cormack12
Gold Member
The last online thread hasn't been updated in forever, and I only started playing this last year and it was a bit of a maze to navigate, so thought I'd make it a bit of a newbie guide for those who may want to try out the new online portion of the game, and know the basics. There are probably other people who can drop even better tips in here to fully populate the guide. A lot is subject to change during the next few months but it's a good intro and would have helped me immensely.
Isn't GTA Online full of assholes and griefers? Well, yeah kind of. I can only speak for my experiences but generally people will fight amongst themselves usually if you stay out of it. But there are some things to be aware of just so you can handle yourself a bit in different situations. It's also worth noting that if you aren't doing anything that requires public sessions, you can start solo sessions, private sessions, friend sessions, invite only sessions. Basically any of your business work for MC/CEO needs to be in a public session. Generally when I join a server, I bring up the map right away, and look for specific things.
Starting left from right - there's a jet. Jets are usually a vehicle of choice for some griefers although some do just fly round the map, just make a note of their name and watch the left side of the screen to see the kill log messages. The other two are special vehicle symbols, there are quite a few. The first is the Deluxo which is basically a slow moving, flying car that can have auto lock missiles attached. Far right is the oppressor. If there are a lot of these or just one asshole flying round killing people you'll find out pretty quickly.
The other icon to watch out for is a red skull, this means a player is in psycho mode or has a bounty. So usually rampaging and killing across the server. Just spend a few minutes watching the kill log and listening for explosions to gauge the heat on the server first. If you kill someone with a bounty it can net you up to $20,000. To set a bounty on someone, you can just phone Lester from your phone and select one of his quick options - one of which is Set a bounty, then you can select the player. As you unlock more items in GTA Online, always remember to get certain upgrades for your vehicles (e.g. armor, bulletprrof tyres and speed etc.)
If you are just chilling, you can enable passive mode. Press and hold the share/select button on the PS5/XSX controllers and it will bring up the menu on the left. Scroll to the bottom and put yourself in Passive mode. Putting yourself in Passive Mode and Coming out of Passive Mode have cooldowns obviously. But in this mode you can drive round, chilling, not doing anything in particular. Doing certain things will take you out of Passive mode automatically. Like getting in a vehicle with weapons, starting a free roam mission and others. If you do get an asshole who won't stop, just find a new session from the menu, we all have to do it at some point.
Your character's condition is measured by two factors - health and armour - shown under your radar as green and blue bars respectively. To recover your health you can consume snacks, by purchasing them from vending machines. Handily, you can also buy and stockpile them by visiting convenience stores, then open the Interaction menu and choose Inventory the Snacks to eat them on the go and top up your health.
Body armour is purchased at AmmuNation stores, and again this can be stored in your Inventory and equipped when required. You can choose which type of body armour is displayed on your character, or none at all if you'd prefer not to interfere with your existing outfit - showing or hiding your armour doesn't affect the armour bar. Number of Body Armor and type of Body Armors (light -> heavy) increases as you level up.
Lastly, it's probably worth being aware of parking up your vehicle leaves it open to others destroying it in your absence (or planting proximity bombs on it etc). So if you're going inside somewhere (like your arcade) and are likely to be away for a bit, just put your personal vehicle back into storage. People get fined for destroying vehicles but it's such a small amount it doesn't deter people (except if you are new). You also can't spawn the vehicle for like 5 minutes after it's been destroyed. You do this from the interaction menu again, and then you can request it to respawn from the same place. Personal vehicle will always be the last vehicle you used that you own. Be aware when the request spawns it's often just down the road or in a crazy place if you're on hills etc.
Trolling back: As you level you up, you will get access to a number of things you can do yourself from afar. You'll be able to phone the following people for the following actions:
- Lester: Set bounties on players on the server. These unlock at level 10. Other useful things Lester can do is 'Remove Wanted Level' or 'Off the Grid', which hides your position. These all cost money.
- Lamarr: You can send a mugger after someone. Usually it's best to study the map and see if anyone is idling out of a vehicle. An NPC will mug the player. If you shoot the NPC, they will drop the money they stole and it can be picked back up.
- Merryweather: When unlocked you can send mercenaries after players as well.
- Orbital Cannon: Costs a huge amount of money, and each shot costs $500,000. You get like a drone style interface and can one shot anyone on the server
When you first drop in you're going to need to earn RP to level up as items and weapons have minimum RP levels before you can purchase/use them. You will also need to start making money. You can just do car jacks for Simeone's wishlist or rob cars, take them to LS Customs, do them up and sell them. In addition to this, you will get invited to co-op missions while in free roam, which will give RP and GTA$ - you'll get a buzz then a popup on the left, just bring up your phone, go to messages and then accept:
You don't have to wait for these missions to pop up, you can also just open your phone and select 'Play Quick Job' then choose the type of mission you'd like to jump into. You can also choose a specific mission by pausing and going to Online -> Jobs -> Play Job then browsing through what is available. Working through Jobs is a great way to flesh out the story of what's happening in the GTA Online world, as well as bringing in new and familiar characters while you earn money and level up.
Also take advantage of the free Rockstar offers by linking Amazon Prime etc. which gives out a payout of $100,000 a week, provided you login and are active. Rockstar also plug modes each week that give bonus GTA$ or RP. For example:
Also be sure to visit the casino each day (24hours from last spin) to spin the wheel of fortune and potentially win vehicles, RP, $$$ or clothes. Just go to it and activate the prompt to claim your free spin:
That should give you a good start to the base fundamentals without engaging with any of the more serious stuff. The aim is to get to level 120 on RP and obviously earn millions of $$$ to buy vehicles, weapons and properties which we can go onto now.
