During the Independence Day special (and weekend) I hit the Rank 100 milestone. A lot was going on at that time, including the Star Wars Battlefront Alpha (awesome!) and Part One of the Ill Gotten Gains DLC for GTA Online. Rockstar also did an Independence Day Celebration special, with fireworks, events, and special vehicle deals.
I couldn’t resist the temptation to get the Liberator Monster Truck. It is a Pegasus vehicle, so you can’t keep it in your garage or customize it. The Sovereign motorcycle was also available. Neither one is available normally. I got one of those too. It isn’t fast enough for racing but it is fun to drive it around. It can be customized, but you can’t change its special paint.
I passed Rank 110 the next week (July 10, 2015). Part Two of the Ill Gotten Gains DLCs came out as well. The two new DLCs add some new weapons and new vehicles, including the most expensive ones yet in the game. The two new Supercars are pretty evenly matched, and round out the category well, giving the Zentorno and Entity XF a run for the money. The Progen T20 is a very high performance car, with a unique speed-controlled spoiler. The Pegassi Osiris has very cool gull wing doors. Both also look very nice. They also are the current top highest price cars, in the $2 Million range. This gives them a special place as the “don’t blow me up, or else” cars, because the insurance costs the offending enemy about $25K if they destroy them.
Now, I dropped about $1 Million on vehicles for the Independence Day Special, including the red, white, and blue tire smokes, so coming up with another couple million for these cars isn’t easy. Fortunately, there are still some good ways to make lots of money quickly in the game. I’ve covered some of the basic ones before — selling cars and doing the Daily Objectives — but there are a few other things which are pretty easy to do.
I got my $500K 28 day bonus for the Daily Objectives, and that is pretty nice. Of the things to do in the game, these are pretty easy, pay well, and also give good RP to help you rank up faster. While some of the tasks are harder than others, all are possible to do within an hour or two of playtime, especially with friends online.
Cool thing happened, which may help some of you. I missed a day playing, but when I got on GTA the next time and did my Daily Objectives, I got the $100K weekly bonus. I thought I’d noticed that before, but now I’m sure that it only counts days that you actually play the game. So if circumstances stop you from playing for a while, you will keep your consecutive days streak going as long as you do the objectives on any day you actually play.
Aircraft Takedown is a free roam task set by Trevor, and pays extremely well ($30K once you’ve done them ten times). It is shared by all players in the world, but often you have no competition for the target and they can be taken out quickly if you have the right tools.
What are the right tools? The Homing Rockets can do the job, but against the light airplanes you often need several to get a kill. You may need to back it up with machine gun or sniper rifle fire. The easiest way is to use armed vehicles. The Buzzard Attack Chopper or any military jet (you can steal one if needed) are good choices. You’ll need to reach Rank 42 to have these reliably, but it is possible to steal armed helicopters from the various heliports in the game, as well as any airfield.
The pay for these is so good that it is always worth trying for if you have a chance. There are two related target jobs offered in free mode: Destroy Vehicle and Kill Target. These pay a few thousand each, and don’t have the progressive payout increase that the aircraft targets get. But you often can find the targets within a short distance of your location, and you only need the usual ground combat weapons to do the job. Any gun, and perhaps a grenade or sticky bomb to destroy the vehicle. If you’re being cheap, you can drive it into water, use an armed vehicle with its weapons (which can make these jobs even easier), or just shoot and crash the thing after you steal it.
Distract Cops is another free mode job offered by Lester, and it pays pretty well — $10K if you are in the area the whole five minutes alone. You will get wanted stars, progressing all the way to five stars if you stay in from the start, so be prepared to evade the cops or die. Possibly multiple deaths, as especially at lower ranks it can be hard to cope with them. Even so, the pay is just so good you can afford the expenses. It is often practical to simply drive fast through the area and do your best to avoid engaging the cops, unless you can’t escape without shooting. This will delay the increase in wanted level. Planning an escape route afterwards is important, especially if you are using your own vehicle. If you die to close to your car, it will be impounded, requiring a trip to the impound lot later to get it back.
All the above require rank 15 to unlock, just like Daily Objectives. Reaching that rank makes it much easier to continue to rank up fast and make more money. Fortunately, it doesn’t really take very much playtime to reach that point — you get Rank 5 just from doing the introductory online missions, which I recommend.
Hitting an Armored Truck is another way to make extra money. You need to get to the truck, usually shoot the driver, then get out and open the truck’s rear door to get the money. A Sticky Bomb will easily blow it open, but may also set off nearby vehicles and blow up the truck (and money) too. You can shoot it open with a heavy gun like a shotgun or sniper. The cops will go after you, but the payout of $2K-$10K isn’t bad for a very quick mission.
Speaking of missions, Contact Missions are both a good way to make quick money and RP, but are also a good way to play cooperatively with friends – and get even more bonus money. As you rank up, more missions will become available, but you can — as with all jobs — join someone else’s mission and play. If you can’t find one you like, you can call up one of the job providing NPCs and request one from them. While some are very difficult to pull off, and others can’t even succeed without two or more good players, many can be run solo if you can’t find cooperative players to join you. They pay very well, more than $20K for a long mission, especially on Hard difficulty.
Last of course, never forget just doing jobs of all types and playing the game to make money. The idea is to do things which are fun, and get your money and rank as a nice bonus while doing so.
