Saving Buell

[Foxtrot]

In my previous two play throughs, I enjoyed the Veteran missions most of all, making friends with Hamish and gaining Buell (the best gosh-darned horse in the West)..

On my third (and final) play though, I started one of the missions with Arthur and then held back.  I was so emotionally involved before that I wanted Buell to survive this time round - something that would have been impossible with Arthur.

So I've saved the rest of the missions for John, for when the  main story is done and I can concentrate on the exploration goals.

[Kormath]

2 hours ago, Foxtrot said:

In my previous two play throughs, I enjoyed the Veteran missions most of all, making friends with Hamish and gaining Buell (the best gosh-darned horse in the West)..

On my third (and final) play though, I started one of the missions with Arthur and then held back.  I was so emotionally involved before that I wanted Buell to survive this time round - something that would have been impossible with Arthur.

So I've saved the rest of the missions for John, for when the  main story is done and I can concentrate on the exploration goals.

I still don't see why you'd want to, definitely not the best horse, but we've had that discussion already

So then i got thinking, cause i thought the side missions didn't carry into the epilogue, and we know the horses in the stables don't (except the DLC horse), and i found this on gamepressure - what transfers into the epilogue.  For their full list - https://guides.gamepressure.com/red-dead-redemption-2/guide.asp?ID=47357

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Side missions - No. The game will not allow you to deal with side quests that you have ignored in chapters 2-6. The only way to do so is to load the previous save of the game before the final events in chapter 6. You can continue to repeat the main quests in chapters 1-6 by selecting them from the main menu. It is worth noting that in epilogue the game provides new side tasks that were previously unavailable.

And this explains why i went from a dark dark red hat to neutral,  i thought it was from the honor in the missions in chapter 6

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Honor - No. When the epilogue begins, the honor bar (reputation) will be back in the middle of the scale. You have to build it anew if you care about e.g. discounts in shops. In the newly "unlocked" state of New Austin, fortunately there are a lot of random meetings in which you can easily earn positive honor points.

Doesn't look like you'll get to keep Buell in the epilogue, but then again, it wouldn't be the first time one of these game guide sites were wrong.

[Foxtrot]

Hmmm. Well I’ll see soon enough. Sure Buell might not be the best in terms of stats, but I have an emotional connection with that nag. 

Interestingly, when John went fishing with Hamish and caught the legendary northern pike, Hamish kept it. I was assuming that John would keep it to send to Mister Gill.