Now we get into the meat and potatoes of online. Note: Because of the heist update you don't have to engage with the businesses any more. Though you will need to have an office as you need to be a CEO to start the heists iirc. You will have two choices of what sort of mogul you want to be with different paths. You can choose a Motorcycle Club President or a CEO.
- A Motorcycle Club will allow you to run the following businesses: Document Forgery, Weed Farm, Counterfeit Cash, Meth Lab, Cocaine Factory
- A CEO allows you to run the following businesses: Import/Export Cars, Crates, Special Cargo, Gun Running
They both start out in the same way, once you've chosen your path, you need to buy head premises. For a MC, you will open up the Maze Foreclosures Site from your phone and pick a Clubhouse to buy. If you choose a CEO, you will need to buy an office from Dynasty 8 (also on your phone). It's likely that you end up being both an MCP and a CEO anyway in time. But it's best to choose one to focus on first. I wuold highly suggest CEO first.
Once you have your offices, you then need your business requirements. For most of the MCP stuff, you'll need to buy factories or premises that match your aims. You do this by sitting at your desk in the Clubhouse and logging in. Then you buy the businesses you want:
And then basically the loop is the same for all businesses now. You have to supply them (you can choose to buy supplies or run small missions to steal the supplies). When you have supplies your production will start. Once you have enough product you can choose to 'Sell'. You get the choice to sell local or far. At this point an alert will go across the server saying you are moving product and then anyone can intercept and attack you (for which they earn RP to level up). This is an example of my cocaine warehouse (below). So I have nothing at the moment. I would start by choosing Resupply, you can either pay to resupply or steal supplies. To start with, stealing will be more cost efficient. A mission will then spawn. When I have my supplies, my stock level will start to grow. I can choose to Sell at any point - if you plan to play solo, don't wait until it reaches the end as it will mean 3/4 vehicles worth of deliveries. 'Sell' will become active when you have product, do it before it goes over half.
CEOs will buy warehouses for moving srolen goods. Crates are the smallest missions and will require a cargo warehouse. Stolen cars will require a vehicle warehouse. Again, when you choose cargo, you will start a small mission to intercept goods, once you've picked them up the server will be alerted and other players may come for you. Vehicles are slightly worse as once you've stolen the car you will get attacked by Sultans and NPCs. Any damage to the car is taken from your earnings and players might still attack you as well. This is the same as above but for gunrunning:
All of these businesses will have upgrades assigned to them as well that you will need to level up to increase efficiency and output (Buy Upgrades). So once you are setup, you will need a nightclub to make your life easier. Once you've bought a nightclub, you can run all your businesses from it and sell from your club as well. So this means you need to buy a nightclub next, staff it up and assign people to your businesses like this. This means you only ever need to worry about keeping supplies high in your businesses. How much product you can move depends on how big your warehouse is and what vehicle you use to dropoff. Remember to upgrade your van/lorry for deliveries.
All your goods will come to your nightclub warehouse, then you just click Sell. Then you'll end up in the van doing the deliveries where again other players will be notified and can attack you. If you are attacked and destroyed, you will lose all your cargo and money invested in that run. So yeah it's difficult unless you find a quiet server or have friends. If you don't have friends and want to earn or help, then from your interaction menu you can ping the server for people to join your missions. They are incentivised by earning $5000 every few minutes and RP, or you can set yourself as looking for work if you want to earn $$$ and RP yourself:
And that is pretty much how businesses work in GTA O and what your options are in a nutshell. For many of us though we just run heists which makes all this moot anyway, see below:
Heists are probably the most fun activity if you have a friend or two. I'll only talk about the Casino Heist and Cayo Perico because they can be done with 2 people and solo respectively. These are the quickest way to earn big money. But require some investment. Basically heists are tied to properties, so the two you're going to want will be an arcade and the Kosatka submarine as these are the bases for the two heists. You probably want to start with the Casino Heist first so buy an arcade. You don't need to go crazy, the cheapest one is actually near the casino and the best. If you are purely solo, then just focus on the pre-reqs for Cayo Perico and read this post here for the heist prep and setup.
You'll quickly learn not to waste money on anything without function or utility as you're going through the game. Then you pay an up front fee of $25,000 and you'll get a set of prep missions to complete. Once you've prepped you can start the heist, you can either lock to friends or risk matchmaking and set the cut for each player individually. Each Heist has different ways to approach and you'll leanr them as you tackle the event itself. That's the fun part.
The Cayo Perico is exactly the same as above, except different missions and you can do it alone if you really want (but you can only take a one person portion of the take, not the whole $5 mill). With all that said, their are still some things you should prioritise in terms of buying as you go to make your lfie easier. In terms of a purchase list:
Office
Vehicle: Nightshark fully upgraded with armor/Armored Kuruma
Vehicle: Sparrow Helicopter (Buzzard optional but not as good)
Arcade premises
Kosatka Sub
Terrorbyte
Nightclub (required for Terrorbyte, for upgrading Oppressor)
Oppressor MKII
Clubhouse (optional)
MCP Businesses (optional)
CEO Businesses (optional)
Everything else is pretty much a luxury until you have all this set. This puts you in the position to make the grind easier to buy stuff you actually want. Each of these things will unlock other activites as well (e.g. Client Jobs from the Terrorbyte).
You can also consider VIP work, but I've written this from the perspective of someone who may not want to engage with that specifically. Relying on others to add their tips and own experiences as well.
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