Grand Theft Auto Online – Frugal Play Guide
Claim of Ownership: THEmtg3drinks
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There is a lot of things Rockstar would like you to buy in Grand Theft Auto
Online, and these items can be very, very expensive, especially to a new player.
So, after hundreds of questions asked on the forums almost daily (and seeing the
same responses), I noticed they all started at the same point. That point is
rudimentary, but it nevertheless assumes every player has started with a sizable
bank of one million in-game dollars. The aim of this guide, however, is to
showcase how you can get started immediately witho the game while presuming the
player is literally starting from a $0 balance and with a level one character,
though having completed the tutorial since everyone must complete that in order
to join into public game lobbies.
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So you’ve completed the tutorial. Or rather, the last step of the tutorial is
to take a vehicle off the streets and fit it with a tracker and insurance for
free so that you have your own thing to get around in. If you’re on this step,
my suggestion is to keep looking until you find a Karin Sultan to make your
vehicle. This is a four door vehicle so you can drive three other players around
for drive-by action whether in mission or free roam, however it’s also all wheel
drive so it handles well and can reasonably move across off-road terrain, should
you find yourself away from a paved highway. It’s also cheap to have replaced by
Mors Mutual Insurance, should you accidentally drive yourself into a body of
water.
Now that you have your vehicle, the first thing you’ll notice is an absolute
barrage of “helpful” tool tips in the upper left corner of the screen along with
a smattering of in-game e-mails about incredibly expensive properties you
“should buy”, according to Rockstar. This can seem overwhelming for sure, but
let me let you in on a secret; you don’t need any of it. You can safely ignore
them all if you follow this guide.
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You start a public game lobby with your free car from the tutorial and a basic
pistol. This is a pretty weak weapon, so don’t bother trying to get into a fight
with other players – they’ll destroy you with explosives, faster and stronger
guns, you name it. However there’s still some things we can do with this setup.
First, have you linked your PSN ID to the Rockstar Social Club? There’s not a
lot of perks to this, but it does give you access to a free sawn-off shotgun,
which is useful at short range since it packs a good punch – much better than
the basic pistol. It’ll wear out it’s welcome soon enough, but we can get some
mileage from it. And, hey, it’s a free gun.
Next, you should have noticed a couple (re: several) of in-game e-mails. One is
about a treasure hunt. There’s a few guides across the net about this hunt, so
use one to complete it and your reward is a nice shiny six shooter revolver.
It’s a nice upgrade to your basic pistol and can even be used as a drive-by
weapon. You also get $250k for completing a small challenge with the new pistol.
Third, there’s another e-mail about a stone hatchet. This is a melee weapon, but
it has the ability to give you something similar to Trevor’s “Rampage” ability
from the single player when you get kills with it, and the more kills you chain
together, the longer your rampage lasts. This also comes with a small challenge
for another bonus $250k. That’s so far half a million for doing a couple of
challenges without buying anything in game.
Oh, and you can also run certain missions which have weapon pickups you can
keep. Denial of Service has an infinite supply of sticky bombs you can max out
on and keep, as well as Los Santos Connection, even if you haven’t unlocked them
yet at Ammunation. There may be a couple other missions as well. Additionally,
you should carry one of each weapon type (assault rifle, sub machine gun, etc)
so you can pick up the ammo any AI characters drop. You won't be able to keep
the weapons they drop themselves unless you've bought the weapon in question,
but it at least saves on your costs to a degree. Ammo gets expensive especially
when you’re starting out, and scavenging ammo off the AI is a great cost reducer
as you begin.
With all the DLC that has come out over the years, there are many guns available
at the start that under normal circumstances you’d have to wait to unlock as you
level. Some of these are great, like the Special Carbine Rifle and the Unholy
Hellbringer alien gun, but these are also very expensive and you don’t really
need them, honestly. By level 33 you’ll be using the AP Pistol almost
exclusively for drive-bys (and the revolver from the treasure hunt is quite
strong prior to this point) and close up fighting, and you will likely stick to
the basic Assault Rifle when it unlocks around level 22 or so. You might buy the
Assault Shotgun when it unlocks though, just because it can tear through a lot
of enemies, vehicles, I mean it can and will absolutely shred things – but
that’s not until level 37, so you’ve got quite a ways to go.
