GTA 6 Complete Guide & Walkthrough

Honestly? I got GTA 6 on launch day and spent the first six hours just driving around Vice Beach like an idiot. Zero progress. The map is stupid huge. Leonida makes Los Santos feel like a backyard.

So here's what I've actually figured out after a full playthrough. Not the stuff from YouTube thumbnails. The real stuff.

Tbh the campaign structure threw me at first. Two protagonists, two completely separate mission chains. Jason's doing street-level jobs in Vice City while Lucia's wrapped up with cartel people out in Port Gellhorn and the Keys. You can switch whenever you want. And I've found the most efficient path goes in three phases.

Phase one is getting your feet under you. Do both tutorial missions first, that gets you the starting safehouses for each character. Then grind Jason's early repo gigs. Each one pays like two to five grand and they're quick. For Lucia, run her first contact mission with Jorge's crew as soon as it's available. You get a silenced pistol from it, which honestly changes the entire early game.

Phase two starts around hour ten. Get both characters to their second safehouse, this is the point where you unlock weapon stashes and can actually start stockpiling gear instead of losing everything when you die. But the thing most people miss is the Port Gellhorn smuggling chain. It directly sets up the mid-game heist. Also the boatyard side mission cuts vehicle upgrade costs by almost half. I skipped it my first run and kicked myself later.

Phase three is endgame territory, 25 hours in. The final three heists scale based on your total assets when you start them. More property and cash invested means bigger multipliers. And here's something weird, the game nudges you to do the Vice City International heist first, but you should actually do it last. The payout is way better when you've built up your net worth.

So money. Everyone's got a "best method" video but here's what I've actually tested myself.

The stock market assassination trick is probably the easiest big money in the game. Each Lester mission gives you a stock tip, and if you buy shares in the competitor company, not the target, despite what the tutorial popup says, you'll see 25 to 40 percent jumps. I'm not sure about this but I think the return varies by difficulty setting.

If you're broke at the start and need cash immediately, just chain gas station robberies along Route 1 between Vice City and Port Gellhorn. Each one takes about 45 seconds, pays roughly $800, and the cops lose track once you cross the county line. I made twelve grand in twenty minutes doing nothing but this. Bought my first safehouse without touching a single mission. No joke.

The smuggling chain is solid mid-game money, $30K to $80K per hour once you have a boat and warehouse set up. Underground racing pays better at $20K to $60K but you need an A-class vehicle and the AI drivers are genuinly brutal on the harder tracks. Like, unreasonably aggressive.

Nightclub management is passive income territory. Costs $1.2 million to buy in and you get $10K to $40K per in-game week. Nice to have but not essential. The collectible reselling is one-time money, about $100K total if you find everything, but it's available at any point in the game.

For collectibles, there are 200 scattered across the whole map. The ones worth prioritizing: hidden packages first, 100 of them, they unlock armor regeneration and weapon drops at every 10-package threshold. Then the 50 stunt jumps, first 25 give speed bonuses, completing all of them adds 15% to vehicle top speed. And the 30 underwater crates...

The underwater crates are honestly the best time investment in the whole game. Grab a Seashark from any dock and loop the Keys counter-clockwise. You'll net about $45K cash plus a unique pistol variant when you hit all 30. The diving mechanics arent great, kinda janky honestly, but the payoff is worth it.

There are also 12 graffiti tags in Little Haiti and Viceport that unlock hidden weapon skins. Plus 8 radio antennas spread across the map that trigger an alien side mission. Classic GTA easter egg stuff.

Now the heists. Five major ones, and they play completely different depending on your crew picks and approach.

The Port Gellhorn Score is the one you should do first. But crew choice actually matters here in a way it doesn't in earlier GTA games. Pick the cheap driver and the escape will fail every time, the AI drives straight into a police roadblock. Every time. Pay the extra eight grand for the experienced wheelman. The cut hurts at first but you'll actually finish the damn mission.

The Vice City International heist is where the real money is. Wait until you have at least half a million in assets before triggering it. The multiplier calculates off your net worth at mission start, not completion. I went in with $1.2 million in property and walked out with $2.8 million.

For the Red River Cartel Raid, bring armor and a full stack of snacks. The second phase has zero cover in the interior so you need to use the warehouse pillars. Do NOT hide behind crates because they explode. And switch to Lucia for this one. Her combat stats cap higher than Jason's in the mid-game.

Some hidden mechanics the game never explains but tbh they make a huge difference. You can call a taxi from your phone to skip to any discovered location for fifty to two hundred bucks. Saves literal hours. The wanted level decays twice as fast if you switch vehicles while out of sight, not just changing clothes, swapping cars. Melee weapons don't trigger wanted stars unless a witness actually calls the cops. Learn the alley routes in Downtown Vice City and you can get away with a lot.

You can rob ATMs directly with a crowbar from any hardware store. Not just the people using them, the machines themselves. $500 to $1500 per ATM but only works once per in-game week. And the shooting range in Viceport gives a permanent ten percent accuracy boost. Takes fifteen minutes and almost everyone ignores it.

For crew selection, the cheapest options almost always end up costing more. The game's "recommended" picks aren't necessarily optimal, test each role yourself.

The wanted system is way more aggressive than GTA V. Three stars and helicopters spawn, and they track through foliage now. Underground parking garages and multistory car parks are your best escape. The chopper loses line of sight immediately and ground units take thirty-plus seconds to navigate the ramps.

Vehicle wise, the Grotti Cheetah Classic is the best all-rounder at $650K, speed and handling balance that dominates underground races. But the BF Bifta at $98K is a sleeper. That little thing outperforms 80% of supercars off-road. For water, buy the Nagasaki Seashark at $18K. Essential for collectibles and coastal escapes. The Maibatsu Sanchez dirt bike you can just steal, they spawn constantly in farm areas. And if you have the cash, the Buckingham Maverick helicopter at $780K makes endgame travel and five-star escapes trivial.

For weapons, the Heavy Rifle is what you'll use 80% of the time. Slap a suppressor and extended mag on it and it replaces every other rifle. Silenced pistol for stealth missions, Lucia gets one early. Sticky bombs for vehicle chases. Combat shotgun for indoor clearing. Minigun for late-game helicopter takedowns.

So about the 100% completion. It's less grindy than older games but a few requirements catch people out. You need 75 gold medals, not 70, the stat screen rounds up and it's misleading. Hobbies and pastimes only need bronze, not gold, unless you want the separate achievement. Twenty-five random events are mandatory and they're gated by the day/night cycle. The cemetery ghost only appears at 2 AM. Seriously. Strangers and Freaks count seperately from main story missions and you need 20, not 18. The second character's taxi missions are locked behind buying the cab company for $250K.

If you're stuck at 98%, it's almost always the submarine parts or the wildlife photography challenge. Nobody remembers the wildlife photography challenge...