I just did this one. I had the double barrel from the O’Driscoll cabin but it was on me before I could fire! Stabbed it with my knife a few times then gave it both barrels. Taking the pelt to the trapper now.
The other night, I had recently unlocked the coach fence and was returning to camp when I came across some fool standing right in the middle of a road. Then there was talk about opening a strongbox. Stagecoach robbery!
Dismounted, used a tree for cover, and took out the fool with a headshot from my scoped varmint rifle. His partner was soon dead as well. I barely even saw their victim, he took off running at some point after the partner came toward me. One stage free for the taking! Boarded, tossed out the driver, and drove to the fence with no problem.
Ah, yes. The Hugh Glass scenario.
Glass and the rest of the Ashley Party eventually returned to Fort Kiowa to regroup for the trip west. Andrew Henry, Ashley’s partner, had joined the group, and he along with Glass and several others set out overland to the Yellowstone River. Near the forks of the Grand River, near present-day Shadehill Reservoir, Perkins County, South Dakota, while scouting for game for the expedition larder, Glass surprised and disturbed a grizzly bear with two cubs. The bear charged, picked him up, bit and lacerated his flesh, severely wounded him, and forced him to the ground. Glass nevertheless managed to kill the bear with help from his trapping party, but was left badly mauled. The men were convinced Glass would not survive his injuries; nevertheless, they carried Glass on a litter for two days, but doing so greatly slowed the pace of the group’s travel.[12]
Henry asked for two volunteers to stay with Glass until he died and then bury him. John S. Fitzgerald and a man later identified as “Bridges” stepped forward, and as the rest of the party moved on, began digging his grave.[13][14] Later, claiming that they were interrupted by attacking Arikara, the pair grabbed the rifle, knife, and other equipment belonging to Glass and took flight. Fitzgerald and “Bridges” later caught up with the party and incorrectly reported to Ashley that Glass had died. There is a debate whether Bridges was actually famed mountain man Jim Bridger.[15]
Despite his injuries Glass regained consciousness, but found himself abandoned without weapons or equipment. He had festering wounds, a broken leg, and deep cuts on his back that exposed his bare ribs. Glass lay mutilated and alone, more than 200 miles (320 km) from the nearest American settlement at Fort Kiowa, on the Missouri River. Glass set the bone of his own leg, wrapped himself in the bear hide his companions had placed over him as a shroud, and began crawling back to Fort Kiowa. To prevent gangrene, Glass allowed maggots to eat the dead infected flesh in his wounds.
Using Thunder Butte as a navigational landmark, Glass crawled overland south toward the Cheyenne River where he fashioned a crude raft and floated downstream to Fort Kiowa. The journey took him six weeks. He survived mostly on wild berries and roots
Decided to be a hobo for a bit. Stabled my horse and hopped a freight train.
I bought the game, hohummed after Chapter 1 left me in camp without a clue as to what to do, then left it for a bit to Assassins Creed Odyssey DLC, which I’d left after the main game.
Having read through the start of this thread, I thought I’d give it a go again. Thanks for the hints, the thread has hit pretty much the same problems I had, and I’ve left the last 20 odd posts for later, since they seemed to be getting far ahead of me.
Sometimes, actually quite a lot, this game is horrible. It’s great at other times. The interface is absolutely one of the worst one I’ve came across in recent times (PC keyboard and mouse). The amount of times I’ve failed just because the interface alone might make me ragequit the game in the end. The save system is absolutely awful. Thanks for killing me and giving me an autosave after I died, so I now have to save every 10 minutes to make up for it. Got a perfect pelt? I forgot to save and bounty hunters got me. It would be nice if it had saved at camp or something when I turned in the pelts. Bounty hunters attacking me? Says press this button to aim. Nope. Not doing anything. Shot to death.
I spent about two hours trying to do the doctors robbery because the interface never told me how to actually change from just shooting the doctor, and robbing. Turns out you hold it then release and hold again. Still lots of interface fails.
Still, other bits are nice, and I do suspect the appeal is the authentic “suffering simulator” of the old west 
Wandering about with no money, and gun not good enough to hunt, randomly getting eaten by wolves after some victory like killing the legendary bear (no idea how I did it, I think i stabbed it or something, I mashed the keys),
After playing it for a week, I still feel a little like Skyrim, a game where I rode about half an hour before falling off a cliff or getting twatted by a troll. I suspect in the end I will do the necessary quests and leave the wandering. Not for me, now getting killed for that stupid Strawberry mass murder and I can’t afford the bounty because I blew the big windfall on the camp and a sniper rifle.
I got used to it, but this game has almost too many buttons and things to do for its own good. I’m glad the game was still telling me how to do EVERYTHING at the end. Even near the end, I made my horse flee when I meant to brush or feed him. I was like, “No, wait! Come back! I’m trying to bond with you!”
I loved it and would give it a very high score, but there is so much to do in terms of buttons to push.
My favourite is that (on the Xbox) talking to a person and threatening someone with a gun is the same button, depending on whether your gun is drawn or not.