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Other ways to make money;
You can steal random cars off the street to sell to the chop shop (Los Santos
Customs) once every in-game day (48 minutes real time). You can’t sell any car
with a street value over $95k (so, all the super cars you find randomly spawned
can’t be saved or sold), which means the most you can make easily is $9,500/48
minutes. It’s not a lot, but it’s pretty easy money. Try to be on the look out
for Galivanter Ballers (nice SUV), Lampadati Felon/Felon GTs, Ubermacht
Oracle/Oracle XS, and even the Dubsta 4x4 still sells for $7,000 itself. There’s
some special timed vehicles that sell for more as well since they spawn with
some car mods on them already (Sandking 4x4s in the desert, certain “gang car”
models of the Tornado, Manana, Buccaneer, & Peyote, and some various but very
specific colour scheme cars at set locations during a set time of the day). I
won’t go into those because I find it’s much simpler, and usually faster, to
just keep an eye out for the Ballers and Felon GTs in regular play.
Even if you run out of ammo in your guns, you can always go to any convenience
store and aim the gun at the cashier to get them to pull money out of their
drawer to give you. Often this isn’t incredibly lucrative (anywhere from $1200 -
$2300), and you’ll get an escalating wanted level based on the number of stores
you’ve robbed in a short time frame (robbing the 20th consecutive store will
give you a five star level, while hitting one or two will give you just two
stars). Still, this is another fairly easy way to make money for relatively no
effort in just a few minutes time. Sometimes, store holdups are worth more money
during certain Rockstar events for a week, which makes these more attractive.
Don’t bother getting into free roam firefights. You’re just wasting ammo and
losing money on hospital costs. You’re not gaining anything whatsoever by
getting into free roam deathmatches. Stick to Passive Mode if you’re really
getting hammered by players, don’t return fire. Let them waste their ammo and
money on you. :)
Lastly, of course you can do contact missions, which open up around level five
as a new player. Depending on the mission giver, you can make up to $22.6k to a
low end of $14k. Contact mission payouts are scaled both to the number of
players participating (more players nets you a better payout) and length of time
to complete (longer completion time for more money, however this caps your pay
at about the fifteen minute mark). However, it’s best to complete missions at
the five to six minute mark for optimum pay efficiency, as the money you’d make
from the one fifteen minute mission is well more than made up by doing two
contact missions in ten minutes.
Missions Tip: When you're in cover, you can consume snacks to refill your health
without the animation of you eating them, making them very fast methods of
healing. And since the game doesn't distinguish between health and armour bar,
this makes these snacks and the extra carry armour equal all things considered.
The catch? Snacks are under $10 each, while super heavy armour (max armour bar)
is $500. Still, you can carry up to nine armour (ten by level 135) in addition
to the snacks, so this is still extra med kits for your person. Just try to use
the snacks first since they're much cheaper to replenish than armour. And, hey,
while you're replenishing snacks, you can hold up the clerk when you're done for
some "free" bonus cash too!
Gang Attacks for Martin Madrazo
Gang Attacks are free roam events open fairly shortly into your online career of
crime, and they are available in different locations at different times of the
day, and feature different attackers pending the location the gang attack is in.
A gang attack's location is notated by a glowing red circle on the minimap
(locations you've already defeated have a green check mark in the middle of
them, but you can keep doing them whenever you like). These will feature
anywhere from 15 - 30 attackers and all you have to do is kill them all. Once
completed, there are four crates scattered around the site, each containing some
ammo and $500. Plus you can pick up the ammo the attackers drop as well as
whatever pocket money they had on-hand. There's some good guns that drop here,
but remember you can't keep any gun you didn't buy first. These events are great
for the frugal-minded since they cost you nothing and provide target practice to
improve your shooting skill with and offer a way to refill your ammo for free,
plus offer some excess spending cash for just a few minutes of your time.
There's really no downside to them, honestly.
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The truth about CEO offices and Motorcycle Clubs;
Every player on the forums will tell you to buy a CEO office first and then an
import/export garage, doomsday facility, gunrunning bunker all to make money
fast. But first of all, these are not fast. Second, the investment you need to
make before you can even do anything with them is enormous. Just the cheapest
CEO office alone will set you back one mill, and about 2.5mill to add an
import/export garage to that! Then there’s the time you’ll spend sourcing
vehicles, and the cost of repairing the vehicles you source back to the garage,
and you’re looking at a very long time before you even break even, let alone
turn a profit on these huge investments.
