Sometimes riding your horse around the sprawling map of Red Dead Redemption 2 is not the most efficient form of travel. We explain how to fast travel in Red Dead Redemption 2. The open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 is quite expansive, sprawling across numerous geographic areas with their own ecosystems. From the mountains up north to the swamps down south, Red Dead Redemption 2 takes players all over the ol’ western United States. With your trusty stead at your side, players can expect to make their way across all corners of the map. However, traveling everyone on horseback can ultimately be quite tedious. It can take a while to get from point A to point B if you limit yourself to only traveling by horses. Luckily there are multiple ways to get around the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 much faster, including a fast travel system. Unlocking the fast travel system is not as straightforward as you might expect. In the first game, all you had to do was pitch camp, and the option presented itself. In Red Dead Redemption 2, however, you unlock the ability to fast travel by upgrading your gang’s camp, namely, the lodging. Using the ledger in your camp after the start of Chapter 2 in the story, you can purchase an upgrade for Dutch’s lodging. After you make this purchase, you can then upgrade Arthur’s tent to include a fast travel map, which allows you to “quickly travel to previously discovered locations.” This upgrade isn’t cheap, however, coming in at a whopping $325. Once this is unlocked, you can find a fast travel map at your tent or bedside at the gang’s camp. Initiating fast-travel to a location shows a relatively lengthy cutscene of Arthur mounting on his horse and riding towards his destination. It’s not exactly an immediate teleportation from one point to another, but it’s certainly quicker than riding there yourself. Unfortunately, you can’t fast travel back to your camp. You can also travel to previously discovered locations via the stagecoach or train systems that are located in towns, for a relatively low price. Again, you cannot take either of these back to your gang’s camp (which makes sense, considering it’s supposed to be a secret location). Both these two options, as well as the fast travel option, bring Arthur’s horse along with him. If you aren’t in a town and still can’t be bothered to ride around, you can use the game’s new cinematic camera feature. With the cinematic camera enabled, your horse will follow the road towards a designated waypoint. This feature doesn’t exactly equate to “fast travel,” but lets you ride between waypoints while you take a break from the controller. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a huge open-world with lots to do, so be sure to stop by App Trigger to keep up with the latest on Rockstar’s newest title.<doc-sep>Red Dead Redemption 2 is an absurdly big game, full of secrets, systems, and hidden surprises. It’s possible to just learn how it all works by playing, but its first few hours can be overwhelming and a little confusing. I’m here to help. Advertisement I’ve learned a lot about how Red Dead 2 works over the course of my time playing and reviewing it, and I figured I’d take the opportunity to share some of what I’ve learned with anyone who’s starting out. Just a note up front that these tips aren’t quite comprehensive; I’ve updated this post twice so far (it originally ran on 10/26/2018), but there’s still plenty that I don’t know. Start by refreshing yourself on the first game’s story. Red Dead Redemption 2 is closely tied with its 2010 predecessor. Because it’s a prequel, it has many of the same characters, and the story is more rewarding if you have a good memory of what John Marston got up to last time around. If you don’t have a spare however-many hours to play the first game, don’t worry, you can just watch Tim Rogers’ entertaining and informative recap video: Take it slow. Red Dead Redemption 2 is outrageously detailed and unusually slow-paced. It will tell you to slow down at every opportunity, so listen to it. Take your time. There is so much to see and do. ...at least, until you get to where you just want to see what happens. With that said, there is a point where the game’s story begins to pick up speed. You might feel like you want to just push forward and see how it all shakes out. That’s fine; most of the best side stuff you’re skipping will still be there once the story is complete, so don’t worry too much if you feel like you want to start focusing mostly on the story starting at around chapter 5. Experiment with the controls. In the “controls” part of the settings menu, you can change a few things. Everyone will have their own preferences, but experiment with “Standard FPS” for first-person controls, which moves a few things around and, crucially, turns sprinting into a familiar toggle of the left thumbstick. Also mess around with “Running Mode,” since you can switch between holding a button to run or tapping it. I also recommend lowering the “Aim/Look Dead Zone” to zero under both first-and third-person controls. Advertisement Manually save from time to time. It’s never a bad idea manually save your game, nor is it to keep multiple saves. So, do that! Don’t rely overmuch on autosave, since the game saves constantly and you might find yourself wanting to undo a murder spree or, more likely, save a fallen horse. Advertisement Your completion percentage and story percentage are in two separate places. If you’re wondering how far you are in the story, check the story tab in the progress menu. When you save your game, however, you’ll see a different, lower percentage next to your save file. That’s your overall game completion percentage, which