red dead redemption 2 increase maxium health stamina dead eye

Increasing your health, stamina, and dead eye bars in Red Dead Redemption 2 is crucial to your success as an outlaw -- and even your survival. With more health, you can take more damage before falling over dead. With more stamina, you can sprint for a longer time and perform more demanding physical actions in a row without having to stop to catch your breath. And with more dead eye, you get a lot more time to pick your shots.

At the start of the game, Arthur's bars are pretty low. He won't be able to survive many bullets in a gunfight, and he won't get too far if he's sprinting away from the law. As such, you'll want to take the time to increase your health, stamina, and dead eye as often as you can.

How to increase health, stamina, and dead eye in Red Dead Redemption 2

Increasing your maximum health, stamina, and dead eye in Red Dead Redemption 2 is quite straightforward once you know how. It's a simple case of performing specific tasks that grant you xp within each category. Below, we've listed the ways that you can gain xp in health, stamina, and dead eye.

Health

  • Fist fights - Brawling with people and winning gives you health xp. Usually, the easiest way to get into a fight is to watch out for angry citizens around towns or settlements. If they shout at you or call you a name as you pass, you can reply by holding L2 and antagonising them, which, most of the time, leads to a fist fight. However, should the stranger pull a gun on you and shoot, it'll be counted as a crime, and the law will attempt to take you in should you be found in the vicinity. Fight fighting itself isn't considered a crime in most places.
  • Hunting - Hunting and killing animals will grant you health xp. Using a bow gives you even more.
  • Fishing - Successfully catching fish grants you some health xp.

Stamina

  • Sprinting - Simply tapping X to sprint steadily gives you stamina xp.
  • Swimming - Find yourself in deep enough water and Arthur will start to swim. Swimming constantly drains your stamina bar, but it gives good stamina xp as you do it. Just watch you don't drown.

Dead eye

  • Hunting - Hunting, killing, and skinning animals grants you dead eye xp.
  • Shooting enemies - Killing enemies with a gun grants you dead eye xp.
  • Cooking - Cooking at camp gives you a small amount of dead eye xp.
  • Camp chores - Marked by black dots on the mini-map, camp chores are easy little activities that you can carry out for some extra dead eye xp.