In truth, CEO Offices do offer a lot of perks – the ability to spawn a Buzzard
right next to you practically on command (if you've purchased one from the
Warstock Cache & Carry site first though), or a motorcycle, or a vehicle, the
ability to instantly top off all your snacks (essentially like a med kit for
your person) whenever you visit the office, the eligibility to purchase a crate
warehouse or import/export garage for more earnings potential. These are great,
but these are so expensive. This is the culture Rockstar has cultivated, prime
capitalism. Buy, buy, buy...and with each property comes a higher daily utility
cost which requires you to put in more and more work just to cover your cost,
let alone make back your investment to these services. Which is fine...if you
play eight to twelve hours a day. Now, I don’t know about your situation, but as
a working adult I know I can’t do that. So, while a CEO Office running you
anywhere from one to four mill pending location of choice seems good, the truth
is if you don’t have a large amount of time to play, it’s typically more cost
efficient just to register as VIP status instead. This comes with the same perks
and costs you $0 (just maintain $50k banked cash, which is possible after
completing two contact missions, for the most part). The downside is that you
can only register as VIP for about four real time hours per day, but how long
are you really playing? See what I’m saying? Unless you’re chill with the game
all day, you get the same benefit and save at least a mill of cash. You can
still run the same VIP styled freeroam work like Headhunter, Executive Search,
Sightseer, but without all of the overhead cost, and the same cooldown timers.
Okay, so you can’t buy an import/export garage or crate warehouse without access
to the computer that comes with a CEO Office. And it’s true import/export can be
lucrative (crate warehouses can be, but it is very much a grind and I know I
won’t do them), but let’s look at the buy-in before you can make anything back
on those.
• A crate warehouse starts at $300k for a small and $1.1mill for a large and
come with their own daily utility costs. The only difference is the amount of
space each one has for holding crates. Crates cost money to source and can be
disrupted by other players in the lobby. Additionally, your crate sell missions
can also be disrupted potentially dropping your profit to $0 and giving you a
total loss. (Yes, there’s ways to get into a “solo public” lobby, and there’s
crews like CEOFriendly you can join solely for peaceful crates work, but this
guide will not be looking at special case scenarios as of present).
• An import/export garage starts at $1.6mill pending location and only goes
up from there. The optimum way to run import/export is to source 32 vehicles (at
which point you start getting duplicates with car #33 and on) so that you can
sell one top end rated car and then source that one top end car right back. In
the meantime, any damage accrued on the source missions will be repaired out of
your pocket, and it doesn’t take a lot to have a repair bill over $10k.
Additionally, even once you have the 32 cars, the most profit you can make per
sale is $80k, less damages acquired on the car. This has a 20 minute cooldown,
meaning you can generate a maximum revenue through import/export work of $240k
per real time hour, presuming this is all you do, and all your sales are
flawless with 0% damage. For the average player, this standard is not feasible
to keep up, so expect your average hourly cut to run anywhere from $180k - $200k
once you’ve factored source repairs and damage from sell missions in. Now
consider you’re already at a minimum of $2.5mill in the red before doing
anything, and your office plus garage will add sizable daily utility fees to
your day and...is it starting to lose it’s luster?
• Now, of course you could buy a Cargobob helicopter to help mitigate these
source costs (eventually), but depending on model that’s going to put you
further in the red by $1.7mill - $1.9mill, putting you at a net $4.2mill -
$4.4mill in the red. At this point you’re not going to see any real profit for a
long time, especially if you’re a part time player. Even a full time player will
put in a lot of hours before finally turning this from red to black. So, why
would you do this when you can just go VIP and do the Headhunters, contact
missions, or join other people’s heists and mission work instead? Don’t fall for
Rockstar’s sweet talk, all the “perks” are realistically a way to drain your
in-game bank to then say “oh, well I guess I can go buy a shark card to get this
last property/upgrade/weapon enhancement...”
So what about Motorcycle Clubs?
MC is just another flavor of CEO, first you buy a clubhouse for $250k (or more,
pending location). This lets you buy an upgrade to add a bike garage shop to it
where you can store up to ten bikes and even apply mods to them like a Los
Santos Customs. But how do you make money with this?