includes collectables, stranger missions, and other side stuff. Advertisement Rent rooms in town to change your outfit and sleep away from camp. In many of the game’s towns, you can rent a room to stay in. Those rooms are more than just a place to rest; you can also change your clothes and basically use them like a home-away-from-camp. If you’re avoiding fast travel and trying to live in the world as much as possible, it can be nice to grab a room. Advertisement Don’t buy guns. You’ll get almost every main type of gun in the game for free through story missions, so it’s rarely worth it to spend your precious cowboy bucks on a gun. Save your gun-money for customizations, which you should definitely pay for, particularly things like sights and rifling that improve each weapon’s performance. You should also save up for upgrade accessories like the bandolier, which increase your ammo capacity. Advertisement Don’t worry about money too much in the early goings. Arthur is nearly broke for the first bit of the game, and everything seems really expensive. Just keep playing story missions, and pretty quickly you’ll have more money to start getting better gear. Once you do, the game opens up a bit, since it becomes easier to pay off your bounties and buy whatever you want in stores. Advertisement You can buy a lot of cool stuff from trappers and fences. In addition to general stores and gun shops, you can shop for goods from trappers and fences. Fences will give you money in exchange for stolen goods, but they also sell a number of useful items, including weapons like dynamite and throwing knives. Fences also have a variety of melee weapons for sale, though I didn’t notice those until I finished the story, so it’s possible they aren’t immediately available. Trappers, meanwhile, trade outfits in exchange for animal pelts and parts, and trading with them can unlock some nifty (and ridiculous) unique clothing options. Advertisement Talk to people more than once. Arthur Morgan can interact with any person (or animal) he comes across in the game, which can lead to some fascinating conversations and unpredictable interactions. Keep in mind that you can talk to people more than once; each one is more than just a one-off interaction. “Greet” someone more than once, and the conversation will move to a new level of the exchange with each press of the button, usually ending after the third one. It’s pretty cool. Advertisement To raise your reputation, go around greeting folks. Arthur’s “honor” meter keeps track of whether he’s been a hero or a villain, and moves up and down based on your actions. Shoot some unarmed civilians or rob a stagecoach, and your honor may go down. Help someone out, and it’ll go up. Honor has a minor effect on the story, changing small things like Arthur’s journal entries and his dreams. I played the game through with a high level of honor and thought the story worked really well; I’m not sure what it’s like if you play as a jerk. Advertisement If your honor ever lowers more than you want, you can raise it pretty quickly just by walking around and greeting folks on the street. Every few people you greet, you’ll get a bit more honor. You’ll also get to hear some cool conversations, so, win win. Get yourself a good horse. Arthur will start out with a perfectly acceptable horse, and it’s possible to play the whole game with that horse. However, you can get a much better horse early on, provided you’re willing to take a brief horse-hunting trip. Put on some cold-weather gear and head up to the west side of Lake Isabella in the northwestern region of the Grizzlies. There, you should quickly see a white Arabian horse in the wild. Advertisement Hello, beautiful. Holster your weapon and target it with the left trigger, sneaking toward it and pressing “calm” every time you get the chance. When you’re close enough, hop on, then hold back on the left thumbstick while steering away from whichever direction the horse is bucking. Before long it’ll chill, and you can take it to a stable and name it. Congrats, you now have a really fast, really good horse. Advertisement Name (and take care of) that horse. There are more horse options at the stable than you might be aware of, so take the time to explore them all. You can name or rename any horse under the “services” menu in the stable, and I recommend doing so. I also recommend brushing and feeding your horse regularly, partly because it will boost Arthur’s bond and make the horse perform better, and partly because it’s your horse, man, and you should be nice to it. Advertisement While you’re back in the Grizzlies, visit Flaco Hernandez. The first time you visit Valentine, you’ll likely pick up a Stranger sidequest from an author who tasks you with tracking down a handful of famous gunslingers and asking them for interviews. If you look at the back side of the photographs in your satchel, you’ll get a location for each one. You can do those in any order, but I recommend starting with Flaco Hernandez. He’s up in the Grizzlies, and meeting him will net you a pretty fly-looking revolver. Be sure to search his cabin, too; there’s a treasure map hidden in a lockbox inside. Advertisement Stay for the whole party. At a few points in the story, everyone at camp will come together for a party. Each party is incredibly well done, as people drink, wander, chat, tell stories, and sing songs. It’s a bit like attending an immersive theater production like Sleep No More, and you can freely walk from area to area and listen in on whatever’s happening. Occasionally during parties, it seems as though ten or more people all got in the mo-cap studio together and semi-improvised a scene. It’s wild. Advertisement Parties are also a really