Arthur Morgan’s hat and how to get it back

Arthur Morgan’s hat is never permanently lost in Red Dead Redemption 2. If it falls off, I pick it up where it landed, or I pull it back from my horse or from any wardrobe, at no cost in in-game money. Below is the full recovery routine, the story moments that strip the hat away, how to rebuild Arthur’s look in Red Dead Online, and what to check before buying a real-world replica.

The short answer

Arthur’s hat does not disappear when it falls off. When a bullet, a fall from the saddle or a brawl knocks it loose, it stays on the ground nearby for a while, and a pickup prompt appears when Arthur walks over to it.

If I’ve already ridden off, the hat is still recoverable because the game treats a hat Arthur owns as a wardrobe item, not as a loose object in the world. That means I can re-equip it from my horse or from any wardrobe at camp, in a rented hotel room or at a clothing counter.

The only hats that can vanish for good are ones I picked up from strangers and never stored. Arthur’s own starting hat is not one of those, so the default brown hat he wears on the cover is always waiting somewhere.

What Arthur’s hat actually is

Arthur starts the game in a weathered brown felt hat with a wide brim and a simple band, and it stays the default part of his outfit through almost the whole story. The crown is creased rather than tall and rounded, and the brim sits fairly flat with a slight curl at the edges. That gives him the low, practical silhouette that separates him from Dutch’s dandier look or Micah’s more aggressive style.

Players recreating the look in Red Dead Online usually reach for the brown Gambler hat as the nearest match, and fan wiki editors generally identify Arthur’s default hat the same way. The hat is widely documented as Arthur’s Gambler’s Hat, and the matching style is known as the Haraway Hat in Red Dead Online.

The hat matters to the character for a simple reason: Arthur rarely takes it off on screen. He tips it to strangers and keeps it on in camp, and the game accounts for whether he’s wearing a hat going into cutscenes. In at least one, a high-honor Arthur removes it out of respect. That makes the moments when it’s missing feel deliberate. My profile of Arthur Morgan covers his history and personality in depth, but in short, the hat works as costume shorthand for a man who sees himself as a working outlaw and not a showman.

Why Arthur loses his hat in the first place

Hats in RDR2 are physical objects with their own ragdoll behaviour, which is part of why the game feels so tactile. That realism means Arthur’s hat comes off more often than in most open-world games, and knowing the triggers helps me predict where to look.

Trigger	What happens to the hat	Where to look
Thrown from the horse	Flies off on impact	Near the spot where Arthur hit the ground
Shot at close range	Can be knocked off by gunfire	Within a few metres of Arthur’s position
Fistfight or bar brawl	Falls off when Arthur takes a hard hit	On the floor of the saloon or street
Deep water	Can float away or sink	Water’s edge, then horse or wardrobe
Ragdoll falls (cliffs, stairs, explosions)	Tumbles separately from Arthur	Downhill from the impact point
Scripted story moments	Removed by the mission	Returned when the story releases you

Falls from horseback are the most common cause in my play, especially during high-speed chases through the Heartlands or the wooded trails around Roanoke Ridge, where low branches and rough terrain throw Arthur off at speed.

Method 1: Pick the hat up where it fell

This is the fastest fix and the one I use most. After a fall or a fight, I stop, look around the immediate area, and walk to the hat. When Arthur is close enough, a prompt appears to pick it up, and he puts it back on in one fluid animation.

A few habits make this quicker:

• Check downhill first. On slopes, the hat often rolls or slides past the spot where Arthur landed.
• Turn on the landscape. The hat is small and brown, and it blends into dirt roads and autumn grass. Slowing the camera pan helps.
• Clear the fight before searching. Standing in the open hunting for a hat while O’Driscolls or Lemoyne Raiders are still shooting is an easy way to die.
• Don’t wait too long. Dropped hats don’t stay in the world forever, so if I leave the area and come back much later, it’s usually gone from the ground.

Method 2: Recover it from your horse

If the hat is no longer on the ground, I go to my horse. Arthur’s main horse carries his stored kit, and the horse menu lets him change outfits and pull hats without riding back to camp. This is the method that saves the most time, because the horse is almost always within whistling distance.

The routine is the same on every platform:

1. Call the horse with the whistle if it’s not beside Arthur.
2. Walk up to the horse’s side so the interaction options appear.
3. Open the outfit or hat option from the horse menu.
4. Select Arthur’s hat and equip it.

A saddle with storage is what makes this work, so the horse needs to be your main horse with your saddle on it. If I’m riding a borrowed or freshly stolen horse, the stored kit isn’t there, and I fall back to a wardrobe instead.