• Of course there’s Clubhouse Contracts, which are just different versions
of CEO work except that most of these need more than one player to start. So if
you’re like me and don’t have a regular crew of friends online, then most of
these won’t be worth anything for you.
• Biker businesses. So you have a clubhouse, now you buy any of five
different businesses (Coke, Meth, Weed, Cash, Documents) which run $800k at the
low end, to $1.8mill at the high end, pending location you want. Then you need
to upgrade these to improve production rate and efficiency of supply
utilization. These upgrades can cost near $1mill each...do you see what’s
happening here? You’re looking at $2mill to buy in to the ground floor and then
more time to steal supplies (don’t do this, it halts production while you’re
stealing) or buy full supplies for $75k per run. You're going to want to buy
supplies twice per sale ($150k in product). The reason I use these numbers is
because you're guaranteed to get single vehicle unit sales with this method,
which are far more ideal to getting the work done, since they're so slow,
vulnerable, and will have to be driven a far distance for maximum profit. If you
wanted to let your, in this case Coke factory max out (Coke business is the most
profitable, everything else pays out less which makes your bottomline worse),
it's capacity is just shy of $500k in value. But you'll have four vehicles to
deliver so don't do this unless you have friends helping.
• There’s no reason to sell a full load anyway though, no incentive bonus,
nothing – just more work, more vehicles, more opportunities to fail and/or get
griefed. And the sell missions are designed in such a way to set you up to fail,
for such small profit margin. Why would I, or anyone, actually invest into this?
The Nightclub
If you’re not investing into MC businesses or CEO Office, there’s no reason to
buy into a Nightclub as the revenue generated isn’t anywhere near enough to
sustain the purchase since all you’ll have is daily ticket sales (popularity).
This at max is $10k/in-game day against a club price at minimum of $1.2mill
(again more based on location). There’s no financial reason to do this. Now,
nightclubs do work very well to funnel your MC businesses into them to generate
true passive income...but by then you’re already so far in the red from the
clubhouse purchase, business purchase, nightclub purchase, nightclub production
upgrades, production staff costs. It’s a money sink designed to make your poor
investment businesses more profitable. And it does it’s job well...but why even
go into this, if you never allow yourself to make the poor mistake of buying
into biker stuff anyway?
Airfreight Hangar
This really isn’t worth a blurb because the work is so unprofitable. It’s like
they found a way to take the grind of CEO crates, and gave it the payout of
Nightclub popularity missions...it’s necessary if you want to unlock the trade
prices on certain aircraft, and it’s neat to turn Pegasus aircraft into personal
ones, but there’s no incentive to ever do this work after the trade prices are
unlocked. And if you want one of these aircraft, the hangar is the only place
you can store them. Nice paywall, Rockstar…
Arena War
Having never run Arena work, I can’t advise on this profitability based on
personal experiences. Gauging others’ experiences though, the profitability
seems to be the same as airfreight hangars...so I’d stay away.
Doomsday Facility
This makes no income on it’s own, but adds more expensive daily fees to your
utility charge. Doomsday Heists are strong money maker missions though, however
the difficulty is ramped up to insane levels with near “aimbot” AI, and
invisible, minigun toting badguys called “Juggernauts” with higher health than
normal. Additionally, while in the original heists you had plenty of space for
cover proportionate to the AI opposition, in Doomsday, the AI greatly outnumbers
you, has superior accuracy and range, and offers hardly any cover to compensate
you. Plus, some of the setup missions are done in freeroam which can be
negatively influenced by random players. However, there is a glitch that can be
done with Act 2 similar to the old glitch with the Pacific-Standard Bank Heist
to allow you and a friend to make a lot quickly...but this guide will not be
covering glitches of any sort. My take on this property is that the frustration
of Doomsday AI is not worth the purchase of it. Nope, not when I can just do VIP
work for no buy-in…however, there are many vehicles that have a cheaper cost to
purchase once you complete their corresponding Doomsday Heist mission, so if you
wanted to try those out...but with the exception of a few of the vehicles, none
of their discounts save more than the initial cost of a facility so unless you
want multiple of these vehicles, or want to do the "Act II Reset" glitch, I
can't in good faith recommend anyone to purchase this.
That wraps up all the options for “businesses”. And where does that bring us?
Right back to VIP work. Well, okay, there’s one last one we should cover.