good place to get insight into the people in the gang and their relationships not with Arthur, but with one another. Understanding those relationships will help make more involved story developments down the road make more sense. Parties go on for a while, and it’s possible to just want to go to sleep and keep the story moving. My recommendation is to stay for the whole thing. Parties don’t happen that often, and they’re pretty special. Advertisement Complete challenges when you have the opportunity. From the outset, Red Dead 2 gives players a series of challenges. Each category has a number of progressively more involved steps, like “hold up five townsfolk,” or “win five hands of poker.” I’ve found most of them to be fun to try to complete, and like how they gently push me toward exploring more of the game. If you tap left on the D-pad and open Arthur’s log, you can find your current progress one tab to the right. Advertisement Hold down the menu button to go straight to the map. The map in Red Dead 2 may seem like it can only be accessed through the pause menu, but you can get to it faster by holding down the start/options button. Advertisement Travel using cinematic mode. When it’s time to get from point A to point B, you’ll usually have to hop on your horse and ride. That can be a nifty way to get around, but given how much riding you’ll have to do, it can also become tedious. Fortunately, you have a variety of other travel options. My favorite of those is the “cinematic camera” you can trigger by holding down the options/trackpad button. It lowers black bars on the top and bottom of the screen and makes the game look more like a movie, but it also takes over steering for you if you’re heading to a waypoint. All you have to do is press get up to speed, and your horse will take it from there. (Keep an eye/ear on your horse’s stamina, though, especially if you’re traveling a long distance.) If you need to get somewhere and want to just kick back and enjoy the view, set a manual waypoint in the map, turn on the cinematic camera, and chill. Advertisement There’s a fast travel option you can unlock in camp. I did almost all of my non-manual travel in Red Dead 2 either by using the cinematic camera or, occasionally, by buying a train ticket. However, if you’d prefer a somewhat more traditional open-world fast travel system, you can unlock one as a camp upgrade. You have to upgrade Dutch’s tent first, which unlocks an upgrade to Arthur’s tent that lets him fast-travel from camp. It’s pricy—more than $500 for both upgrades combined—but worth it if you want to get around more quickly. Advertisement Understand how stats, cores, and leveling all work. The game does a poor job of explaining cores and stats, so I’m going to try to do a better job. In the lower-left corner of the screen you’ll see three separate attributes, each denoted by a white symbol with a partially filled ring around it.<doc-sep>
How to fast travel in Red Dead Redemption 2 Learn how to fast travel in Red Dead Redemption 2 and save yourself that long journey on horseback. Those who played that other big Rockstar game that’s been popular for the last few years will recall that there isn’t an easy way to fast travel. Yes, you can call a taxi and pay the fare with in-game currency, but it never breaks immersion. This is not the case for Red Dead Redemption 2. You can absolutely travel to other locations faster than by horseback, and there are multiple ways to do so. Because it isn’t obvious from the beginning, here’s how you can fast travel in Red Dead Redemption 2. How to fast travel To fast travel in Red Dead Redemption 2, open your map and look for the location of a Stagecoach. It will have an icon that looks like a signpost. When you arrive, talk to the person standing beside the Stagecoach itself to fast travel to your desired location. Note that if you approach on your horse, it will appear your can't use the Stagecoach, but this is simply because you can't take a ride while on horseback. It should also be noted that you must unlock fast travel destinations by visiting them at least once. Another way to fast travel in Red Dead Redemption 2 is to take the train. To do this, head to any train station in the game and talk to the Station Clerk. They will have options for you to Send Mail, Receive Mail, Train Tickets, and Pay Bounty. For the purpose of this guide you’re going to want to select Train Tickets. It works very similar to the Stagecoach. Select your destination and hop on the train. The game will then initiate a cinematic that shows a train traveling across the land. Truth told, this isn’t exactly fast, but it does a fine job of saving you a 10-minute trip on horseback and not breaking immersion with the experience. If you have a mission to complete and it’s a long ride, you might consider taking the train and hurrying things along. Be warned, though; your horse does not travel with you if it's hitched to anything. If you want to go for the immersion-breaking method of fast travel, head to the Van der Linde camp and to the back of Dutch’s quarters. There you’ll find a ledger and the option to contribute to the camp. Open the ledger and look under the Lodging section. Under Next in Line it will say, “Arthur wants a map to help plan journeys.” This upgrade costs $325 but will put a fast-travel map at the back of Arthur’s quarters. You can only travel to previously discovered locations, though. If you don’t have the money to fast travel, you could always take a long trip by horseback and setup a camp along the way if day turns to night. You should also stop by our Red Dead Redemption 2 walkthrough and guide for all the help you’ll need getting Arthur Morgan through this adventure in one piece.