I can see how that’s frustrating. On PlayStation it became mostly intuitive.
One thing I only recently learned about fast travel, which wasn’t clear from the pages I read online, is that you can use it out in the wild. At first I though I had to ride back to camp to use it, and that was somewhat limiting, then when out up the mountains I camped and found that I could fast travel from there in the middle of nowhere. Not back to camp, but that’s less of an issue if you just go to somewhere like Valentine instead.
Though another time I camped (I was on a train on the gunslinger quest, so went to near next gunslinger), I lost my horse, and my next camp was just me by the first and I don’t think there was a fast travel option there. So is there two types of camp or did I just imagine this (it was late in the evening)?
A lot of time I couldn’t camp because I was too near to activity, and not sure what was the trigger of that, I did ride quite a way and couldn’t.
I also was very, very late in the game when I realized I could fast travel from my campfire. I had initially thought that would be the case, but did not see the option when camping. I finally noticed it and I think late game, I was very much ready to fast travel to some key locations from my camp instead of from my tent/bed area.
Ok, so I’ve got to one of the other little crap interface moments. A guide online convinced me I needed to go off and find that arabian horse in the north west grizzlies by a lake. I work out fast travel (which seems to allow me to fast travel from camp to horseshoe overlook, yay!) up to Colter, and make my way down to the lake, save and are ready to tame one of the good horses in the game to save a bunch of cash…
I go close, call, calm, it runs away. I keep following, I call, calm, move, calm, move, clam, and just getting to it, I’m ready to…
And I punch the horse in the face.
It runs away, unsurprisingly. A cruelly almost funny moment.
So I reckon that’s not right, and then load, camp, navigate to, and do exactly a second time.
Just when I think I’m ready to calm and attempt to mount the horse, I punch it in the face. It actually stopped, stunned for a moment, and I think I might have been able to jump on it. But then ran off. Is this what is supposed to happen?
Such a weird game.
I don’t remember punching any horses in the face, but I did not tame too many. I calmed a few and bought my main horse from a stable. I paid between $450-$500 and saw no reason to swap him out once I got him leveling up.
Anyway, I found most interactions worked out as I played. I had a few funny moments late, like making my horse flee at the wrong time.
My thing was that StickyKeys was activated on my PC if I pushed Left-Shift three times fast. You can imagine with all the giddyuping of my horse and so forth, it went off often. I turned it off later.
There was a segment where I had to operate a train-track handcar and had to push shift in rhythm with my partner. We had to move fast to escape a train, but it kept messing up on my end.
I had to skip the sequence. No huge loss.
I read another guide which said a lasso was part of the process. So I went back and got close and had lasso ready and the interface didn’t allow me to, then it had Calm as an option, I calmed it, got close and worked. I think what was happening was it had suddenly stuck Flee (punch the horse) under whatever key I was pressing at the time (G? calm? call). Like it does, when the interface says Greet, but it means Shoot if you have your gun out.
Then while trying to work out how to tie them together, I mistakenly pressed F and punched my other horse. Perhaps it is, as I said, a suffering simulator. Similar to the unrelenting despair of the tv show Godless.
Catching horses was one of the few things that just didn’t interest me much. It was frustrating without much payoff. I only did it when I had to.
I had a couple of horses. Bought a couple. I got Buell from the Old Veteran and kept him until the end of the game.
No need, either. I found stronger, faster horses to not be a real need in the game.
It totally is. One of the things you can do in-camp are “chores” like chopping wood (and don’t get me started on John’s chores in the epilogue). I’m like, I’ve done shit like this IRL, and decidedly NOT for fun. WHY would I want to do this in a damn video game? Thank god it’s mostly optional.
So what’s with the unavoidable dog deaths (it could be wolves, I don’t usually have time to get the binoculars out)?. I’m riding along, I hear a bark and then there’s about ten on me. I shoot them in dead eye in the red glowing patches and it doesn’t seem to stop any of them, switch to shotgun, and I reckon I’ve blasted them five or six times with it, shot them with handgun another five and that’s it for me. None seem hurt, they all feast on my slowly black and white bones…
Wolves? They can be difficult because they are fast but I never found them that hard to kill. Not as tough as bears or as dangerous as cougars.
I’m wondering if I got a special “Superdog” edition of the game. I’d try to record it for you to see the onslaught, but usually I’m trying to have another go at living. I had a similar kind of thing happen with lynx in Assassins Creed: Odyssey, a couple turn up and ten minutes later there’s 30 odd corpses but with that I’d survive. I’ve not managed to successfully kill one of those dogs the three time they’ve rushed me in the 10 seconds from first bark to fade to grey. Shotgun. Repeater. Handguns. None of them wasted a single one, and I’m sure I shot one of them three times.
So far, I’ve only had wolf trouble when bringing John back to camp. At least those seemed to have a set attack pattern.
I’ve only been back that way to deal with Flaco Hernández and easily avoided the wolves.