GTA Online Beginners Guide and Tips & Tricks for Newbies

Welcome to San Andreas where criminals are made their best!

Upon launch, you had to own a full copy of GTA V in order to play online as the online option was part of the main game. Within recent years this has changed and you can now purchase it as a separate standalone component from STEAM, EPIC and the likes for a greatly reduced price. 

That being said, the online aspect of the game is where Rockstar really adds the newest, latest and greatest content so by not playing online you are virtually limited only to the base game with the three protagonist in story mode and the assets that were released with the game plus a few minor additions to the in-game store and additional game tweaks and patches. All the latest vehicles, map additions, add-on and game modes etc. are part of only GTA Online, making it virtually a totally different game all together that utilizes the same map of the story mode game and adds a ton of features and assets to it. So let's get started felons!

The game starts you off with the character builder where you will have the chance to make your personal online character by choosing from a variety of detailed options where you can more or less create almost any facial look you want. The tools available are amongst best to date for character creation as far as facial features go. 

You cannot really do much with the body as the game selects a default male and female body depending on your gender preference. Apparel, makeup, hair, accessories and skin features can however be altered to a wide extent. After this the game puts your character through a cut-scene in an airplane where you land in "LSIA (Airport in game)" and you meet a character called 'Lamar' who introduces you to "Los Santos" and the wider "San Andreas" and gets you started.

The GTA Online Career Builder is a new feature available to players on the latest generation of consoles. With this option, you'll receive a sum of GTA$4,000,000 in your online account to get yourself set up with property, vehicles and weapons, so you can get started without a grind to earn that cash. When starting a new character or overwriting a profile, players will be allowed to choose from four different criminal career paths:

• Biker 
• Executive
• Gunrunner
• Nightclub Owner

Each of these paths will come with the associate start-up infrastructure like properties, vehicles and weapons pertinent to that career and is designed to streamline the process in your chosen path. Rockstar says that the career builder can only be experienced once with the 4 million in cash and you will not be able to repeat the process for a new character again. Furthermore it is only available on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of GTA Online. Simply put you have one chance per registered account to star fresh and so there is no deleting and restarting to get another $4 million. 

Those on PC unfortunately do not have this facility to date and will have to enter the grind or buy Shark Cards from Rockstar to get money, as you will soon realize that nothing in GTA Online is cheap! and it can be a daunting task these days to start from scratch. Being a PC player myself, I built my criminal enterprise in the game from scratch; the only free thing being a random high level apartment which was chosen for me by the game. Thankful enough this was a requirement to get started with the "L (Lester)" missions which take place very early in the game and charts the course for getting into heists and building your career in the game.

As for the PC gamer being one myself, I can tell you it will be challenging at first. When you are thrown into a lobby filled with high level players flying around on their state-of-the-art bike and car or driving in a weaponized vehicle shooting missiles indiscriminately at others players who own nothing more than a stolen rally car from a parking lot you stored in your garage only to realize it can be lost when destroyed if you do not visit a "LS Customs" and add insurance to it, which on day one of playing you may not even have!. Fear not, just persevere and follow these simple tips for climbing the corporate underworld ladder as quickly as possible:

1. Take advantages of contact mission, especially G / Mz / and S marked on map. Keep checking every Thursday on Rockstar's "Newswire" site for opportunities when these missions will be offered with X2 or even X3 $payouts and RP. Doing this will increase your RP and hence move your level higher much faster and of course reward you with more $ faster.

2. Try not to initialize your own contact mission by selecting it from the game menu. Instead try to drive to the location and join and existing one. You may still be unlucky to be the first or only one when the game loads you into it but you can always exit and make a block and try again until you get an instance with players. This will save a lot of time in waiting to populate lobbies.

3. Try to befriend high-level players when doing contact missions. This is a good way to meet 'decent' ones as these contact missions only have at max 4-6 players in a full session. This can be done through the game chat (pressing T or Y on keyboard) and typing or if you have voice enabled in your game you can see if they respond friendly in that way too.

4. When online try to join these high-level players you've befriended in their sessions from your social club menu instead of loading into online and being placed in a random one. This helps you find them faster while they are doing events and missions and can lead to you becoming part of their MC club or Organization and doing Heists setups with them. You will learn a lot like this as I did in my early days of playing. You get familiar with the game's core heists and their setups.

5. Don't be afraid to accept invites on your game phone when they pop up to join heists setups and finales. Sadly I was one who initially thought I wold be keeping back more experienced players and I didn't for a little while. This many times throws you straight into say a Casino heist finale which I found myself in a lot. This is a major heist from 'Lester' and sometimes high-level players with lots of $ just want to play for fun and they give a generous percentage of the cut if its just you two out of four. Of course its even better if your friend is one of these players in which case you can ask for a bigger cut and they would show some empathy, hopefully. Stand your ground and try to follow what the leader says if you aren't friends that way avoiding them abandoning the heist or throwing negative remarks. After all beggars can't be choosers.

6. Mostly obvious but worth mentioning. Get your high-level friends when online and free, to help you do your core missions. Some are quite generous and will help you through otherwise very hard parts with their advanced arsenal of weapons and prior knowledge of what to expect. Take part in these core setups and finales of other players too from your phone notifications so that you can have an idea of what to expect and even if the mission gets abandoned you might have had at least one shot at it before doing your own. You can message friends via social club.

7. Try to save money! It's a game and we're tempted to use $ to reward ourselves at the slightest temptation. Sounds a bit counter productive for a game but one such as this you will soon see that it's rewarding when you have say 2 million to drop behind a nightclub after a couple of contact missions and a few heist finales rather than regret you spend it on say a fancy sports car that will only bring pleasure for short bursts. The nightclub can earn you passive income to buy that car a little while after so you wont have to labor to much as before, Simple business sense! right.

8. Last but not least don't give up. Sometimes its hard to play with strangers online and getting good people to play with you is really hard especially in a big game of this nature. Socials like Discord can help in this regard where you can find like-minded people on servers and befriend them then meet up in game as friends to play. Keep at it and sooner or later you'll be rewarded. Remember time is money in the financial realm and GTA Online too!