Hats Arthur picks up from NPCs can also be stored on the horse when he takes them, and those then become available to swap in. Horse storage for hats is limited, so I don’t treat it as a permanent collection. Anything I want to keep long term belongs in the wardrobe.

Method 3: Use any wardrobe

The wardrobe is the guaranteed fix. Every hat Arthur owns lives there, including his default hat, and it shows up under the hats category whenever I open one. These are the wardrobes I rely on during the story.

Wardrobe	How to access it	Cost
Arthur’s tent at the gang camp	Walk to the chest or dresser area in his tent and use the change outfit prompt	Free
Hotel rooms	Rent a room at a town hotel, then use the wardrobe inside	Room rental fee
Clothing counters	Use the wardrobe option at a tailor or general store clerk	Free to change, money only if you buy

Camp is the best default because it costs nothing and Arthur ends up there often anyway. Each time the gang relocates, from Horseshoe Overlook to Clemens Point, then Shady Belle and Beaver Hollow, the tent and its wardrobe move with them.

Hotel rooms are the better option when I’m deep in the Saint Denis side of the map or far from camp, since renting a room also gets me a bath, a save and a change of clothes in one stop. If you’re still learning the layout, our guide to the RDR2 map with every region shows how far camp sits from each town in every chapter.

Method 4: Buy a replacement in a store

Buying a new hat is never necessary to get Arthur’s default hat back, because it’s never deleted. Still, I’ve seen players spend money assuming the hat is gone for good, so it’s worth knowing where hats are sold and what you’re actually paying for.

General stores and tailors sell hats, with the widest choice in the Saint Denis tailor, and the stores also stock the Wheeler, Rawson and Co. catalog for ordering clothing. Prices vary by item, and the fancier pieces cost noticeably more than workwear. Buying a hat adds a new item to the wardrobe. It doesn’t replace or restore Arthur’s original.

The real reason to visit a store is variety. Arthur’s default hat suits most of the game, but winter hats help in the cold around Colter and the Grizzlies, and a few period pieces suit a Saint Denis evening better than a dusty brim. Hats also don’t change any temperature stat the way coats do, so the choice is mostly cosmetic.

Story moments where the hat goes missing

Some hat losses aren’t accidents. Rockstar removes or replaces Arthur’s outfit during specific missions, and players often mistake these for bugs.

Mission outfits

A handful of missions dress Arthur for the job. The clearest example is A Fine Night for It in Chapter 4, where the gang attends Angelo Bronte’s party in Saint Denis and Arthur is put into formal clothes for the evening. The game handles the change itself. After the mission ends, his normal wardrobe is available again, so if I come out of a scripted outfit missing my preferred hat, the first stop is the horse or the nearest wardrobe.

Guarma

The Chapter 5 Guarma sequence strips Arthur of his familiar setup after the shipwreck, and he spends the chapter in survival gear on the island. This is a story choice, not a lost item. Once the story brings the gang back to the mainland, the wardrobe works as normal and the default hat is there to equip.

Captures and setbacks

When the story takes Arthur’s control away, his outfit can change for that sequence. His capture by Colm O’Driscoll is one example. In every case like this, the rule is the same: the story controls the outfit until the mission ends, and then the wardrobe takes over again.

Is there a cheat code for Arthur’s hat?

No. Red Dead Redemption 2 has a cheat system, unlocked through newspaper cheat phrases and entered from the settings menu, but none of the cheats restore, spawn or unlock hats. That applies on PlayStation, Xbox and PC alike, and there is no phone-number style input the way older GTA games used.

Platform	Cheat for Arthur’s hat	What actually works
PlayStation 4 / PS5	None	Pick up, horse menu, wardrobe
Xbox One / Series X	S	None
PC	None	Pick up, horse menu, wardrobe

I’d also steer clear of any site offering a third-party tool that claims to unlock outfits. Mod menus and trainers carry malware risk on PC and can get an account banned in Red Dead Online, which shares a launcher and account with story mode. The in-game recovery methods above are faster than any workaround anyway.

Which version of RDR2 this applies to

Everything in this guide applies to Red Dead Redemption 2’s story mode on every version Rockstar released. The game launched on PS4 and Xbox One in October 2018, and the PC version followed in November 2019 with the same wardrobe and horse systems.

Version	Hat recovery works the same?	Notes
PS4	Yes	Original console release
Xbox One	Yes	Original console release
PC	Yes	Same story mode systems as console
PS5	Yes	Runs the PS4 version through backward compatibility
Xbox Series X|S	Yes	Runs the Xbox One version through backward compatibility

Since the PS5 runs the PS4 build, button layouts and menus are identical to the original. Our breakdowns of Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS5 explain the performance differences between the two, but neither changes how hats behave.

