RDR2 Satchel Upgrades: how to craft all 7 and get Legend of the East

RDR2 satchels raise how many items Arthur can carry. Simon Pearson crafts them at his butcher table in camp. To get him working you need three things:

1. The Camp Ledger. It unlocks in Chapter 2 after Strauss’s mission “Money Lending and Other Sins”.
2. Leather Working Tools, a ledger upgrade for $225 ($180 in the Special and Ultimate Edition). It is paid from the camp fund.
3. Perfect pelts, three-star only. Pearson won’t use legendary animal pelts for satchels.

You can start crafting in Chapter 2, when the gang is camped at Horseshoe Overlook. According to Red Dead Wiki, you can hand Pearson perfect pelts even before buying the tools and they will be kept. But a pelt sold to a butcher or trapper can no longer go toward a satchel (rdr2.org). So don’t sell the perfect pelts from the table below.

How to unlock the ledger and what else is worth buying in it is covered in our RDR2 camp upgrades guide.

Every pelt in these recipes is perfect. The numbers in the table are only for convenience: guides list the satchels in different orders, and you can craft them in any sequence except Legend of the East.

Recipe details:

• Effect. According to Red Dead Wiki, each satchel doubles the cap for its item type, and the effects stack. Legend of the East raises the cap on most items to 99, which both the wiki and rdr2.org confirm.
• The exception is pocket watches: 5 per type, and no satchel changes that (according to the wiki).
• The squirrel for the Ingredients Satchel, according to rdr2.org, is handed in as a whole carcass; you don’t skin it.
• Kit Satchel: the “3 valuables” requirement comes from GamesRadar+, rdr2.org, SegmentNext and the wiki’s satchel page; only Pearson’s wiki page leaves it out. It’s easier to donate three valuables and not guess.
• Valuables Satchel needs exactly $50 in cash; items don’t count.
• The look of any unlocked satchel, according to the wiki, can be picked in the wardrobe.

All seven satchels take 18 perfect pelts: 7 Deer, 2 Elk and one each of Buck, Bison, Raccoon, Badger, Squirrel, Boar, Iguana, Panther, Beaver, Rabbit, Cougar and Wolf.

Money: $225 for Leather Working Tools plus $155 for two medicine tiers and two provisions tiers ($30 + $50 and $30 + $45), $380 in total from the camp fund. Another $50 in cash is the donation for the Valuables Satchel.

To see how much the satchels add, here are the base caps without them, according to Red Dead Wiki:

Legend of the East is the best satchel in RDR2. For Pearson to craft it you need to:

• craft all six other satchels;
• bring perfect Deer, Cougar and Wolf pelts.

The recipe is confirmed by five sources: GamesRadar+, SegmentNext, rdr2.org and two Red Dead Wiki pages. Some pages in search results say it needs legendary pelts. That’s wrong: Pearson doesn’t take legendary pelts for satchels at all.

You can’t get Legend of the East through challenges. No source ties it to Challenges: Pearson crafts it, and in the Epilogue the Fence sells it. The link goes the other way: Herbalist 7 requires carrying 30 herbs, so you’ll need the Ingredients Satchel or Legend of the East. All requirements are on the RDR2 challenges page.

The hardest pelts on the whole list are Panther and Cougar: both are rare and dangerous predators. The panther lives only in Lemoyne, and Arthur finds cougars in Big Valley and northern Roanoke Ridge.

Animals spawn randomly within their range; there are no exact spots. Weapons in the table are matched to animal size, as recommended by PowerPyx, Mein-MMO, Red Dead Wiki and rdr2.org.

A few clarifications:

• Iguanas are only available to Arthur on the Flat Iron Lake island. The iguanas in Guarma and New Austin become accessible later in the story, so hunt on the island for your satchel.
• Cougars in New Austin are only available to John in the Epilogue.
• Panthers, according to Red Dead Wiki, most often appear near Old Harry Fen, one at a time, and a new one spawns after 72 in-game hours.
• Varmint Rifle is for small game. According to the wiki, it costs $72 and is free in the Ultimate Edition.

How to get three stars instead of two: study the animal with binoculars, kill it with one shot to the head (the heart for the largest animals) and leave the shotgun at home. The full method is in our RDR2 perfect pelts guide, and ranges for every species are on the RDR2 animals page.

In the Epilogue there is no gang camp, and Pearson runs a store in Rhodes and no longer crafts satchels. So John buys any satchel you haven’t crafted from the Fence, with no pelts and no camp requirements. Satchels Arthur already crafted carry over to John along with the rest of his gear.

Prices are from SegmentNext. Red Dead Wiki lists lower amounts that look like high Honor discount prices, so with good Honor it may cost less. According to SegmentNext, the six regular satchels show up at the Fence from Epilogue 1, and Legend of the East once you have all the others. Fences are in Emerald Ranch, Saint Denis, Rhodes and Van Horn; the locations are marked on the RDR2 map page.

Red Dead Wiki says Pearson crafts in Chapters 2–4 and in Chapter 6. But the gaming press hasn’t confirmed that, and at Beaver Hollow in Chapter 6, according to the same wiki, the tithing box and Camp Ledger are already gone. In Chapter 5 there is no gang camp at all. So our advice is to craft every satchel before the end of Chapter 4 (the Shady Belle camp). Whatever you miss, buy from the Fence in the Epilogue.

Platform differences. Recipes and mechanics are the same on PS4, Xbox One and PC. The only difference is the edition: in the Special and Ultimate Edition camp upgrades are 20% cheaper (Leather Working Tools cost $180), and the Varmint Rifle, according to the wiki, is free. There is no mobile version of RDR2. How long the story takes up to Chapter 5 is covered in how long to beat RDR2.