Red Dead Online now lets you transform into a deer

Red Dead Online's Naturalist role has taken a turn for the trippy, as a new update has introduced a way for players to transform into deer. For a game largely dedicated to realism, this certainly bucks the trend.

The new update, which rolled out on 8th September, allows players to have an "out-of-body" experience if they follow all the steps in Harriet's Buck Vitalism Studies Pamphlet. Along with the animagus moment, the mission rewards you with a free treasure map once complete - although you'll need to be at least a Rank 5 Naturalist to start the whole process.

To actually transform into a deer, you'll need to collect five Harrietum Officinalis plants before finding some deer tracks. Interacting with these will start the transformatio, but the effect is temporary and only lasts five minutes.

In terms of stag dos and don'ts, you are able to kill NPCs as a buck, and transform at the same time as friends, but taking on a moose might be a step too far. Not to mention you can still die in deer form.

Although what you can actually do as a deer seems limited, I'm quite a fan of hopping between animals in Red Dead Redemption, something I managed to achieve with mods in the game's single-player mode. Maybe allowing players to run around as bears or cougars would be a bad idea, however.

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