Red Dead Redemption 2 Crafting Guide: How to Craft Bait, Weapons, Food, Upgrades & More

How to Craft in Red Dead Redemption 2

In Red Dead Redemption 2, you’re not required to be a wage slave. You don’t have to earn money just to spend it in a store. If you’re resourceful enough, you can craft many useful items that will make your campaign so much easier. This includes items such as food to boost your health, special ammo types, poisoned weapons, upgrades for the camp and more.

How to Craft (General)

Most of your crafting in Red Dead Redemption 2 takes place at your personal camp which you can set up pretty much anywhere out in the wilderness.

You can set up a camp by holding L1/LB to enter the weapon wheel, and then press R1 to enter your items wheel. Then, go to the section of the wheel that says Crafting and hit R2/RT to scroll through until you find your camp option.

From there, you can follow the prompt to Craft/Cook at your camp. In this menu, you’ll see all of the different options you have for doing your own personal crafting. Keep in mind that, of course, you can’t just make whatever you want, and you’ll need specific items that will need to be scavenged or purchased in the world of Red Dead Redemption 2.

Also, not all recipes are known from the start of the game, and you’ll gain access to more as you acquire more ingredients and items.

How to Craft Food & Tonics (Provisions)

You can craft food from your own camp by following the directions above. If you have meat that you hunted, or ingredients that you found along the way, you can cook them to enhance their effects. For example, buying a percolator and bringing ground coffee to a camp fire will allow you to make real coffee, which gives you a nice boost to your stamina and dead eye meter.

You can also cook your meat if you don’t want to turn it over to the cook on camp. Again, cooking the meat you get will provide you with food that will give you a big bonus to stats such as health, stamina and dead eye.

Similarly, you can also make tonics from this menu, using mostly plant ingredients that you can purchase and pick up along the way throughout Red Dead Redemption 2.

How to Craft Weapons & Ammo

From the same menu as above, you can craft weapons & ammo as well. These recipes usually feature converting weapons and ammo that you already, into alternate versions of them that are either are a different way of using the weapon, or are just a straight improvement, such as the improved throwing knife.

In addition to acquiring the ammo and weapons you want to create & upgrade, a lot of the recipes will require animal parts. So make sure to regularly hunt and keep a stock of useful items such as feathers and animal fats that are found from the animals in Red Dead Redemption 2.

How to Craft Bait

If you’re setting up a camp, there’s a good chance that you’re doing so because you’re preparing for a hunt somewhere in the middle of no where. Thus, it’s quite useful to know how to make bait.

To craft bait in Red Dead Redemption 2, simply access that camp menu like we’ve been talking about, and tab on over to Hunting. From there, you can see all of the baits and other hunting related items like lotions that you can craft.

Most baits require meat from something further down in the food chain, like fish or herbivore meat, or in the case of herbivores, some kind of plant mix.

How to Craft Camp Upgrades (Satchel & Lodging)

By visiting Pearson in camp, you can craft upgrades to your satchel, lodgings, and the camp in general. Visit the butcher icon on the camp (usually always near the stew location), and interact in order to see what Pearson has available to craft.

Before that, however, you’ll need to purchase the leather working tools from the camp ledger. After you do so, Pearson will be able to start crafting upgrades. In addition to that, he will keep any perfect pelts you hand over to him, and you can use those for future crafting.

A lot of the upgrades from Pearson are cosmetic, but there are some, such as the satchel upgrades, that provide a perk such as increase tonic capacity.

That does it for how to craft in Red Dead Redemption 2. For more information, tips, and tricks, be sure to check out our Red Dead Redemption 2 wiki.