How Much are 25 Gold Bars in Red Dead Online in 2024?

As of 2023, purchasing 25 gold bars in RDR2 Online costs $9.99 from the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, or Rockstar Warehouse. This real-money price of gold bars has remained steady since the beta launch of Red Dead Online in late 2018.

Based on my experience from over 50 hours played, I recommend buying 25-55 gold bars if you want to shortcut the grind and access the best specialty gear right away. In this detailed guide for new and veteran players, I‘ll cover everything you need to know about gold bars in Red Dead Online:

What Can You Actually Buy With Gold Bars?

Before deciding if you should buy gold bars, it helps to understand what you can even spend them on. As a premium currency, gold bars provide exclusive access to specialty cosmetics, gear, and upgrades:

Unique Clothing, Emotes, and Camp Options

• Special role outfits from Bounty Hunter, Collector, Naturalist
• Prestigious role items unlocked above Rank 10
• Select gestures and dances like Chuckling and Flip Off
• Special camp flags, themes, and a Australian Shepherd dog

Improved Weapons and Ability Cards

• Scopes, wraps, and engraving for weapons
• Upgraded ammo types like Express and High Velocity
• Special Miracle Tonics that fortify cores
• Top-tier ability loadouts for Combat and Recovery

Quality of Life Improvements

• Unlock Fast Travel from Wilderness Camps
• Purchase additional Collector maps from Madam Nazar
• Reset awards to repeat high gold payout challenges

As you can see, gold bars offer a broad selection of cosmetics and upgrades that allow you to truly customize your cowboy or cowgirl beyond what you can buy with standard cash alone.

Historical Gold Bar Pricing in Red Dead Online

If you‘re wondering whether gold bar pricing has changed much historically, this table shows prices since the beginning:

As you can see, gold bar bundle pricing has remained completely static for over 4 years now at these price points. So if you purchased some back at launch, you got the exact same rates as today.

Gold Bar Earnings From Playing vs Purchasing

To understand if buying gold is worthwhile, you need to know how quickly you can earn it by actually playing Red Dead Online.

Here‘s an overview of potential non-purchased gold income rates:

As a benchmark, I average around 0.25 gold bars per hour from doing a mix of daily challenges, events, and missions.

Compared to purchased gold stacks, that means:

• 25 gold bars take 100 hours to earn
• 55 gold bars take 220+ hours to earn

As you can see, buying gold lets you bypass hundreds of hours of grinding to immediately unlock items otherwise gated behind slow gold accumulation rates for non-paying players.

Is Buying Gold Bars Worth it in Red Dead Online?

So should you actually spend money on gold bars? Here is my take as a long-time player:

Worst Uses

• Upgrading ability cards that you can slowly max out anyway
• Buying special ammo types like Express/High Velocity when regular ammo gets the job done
• Splurging on purely cosmetic clothing for vanity alone

Best Uses

• Unlocking roles like Bounty Hunter and Collector for major money-making potential
• Getting key Fast Travel upgrades for your camp and wilderness shelters
• Grabbing Special/Miracle tonics that offer buffs unavailable otherwise

Verdict

25 gold bars for $10 represents decent value – less than a movie ticket for hours of entertainment unlocked. But don‘t go wild buying every vanity item. Prioritize permanent upgrades and money makers first.

The Ongoing Controversy Around Gold Bars

While plenty of players don‘t mind the option to purchase gold bars, it has remained a controversial monetization method since launch.

Common Complaints

• Creates a "pay to win" culture where cash buyers get advantages
• Devalues effort put in by non-paying grinding players
• Prices remain overly expensive for virtual currency

Many feel gold bars should be earnable at faster base rates or that certain gear/upgrades should not be locked exclusively behind premium currency.

However, bars likely account for a material portion of Rockstar‘s ongoing revenue from Red Dead Online. So unless masses of players boycott gold purchases altogether, pricing and availability probably won‘t change.

That wraps up my detailed guide on whether buying gold bars makes sense in Red Dead Online! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.