Rockstar really kept us in suspense about this one, waiting to announce the Red Dead Online Halloween Pass until the day it launched. To be fair, though, most of what’s in it leaked a good while ago. So anyone who listens to official updates only might have been surprised; those who obsess over leaks knew what was coming.
This works sort of like the recent Outlaw Pass, but there are 20 ranks worth of rewards instead of 80. You are enrolled in the season of content no matter what (earning a new reward about once every five levels or so), but you can buy in for 15 Gold Bars if you want to get premium rewards. (15 Gold Bars is nothing; here’s a guide to how you can make that pretty quickly.)
Anything that earns you XP in the game should earn you XP in your Halloween Pass, and it takes 1,000 XP to increase each rank. So that’s 20,000 XP to get all 20 ranks, which is pretty easy if you so much as log in every day to complete a daily challenge or two. I earned like three ranks just by playing the Dead of Night game mode for an hour.
Standout premium rewards for the Halloween Pass include the Zavala Machete and some freaky masks for your horse.
You can only earn this stuff during the event, but you’ll get to keep all of it even after the event ends on November 16 (Update: The Halloween Pass has been extended until November 30).
Do you want a full list of rewards? I’ll give you a full list of rewards.
Rank 1
- Hand Wraps (premium)
Rank 2
- Noir Filter (free)
- Free Hardy Tonic coupon (premium)
Rank 3
- Wood Cabin photo backdrop (premium)
Rank 4
- Scared emote (premium)
- RDO$100 coupon (premium)
Rank 5
- Boxes of .22 Sedative ammo (free)
- Ace of Spades camp flag (premium)
Rank 6
- 40% off select Naturalist role item (premium)
Rank 7
- Wheat Field photo backdrop (premium)
Rank 8
- RDO$50 coupon (free)
- Post-Apocalyptic camera filter (premium)
Rank 9
- Frighten emote (premium)
Rank 10
- 5 free Blending Tonics coupon (premium)
- Flayed Bison Mask for your horse (premium)
Rank 11
- Boxes of Nitro Express ammo (free)
- Abandoned House photo backdrop (premium)
Rank 12
- Rolling Block Rifle Variant (premium)
Rank 13
40% off select Naturalist role item coupon (premium)
Rank 14
- Phantom Buck Mask for your horse (free)
- Spooky emote (premium)
Rank 15
- Skull & Daggers camp flag (premium)
Rank 16
- Predator camera filter (premium)
Rank 17
- Gallows Blindfold (premium)
Rank 18
- Cemetery photo backdrop
Rank 19
- Painted Ram Mask for your horse (premium)
- The Ripper emote (premium)
Rank 20
- 30% off select weapon coupon (free)
- Zavala Machete (premium)
- Gothic Décor for your moonshine shack (premium)
If you buy into the pass during the first week, you’ll also get a free shortarm engraving.
And, I mean, this stuff is alright. The horse masks are cool and that Rolling Block Rifle variant is pretty sexy. I also like the camp flags this time around. Oh, and I’m told the Ripper emote will actually deal damage if the knife connects with another player, but I haven’t tried it yet.
There’s actually more stuff that I’m excited about in 20 ranks of the Halloween Pass than in 80 ranks in the Outlaw Pass 3. I can’t tell if that’s because the Halloween Pass is actually pretty good or because the Outlaw Pass 3 was actually kind of terrible.
I bought the Halloween Pass, of course. As someone who’s invested more than 550 hours into Red Dead Online, I have Gold Bars coming out of my ears at this point (and even out of my horse’s ears). There’s no Gold Bar return on this one (if you completed all 80 ranks of the Outlaw Pass 3, you would earn your 40 Gold Bar deposit back), but I’m honestly not super worried about dropping 15 Gold Bars.
And that’s the Red Dead Online 2020 Halloween Pass. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does give longtime players like myself something new to do, and I can’t really complain about that.