The Gunrunning Bunker
So, the Bunker unlike the rest can be purchased and operated as VIP. It doesn’t
have a pay wall to get to it and make it profit persay, though the buy-in is
quite high. Pending location desired, you’re looking at a minimum of $900k up in
Paleto Bay and $3mill for the Farmhouse location. My preference is the Chumash
location, which is just under $2mill. Then you need the staff and production
upgrades for another $2mill total. Daily operation fees will run you $8.4k, or
$9.6k if you buy the security upgrade (you don’t need it unless you hang out in
public play lobbies all day). $4mill is a huuuuggggeeeeee investment though, and
the profitability of this will take a long time to reach. On the plus side,
there are some sweet weapon upgrades you can research but you can’t use them
unless you purchase the Mobile Operations Center with Weapons Workshop (or the
Terrorbyte, again with Weapons Workshop, but you need a Nightclub to buy this).
It’s probably not worth it over the efficiency we already have, but if you must
buy into a business, this is the one to go with as it has the fewest extraneous
purchases attached to this.
The Arcade & Casino Penthouse
So, first major edit to this guide is a couple of properties being added that we
need to discuss. That is the Casino Penthouse and Arcade. The Penthouse gives
you a premium casino membership which lets you gamble at the high roller tables
in the casino itself, but realistically is actually a worthless property that
makes you $0 dollars but adds $1k to your daily costs. You need this to do the
special Casino Missions from Agatha Baker which do pay out nicely (double,
actually) on the first time completed. There's also an armoured car you're given
at the end of this series of missions. That's pretty much all there is to the
Penthouse. If you don't buy the Penthouse, you can still purchase a general
Casino membership for $500 which allows you to spin the lucky wheel and try for
the weekly podium car. Either membership still gets just one spin per day
(that's a 24hr real time day, not a 48min in-game day).
The Arcade is a business used as a front for hosting the Casino Heist. On it's
own it is not profitable in the least as it can generate a maximum of
$5k/in-game day after you've bought all the arcade consoles for it (each console
costs you considerable money). It's very high cost for low return, though it is
"passive income" for what it's worth...just don't expect to make anywhere close
to your money back on it. Rather, if you want this, I'd suggest just getting the
building itself and just running your casino heist setups through it,since
that's the only real purpose for it existing. The casino heist is good, great
even, and there's a lot to say about it, but this isn't the thread for it.
Minesweeper_, over on the messageboards, actually has a great information thread
all about the heist, and they've played through it far more than I have, so they
are far better suited for speaking on it. The actual heist itself, and even the
setups with it, are really fun and I enjoy it a lot, and the maximum potential
take is $2.1mill - $2.3mill. Of course you have to split that with your crew but
still, you can make good money off this. It's just...the associated property is
so bad for the rest of our business portfolio, like a "waste" of our earned
resources. You might decide it's a fine purchase and that's OK; I'm happy
playing as a helper for other people's heists. I get the $, I get to experience
the setups and the mission, and I don't have to buy-in to an arcade. :)
One nice thing about the casino heist and setups is that they're all done in
free roam so there's no load screens to worry about. It can also be done in
invite-only lobbies so you can keep lame people away from spoiling your work.
Plus, everything except the finale itself can be done solo, and the finale only
needs a minimum of two actual players. Definitely try to join some of your
friends' setups and finales to decide if this is something you want to be able
to host yourself.
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Vehicle and Weapon Choices
So, one thing you miss out on by not buying any properties, is a garage. You
need one if you want to order any kind of fast sports or super car. But, do you
REALLY need one?
• You don’t need an apartment, which comes with a garage. It’s fluff to give
you a convenient place to change clothes (you can also do this at any clothing
store as well as any property with a living quarters), but the only game thing
they offer is a place to host the original heists. Heists require you to be at
least level twelve, and have to be done with four players. If you don’t have a
crew, you’re doing this with random players, which is very inconsistent to
straight up bad for your profitability of time spent. And even if you do have a
crew...you can make that money just by joining friends heists…
• If you’re not racing, do you need a super car? These are very high priced
and if you’re not racing with them, what purpose does it serve? You can get a
free car (indeed, if you followed my advice at the start you already have a
great Karin Sultan for getting around) off the streets. If you do race, you can
turn custom content off and set the car class to whatever you want, and everyone
will be on a more even playing field anyway…
• If you want a free option to increase your flying skill, the Dodo plane is
a good option that can also make water landings. It’s not fast, nor is it
armored, but it’s a free option to just fly around and grind that flying skill
up. edit: I misspoke in the first version of this guide, the Dodo is only free
for returning players, i.e. the ones transferring from last gen to current. I
can't in good faith recommend anyone spend GTA$ on a Dodo plane, so only acquire
it if it's free.
