In Red Dead Redemption 2 you can increase your honor level to unlock new clothing and get access to the missable honor mission ‘Do Not Seek Absolution’ in chapter 6 (requires honor level 4 of 8), which is needed for the Lending a Hand trophy and achievement. Maintaining a high level of honor also awards you with other perks as detailed at the end of this guide. The maximum is honor level 8.
To keep track of your honor press 
and check the bar the bottom of the screen. If the bar is on the left (red) it means dishonorable. To the right (white is honorable).
Best Ways to Increase Honor:
- Throwing Fish Back in the Water: Fishing is a great way to increase honor and can be repeated infinitely. Catch a fish and instead of keeping it, throw it back in the water. Make sure it shows the honor icon in the top right corner afterward. Also see How to Get Fishing Bait and Lures.
- Completing Bounty Hunts: Delivering bounty targets to the sheriff’s office gives you honor. See the Bounty Locations. Aside from fishing, Bounties are the best and most reliable way to bump up your honor level, especially in preparation for the missable chapter 6 honor mission that requires honor level 4 of 8.
- Chance Encounters: You will randomly see white dots pop up on the minimap from time to time, these indicate chance encounters. They don’t happen often. Sometimes, these let you help people and can gain you honor. E.g. helping someone whose horse ran away, helping a wounded person, giving someone a ride back home, giving medicine to a sick person, someone asking for directions, even on train rides you may come across disabled people who need a hand. These events can happen anywhere, any time and there are lots of possible events.
- Tithing Box (Camp): Donate $20.01 money to the camp’s tithing box. It only counts when you see the white honor icon in the top right corner after donating. Repeatedly donate $20.01 and it should give you honor. You can also make a manual save beforehand and test with donating other sums.
- Pay off your Bounties: Got in trouble with the law? No big deal, pay the debts you owe to society at the post office and all will be forgiven. This can also gain you honor. During the story you automatically build up bounties from story missions. Pay these off.
- Surrender to Lawmen: Committed a crime and got caught? When the police come, stay unarmed and surrender. Spend a few nights in jail. This has a chance to grant you honor for surrendering without bloodshed.
- Do camp activities and camp errands: From time to time, members of your gang will walk up to you in camp and give you little requests of items they want. Doing these will gain you honor. You will also get the chance to partake in camp activities. These are minigames and special side activities like robbing homesteads or stagecoaches. Always do camp events when they become available. A full list of them can be found in the trophy guide under the trophies “Friends with Benefits” & “Errand Boy”.
- Killing Rats in Towns: This is really random, but you can kill rats in towns. This is just a lucky side thing and not a feasible way to earn honor quickly.
- After Story: Do daily missions to get honor quickly. You can advance time and then grind them again and again. This is by far the fastest way to get honor but only works after having finished the story.
- Main Missions: Some story missions have sure ways to increase honor if you make certain decisions. This is the most reliable and fastest way to increase honor but there are very limited opportunities for it.
Mission-Specific Honor Decisions
- Chapter 2 – Polite Society, Valentine Style: Calm the escaped horse & bring back the horse to its owner.
- Chapter 2 – Polite Society, Valentine Style: Save the witness who is hanging from the cliff.
- Chapter 2 – Polite Society, Valentine Style: During the witness chase, Arthur steals a horse automatically. Bring it back to the owner afterward.
- Chapter 2 – We Loved Once and True – III: Accept Mary’s request to save Jamie
- Chapter 3 – Sodom? Back to Gomorrah: Crack the safes, don’t blow them up.
- Chapter 4 – Fatherhood and Other Dreams: Mary will ask Arthur to get back a broach for her. Agree to her request and buy it back without violence.
- Chapter 4 – Brothers and Sisters, One and All: In this mission you must find a boy. He will drop a crucifix, bring it back to the nun.
- Chapter 6 – A Rage Unleashed: Agree to help Rain Falls.
- Chapter 6 – Archeology for Beginners: Agree to help Monroe when he asks you during a dialogue.
- Chapter 6 – Mrs. Sadie Adler, Widow: Help Sadie (accept her mission).
- Chapter 6 – Do Not Seek Absolution (requires Honor Level 4 to trigger): Help Archie & Edith in this questline.
- Chapter 6 – The Course of True Love IV/V: Bring the woman to her boyfriend on the train. After the train ride, refuse to take her jewelry for payment.
- Chapter 6 – Red Dead Redemption: Do not go back for the money.
Last but not least, obviously don’t do things that reduce your honor. This is common sense, but don’t go around killing and looting random people. Whenever you have a choice between sparing or killing someone on a mission, choose to value life and just be nice to people and lead by good example.
Benefits from increased Honor
You can see your honor benefits in the Pause Menu under Player, General, Honor.
Rank 1: Better look from corpses.
Rank 2: 10% off in all stores.
Rank 3: New Outfits become available.
Rank 4: Get access to optional chapter 6 honor mission ‘Do Not Seek Absolution’.