Keeping Arthur’s hat after the story ends

This is the angle most guides skip, and it’s the one I wish I’d known on my first playthrough. After the Chapter 6 finale, the epilogue switches control to John Marston, and the open world continues with John as the playable character. From that point, playing as Arthur in free roam is no longer an option on that save.

Arthur’s wardrobe stays with Arthur. John has his own clothing, his own default hat and his own wardrobe, including the one at Beecher’s Hope once the ranch is built. If I want to keep riding around as Arthur in his hat after finishing the story, I need a save from before the ending.

My routine before the final missions:

1. Finish any stranger missions, challenges or hunting I want to do as Arthur.
2. Make a manual save in a separate slot from the autosave.
3. Name or note the slot so I don’t overwrite it later.
4. Play through the ending on a different slot.

That backup gives me a permanent Arthur sandbox for photo mode, horseback rides and outfit experiments, with the default hat ready in the wardrobe whenever I load in.

What the hat means by the end

Without spoiling specifics for anyone still on their first run, Arthur’s arc in Chapter 6 makes his appearance feel heavier. His illness, his relationship with Dutch van der Linde and his choices about the Marston family all play out with Arthur in the same worn clothes he’s had all game. Our Dutch van der Linde profile covers how that relationship breaks down, and our Jack Marston profile picks up the story of the boy Arthur spends his final chapters protecting.

Picking up and keeping other characters’ hats

Arthur’s own hat is the main event, but the hat system has a fun side that’s worth knowing because it overlaps with recovery.

Shooting hats off

Well-placed shots can knock a hat off an NPC without killing them, the same physics that can strip Arthur’s own hat. It’s a showy trick in duels and standoffs, and it gives me a way to collect a specific hat I like from an enemy without looting a body.

Taking hats from the ground

When I find a dropped hat, the prompt gives me a choice between equipping it and storing it. Equipping swaps it straight onto Arthur’s head. Storing sends it to the horse, from which it becomes part of his collection. If I equip a found hat and then lose it again before storing it, that hat can be gone for good, which is the one case where “lost hat” really means lost.

Why your old hat sometimes ends up on the ground

If Arthur is already wearing a hat and equips a new one from the ground, the old one drops. Because Arthur’s default hat is an owned wardrobe item, it isn’t destroyed in that swap and remains recoverable through the wardrobe. A common stranger’s hat Arthur was wearing is the one at risk, since ordinary NPC hats can’t be stored and are lost once knocked off.

Recreating Arthur’s hat in Red Dead Online

Red Dead Online doesn’t offer Arthur Morgan as a playable character, but players regularly build Arthur-inspired characters. The hat is the anchor of the look, and the community approach is consistent.

• Hat: The brown Gambler hat is the usual pick for matching Arthur’s shape and colour, with the colour variant chosen to look as worn as possible.
• Shirt: A plain work shirt in a muted tone, sleeves down or rolled depending on how close you want to stick to his early-chapter look.
• Vest and coat: A simple dark vest, with a worn leather or canvas coat for colder areas.
• Pants and boots: Dark work trousers and plain boots, nothing polished.
• Satchel and gunbelt: A plain leather gunbelt matches his practical style better than decorated options.

Online clothing is bought through stores and the catalog with in-game dollars and sometimes requires a minimum rank, and the exact unlock conditions have shifted over the game’s update history. I’d check the catalog in your own game for the current requirement before planning a build around a specific item. Hat recovery in Online works on the same principle as story mode: owned clothing lives in your wardrobe and isn’t deleted when it falls off.

Buying a real-world Arthur Morgan hat

Searches for an Arthur Morgan hat often come from people who want one on their own head, and the shop listings that show up for this keyword are almost all unofficial replicas. I don’t recommend specific sellers, but I can tell you what separates a good replica from a costume prop, because the details are where Arthur’s look lives.

Material: felt or leather

Arthur’s in-game hat reads as felt: soft, matte, weathered and slightly misshapen from years in the saddle. Felt replicas generally match the game better.

Material	Look	Pros	Cons
Wool felt	Matte, soft	Closest match to the game, holds a crease well	Can lose shape in heavy rain if low quality
Fur felt	Smooth, dense	More durable and water resistant, shapes beautifully	Usually the most expensive option
Leather	Slight sheen, stiffer	Very durable, rugged feel	Shinier and heavier than Arthur’s in-game hat
Cowhide or suede	Textured	Distinctive, often handmade	Less accurate to the game’s silhouette

If accuracy is the goal, I’d go with felt. If you want a hat for daily outdoor wear that nods to Arthur without copying him, leather is a reasonable trade.