• Boats are worthless purchases. Waste of money, you don’t need one for
anything. Even if you did, the aforementioned Dodo can FUNCTION like a boat with
it’s water landing.
• The only clothing item I’d purchase is the Scuba Suit – the rest are
purely cosmetic options to play dress-up with your virtual avatar. The Scuba
Suit at least has function to swim underwater indefinitely, and is thus the
easiest way to max out your lung capacity (though you don’t need lung capacity
once you have a scuba suit, ironically).
Ammunation
When you walk into a gun store, the first thing you see is tons of options on
the wall and in the case and it can be overwhelming at first. Just remember you
don’t need all these and often you only use a couple different guns.
• The AP Pistol unlocks at level 33 and will straight up replace any other
pistol and SMG you have. It’s fast, it’s reload is quick, and it can hold a very
respectable number of rounds (32 with an extended clip). It’s not very good at
sustained firefights, but for quick skirmishes and drive-bys, it is king. Before
this level, the Six Shooter (Double Action Revolver) will definitely get the job
done for you, and you can obtain that from the treasure hunt in-game e-mail, for
$0.
• The Assault Shotgun is a great weapon when you’re up close with it’s fast
rate of fire and high damage. As a shotgun it’s range is weak and it’s reload is
slow, but with cover and around a lot of vehicles, it is a potent weapon. This
unlocks level 36 though. Worth noting you can get some free slugs (and a free
pump action shotgun if you wanted, every time you get in a regular police car.
You can’t keep this gun as you lobby jump though.
• The Assault Rifle is the bread and butter of much mission work with it’s
long range, and it’s pretty decent in midrange combat too. It’s shots are not as
powerful as the shotgun though, nor is it as fast as the AP Pistol, but it’s
range is unmatched here. Where some may suggest the Marksman Rifle instead, an
assault rifle can lock on while the marksman is a sniper rifle and goes into
“scope mode” rather than offering a lock on. It’s also a slower weapon than an
assault rifle, but if you play in first person mode you can avoid it’s recoil
completely. Personally, I wouldn’t use it without maxing shooting skill first
because any more than one shot will make it hard to maintain your focus (at
least it's hard for me to maintain my focus, I am a pretty slow shot). Personal
preference here though is the alien MG “Unholy Hellbringer”. It is a whopping
$450k, but it has no reload animation which makes it untouchable at sustained
fire, and it’s range is pretty close to an assault rifle’s. Save up for this
weapon, and never be disappointed again.
• If you bought into the Mobile Operations Center and Weapons Workshop, the
Heavy Sniper (unlocks at level 90) is a supreme choice with it’s explosive
rounds and thermal scope unlocks. But there is a lot of baggage and buy-in to
get to those. On it’s own, it’s a great gun, though it can’t have a suppressor
like the original Sniper Rifle (unlocks at level 20). Whether you want stealth
or not should determine your choice here, however note these are hard to use
effectively without your shooting skill being maxed or near max.
• Sticky bombs are the explosive of choice, and you can get a full set (and
keep them after the mission) during Denial of Service from Lester Crest. Never
buy sticky bombs as they’re $500 each and you can get a full set just starting
this mission, right next to the warehouse at the starting location.
• If you want a heavy weapon (to take down aircraft and the like) you can
get the Homing Launcher, but it’s $75k and $1k per shot, is slow, the lock-on
time is quite long, and only holds ten rounds. I like the Grenade Launcher, but
it can’t hit airborne targets for obvious reasons and it unlocks at level 60.
Personal preference though is the Minigun, but that doesn’t unlock until level
120. There’s the alien version (Widowmaker), but it’s $500k!! The rounds are a
lot cheaper for that, however, as compared to the Homing Launcher.
