It's not something I say very often or lightly, but I'm glad I was pressured to spend money on a game.
I admit that I was reluctant to buy gold Red Dead Online from a purely ideological point of view. Why should I spend money to make the game easier? You should make it easier, Rockstar. But faced with last week's poll choice and the studio's documented lack of abandonment, I caved and purchased the smallest bundle of gold possible in order to fully unlock the role of Moonshiner. And it was worth it.
I went into this completely ignorant. I have never played GTA Online and so I never played any of the roles that were offered there, and most of what I did in RDO was perfectly usable to play with family and friends on this occasion. But now that I've started to get interested in being a Moonshiner, I have reason to play this game whether my party is with me or not.
I had already taken the very first possible step to get started on creating shine (look, I can't write about it and not suggest a southern drawl, okay?) when speaking with the main NPC associated with the role, one Maggie Fikea former black head with a chip on her shoulder and a lot of piss and vinegar, so working with her again was great. I fucking worship this woman and I would do anything to help her achieve her overall goal of getting back to the top of the leaderboard, so I was mentally all in on the opening missions to set up the still.
First, we had to recruit a cook to take care of making the spirits, and then it was a matter of taking some materials needed to cook this gourd. Both of these missions were fairly simple and consisted of attacking rival minnow camps, rescuing our good French leader Marcel, and bringing back a cart with the supplies I needed. Not too stressful, especially since I had my best friend with me the whole time.
With those tasks completed, it was time to get straight to making a mash. Obviously the things I have access to are pretty menial – weak, especially – but the ability to add flavors to my mash and give it a savory sheen has definitely appealed to my cook's brain. Luckily, I had most of what I needed to make apple cider moonshine, which would end up generating a greater profit than the unflavored products.
This is where the hooks started to set. Adding flavor to the brew batch in progress requires finding ingredients both in nature and in stores. And finding things in nature is just a matter of wandering around the game and finding things to do, which I found to be the best way to play RDO. So now I have even more incentive to take walks in nature as I search for both plants. And worry.
After 30 minutes of waiting, my first batch was ready to sell. It was also more complicated, because instead of just clicking a button to sell the goods, I had to manually drive a cart with my guru to an interested buyer. Naturally, it wasn't easy as the cart was beset by attacking bandits and an attempted roadblock, but once again I had my friend with me to play shooter while I drove.
I still ended up breaking a few of the 20 bottles, which naturally cut into my profits, but it was still quite rewarding from a monetary standpoint and certainly rewarding from a gameplay standpoint. Maybe this will get old with time, but I was having a lot of fun with this loop of collecting goods, starting batches, and getting the product from my shed to a buyer.
Between all of this, there were additional smuggling missions to undertake that had benefits such as progressing through the Moonshiner role ranks, which in turn grants me specific currencies that I can spend to unlock rewards or the ability to spend money on business upgrades. Most of these upgrades and gains aren't cheap, but it all contributed to the overall gameplay that I was already enjoying, and after a little while I left my party and rejoined my best friend's party. friend for some of her own missions. which in turn shut down gloss production so I could just make money to fuel my growing business.
It's still early for this activity, of course, but this role is definitely an added layer to my enjoyment of RDO. I felt like I had a little more purpose in the game than being another weapon to help my family have fun (although that's not a criticism). It gave me a sort of home in the game as it is, with money that I could generate for myself and those I play with. Plus, it kind of fits my canon for my character; he seems like the type to worry about alcohol production more than many other things.
I still have a week left RDO playtime for the purposes of this column, but I also don't really have any poll choices I can do for this particular game, so essentially I'm just going to live in the sandbox and try to summarize my general feelings about the time I had in the game. I think I've come to a conclusion here (spoiler alert: it's expansive) but I still want to give myself a little more time to lean into this new role and think about how this ultimately affects my thoughts as well as giving this role time to lose that honeymoon glow.
That doesn't mean I don't have a poll for this week! After all, we're nearing the end of the month, so it's time to decide on our next destination!
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Polls will close at 1 p.m. EST as usual this Friday, November 22. For now, now that the decision is made, I'm off to live my best Moonshiner life in the world with my family. I am Really excited for more of this.
Welcome to Choose my adventurethe column in which you join Chris each week as he travels through mystical lands on fantastical adventures – and you decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he's ordering a hamburger.
