow area (like, roughly the diameter of the yellow circle away from the edge of the circle.) Close enough, I guess. I do feel slightly vindicated, at least.

It doesn't need to be Ginseng, by the way. Other health herbs work as well. Or at least Milkweed does, I tried that the other day. And Milkweed is a lot more common than Ginseng.

I feel your pain. Dunno if I'd call it a massive problem, but certainly an annoyance. I deal with it by using Fast Travel a lot. When the camp disappears - usually when doing a mission, as then you change lobbies, but sometimes randomly as well - I try to pitch the camp again where I want. That rarely works, so I pitch it wherever it lets me, and then Fast Travel to camp. That cuts into profits a bit, but at least it keeps me (mostly) sane.

She moves every 24 hrs, I've found, at the same time the daily challenges reset. Which is 7 am CET, or 1 am EST. That's a handy map, though. I don't really want to use it to find the collectables, but just to check her location is very useful already. Now I no longer have to check that youtube channel from the guy who makes a video with her location every day.

Just to confirm, the Stay command is there on PC as well. Very useful, I use it regularly. You have to be a few meters away from the horse to bring up the option, though, like Jimblob said, until the horse's name is no longer in the bottom right corner of the screen.