Crown and brim

The crown and brim are what make the hat look like Arthur’s and not a generic cowboy hat, so this is where I’d spend the most attention.

• Crown height: Arthur’s crown sits relatively low and creased. Tall, rounded crowns read as a different character.
• Crease: Look for a creased, slightly pinched top in place of a flat-top or perfect cattleman shape.
• Brim width: A wide brim that sits fairly flat, with a modest curl at the sides. Heavily rolled brims look more like a modern rodeo hat.
• Band: A plain, narrow band. Decorative conchos or feathers move the hat away from Arthur’s look.

Colour and distressing

Arthur’s hat is brown with visible wear: dust, sun-fading and edge scuffs. Some sellers sell pre-distressed hats, which gets you closer to the game straight away. A regular brown felt hat can also be weathered by hand over time, but a quality felt hat takes real effort to age convincingly, so I’d decide up front which finish you want.

Sizing and fit

Measure your head circumference with a soft tape around the forehead, just above the ears, and match it to the seller’s size chart. Western hats that are too loose blow off in the wind, which is very Arthur but not ideal in real life. A hat that’s slightly snug can be eased with an inner sizing strip.

Licensed versus fan-made

Most “Arthur Morgan hat” listings are inspired-by products, not official Rockstar merchandise. That’s not automatically a problem, since some of the best-looking replicas are handmade by hatters. But I’d read the product description carefully, avoid listings that use Rockstar’s artwork and logos as though they were official, and judge the hat on materials, construction and photos of the actual item.

Common mistakes when trying to get the hat back

These are the slip-ups I see most often in player forums and in my own early playthroughs.

1. Buying a new hat in a panic. The original is still in the wardrobe, so spending money doesn’t fix anything.
2. Searching the wrong horse. Stored kit sits on your main horse with your saddle, not on a temporary mount.
3. Equipping a stranger’s hat over Arthur’s. Arthur’s hat survives the swap through the wardrobe, but the stranger’s hat may not if you never store it.
4. Assuming a mission outfit is permanent. Scripted outfits revert once the mission ends, and the wardrobe is available again.
5. Finishing the story without a backup save. Once John takes over, Arthur and his hat are only reachable through an older save.

Where Arthur’s look fits in the wider series

Arthur’s hat has become one of the most recognisable pieces of costume design in Rockstar’s catalogue, alongside John Marston’s look from the original Red Dead Redemption. Both characters share a working-outlaw silhouette, but Arthur’s hat is wider and more battered, which suits a man carrying the gang’s dirty work.

Anything about a future game is unannounced. Rockstar has not confirmed a new Red Dead entry, so any claim about Arthur’s costume or his return in a sequel is speculation. Our page on Red Dead Redemption 3 release date rumors tracks what has and hasn’t been said. For now, the brown hat in the RDR2 wardrobe is the definitive version.

FAQ

Can Arthur Morgan’s hat be lost permanently?

No. Arthur’s default hat is an owned wardrobe item, so it’s never deleted. If I can’t find it on the ground, I can re-equip it from my main horse or from any wardrobe at camp, a hotel room or a clothing counter.

What is Arthur’s hat called in the game?

Players and fan wiki editors generally identify Arthur’s default hat as a brown Gambler hat, and that’s the item people use to recreate it in Red Dead Online. Rockstar hasn’t published a separate official name for it outside the game’s menus.

Why does Arthur keep losing his hat?

Hats in RDR2 are physical objects that fall off during falls from the horse, close-range gunfire, brawls, deep water and ragdoll tumbles. Missions can also swap Arthur’s outfit, such as the formal clothes he wears for the Bronte party in A Fine Night for It.

How do I get my hat back from my horse?

Walk up to your main horse’s side and open the horse menu, then choose the outfit or hat option and equip Arthur’s hat. The horse needs your saddle on it, so this doesn’t work on a borrowed or freshly stolen horse.

Is there a cheat code for Arthur’s hat on PS4, Xbox or PC?

No. RDR2’s cheat list has no hat or outfit cheat on any platform. Using cheats can also disable saving and trophy or achievement progress while they’re active, so recover the hat the normal way.

Can John Marston wear Arthur’s hat in the epilogue?

Arthur’s saved outfits stay with Arthur, and John has his own wardrobe and default hat. To keep playing as Arthur in his hat after the story ends, make a manual save in a separate slot before the final missions.

Is there an official Arthur Morgan hat I can buy?

Most real-world Arthur Morgan hats on sale are unofficial replicas. For the closest match, look for brown felt, a low creased crown, a wide and fairly flat brim, and a plain narrow band, and check side-profile photos before buying.