As someone who also felt fairly overwhelmed with all the new mechanics at times, after talking to my buddy I went to the pre-release with (who's way ahead of me in game progress), I'm wondering how much all those levels even matter.
He's the type of dude who pretty much does nothing but main story missions - when he beat GTA V I couldn't believe how little money / weapons / anything he had - and he seems to be getting by just fine in RDR2. And knowing him, i guarantee he doesn't have any of the cores stuff figured out.
I'm starting to think the difference between well maintained cores and poor ones are fairly minimal. I think we may be all over-thinking it.
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