Roles Overview

Roles offer the most immersive content allowing you to progress each role and unlock special skills and ephemera that will not only increase the amount you can potentially earn but that will also make completing role-related objectives much easier.

As they are the main source of substantial income, new players will be eager to start progressing in each, which is accomplished by earning role specific XP from completing tasks and actions for that particular role. With each increase in rank, you’ll unlock new items and skills to use.

The History of Specialist Roles in Red Dead Online
Specialist Roles (or simply just “Roles”) were released with the Frontier Pursuits update in September of 2019. At the time that they were announced, the community as a whole rejoiced, as this was the first real additional content that Rockstar would add to the world of Online, something that had been missing up until that point. Finally, there would be ways of earning $RDO Cash and Gold Bars besides hunting, fishing, Showdowns and Stranger Missions.

Three roles were released in September 2019 : Trader, Bounty Hunter and Collector. Then, in December 2019, Rockstar released a fourth role, Moonshiner, which was an extension of the Trader role. The fifth role, Naturalist, an extension of the Collector role, was released in July 2020. Finally, Rockstar released an “upgraded” second Bounty Hunter license in December 2020.

Roles Today
Roles continue to be the most lucrative avenue of earning both $RDO Cash and Gold Bars. They are also the main source of cooperative play content, designed for Posses to participate in. Each role also features a Free Roam event that can be undertaken that awards role specific XP and loot for participants. As mentioned above, roles feature the ability to unlock several different skills, upgrades and horse breeds, making day-to-day play easier for those who have them.

With the release of roles also came a new currency, Role Tokens. These are earned by increasing your Rank in a role and are used to unlock role specific items, skills, horse breeds, cosmetics and upgrades that are unobtainable through any other means.

Since Roles can only be purchased with Gold Bars, they are not immediately available to new players, unless that person is willing to spend real world money. That said, it is possible to grind the gold needed without having to spend any real world funds, it just requires a bit of dedication.

Maximizing Role Related Income - Running Multiple Roles Simultaneously
As you can see, Roles are the main source of income in RDO. While each role offers payouts at different rates, you will still earn far more from them in a much shorter time than with any other type of content.

With this in mind, the only logical next step is to maximize your overall payout by combining roles and running them simultaneously. For example, the Collector role pairs extremely well with Bounty Hunter. You can use the time before reaching the target to pick up various collectables that are on the way to the target and then sell the complete sets to Nazar when you have at least one of every item. You can find a very detailed guide to utilizing these two roles here.

But these are not the only two roles that have synergy. You can easily create a routine where you start Moonshine, run a Resupply for Cripps, accept and complete a bounty while also picking up collectables, run another Resupply, deliver your Moonshine and start more, run a third resupply, go hunting for Cripps, run another bounty while picking up more collectables, deliver your Trader goods, deliver Moonshine (etc. etc.). Once you have your system in place you’ll be able to continuously be earning income every minute of your play session!

Purchase Order
One of the most common questions asked by new players is “What role should I get first?”

While this is completely up to that individual, it is suggested that the first role you should get is the Bounty Hunter Role, as this is the only role that awards Gold. By completing bounties from Bounty Boards and using a timer so that you will receive the max payout, you can earn around 1.5 - 1.75 Gold Bars per hour if you dedicate yourself to it. As long as you don’t let anything distract you, you can earn 25 Gold in approximately 14 - 16 hours of game play. But many players will, at some point, grow weary of bounty after bounty, which is understandable. At this point, the decision needs to be made to either take up a different gold-earning activity or to just take a break from it and do something else until you are ready to get back to the grind. With all that being said, realistically, the average player should be able to earn enough Gold to purchase their second role within a weeks worth of play time.

Another commonly asked question from new players is “What role should I get next?”

This is really a matter of personal preference and playstyle.

If you usually play with others, the Trader role offers a great co-op experience with its Goods Deliveries. Long distance deliveries will pay the Posse Leader $625 per and Posse Members will receive $312.50 for each run. Posses can also help each other fill up their camps with raw materials by donating hunted animals and will make short work of the task as a group.

If you enjoy running bounties but think the $RDO Cash payout leaves quite a bit to be desired, you may want to consider purchasing the Collector role next. The Collector role pairs extremely well with Bounty Hunter as you can spend time before reaching the targets picking up collectables along the way. This role is very lucrative if you sell Madam Nazaar complete sets of items, allowing you to earn a boat load of $RDO Cash with minimal effort.

After you have these three roles, you’ll be able to easily earn both $RDO Cash and Gold Bars easily and will likely be hungry for more traditional content. The Moonshiner role is the only role that features an actual complete storyline and more than halves the time required to produce enough for a delivery when compared to the Trader role.

Last and probably least of all is the Naturalist role, which features the ability to hunt down various Legendary Animals, where you can choose to just sedate the beast and take a sample for your collection or kill and skin it so you can have the trapper craft you a special garment set. Unless you are just dying to run around with some poor critters head on top of your own, you will probably want to make this role last in the purchase order.

Total Cost
Roles are expensive! The table below outlines their cost when there is no discount or promotion being offered: Total Cost For All Roles : 125 Gold Bars

Unless you are willing to wait until a role goes on sale, the total cost for all roles is 125 Gold Bars. You can purchase 150 Gold Bars for around $50 USD, but with Rockstar announcing that they won’t be adding any new content as of September 2022, some players are understandably going to be hesitant to pay out of pocket to take the easy way. and will spend the time grinding various content to earn the required Gold in-game.

