Trader is one of the five specialist roles available in Red Dead Online.
Description
Traders in Red Dead Online operate their own businesses from their camp, producing and selling goods to nearby regions in order to make money.
Butcher’s table
To begin the Trader role, the player needs to acquire the Butcher’s table. Normally this costs 15 gold bars, which can be purchased from the Wilderness Outfitter store located on Cripps’ wagon. Buying the table allows the player to start the trading business.
Task
Your loyal camp partner Cripps has more skills than simply playing the harmonica. His long experience working with animal materials finally becomes useful through a new business venture you can join: the Cripps Trading Company.
As a Trader, your job is to transform your camp into a growing business. You gather animal materials which Cripps then converts into goods that can be sold.
Trader Skills
- Stew pot – A camp upgrade that unlocks special stew recipes which improve your cores.
- Ingredients satchel upgrade – Allows you to carry more ingredients in your pouch.
- Awareness – Lets you detect rival Trader wagons from a greater distance.
- Canine warning – Your camp dog can be trained to alert you when thieves try to raid your camp.
- Medium delivery wagon – An upgraded wagon capable of carrying two barrels of goods.
- Weapons locker – A storage area where extra weapons can be kept for later use.
- Lance knife – A unique knife style available only to Traders.
- Efficiency – Perfect carcasses provide 25% more raw materials when donated to the trading company (rounded up). A bug currently causes this bonus to appear on legendary pelts even though it is not applied when they are donated.
- Large delivery wagon – A larger wagon able to transport four barrels of goods.
- Hunting wagon – A durable wagon designed to carry several carcasses, pelts, and hides.
- Protection – Reduces the chances of raids happening at your camp.
Strategy
Level rewards
One of the most important upgrades for Traders is the Delivery wagon. Improving the wagon increases the amount of profit that can be earned, potentially raising the value of goods from $2.50 to $5 per item, while also making deliveries more efficient.
The Hunting wagon is another very valuable investment because it allows players to carry far more carcasses and pelts back to camp in a short time.
Camp and supply
The Trader role is closely connected to the player’s camp, which must be set up in order to use the role properly. Money and experience are mainly earned by selling goods produced by Cripps. To make those goods, Cripps requires two types of resources: materials and supplies.
Materials
The materials bar represents $100 worth of animal parts, such as whole carcasses, pelts, and many animal trophies. These must be donated to Cripps at the Butcher’s Table rather than sold to a butcher or vendor. Unlike goods, the exact number of materials is not shown, so players should be careful when donating valuable items—especially legendary pelts, because the grey estimate shown before donating can be inaccurate.
Some items cannot be donated, including skinned carcasses (like plucked birds), certain meats, and specific trophies such as wolf hearts or javelina tusks.
Supplies
The supplies bar represents a single unit of production supplies. Supplies must be refilled after every 25 goods produced, which takes around 50 minutes of real time if enough materials are available. Players can either complete a resupply mission for Cripps or pay $20 to order supplies directly. Both options take time but provide a small material bonus.
However, supplies cannot be stockpiled. Players must wait until the supply bar runs out before obtaining another unit.
Each unit of goods consumes $2 worth of materials and takes 2 minutes to produce. To completely fill the 100-goods bar, a total of 200 materials and 200 minutes (about 3 hours and 20 minutes) are required when both wagon upgrades are owned. This does not include the time or cost needed for the four resupply missions required.
Location
Camp location also has a major impact on hunting efficiency. If the camp is placed near areas where large animals spawn frequently, gathering materials becomes much easier. For example, camps placed in Bayou Nwa often spawn close to alligators, which are relatively easy predators to hunt and provide carcasses and pelts that refill the materials bar quickly.
Being closer to hunting grounds also reduces the risk of encountering rival players.
If the player chooses not to sell them to Gus Macmillan, Cripps can also use slain legendary animals introduced with the naturalist role update. Their carcasses and pelts provide far more raw materials than normal animals, although they do not increase the total sale value of finished goods.
Profit
Profit depends mainly on three factors:
- The level of Delivery wagon upgrade
- The amount of goods ready for sale
- The type of delivery mission chosen
Since Cripps takes time to manufacture goods, there is always some waiting involved.
There are two delivery types:
- Local delivery – Safer because the destination is close to camp.
- Distant delivery – More dangerous but offers over 20% extra profit compared to local deliveries.
Long-distance deliveries can involve extremely long routes. For example, a camp set in the Heartlands of New Hanover might require traveling all the way to a shack along the San Luis River in Hennigan’s Stead, located in New Austin.
Camp location also affects delivery success. A camp placed in certain areas of the Heartlands allows players to travel directly across the open plains instead of following roads, making deliveries faster.
If a delivery wagon is destroyed during the mission, players can still recover and sell a portion of the remaining goods by collecting them from the wreckage.
Materials value
Different animals provide varying amounts of materials depending on the quality of the carcass or pelt. Perfect animals always provide the highest material value, followed by good and poor quality specimens.
In addition to carcasses and pelts, some animals also yield special trophies such as claws, horns, antlers, feathers, or teeth which contribute additional materials.
For certain species—such as Bighorn sheep, elk, and moose—only the male animals provide trophies like horns or antlers.
When birds are plucked, the number of feathers gained depends on how clean the kill was.
Bugs
A known bug affects the Efficiency skill. The materials screen displays the 25% bonus applied to the value of legendary pelts, but this bonus is not actually added when the pelt is donated.
For instance, the Legendary Payta bison pelt may appear to be worth 58.75 materials on the screen because the bonus is included in the display value. In reality, the true value added to the materials bar is 47 materials.
To be continued…
This is post 1, of 5 of the specialist roles available in Red Dead Online. The next post is The Naturalist.
