I’ll save you some panic right away. You do not need to do everything in Red Dead Redemption 2 to hit 100%. I thought I did on my first playthrough. I spent an embarrassing number of hours hunting every last animal. Then I found out I’d wasted most of that time chasing a number the game never actually asked for.
What 100% Actually Requires
The tracker sits under Pause Menu, Progress, and Total Completion. It splits into five categories: missions and events, collectibles, compendium, player, and miscellaneous. What trips people up is assuming every category means every item. IGN’s own completion checklist makes the same point. Honestly, it’s the most useful thing anyone can tell a new player going for an rdr2 100 completion guide. You need a fraction of the animals. A handful of stranger missions gets the job done there too. Weapons work the same way: enough to clear a threshold, not the full inventory.
To put actual numbers on that: roughly 50 of the game’s 178 animal species studied, around 10 of the many stranger questlines finished, and somewhere near 48 of 59 weapons collected. Same story with fish and plants. You need a decent chunk, not the whole compendium filled in. I didn’t believe this the first time either. The game never spells it out clearly in any menu.
That’s genuinely good news. It means the real grind isn’t the compendium. It’s the rdr2 challenges, and there are nine full sets of them.
The Nine Challenges
Bandit challenges rdr2 players run into early are mostly combat and stealth based. Robbing coaches, hogtying targets, that sort of thing. Rdr2 bandit challenges get meaner as you climb the tiers, since later ranks want specific weapon kills instead of just any kill.
Gambler challenges rdr2 has are the ones people complain about the most, and I get why. GamesRadar+ points out that these must be completed strictly in order. Grinding ahead on a later rank does nothing until the earlier ones are done. Three straight domino wins without drawing a tile, no less, is what rdr2 gambler 8 wants, which sounds simple until the game hands you a terrible hand three times running. The poker version is rdr2 gambler 9: three consecutive wins, and luck plays a bigger role here than skill ever will.
By the time you hit rdr2 herbalist 9, you’re hunting specific plant combinations you’ve probably already walked past a dozen times without noticing. If you’re still working out where these challenges land relative to the story, our breakdown of the game’s chapter structure covers that side of things.
Blackjack, Berries, and Other Collectibles
Rdr2 blackjack locations matter for two totally separate reasons. One of the gambler tiers needs blackjack wins, and there’s a standalone challenge tied to it too. Blackjack rdr2 tables show up in most saloons. Rhodes and Van Horn Trading Post specifically come up a lot in guides, so you’re rarely far from one once you know to look.
Berry locations rdr2 has scattered across every region matter for the herbalist line and for crafting. They’re honestly some of the easiest collectibles in the game once you know the plant icons. Blackberry location rdr2 spots specifically cluster around Lemoyne and the Heartlands, which is useful if you’re only picking a few up rather than clearing every state.
None of this is thrilling content to read about, I know. But it’s the stuff that actually eats hours if you go in blind.
The Compendium, Statues, and Safes
Rdr2 compendium entries fill in automatically once you interact with an animal, plant, or item. That makes this category mostly passive if you’re already exploring. The rdr2 statue puzzle is a different animal entirely, a genuine logic puzzle tucked into the map with nothing to do with combat or collecting. It stumped me longer than I’d like to admit, for something that doesn’t even count toward the main completion percentage.
If you’re wondering how to open safe rdr2 locations require, most take a code you’ll find nearby rather than lockpicking. Missing that code means walking away empty-handed more often than people expect. Rdr2 bull location searches usually point to one specific animal tied to a stranger mission rather than a wild encounter, which is why it shows up as its own search instead of folding into general hunting.
Even tracking down rdr hats worth wearing ends up mattering more than it should. A few outfits and challenge rewards are gated behind specific pieces you’d otherwise never think to buy. None of these are things a first-time player would naturally stumble into without a checklist open in a second window.
Missable Content and the Best Order to Do Things
Here’s the part that actually deserves your attention. A handful of companion activities and item requests only exist in Chapters 2 through 4. Once Chapter 6 ends, they’re gone. Same story for a few Honor-based interactions tied to Arthur specifically. If you like to finish the story first and clean up after, that particular category is the one exception worth planning around ahead of time.
A separate save slot before the endgame mission that shifts your playable character is worth making too. A small amount of camp-based content is tied to Arthur specifically, and it quietly disappears once the story moves on without him. It’s easy to forget in the moment, since nothing in the game flags it as urgent until it’s already too late.
My honest advice, and this is just what worked for me: knock out challenges as they unlock instead of saving them. Keep an eye on camp for companion requests every time you pass through. Don’t stress about the compendium at all until post-game. Everything else waits for you. That one category doesn’t.
There’s no trophy for doing this the hard way. Take the shortcuts the game actually allows. Save the full grind for a second playthrough if you ever feel like putting yourself through it again.
One last thing worth knowing: none of this needs to happen in a single sitting. The tracker saves your progress permanently, across sessions and even across a full replay if you start a new save. Treat it less like a checklist you’re racing against and more like something you chip away at between story missions. That’s genuinely the least stressful way to approach it, and it’s how most players who’ve actually hit 100% describe doing it in hindsight.
