When the fourth outlaw pass for Red Dead Online came out in December of 2020, I decided to buy in. I hadn’t bothered with the first three passes (or the Halloween pass), since I didn’t really see the point of adding any unnecessary arbitrary goals to my somewhat casual play style. But with the fourth pass, I decided to give it a go, even without any knowledge of the unlockables it might contain. I was actually playing a lot of Red Dead Online at that point, and my bags were flush with Gold Bars.
As fate would have it, after only completing the first 20 ranks, I fell out of my Red Dead Online addiction, with no second thought to my investment or the potential gains still to be had. And time would continue to march on, as it is wont to do.
I didn’t return to Red Dead Online until six days before Outlaw Pass No. 4 was scheduled to end. I happened to realize that, buried in the riffraff and knickknacks — all the way at Rank 97 of the pass — was perhaps the most valuable and practical unlockable of them all: the much-lauded Wilderness Camp Fast Travel ability. This handy ability lets you fast travel from anywhere in the game so long as you can set up the Wilderness Camp (itself an unlockable item for the Naturalist Role).
I’d been listening to Half-Glass Gaming’s owner Josh extol the undeniable virtue of being able to fast travel from anywhere (as opposed to having to locate a fast travel post, which are usually located in towns). If you’ve spent any amount of time with Red Dead Online, you probably realize that this skill could save you vast amounts of travel time. As you can imagine, I had to have it (despite the fact that I had yet to unlock the actual Wilderness Camp itself).
So with less than a week and roughly 77 Outlaw pass ranks to go (with an additional three ranks to complete the pass outright for good measure), I set out on my journey. Here are the rough details of what this entailed.
First, I needed to determine the best way to gain as much XP as possible. Rockstar led the charge on that front, giving players a free 5,000 XP bonus for simply logging in during the final week of the Outlaw Pass No. 4. Add to that the XP boost for the Bounty Hunter Role that week and I had the makings of a real camp stew.
But there was an unforeseen hurdle that cost me a full day. With the arrival of my PS5 on March 12, the second day of my RDO journey, I ended up spending the entire day transferring data from my PS4 Pro to my new PS5. This meant I couldn’t use either console, as both were occupied with the day-long transfer. There would also end up being a user error that led to corrupted data in the Red Dead Redemption 2 transfer, which resulted in me having to delete the file outright and restart the lengthy download. It wouldn’t be until Saturday afternoon that I would be able to pick the proverbial chisel back up to chip away at those levels.
Saturday became a rare marathon day, the likes of which I hadn’t attempted in years (I had just turned 40 on that fateful Friday). And so I stayed up until 4 a.m., much of the time while on chat with Josh, knocking out rank after rank of this Outlaw Pass. To top it off, this was also the Daylight Savings shift, which cost me another precious hour.
I put together an efficient combination of activities to maximize my XP acquisition. I would consistently work my Trader Role, making sure my camp was constantly stocked and constantly producing. All the while, I was also producing moonshine. So in between Trader deliveries, I would run moonshine every hour, and while waiting for moonshine deliveries (and also while waiting for the much longer Trader deliveries to pop) I was constantly running Bounty Hunter missions while also simultaneously picking up every nearby collectible I could find (the Collector Role has some top-notch XP payouts).
At one point, Josh and I completed a collection of animal stamps for Harriet, as I needed to level up to rank 5 in the Naturalist Role so I could unlock the Wilderness Camp (which would allow me to use the fast travel skill when I finally earned it). Once I got the hang of the Naturalis Role, collecting animal samples and reviving sedated animals slid nicely into my XP assembly line.
And so it goes.
After a marathon weekend, which rolled bleary-eyed into Monday, I achieved what I had set out to do. I managed to deliriously advance 70-some ranks, unlocking the fast travel skill and ultimately completely the entire 100 levels of the Outlaw Pass. On the way, I handedly reached rank 5 in the Naturalist Role. I have now successfully unlocked the Wilderness Camp and the incredibly awesome and endlessly beneficial fast travel ability to go along with it.
And so it was, on the seventh day I could finally rest — only to buy into Outlaw Pass No. 5 and start the whole process over again. But considering just how much of a game-changer that fast travel really is, it was well worth the effort.
