How-to Get the Fastest & Rarest Horses in Red Dead Redemption 2 – Best Horses for Traversing the Wilds in RDR 2!

Our guide to the fastest and rarest breeds of horse in Red Dead Redemption 2 will walk you through how-to find and tame the best horses in the game! We've also got information on how-to increase your horses speeds, but also some methods that will get you some great horses for free!

The Best Breeds

Most of the best breeds will only be available to you towards the end of the game. However, there are a couple of ways to get some ahead of the time, which is good because you are going to be on your horse quite a bit. Those are mentioned below in the "finding the best horses" section.

The best horse breeds in RDR 2 are Nokota, Turkoman, Arabian, Thoroughbred, and the Missouri Fox Trotter. These horses all have a high speed base, and the highest acceleration base stats. After around Chapter 4, you will be able to purchase the majority of these at the stables. They all fall in the $1,000 range, but if you have high honor the price will be knocked down by quite a bit depending on how high it is.

Increasing the Speed

With every horse when you look at the stats you will see fully filled in white rectangles indicating its current stats. There are also, light gray rectangles, these indicate the potential of the horse. To max out the stats to the horse's highest potential, you will need to equip the horse with the best saddle and tack you can buy! You can purchase these at the various stables that are mostly found in cities across the map.

Also, be sure to brush your horse when it gets dirty. Believe it or not, if the horse is dirty this will actually affect the speed of the horse. Brushing will also add to your bond with the animal, so it's beneficial to brush it whenever you've ridden it for a while.

Finding the Best & Rarest Horses

The White Arabian Horse

This is one rare horses you can get early on in the game, and it will serve you well throughout. Head over to the west side of Lake Isabella, and be sure to put on your winter gear so you don't free to death. You will need to be careful out here due to some predatory animals that can spawn around, so be sure to have a trusty weapon nearby.

You will want to save prior to attempting to tame the horse. There's been some reports of it disappearing if you fail to tame it after a few times, and it apparently will not respawn again. This might be a bug, but for now I would just save your game so you can reload if you have any issues.

Once you find the horse, you are going to need to be careful on your approach. It can spook very easily, so target it and slowly make your way to it by calming it down and patting it when you get a chance. Once you've done this a few times, you can then attempt to mount it. The horse is going to try and buck you off, so pull the directional stick in the opposite direction of where it is headed and you should be able to tame it!

If you are bucked off, you will need to repeat the process! I highly recommend going after this horse early in the game, you aren't going to find anything close to it, and it will serve you well until more horses are unlocked in chapter 3 and 4.

Brindle Thoroughbred

This one you can get a bit earlier than most, but it's going to cost you and you might not have the kind of money needed for it this early in the game. Once you've gotten to Chapter 3, you can head to the Strawberry Stables and purchase the Brindle Thoroughbred. This horse matches the highest base speed with the Missouri Fox Trotter and Nokota. However, it has very weak base stats in health and stamina, so be sure to have plenty of horse reviver around with you!

Rose Grey Black Arabian

This is the top tier Arabian horse, and can be purchased at the Blackwater Stable once you reach Epilogue 1 in the story. You can purchase another Arabian in the Saint Denis Stables at Chapter 4 of the story in the game, but this particular one with the Rose Grey color is the fastest of them all.

Turkoman

If you want a horse that has a lot of health and stamina without sacrificing speed then this is a good one you can get fairly early on in the game. This will be unlocked in Chapter 4 of the game, and can be found in the Saint Denis Stable. The horse comes in a few different colors, but the stats are identical across the board.

Reverse Dapple Roan Nokota

This is the fastest horse you can find, but it comes with the sacrifice of having low health and stamina. You are far likely to kill off this horse, but you can upgrade the health and stamina once you've bonded further with it and buy the right gear for it. This one is also available in Chapter 4 of the game and can be found in the Saint Denis Stable.

The other versions of the Nokota which can be found in the wild are much slower than this one.

Missouri Fox Trotter

The Missouri Fox Trotter is one of the best all-around horses you can get in the game. It has high base speed, acceleration, and also has strong health and stamina statistics. You can find the first available version in Chapter 4 of the game at the Scarlett Meadows Stable. The horse comes in two colors, but the stats are exactly the same. You can get Amber Champagne earlier in the game, but the Silver Dapple Pinto version unlocks during the Epilogue and can be purchased in the Blackwater Stable.

Tiger Striped Mustang

If you want just a really interesting looking horse and don't care too much about stats then the Tiger Striped Mustang is a great one to grab. This is another horse that will require to get to the epilogue to get, but if you head south west to Rio Del Lobo Rock you can find this unique horse. This is the only place it spawns, so be sure to save prior to making your attempt to tame it, because just like the White Arabian, you might get unlucky and have the horse get away or bug out.

At first glance, the horse kind of looks normal, but around its legs are the tiger stripes that gives it a very interesting look. You might need to travel around a bit in the Rio Del Lobo Rock area to find it, but it'll be worth the hunt!

Best Horses for Free

This is a method someone figured out that will allow you to find the best horses in the game for free fairly early on in the game. Once you can get to Saint Denis, which is the largest most advanced city in the game, you can head to a spot north of it that has a couple of horse spawns.

These spawns are completely random, and cycle through all of the breeds and different types of the breeds. This includes the versions of horses that are the best in the game, which are ones you wouldn't have access to until much later in the story.

There's a couple of ways you can approach how to take advantage of this spot. The first is that you can save nearby and then head over to the area, check if there's a rare horse, and either grab it or reload your save. This can take a while, but if you are on one of the faster consoles it might not be too bad.

The second option, is you check the horses to see which have spawned, and if you aren't happy with them. Head north on your current horse for a little while, and then turn around and come back. This should respawn the horses and give you another set to check out. You'll want to experiment with how far exactly you need to travel away to trigger the respawn so you aren't wasting time!

This method is kind of cheesy, but it's one of the best ways that is known to get a top tier horse for free!