4 things to know about Red Dead Online’s Feb. 26 patch

Red Dead Online continues its beta updates, with a big patch hitting today that adds new content and changes some of the most frustrating parts of the game’s open world. Rockstar has staggered all of the additions of the Feb. 26 update across multiple announcements, so we’ve collected everything you need to know about how the frontier is changing in one spot.

It’s harder to grief

The Feb. 26 update will hide your location on the map unless you were within 150 meters of another player, with as slightly larger radius if you are firing your weapon. Aggressive players will have their blip darken in color and their visibility radius widen. Attacking and killing players who are minding their own business will put a bounty on your head, causing both righteous players and NPC bounty hunters to track you down. These disincentives will stack with dishonor gains, making civilian murder sprees or camping one particular player much harder to pull off.

Daily challenges

Daily challenges will be available to players, and they’ll grant gold nuggets and experience. Daily challenges can be completed with the activities already in the game, from clearing hideouts to picking herbs. Over time, more specialty challenges and better rewards will be introduced.

Rockstar Games

New showdowns, races, and events

A few more activities are being added to the free roam, showdown, and race queues. One of these free roam events is Fool’s Gold, where players compete to wear a golden suit of steel armor. Killing the player donning armor earns you points, and so does surviving while wearing the suit yourself.

When members of two posses kill each other in free roam, they have a wider selection of options. Posse-wide parleys will call the action to a halt, allowing a posse to play without being camped by a band of opponents. Posse feuds can trigger a mini-deathmatch in the open world, and players can select whether its the posse leaders, two members, or the entire group of both posses who can participate in the brawl.

Three new showdown modes, “Up in Smoke”, “Spoils of War”, and “Plunder” are also incoming. Rockstar will have further announcements in the days to come. Races are getting a new variation as well, with Target Races challenging horseback riders to hit targets from horseback while they ride.

Finally, Fishing Challenges are coming to the game. Players opt-in and get the equipment for free, including lures and bait. Players then head to the appropriate body of water and fish away to try and get the most weight of fish captured. Rockstar specifically notes that griefing other players will not be possible during Fishing Challenges, so this is a test of pure fishing skill.

Rockstar Games

New weapons, clothing, and emotes

The Evans Repeater rifle and Rare Shotgun are coming to the game as high end weapons, and they will be available for purchase through the catalogue or gunsmiths. Existing weapons are being tweaked and rebalanced, like the Varmint Rifle’s accuracy.

When it comes to character variation, we’re also getting a bunch of new individual pieces of clothing and outfits. The shops and catalogues will sometimes have special limited time items on display.

New emotes are on the way, allowing players to non verbally greet, react, or taunt other players via their character.

Some of this content will be exclusive to PlayStation 4 players for a limited window of time. This includes “open target races”, which pits players on horseback in an open arena to see who can take out the most targets, a new jawbone knife, new clothing options, and three new emotes. After a window of time that has yet to be announced, Xbox One players will also get this content.