Rank 5: 25% off in all stores.
Rank 6: New Outfits become available.
Rank 7: 50% off in all stores.
Rank 8: Nothing, just peace of mind that you’re the most honorable gunslinger in the wild west.
While you’re at it, you are highly advised to go for the missable honor missions during the story to snatch the trophy or achievement Lending a Hand. That’s all there is to know about honor in RDR2.
For more guides check out our full Red Dead Redemption 2 Wiki & Strategy Guide.
Your missing the true camp errands in your description.
Periodically errands become available in camp and are marked with a black dot on the map.
Things like Chopping Wood, Giving Hay to the horses, Supplying Water, and carrying sacks to the Chuckwagon.
I’m only on chapter 2, so there may be new errands at different camps (other than the wood chopping they all pretty much start at the Horse station)
Will my honor decrease if I rob dead bodies of criminals (those who marked with red dot on minimap)?
Gang members are lootable, I think anyone else incurs an honor penalty.
Yes it seems and its stupid… I have came across some that it is ok to take from and some that is dis honorable but all marked with a red dot.. Best bet is if ur trying to be a good guy then just dont loot bodies… :/
Yes but not much. I always do it and check my honor and struggle to see the difference
How do i check my honor level number, you saying i need to have level 4, but i see only that long scale at the bottom of the screen which is almost full. And in character menus i don’t see any honor numbers.
You kinda have to guess it by the honor meter when you press d-pad down. It rises in 8 “segments” but you have to kinda guess it.
There’s also kinda workaround for checking your honor level. Go to Player>Arthur>General. Scroll to Honor and you can see in bottom left corner your current Honor Level perk. Then check from above “Benefits from increased Honor” list on which level that perk is rewarded. Couldn’t be easier ;)
Check social club it will give you the “bar ranking”
Hi PowerPyx, there is another way I did it by accident, you can earn honor everytime you great people in street or anywhere
No, greating people don’t work.
It works. You gain honor each 3 people you greet. In busy streets like Saint Denis, you can easily rank up your honor. It goes up relatively fast and should be faster than e.g. fishing!
You do earn honour greeting people in the street. I get honour every 3-4 people that I greet, especially if they greet me first and I reply. Just get in a saloon or ride into town and spam the L2+Square. It’s one of the easiest things to do
Hey so based on your recommendation I didn’t do any of the bounty missions and I am now on chapter 6 and they are all gone. Not a single one is left for me to do and It seems It is likely that I will not be able to complete the game 100 % and get the platinum as a result. Very disappointed.
They will show up again don’t worry, just keep playing a bit further.
Is Honor Rank gated on story mode?
Since bar stopped moving up around rank 6 for Chapters 4-5. Could decrease level OK (mainly by accidents), but later level raised always only to about that rank 6. Appears that during Chapter 6 higher levels were unlocked and could then reach max rank normally.
Where do I find these daily missions? I completed the story.
On the farm. They have little dots on the map when you zoom in real close.
Sure this is the fastest? I did them for like 40 minutes and my honor rank only increased once
I was wondering the same thing and then i find out theyre just talking about chores. shm….. these are called chores, honey, and theyre available in every camp in every chapter throughout the story.
Does replaying missions affect honor in anyway? I’m replaying some for Gold medals and wonder if I can get some extra headshots on that chapter 1 story mission by shooting those guys in the head at the end.
Saying hi to everyone when you walk around towns also gets you honor points. (dogs and cats included).
This is true, I kept doing that in every town I visited and my level increased doing that
No idea how big a boost it is, but every 3 people you greet you get an honor boost.
Mission-Specific Honor Decisions
I swear there are 2 mission in chapter 3, was the mission “Money…….” Removed?
Best way to increase honor level is fishing, catch a fish and throw back ! It gives you 5 honor points ! Each honor level requires 40 honor points so if you do this same thing 8 times, you increase your honor level by 1 ! And you can do this unlimited times ! I was at level 3 and just by doing this for 30 minutes I increased my honor level to 8 ! Now I am getting 50% discount on every store plus some good outfits!
Will robbing trains and the like with a bandana affect honor?
My honor is stuck at 0?? Wont increase or lower
NEVER DONATE MORE THAN 20.00 AT A TIME TO CAMP!
You get honor for every $20 you put in but the amount of honor does not increase if you add more.
Instead if you want to donate around 100 just donate 20 five times in a row for 5 honor. Very easy and quick way.
(Side note, donating items is tricky because the items must also be worth over 20 to give honor. Best bet is to sell valuables to fence and donate the money instead.)
I believe the perfect amount to donate is $20.01
Anyway than that gets your the basic honor “sound effect”, but 20.01 makes a much louder and bolder honor sound.
I’m currently on Chapter 4, but my honour seems to have capped out at Rank 6. Is this the limit until chapter 6? I think in my first playthrough, my Dishonour could only go as low as Rank -6 as well.