- Honor
- Keep it on the white side. Rank 4 of 8 opens Do Not Seek Absolution in Chapter 6, which the platinum needs.
- Camp deadline
- The tithing box and the camp requests are gone after Chapter 4.
- Saves
- Keep manual saves from every chapter.
- Point of no return
- Guarma, in Chapter 5: two of the guides we read say you cannot go back once you leave.
Play honorably from the start
- Honor runs from 1 to 8. Do Not Seek Absolution, one of the optional Honor missions of Chapter 6, only opens at rank 4, and Lending a Hand needs every one of those missions.
- Two of the guides we read give the same ways to raise it: throw caught fish back into the water, deliver bounty targets to the sheriff, pay off your own bounties at the post office, surrender to lawmen instead of fighting, donate at the camp tithing box, help people in random encounters, and do camp activities and errands.
- Both also say not to kill or harm bystanders while you build it up, and to spare people when a mission gives you the choice.
- Honor also shows in small things. Two of the guides we read say the kill cams change with it.
The camp, Chapters 2 to 4
💰 Give to the Poor
Donate $250 to the gang tithing box. The box is gone after Chapter 4. One guide adds that only money you put in yourself counts.
📦 Errand Boy
Deliver 5 item requests from your camp companions. They stop after Chapter 4 too. One guide counts 21 requests across the game; another says they run from 8:00 to 20:00.
🎻 Friends With Benefits
Complete a Companion Activity in each camp: one in Chapter 2, one in Chapter 3 and one in Chapter 4. They come up at random, so take one when it is offered.
🏚️ Breaking and Entering
Recover the stash from 4 homesteads. Two of the guides we read say to start in Chapter 2, because some homesteads can be lost if you kill the people living there.
Habits that save a replay
- Make manual saves from time to time, and keep older ones. Two of the guides we read recommend it, so a missed optional mission does not mean starting over.
- Do each optional Honor mission in its own chapter. Two of the guides we read say the ones you replay later from the mission menu do not count for Lending a Hand.
- Gold Rush needs 70 Gold Medals in Story missions. One trophy guide notes that the game does not tell you the medal goals on a first run, so look them up before each mission. Whether replays are harder is one of the points where the trophy guides differ (see the Trophy Roadmap).
- Two of the guides we read say Guarma, in Chapter 5, is a one-way trip, and its animals are lost to the compendium. They do not count for Zoologist or Skin Deep.
Opening tips from one guide only
- In Chapter 1, do not try to leave the first camp in Colter: the weather around it is too harsh to survive.
- Money is scarce early, and looting the enemies you fight in the opening missions is the main way to get it.
- Before heading into the mountains, store a warm outfit on your horse from the footlocker in your tent, and change into it from the horse menu.
- Once you have bonded with your horse, keep a second one in a stable so you do not start a bond from zero if the first dies.
- In the burned-out village of Limpany, southwest of Horseshoe Overlook, a lockbox under the desk in the Sheriff's Office holds a gold bar worth $500. You can only sell it after the Fence is unlocked.
- With about $545 in the camp Ledger at Horseshoe Overlook, upgrade Dutch's tent and then Arthur's tent and wagon. The second upgrade adds a map that fast travels to settlements you have already found.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 23 October 2026 against the trophy guides of PowerPyx and PSNProfiles, the Honor guides of PowerPyx and RDR2.org, the missable-mission guide of RDR2.org, the Red Dead Wiki on Fandom, IGN's tips page and the trophy lists of Exophase and TrueAchievements. The Honor list comes from PowerPyx and RDR2.org; the kill cams from IGN and RDR2.org; saves and replays from PowerPyx and PSNProfiles; Guarma being one-way from RDR2.org and the wiki; the homesteads from PowerPyx and PSNProfiles. The $250 and 8:00 to 20:00 details come from PowerPyx alone, the hidden medal goals from PowerPyx alone, and the 21 requests from PSNProfiles alone. Every tip under Opening tips from one guide only comes from IGN's Things to Do First page; we did not find them in any other source we read. Not from a playthrough: nobody here has played it.