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In closing
I hope this guide helps you to save your money and only buy what is actually
necessary and get past all of the Rockstar shilling of shark cards and
inefficient properties. All it takes is a little willpower to recognize that
most content is fluff, and that when you take it away, there’s really not a lot
left to keep you playing. But at least you don’t have to buy the stuff to find
out. I wish I had all this knowledge when I first started in 2013, but hey at
least I can apply it on my new (current) character, and if I can help to educate
just one person to efficiently grow on this game, then this guide will have been
worth the time it took to type it up! Thank you for reading to the end of this
guide, and may your virtual funds continue to ever-grow.
~ 3drinks
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So is that all? What else can I really do on GTAOnline?
3drinks, you're pretty anti-everything in the game, are you telling me there's
no point to even buy this game? What's going on? So, alright, let's talk about
this. We play because we like to play, but we don't want to waste our $ on every
shiny thing Rockstar tries to "bait" our wallets with, and surely don't want to
buy a Shark Credit Card for anything. But we want to feel like we're progressing
through the game and building some kind of criminal empire for our character.
Well, let's look at some things we can save for in the future to work towards
creating a semblance of an empire. As a note, remember I speak as someone that
doesn't have 40+ hrs/wk to play the game, so making every large expenditure is
counter-productive. If you have more time to play, cool, great, awesome, but
this guide will still be speaking from the point-of-view of someone whom does
not.
So, we've decided that a CEO Office is not worth it, given we can achieve the
same level of benefits as VIP for free. We've also decided that, we don't really
want to run MC because the business costs are ridiculously high and the buy-in
is outrageous. but there's still a lot of perks we can get for ourselves as it
is. To start, we're going to buy a nightclub. This opens up daily popularity
money which while it isn't great, it's not the worst to do one popularity
mission/day to keep your payout at max. This is a pretty easy $10k/day. This
also opens up the Terrorbyte access and underground warehouse. The reason I
chose the warehouse is because the sell missions are better than any other
businesses, and it's stock accrual is entirely autonomous on your end. But I
digress, we're not doing warehouse stuff yet. The only upgrade you care about
here, is the staff upgrade so you're doing popularity stuff half as often for
the same payout. Another perk of the nightclub is it gives you a garage
(nightclub service entrance) which is a viable spot to have purchased vehicles
delivered to from the in-game internet. So if you wanted a fast car (like the
free Elegy RH8 for linking your social club account), or a tough and explosive
resistant Insurgent truck, you could finally upgrade your Sultan or whatever
starting car you got in the beginning. I recommend the Insurgent if you do want
to swap, but if you still have the Sultan, it won't hurt you. It's quite
reliable. Plus, you can make it into a super car at Benny's mod shop now that
you have a garage, if you're into customization. They're really expensive mods,
but they look cool.
Next, we're gonna purchase a Bunker. Bunkers do produce stock at a good rate for
sales, but we want to focus on research since there's a lot of sweet mark two
weapon upgrades we want. This means there's two upgrades to buy here -
production, and staff. This produces stock faster and, when we're ready to sell,
produces more stock per supply unit. The security upgrade is unnecessary as it
increases the time before getting raided from four hours to eight hours, but
simple switching lobbies before the raid will reset the timer too.
Coincidentally however, since you can only be VIP for four hours/day, that's
another reason why buying the security upgrade isn't necessary. You also don't
need to purchase a Mobile Operations Center, so put that out of your mind as you
can do the important stuff (mark two weapons) in the Terrorbyte (The Mobile
Operation Center is useful to turn certain Pegasus vehicles like the Insurgent
Pickup, Karin Technical, etc into personal vehicles, but you can get by just
fine with an unarmed Insurgent, if you even get an Insurgent at all). Note that
the bunker research will take a very long time unless you pay to fast track it.
Each project is $250k to fast track though so it's either a lot of money or a
lot of time. There's nothing you can really do about it, both options suck. But
the results are amazing so...
Once you have a bunker, now you will go back to the Nightclub and start doing
underground warehouse things. Your bunker is the only business you have, and the
warehouse comes with one technician, so he will start gathering "sporting goods"
(guns) automatically for you. Now is also a good time to purchase a Terrorbyte,
as you can run the VIP work which is easy and pays out just around $30k for a
few minutes of work. When upgrading the Terrorbyte, the only things that matter
is the vehicle and weapon workshop, and the panel that lets you start the work.
The drone is really expensive and slow, and while it does unlock two VIP works,
you're better off doing robbery in progress and the data theft missions anyway
since they all pay close to the same amount. The missile battery is cool in
theory but you can't fire it unless you're stationary in the nerve center, so
it's more fun than actually productive. It's totally skip-able.
