Red Dead Redemption 2 Honor System: how does it work, honor ranks, rewards and unlocks
The Honor System in Red Dead Redemption 2 plays a significant role in your progress, even though it’s not immediately obvious.It’s not always apparent why things are happening, but this system runs under the surface throughout the whole game, and it’s important to understand it and how it affects your particular play style.
Red Dead Redemption 2’s Honor System is the difference between good and bad – how you’re treated by other characters in-game, whether they attack you, respect you, or run in fear, whether you’ll receive discounts on things that you buy around town, help and advice from folk, new outfits, or an ambush to the kidneys.
How does the Honor System work?
Put simply, if you do good, such as help citizens that are stranded or being beaten up, your Honor will go up. If you steal, murder innocents, or generally become a nuisance, your Honor will drop. Wondering why that old fella gave you some abuse, or why the shop keeper knocked a dollar of your new outfit? It’s because of your Honor Rank.
Honor Ranking and Rewards
Every time your Honor Ranking goes up or down you’ll receive an in-game notification and a note if there’s a significant change. The Honor Ranking is a scale from -8 to +8, with 0 as neutral. Not every rank gives you bonuses, but be aware that if you’re Honor Rank -6 you’ve got a long way to go before you can get back in people’s good books.Generally speaking, having high Honor will get you the discounts and outfits to unlock, but being bad also pays a little if you’re fan of booze and smoking – and Dead-Eye shortcuts.
Here’s what changes as you move up or down the Honor Rank scale:
- Honor 7: You’ll get a whopping half price discount in all shops. If you’re going to be the good guy, it really pays off.
- Honor 6: This unlocks the final set of outfits to buy in stores; the Deuville, the Drifter, the Dewberry Creek, the Farrier, the Faulkton, and the Gambler.
- Honor 5: Reaching Honor 5 gives you 25% off at all stores in the game.
- Honor 3: This will unlock a whole bunch of new outfits: the Bulldogger, the Chevalier, the Corson, the Cumberland, the Cowpuncher, the McLaughlin, the Roscoe, and the Valentine.
- Honor 2: Your first round of discount at shops is 10% off.
- Honor 1: When you loot bodies the drop rate is improved so you’ll find more tonics, jewelry and food.
- Honor -1: When you loot dead bodies the drop rate is increased for the following items; Dead-Eye tonic, thrown weapons, alcohol and tobacco. There’s also a chance of more money and jewelry from dead lawmen.
How to increase or decrease your Honor Rank
There are multiple actions that will increase or decrease your Honor Rank and we’ve listed a few here.These relate to general actions in the world and not specific story missions. Story missions all contribute to the Honor Rank too, but there are too many to list. Just know that when you’re given a chance to help or ignore a story character, or do them a favour (or not) your Honor Rank is being adjusted accordingly.
Actions that increase Honor
- Donate cash or jewelry to the camp
- Do chores around the camp
- During a duel, disarm an opponent instead of killing them
- Surrender peacefully to the law when Wanted
- Pay off your bounties at the post office
- Stealing a horse
- Beat someone up while intimidating them
- Killing a farm animal like cows and pigs, or a dog
- Hold up a shop – this is one of the biggest dishonorable actions
- Randomly shoot near an innocent person
- Kill an innocent person or kill a lawman
- Killing a wild animal seems to be fine, but you have to skin it or stow its pelt