Red Dead Online – How to Level Up Ability Cards Fast

Guide for Red Dead Online – How to Level Up Ability Cards Fast

Requirements

– Bounty Hunter role for 10-15 gold bars
– Any Sniper rifle
– Pump shotgun or any other shotgun

Upgrade Costs

1st Level Cards cost $50, 2nd Level $350, 3d $500, making it a total of $900 to upgrade a card

1st Level Cards cost 0 EXP, 2nd Level Cards cost 10.000 EXP and 3d 15.000 EXP

Yukon Nik Legendary Bounty

Equip all the cards you want to level after purchasing them for an initial $50. If you want to level 4 cards at the same time, I say do it. The faster, the better, but you might not have enough cash to level them all up once you get the EXP, so it is good to have other ways of income, like Condor’s Egg I mentioned in my other guide, Moonshiner, or Trader.

If you got any leveled cards and are leveling less than 4 cards, then equip any damage boost/recovery cards or healing cards (healing cards can be handy during PVE fights like these as enemies have good aim and hit rough). Don’t forget to bring a few healing tonics just in case.

So you want to do this bounty mission every time it cools down after 48 minutes of you have completed it. You should start a timer of 30 minutes from the start of the mission to know when to turn it in for maximum gold and cash rewards.

This mission is my favorite because it is the easiest, and it is the best for EXP because it has many goons to kill and loot. Besides, you get an additional EXP load after beating a legendary bounty. But the reason I advise you to do this because it gives you EXP and MONEY and, at the same time, lets you level cards that much faster than by just grinding either, especially if you do not have any money-making strategies.

If playing on KB+M, I suggest you go into controller settings and set aiming to Free Aim both on Horse and Foot for extra EXP per kill.

First, go on the cliff overlooking the Yukon’s fort and hide behind this tree. It is the largest tree up there, perfect elevation to snipe everyone down. The cliff is on the way towards Great Plains.
Like this:

After most enemies are down, make your way to the fort, kill the remaining enemies, beware of dogs in front of the shack. Do not let bears out of the cages, or “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa” is going to happen.

Once all enemies are down, a cutscene will play, and Nik

will come out of his hut with a hostage. You gotta shoot Nik several times in the sawed-off shotgun. If you hit the hostage, do not worry; who cares if he lives. Anyway, shoot him around 3 times with a navy revolver in the sawed-off, and he will drop his gun and lie wounded on the ground. Tie him up and bring him inside the shack. If you can’t wound him and end up killing Nik instead, use a la*so to tie him up, either tackle with it or throw, but be quick, or he will kill you with a shotgun.

There is a total of 3 waves of goons during this mission. You’ve already cleared 1 wave. The 2nd wave will arrive soon after you tie Nik up. I like to put him in the hut, so I do not accidentally target him with the right-click like you would target a horse for interaction sometimes, during a firefight, which is very annoying.

So you gotta do everything fairly quick, not to be ambushed by those guys.

Anyway, hidden in the shack, it will be your outpost of defense against 2 final waves of poachers. Go in 1st person mode as it is easier to shoot in that mode when you are in confined spaces. You can use both shotgun and sniper rifle from inside the shack. It is a perfect defense spot. It has 2 doorways, and doors close. When doors are closed, enemies usually do not attack you or even come inside. So try having only 1 door open at a time. You can shoot through windows and holes in the shack; enemies won’t usually do that or will miss horribly. Proceed to clear the enemies. Do not let bears out as they will steal your kills and XP.

Once you’ve dealt with this 2nd wave of enemies, you probably think you are safe. Well, you’re not. Leave Nik inside the shack and venture outside the red borders I’ve shown on the pic below. And run back to the shack very, very fast as more enemies will come to fight you in the same fashion as during wave 2. Wave 3 is likely to catch people leaving with Nik off guard on their horse in a field without the shack’s protection.

The picture with me standing shows approximately how far you have to go before turning back and running as fast as you can inside the shack. Do not waste time; once you reach the red border, the enemies will already come for you with aimbot aim and numbers. That is especially deadly on final difficulties. But this bounty is still the easiest and best to play.

They do not immediately show up, which may deceive you into thinking you did not go far enough, but I suggest you venture out and run back inside. Over time you will get an idea of how far you have to go before returning to the shack.

Grinding Thief’s Landing or Van Horn

I always liked grinding those 2 locations because they have non-police enemies that give you actual EXP for killing them. Even more EXP with Free Aim targeting. And the great thing about those 2 is that they respawn very fast, practically when you turn a corner and lose sight of their spawn points. They also give you good loot from jewelry, ammo to opened tonics that you can’t buy via the catalog. So shoot everyone up, and while you are roaming the area, patrolling, looting, more will spawn. So you can endlessly kill enemy NPCs for EXP and loot. And it works in sessions that have 25+ players too.

However, if you are playing without anyone around you, in a solo lobby, then NPCs’ speed respawn almost instant, while it is quick even with 25+ players. The swarms of enemies that can flock to you are huge sometimes, as, at times, they can respawn before you finish off the entire group.

My favorite is the Thief’s Landing.

In Thief’s Landing, Del Lobo never calls the police. Only occasional rare strangers can call the police, so kill them fast and enjoy shootouts without police interference. There are higher chances of police in Van Horn.

Just do that until you can start another Yukon Nik mission.

Other places where the Thief’s Landing method works

I decided to name all the other places with constantly spawning enemy NPCs and little law presence in Online. There will be occasional witnesses, and I haven’t really used these places for leveling my cards, but it is possible for when you get tired of shooting up Thief’s Landing and Van Horn.

Cornwall’s Oil Rigs (to the right of Valentine) and Murfree’s Brood Town (to the left of Van Horn)

Braithwaite Estate (below Rhodes) and Gray’s Caliga Hall (to the right of Rhodes)

Fort Wallace DOESN’T WORK SOLDIERS DO NOT GIVE EXP; it is sometimes closed, sometimes it is open and populated with Soldiers. Located right of Valentine above the Oil Rig.

Final Advice

Make sure you always have the cards you are trying to level equipped when you turn in Collector’s Set or Completing Dailies for large EXP gains, finding treasure, picking up collectibles, resetting awards for gold. Or whenever you know you are about to get a lot of EXP, maybe completing a trader delivery, have those cards equipped in your loadout.

Please, have fun and enjoy and be well!

This is all that we can say about Red Dead Online – How to Level Up Ability Cards Fast for now. I hope this post helped you. If there is anything that we should add, please let us know via comment below. See you soon!