I almost skipped this stranger mission entirely. The guy asking for help came off like just another random weirdo in the woods, one of dozens scattered across the map, honestly nothing special at first glance. Turns out he’s tangled up in one of the strangest, most debated mysteries in the entire game. Let’s track down every carving, because there’s a lot more going on here than “find some rocks.”
Meeting Francis Sinclair and Starting Geology for Beginners
Rock carvings in rdr2 players stumble onto usually start the same way. You run into a man named Francis Sinclair, north of Strawberry. He asks a strange favor. Find a series of carved stones scattered across the map and report back their locations.
Geology for beginners rdr2 is the actual name of this quest line. It doesn’t announce itself as anything special at first. Francis Sinclair rdr2 fans meet here dressed oddly and talks even stranger, using phrases that don’t quite fit the era. Nothing about the initial pitch suggests you’re being pulled into anything beyond a basic fetch quest. That’s kind of the whole point, honestly. Rockstar loves burying its best writing in places most players skip right past without a second thought.
The mission becomes available once you’re past the story’s second chapter. Here’s a nice touch, though: if you’ve already stumbled across a carving or two while just wandering earlier, it still counts once you officially pick up the quest. Good news for anyone who explores before committing to any given storyline, which, if I’m honest, is most of my own first playthrough.
Francis Sinclair himself is worth paying attention to from the start. He doesn’t use Arthur’s slang. His clothes don’t sit right for 1899 either. Most players clock something’s off within a few minutes of the conversation, even if they can’t quite place what it is yet.
All 10 Rock Carving Locations
Rdr2 rock carving locations spread across a wide chunk of the map, mostly clustered in the northern and central regions. Don’t expect any help from the game itself here. All rock carvings rdr2 has hidden won’t show up on your map with a marker of any kind. You’re exploring on foot or horseback, the old-fashioned way.
Most carvings sit near recognizable landmarks: rock formations, riverbanks, ridgelines, that sort of thing. A few make you work for it, requiring some climbing or careful navigation just to reach. One of the trickier ones sits on a rock shelf near Elysian Pool, reachable by heading south from Annesburg or east from Emerald Station. Another is tucked beneath an overhang I walked right past twice before I actually spotted it, and I was specifically looking.
TheGamer’s own writeup on the game’s weirdest characters notes that Francis doesn’t offer any real clues along the way. That makes the hunt feel less guided than most of the game’s other collectible chains. You’re genuinely on your own here, which is unusual for a Rockstar collectible quest.
You don’t need a guide memorized to find them all, honestly. Once you spot the first two or three, you start noticing a pattern in where Rockstar likes to hide this kind of thing. That said, a map with all ten marked saves a lot of backtracking if you’d rather not wander for hours.
Mailing the Carvings and What Happens Next
Rdr2 rock carvings can be mailed back individually as you find them. You don’t need to collect all ten before sending the first batch. Any post office works for this task. Once all ten are in Francis’s hands, the quest moves into its final stage.
There’s no monetary reward tied to finishing this one, which is unusual for a stranger mission this involved. What you get instead is purely narrative, a scene that reframes everything you thought you understood about Francis Sinclair. That trade-off puts off some players who only chase collectibles for the payout. For anyone who actually cares about the game’s writing, it’s one of the better uses of ten minutes the game offers. It’s also worth noting that none of the carvings are missable in the traditional sense. They stay in the world waiting to be found no matter how far you push the main story.
The Time Travel Twist
Once you’ve mailed every carving, wait roughly a full in-game day. Francis will send an invitation to meet him at his cabin. Head back north of Strawberry to trigger the final scene, and don’t skip through the dialogue here.
Here’s where things get genuinely weird. The confusing scene waiting at Francis’s cabin suggests he’s something far stranger than an eccentric rock collector. He comes across as closer to a time traveler than an ordinary stranger. The carvings themselves depict events that have no business existing yet in 1899. That single detail is what flips this from a basic fetch quest into one of the game’s more genuinely debated pieces of lore.
One deeper dive connects Francis Sinclair to a similar side story way back in Grand Theft Auto V. That earlier questline involved a cult called the Epsilon Program, built around a character who looks and talks an awful lot like Francis. Coincidence? Rockstar has never said either way. Fans have been arguing about it since the mission was first uncovered, years ago now. I don’t think it’s getting settled anytime soon, and honestly, part of me hopes it never does.
Does This Count Toward 100% Completion?
None of this counts toward the strict list of items required for full completion, for what it’s worth. You can skip the whole thing and still hit 100%, no penalty attached. That’s honestly kind of a shame. This is one of the better-written side stories in the whole game, sitting right where a lot of players never think to look.
If you’re playing through the story for the first time and haven’t run into Francis yet, keep an eye out for him. It’s an easy one to miss completely if nobody points you toward it. The payoff at the end is worth a lot more than the plain fetch-quest setup would ever let on. Plenty of players finish RDR2 without meeting Francis at all, and honestly, that means missing out on one of the best-kept secrets Rockstar hid in the whole game.