Time Spent
Players who are not keen to spend real world funds may be wondering how long it will reasonably take to grind enough gold. Let’s review some figures and estimates to approximate that length of time :

If you play RDO daily for exactly 4 hours each day,:

FIRST ROLE -

 * it will take 2 weeks to earn 17.5 Gold, as long as you complete all 7 General Daily Challenges.
 * If you decide not to complete any Showdown or PvP challenges, you’ll only have 4-5 each day (we will use 5 for the purposes of this extrapolation) that you can do, which means you’ll earn 15.75 Gold after 3 weeks of playing. #### SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT ROLES (When trying to purchase more that one role at the same time) -
 * If you dedicate your playtime to making sure all 7 General Daily Challenges are completed each day, it will take 3 weeks for you to earn a total of 31.5 Gold Bars, which is enough to be able to purchase two roles at the same time.
 * After 4 weeks of completing all Daily Challenges each day, you’ll be 49 Gold Bars richer and be able to purchase a total of three roles at the same time.

FIRST ROLE -

 * If you dedicate your playtime to only grinding Stranger Missions and spend 15 minutes for each mission for max pay out, you can complete around 3.5 missions in an hour (allotting for the time that it takes to travel from one Stranger to the next and load times). For the purposes of this extrapolation, we will say that you can complete a total of 3 per hour. in 4 hours, that is a total of 12 missions. At max payout of ..32 Gold per mission, you will be able to earn 3.84 Gold per play session.
 * After 1 week, you will have accumulated 26.88 Gold Bars total, which is more than enough to purchase your first role.. #### SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT ROLES (When trying to purchase more that one role at the same time) -
 * After 2 weeks, you’ll have a total of 53.76 Gold Bars, enough to be able to buy a total of three roles at once.
 * After week 3 this climbs to 80.64 Gold Bars, which enables the purchase of four roles.
 * After the 4th week, you’ll have amassed a grand total of 107.52 Gold, with which you’ll be able to afford five roles with change left over.

FIRST ROLE -

 * If you decide to mix these two and run only 2 Stranger missions per hour and complete at least 5 of the 7 General Daily Challenges each day, after 1 week you’ll have earned 6.06 Gold. Not much but it’s a start!
 * After the 2nd week, provided you maintain this grind, the total jumps to 17.37 Gold Bars and you now have enough to buy a role. #### SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT ROLES (When trying to purchase more that one role at the same time) -
 * At the end of week 3, your total will grow to 35.68 Gold Bars., enough to be able to buy two roles simultaneously.
 * If you continue this for a 4th week, you’ll have amassed a total of 62.74 Gold Bars, which will allow you to purchase three roles and also have plenty of Gold leftover.

In Conclusion:
The short answer to this question is really “it depends”, but given the figures shown here we can safely estimate that you’ll need approximately 2 weeks to be able to purchase your first role. If you would prefer to be able to immediately take advantage of running multiple roles at the same time, the conservative estimate is approximately 3 weeks minimum. That said, each player is different and the actual time that it will take you will very much depend on your usual playstyle and the amount of dedication you are comfortable putting towards this goal.

WEEK ONE
Gold from completing all 7 General Daily Challenges for 1 week = 7 Gold Bars Gold if you only complete 5 of the 7 General Daily Challenges for 1 week = 3.5 Gold Bars ###### WEEK TWO Gold from completing all 7 General Daily Challenges for 2nd week = 10.5 Gold Bars Gold if you only complete 5 of the 7 General Daily Challenges for 2nd week = 5.25 Gold Bars Week 2 Total (All 7 Challenges) = 17.5 Gold Week 2 Total (Only 5 Challenges) = 8.75 Gold ###### WEEK THREE Gold from completing all 7 General Daily Challenges for 3rd week = 14 Gold Bars Gold if you only complete 5 of the 7 General Daily Challenges for 3rd week = 7 Gold Bars Week 3 Total (All 7 Challenges) = 31.5 Gold Week 3 Total (Only 5 Challenges) = 15.75 Gold ###### WEEK FOUR Gold from completing all 7 General Daily Challenges for 4th week = 17.5 Gold Bars Gold if you only complete 5 of the 7 General Daily Challenges for 4th week = 8.75 Gold Bars Week 4 Total (All 7 Challenges) = 49 Gold Week 4 Total (Only 5 Challenges) = 24.5 Gold

WEEK ONE
Total Gold per Play Session = 3.84 Total Gold after 1 week = 26.88 ###### WEEK TWO Total Gold per Play Session remains the same = 3.84 Total Gold after 2nd week = 53.76 ###### WEEK THREE Total Gold per Play Session remains the same = 3.84 Total Gold after 3rd week = 80.64 ###### WEEK FOUR Total Gold per Play Session remains the same = 3.84 Total Gold after 4th week = 107.52

WEEK ONE
Gold from Challenges = 3.5 Gold Bars Gold from Stranger missions = 2.56 Gold Bars Total Earned = 6.06 Gold Bars ###### WEEK TWO Gold from Challenges = 8.75 Gold Bars Gold from Stranger missions = 2.56 Gold Bars Week Two Total = 11.31 Gold Bars Two Week Total = 17.37 Gold Bars ###### WEEK THREE Gold from Challenges = 15.75 Gold Bars Gold from Stranger missions = 2.56 Gold Bars Week Three Total = 18.31 Gold Bars Three Week Total = 35.68 Gold Bars ###### WEEK FOUR Gold from Challenges = 24.5 Gold Bars Gold from Stranger missions = 2.56 Gold Bars Week Four Total = 27.06 Gold Bars Four Week Total = 62.74 Gold Bars