Another thing about the nightclub and bunker (and airfreight hangar, really) is
that they can all be made into a base of operations and a place to call home.
This gives a place to spawn into any lobby as well as a place to change outfits.
You also can fit these locations with a gun locker, which lets you personalize
your gun loadout by hiding guns you don't use which can be useful. I'd only make
one of these my "home", since you can only spawn into one place at a time, and
typically I'd choose the nightclub for that since you'll spend more time here
than you would in a bunker or hangar. Additionally, the bunker only holds one
vehicle while the nightclub could hold more, if you buy more garage space (five
floors of ten cars each, even). I wouldn't now, but it's an option if you want
to collect cars.
The Oppressor(s).
These flying motorcycles are all the rage, allowing you a fast and nimble way to
cut across Los Santos in the air, can be called to your side in the MC menu (you
won't be using this because you're not buying a clubhouse), and are overall
quite useful. The Mk1 is like anh actual motorcycle that can propel into the air
and glide for short distances, but can only be outfitted for missiles at the
mobile operations center workshop. We're not going to use this though, because
the Terrorbyte gives us the Mk2 version always flies and can be fully modified
in the Terrorbyte that we want to buy anyway. You also save about $900k off the
original price of the Mk2 by doing five Terrorbyte VIP missions, which is very
simple. And, it's also stored right there in side the Terrorbyte for ease of use
and getting around. Once you have this truck and the flying bike, you will
rarely ever visit your club, unless you're launching a popularity mission or
selling stock. See why I advised you not to buy the living quarters in all your
properties?
Airfreight Hangar (again)
So, as I said before, the Hangar is a bad purchase because it's not profitable.
That hasn't changed, but it does have some tertiary uses. First, it's the only
way to store the newest combat aircraft, like the Akula and the Hunter, and it's
airfrieght missions unlock the cheaper prices on these aircraft. It's totally a
grind, but if you want these craft, you're gonna have to suck it up and buy a
hangar. However, there's one more use for this thing; if you own a hangar, you
can connect it to the nightclub and hire one more technician to source special
cargo (crates) for you. This makes your nightclub twice as lucrative as it was
when you just sourced sporting goods. These sources will take a long time to
accrue, but it's virtually free money while you're doing other things. The
hangar also has an upgrade that gives you a workshop to make any owned aircraft
into personal vehicles for you, rather than you needing to call Pegasus and
drive to a spawn point to use them. Imagine starting a mission and using the
"request personal vehicle" option to spawn your Hunter attack helicopter right
next to you. Pretty sweet yeah?
It's up to you what location you want. If you buy the Zancudo locations, you get
"low level clearance" into the base, meaning you no longer get a wanted level
for approaching. This by far gives you the easiest access to the P-996 Lazer
Jets, but these are also the most expensive, at nearly triple the cost of the
LSIA hangars (they range from 2.1mill - 2.6mill). The LSIA hangars are 1.0mill -
1.1mill for all the same perks, minus Zancudo clearance. It's up to you to
decide if Zancudo clearance is a thing you're interested in...
So, the hangar provides the same kind of stock for the nightclub as the CEO
warehouses provide, but the cheaper hangars are less than the cheapest office +
small warehouse. Cheapest office plus a large warehouse is close to the price of
a Zancudo hangar, and the office + warehouse will add more to your daily costs
than a hangar. You won't be doing hangar work though because it's not
profitable, while you could grind the warehouse crates, but many (myself
included) find the crate grind incredibly tedious. So for the cost, and that
reason, and since we don't need the CEO office perks as VIP, I'd put the edge to
the hangar, though it's close I guess.
Hangar $300-$1300
- $300 Base cost
- $50 per aircraft stored (up to twenty)
Executive Office $800
- $500 Office
- $300 Assistant Salary (charged separately from utility fees)
Special Cargo Warehouse (small) $50
Special Cargo Warehouse (medium) $100
Special Cargo Warehouse (large) $200
For more info on daily costs, check out this brilliant guide by user halapeno on
the message boards here:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/805602-grand-theft-auto-online/78278434
For more info on the casino heist, check out this wonderful guide by
Minesweeper_ on the message boards here:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/805602-grand-theft-auto-online/78250798
