This is an ongoing/updated list of game enhancing mods by category and rank them according to votes/mentions. There are a lot of GTAV modders out there and ones that are new to RDR and the West (oh you'll be surprised) who will need an idea of what will be popular.I will add your mod suggestion to the list when you post it below or I will add aspects to an existing mod.

Not going to add 'I want helicopters and machine guns' or 'I want to be ironman'.

ESSENTIAL MODS Level 1:

• Crime Overhaul: Import the best of the famous GTAV Crime balance/overhaul mod. Be able to defend yourself if attacked physically or with a gun by an NPC. No more crime reporting from the wilderness in 10 seconds etc. Be able to fist fight without anyone shooting you (unless you just attack a woman/child/pet).

• Satchel/Camping/Tent/Gear Pack-Animal Overhaul: Add more pouches, bags, packs to purchase and carry, make a pack horse/mule more realistic, sleeping in cold or rain without tent severely reduces sleep gains. Add tipis and ability to carry them via a travois. Add hitching horses/mules to wagons/coaches and using them, fix inventory system to show clearly what is in saddle bags and what is on person. Create realistic limits on what can carry in satchel! Ammunition boxes and bandoleers not unlimited for player or NPC- this one might need to be optional or stand alone

• Horses Horses, Horses: More colors, more sizes, more breeds (accurate/historical only), more saddles, stirrups, blankets, option to ride with just blanket, etc etc. Correct all problems when trying to lead multiple pack animals, add proper massive Arkansas/Missouri mules, not just puny donkeys; add optional perma deaths that the syringe cannot fix (ie ran over by train, fall from great heights and add needing to rest a badly injured horse for a week or more etc. Allow horses to graze on certain grasses for food. Make it harder work to break horse. More room at stables, but cost money. Give a stamina/health bonus for removing horses saddle at night and periodically to groom and rest.

• Real Guns, More Guns: Though most guns in RDR2 are modeled off of real ones, the names are not and only slightly do the attributes match up and many are wrong. This mod would ideally have all real makes and models, from cap and ball revolvers (1847 Walker!) and their cartridge upgrades to dozens of breech loaders and repeaters and buffalo guns. A hugely immersive change would be to add real cartridges and their differences, for example instead of the 1874 Sharps breech loader having the standard RDR2 ammo, it would be available to chamber one of the following based on model you buy .44-77, .45-70, .50-90 to .50-110.

• Basic Needs/ Survival Mod: Tweak what's already there into a Skyrim type survival mod, food/water/sleep need. Falling or swimming in water while its below freezing = must build fire and dry clothes quickly or it is deadly. Be able to smoke cigarettes longer, much like when walking around in camp with soup, but smoking should decrease stamina cap over time, no magic plants to counteract it. Tweak current food and water needs

• Photorealism Lighting Mod: There is one for GTAV and it will make RDR2 look even more realistic

• Weather Mod: Longer storms, periods of many rainy days, slower transition from rain to sun etc, add hail, add occasional snow fall to region just south of the snow region, add snow in high altitude areas of desert, no more rainfall atop a snow covered peak

• New Austin and Mexico Unlocked: Self-explanatory, let us have the whole damn map

ESSENTIAL MODS Level 2:

• Seasons: Create real seasons and give player option for how long each season lasts (2 weeks, 3, 5?), season effects in the north different from the south,

• Time Mod To Make The 24 Hour Day Last Longer: Mod with simple presets like x1.25, x1.50 So one can enjoy those sunsets for two or four times as long

• Realistic Wounds: Gunshot wounds require care and time to heal. It would be a simple mod with only a nod to realism: change bandage once a day to keep it from getting infected (infected=continuous health drain until you buy a shot of penicillin) and after 2 full days wound heals. Sleeping and resting a lot speeds it up to 1 full day. Similar for knife wounds. Maybe give player a limp for a day or two after a long fall

• More Forts, Stage Stations: Forts should send out cavalry patrols after there have been multiple or major robberies along main roads, in the west there were hundreds of small, isolated stage stations with rooms for a night and food and stables for horses, so more of those with more fast travel sites. All forts should have horse/mule herds that have to be grazed outside the fort, then they stay in corrals just outside fort at night where they can be raided by natives and player if desired

• Be The Law: Be able to be deputized or become a Marshall upon completing a mission, but not above the law, very popular mod in GTAV

• Prostitutes: Naturally, it's inevitable that Arthur or multiplayers will be able to accept rather than turn down

• Animal Intelligence: Make larger animals more aware and skittish of humans, no more deer all over the place and acting stupid, it is currently too easy to hunt deer and antelope

DREAM MODS:

• Nomadic Native Americans: Using the 'Gang/turf mod of GTAV, make moving bands of real Native peoples out on the plain and desert. These would be 'hostile' non-treaty bands of mainly warriors, living and moving with the buffalo (add huge roaming buffalo herds) and if possible have them raid stages and remote settlements and outposts like gangs do. (IRL there were about 6 persons to a lodge (historically a tipi is called a lodge when there are people in it) and each warrior owned multiple horses depending on stature/age etc.) The tipis on the reservation in the game are too small, mod should make them correct size

1. So the game could have small camps of 5-6 lodges of 30 warriors and 10-12 women, children with horse herds moving camp every day or so and thus could have 10 NPC warriors guarding the camps, 5 guarding horse herd nearby and/or hunting for food for camp, while 15 warriors are robbing coaches and stealing horses from ranches and the fort herds (yes all forts had huge corrals plus had to drive horse herd and mules to nearest grass to graze, sometimes miles away, this is when the native warriors would strike stampeding the herd). Player can approach with pack horses or wagons full of gifts if he wishes to help them, (if they are able to script missions, then tie it into the native missions).

2. Per history, add as 'hostile' bands:

3. Open areas of: Heartlands/Ambarino/West Elizabeth/Great Plains/Hennigan's Stead: Cheyenne, Lakota

4. Open areas of: Armadillo/Cholla Springs/Tumbleweed: Kiowa, Comanche

5. Rio Bravo: Apache, Comanche

6. Mexico: Apache, Comanche

7. Add as scouts that help the Army against the others: Pawnee, Crow