GTA 6 Complete Guide Community Picks: Top Recommendations

I spent way too many hours in GTA V doing things wrong.

tbh I wish someone had told me the stock market thing before I was already 60 hours in. You know the trick, right? Before any mission where you assassinate a CEO or blow up a competitor's stuff, dump everything into the rival stock. Mission ends, wait 48 in-game hours, sell at the spike. It's that simple and I still missed it on my first playthrough.

And the money difference is kinda staggering. People who skip the market end up way poorer by endgame. Not like a little bit. Like, owning-every-property versus scraping-by-with-two kind of difference.

But here's where it gets tricky. Not sure about this but I think Rockstar might change how the economy works in GTA 6. They've had years to watch how players exploited GTA V's systems. So maybe don't build your whole strategy around market manipulation just yet.

So what actually matters when you start?

Honestly, rushing the story until both protagonists are active. Dual-character switching isn't just a gimmick, it opens up passive income and cuts down on travel time. Nobody wants to drive across the map for 5 minutes every time they need to switch mission chains.

Don't buy cosmetics early. I've found this is the trap that gets everyone. You see a cool paint job, think "eh it's only a few grand," and suddenly 3 hours later you're grinding for a business purchase wondering where your money went.

Random events on the minimap. Do them immediately. Rockstar has this annoying habit of making them time-sensitive and some of the best gear only drops from strangers who show up during specific chapters. Miss it and you're out of luck.

Oh and the tutorial missions. They're loaded with achievements you can't go back for without a full restart. Rockstar loves doing this.

For combat, I've found that heavy armor plus shotgun rush beats careful cover-shooting in most indoor fights. Everyone plays it safe peeking from behind walls but honestly the enemy accuracy penalty against moving targets up close is huge in Rockstar's engine. Feels reckless but it works.

Vehicle chases. Don't focus on the target vehicle. Focus on the road like 200 meters ahead. The AI pathfinding gets predictable once you learn to read the minimap curves and you'll intercept naturally instead of tailing forever. Saves so much frustration.

Stealth is weird in these games. The enemy AI has this reaction window where they investigate noise for a few seconds before actually spotting you. Throw something at a surface opposite your path and you've got your traversal window right there.

But honestly the biggest thing is knowing when to abandon the intended approach completely. Rockstar designs multiple valid paths through missions and the obvious one is rarely the fastest. Sometimes you just gotta try something stupid and see if it works.

Collectibles. Oh man. I spent like 12 hours in GTA V hunting these without any system and probably half that time was backtracking through areas I'd already cleared. Dumb.

My advice? wait until you have a helicopter before touching anything above ground level. Climbing buildings manually takes forever. Print out a zone map, divide it into sectors, do one sector completely before moving on. Underwater stuff dead last, after you're sure no story mission gives you better diving gear.

And here's something most people miss. Some collectibles only spawn at specific times or weather. If you can't find the last one in a sector, advance the clock to the opposite time and try again before assuming your map is wrong.

Heists. Everyone overcomplicates these.

Pick crew based on stats, not cut percentage. A high-skill driver gives you way more escape time. The cheaper guy taking a smaller cut gets you killed 3 times before you clear it. Pay the premium, clear it once, your effective hourly earnings go up.

Loud and fast beats stealth like 80% of the time if you can shoot. But only if you bought heavy armor and explosives before triggering the heist. The prep missions are literally there so you can stock up without burning heist budget.

For the actual prep: max heavy armor, at least 2 explosive types, the fastest vehicle not the cheapest, and a gunman with stats at 80% or above. The extra cost is almost always less than one failed attempt's lost take.

100% completion. Nobody talks about how miserable this is if you do it wrong.

Stranger missions count. Hobbies count. Random events. But stuff like golf and tennis was required in GTA V and most people didn't find out until hour 80 when they were already burned out. Do those in small chunks throughout, not in one awful 6-hour grind at the end.

And underwater exploration and taxi driving historically did NOT count toward completion percentage. Different checklists for achievements vs completion percentage. Don't mix them up.

If you're going for 100%, keep a physical notebook. Not an app. Something about writing it down makes it stick better. Or maybe I'm just old...