General Info

Introduction
Red Dead Online is the multiplayer aspect of Red Dead Redemption 2. While it is not going to receive any new content going forward, it does have an active player base. At this time, there is no up-to-date wiki that focuses on Red Dead Online alone. This wiki is intended to fill that gap.

Red Dead Online or RDO for short offers you the chance to create your own character and live out your cowboy or cowgirl dreams through various activities. You can play with friends, other randoms or fly solo and participate in activities such as hunting, fishing, Free Roam Events, and various missions. You can also purchase different Specialist Roles for a wider variety of content and money making opportunities.

Information contained in this wiki, including button combinations and other options, are from a PSN player's perspective, since this is the platform that I play on. I apologize to players on other platforms for not having your platform specific buttons/options. If you would like to add them, you are more than welcome, provided that you do not delete the existing ones.

Update Timeline
Red Dead Online was released in Beta on November 30, 2018. Since then there have been several major updates There have also been several minor updates in between these and after but as of this writing Rockstar has said that no new updates are going to be made going forward.
 * Beta Release ~ November 30, 2018
 * Gun Rush Update ~ January 10, 2019
 * Beta Update ~ February 26, 2019
 * Poker Update ~ May 14, 2019
 * Frontier Pursuits Update ~ September 10, 2019
 * Moonshiner Update ~ December 13, 2019
 * Naturalist Update ~ July 28, 2020
 * Bounty Hunter Update ~ December 1, 2020
 * Blood Money Update ~ July 13, 2021

The Online Menu
After starting the game you are presented with two options: Story and Online. Selecting Online will bring you to the Online Menu where you will choose what game mode you want or where to load into Free Roam at.

When playing, this menu is available by pressing Start and selecting "Online" from the available options. If you return to this menu after you have spawned in and select any of the options, you will be prompted with a message asking if you really want to leave your current session.

There are a few things to note about this page. Selecting "Free Roam" will spawn you at the same location you are currently in, only in a new session. Selecting "Camp" will spawn you into your camp in a new session. Selecting any of the region options at the bottom of this menu will spawn you into a random location in that region in a new session.

The usefulness of this menu is often overlooked. One way that it can be utilized is to get your posse out of trouble after being attacked by griefers if you don't have another friend who is currently on that you can safely jump to. Have one of your posse members open the Online menu and select "Free Roam" and press X to confirm they want to leave the current session. While they are loading in, you'll need to block the asshats who are harassing you. When your posse member is loaded in, they should send you or the Posse Leader an invite to their session, which should be accepted immediately. When the Posse Leader accepts the invite, the entire posse will be pulled into the new session.

Character Creation
The first time you start playing RDO, the first order of business is to create a character. Previously, you only had one attempt at this, but that changed when the Roles were released. Now, you can change your character's appearance (with respect to skin tone and physical features) for the low cost of 10 Gold bars or $RDO 400. The cash price will only be shown when you are in the character creation screen.

That said, the only thing you really cannot change is your character's gender.

New players should be aware that the lighting in the creation screen is terribly bad and so it's advisable that they play with the facial feature sliders without having any hair (face or head) visible when doing so and adding that as the last step before exiting this screen.

Gameplay
Unlike a lot of online RPG-esque games, Red Dead Online does not have any clear objectives or end game content to speak of. After you reach Rank 50, you have access to every gun in the game and other than the content that is role-specific, you are able to participate in all of the standard content available. All that is left at that point is to purchase and level up your Ability Cards.

There are, of course, items such as horses, tack, weapon upgrades and clothing that you would like to purchase and for these you will need either $RDO cash or Gold Bars, which you'll need to earn by completing various missions and tasks. Since Roles not only provide additional content that you can participate in either solo or with a posse, you may want to focus on saving your gold up for purchasing at least one as soon as possible. The role that you choose is entirely up to you, of course. That said, the Bounty Hunter role is the only one that will pay out gold in addition to $RDO cash and is a great way to continue earning gold while completing content.

You will be spending most of your time in Free Roam, which allows to to explore the map at your leisure and interact with the content you want to. There are other PvP-based game modes available, but these modes will only allow you to participate in those PvP-specific activities.

There really is no true end-game aspect to RDO, but there are plenty of things to work towards. When starting out you won't have any of the roles available. If you are willing to spend real-world money, you can just open them all immediately, but this may not be an option for some. Roles are important for more than the additional income they provide. There are certain quality of life upgrades that can only be obtained through them, such as the ability to run while in Eagle Eye or your horse being able to pick plants for you when you are mounted.

It's also very satisfying to spend a lot of time collecting and the selling multiple full collections to Madame Nazaar and walking away with $RDO 20-30k. Or bringing in 6 bounty targets alive all by yourself.