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Red Dead Online: How to Equip & Upgrade Abilities

This article is over 5 years old and may contain outdated information

How to Equip and Upgrade Abilities in Red Dead Online

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Here’s everything you need to know about how to equip and upgrade abilities in Red Dead Online.

Red Dead Online has finally arrived in Red Dead Redemption 2, just under a month since the base game launched, and some players are getting access to it now, starting with Ultimate Edition owners before giving access to everyone with the full game.

As you jump into the Wild West, meeting up with other players and completing missions as you can, you’ll be trying to get used to some of the new mechanics that the online mode introduces.

One of the new features to make it into Red Dead Online that its predecessor lacked is abilities that your character has in Red Dead Online. You are able to equip them and then upgrade them as you play, providing you ample reason to really push to hit that max rank.

There are various passive abilities, as well as Dead Eye abilities, and you access what you have at your disposal by first pressing the Options/Menu button, on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One respectively, to go to the menu, then selecting the Abilities option.

This is where you equip them. To equip any ability in whichever slot you want, press X/A on the slot, then the same button again to equip the ability you want to use.

The Dead Eye ability slot is unlocked as you play through the Red Dead Online tutorial, and you can follow those steps above to equip any of the three available Dead Eye abilities to that slot.

However, you will only get access to Passive Abilities once you reach ranks 10, 20, and 40 in the mode. As you increase the overall rank of your Red Dead Online character, you will be able to upgrade a specific ability. All you need to do is press Square or X on the abilities to upgrade them once you’ve reached the required rank.

It’s also worth noting that some of these upgrades for your abilities will cost you some of your hard-earned cash in Red Dead Online. After all, skills don’t come cheap.

That’s all there is to know about how to equip and upgrade abilities in Red Dead Online. For more tips and tricks on the game, be sure to check out our Red Dead Redemption 2 wiki guide that covers everything on the base game and more on the online mode as we get it. We have also listed some other helpful guides for you down below.


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Tom Hopkins
Having been Editor on multiple sites, Tom has a wealth of video game knowledge and is now Managing Editor at Twinfinite. He's an expert on Call of Duty, sports games, PlayStation exclusives, and blockbuster action games. If he's not playing the new release, he'll be grinding on EA FC 24.