Saving progress in Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Between automatic checkpoints, manual saves, and story restrictions, understanding how and when you can preserve your progress can spare you from losing hours of adventure across Rockstar’s rugged frontier.
- You aren’t doing any missions.
- You aren’t fighting with anyone.
- You aren’t playing any mini-games or other activities that force you to complete them.
Pause the game and go to the Story tab. Here, you can choose to save the game, load your previous save, start a new game and to exit. Red Dead Redemption 2 allows you to make up to 15 manual saves.
You should save your progress before starting a new mission, especially when it is a mission from the main storyline. The majority of the main missions forces you to make minor or major decisions. Some of them have a small impact on the game while others can be really important to the story campaign. For example, killing an NPC accidentally means that you won’t meet this person later in the game. Thanks to the manual saves you can easily go back to the past events and act differently.
When can manual saving be blocked in RDR2
Manual saving in Red Dead Redemption 2 is blocked during specific situations to prevent save scumming and maintain game progression integrity. These restrictions ensure reliance on autosaves at key checkpoints.
Blocked During Missions
Manual saving locks when you’re in an active mission, cutscene, or scripted sequence-save beforehand by avoiding mission-starting conversations. This applies from early game events like camp parties or horse rides with wolf fights.
Combat and Pursuit Situations
Saving is unavailable during combat (red enemy indicators on the map), while being chased by bounty hunters, lawmen, or predators, or with an active wanted level. Escape the area and let the meter clear before trying again.
Cheats and Camp Events
Activating cheats disables manual saves entirely until deactivated, with an on-screen warning. Certain camp activities or nearby random encounters (even unseen) can also temporarily block it.
How do cheats affect saving and achievements in RDR2
Activating cheats in Red Dead Redemption 2 disables manual saving and blocks achievement/trophy progress for that session to prevent exploitation. This restriction applies only to the affected save file, leaving others intact.
Saving Impact
Manual saves become unavailable immediately upon cheat activation, with an on-screen warning displayed. Autosaves may still occur at checkpoints, but reloading typically reverts to the pre-cheat state since progress doesn’t persist; toggle cheats off via the menu to restore saving.
Achievements Impact
Achievements and trophies are disabled during the session on the cheated save, but they reactivate upon loading a clean save or restarting the game. Progress toward goals like Gold Rush remains unaffected on non-cheated files.
