How to set creation file time on MacOS X
Recently, I downloaded a bunch of mp4 videos from my PS4 to create some longer form videos for YouTube with iMovie. Unfortunately, the files copied from the PS4 did not retain the original creation date and time. I was bummed because iMovie uses the creation date to sort the video clips stored in its import library.
I’m pretty sure that the PS4 stores this information with the file in the BSD operating system used on the PS4. For whatever reason, this information is lost and is not retained when copying these video files to a USB drive.
Instead, the PS4 creates the files using the current date and time of when they were copied to USB. However, the filename does includes the date and time of the PS4’s original file creation date. All is not lost. For example, one of the files is named “Grand Theft Auto V_20231021102822.mp4.” The 20231021102822 is the file’s original creation date, but it’s embedded in the filename. This is a pain in the ass, especially when you have a lot of these files and you need to depend on sorting the files by creation date.
If you’re using Linux, some of this may apply with touch, but some may not. For example, it may not be possible to set the birth time or btime in Linux. Then again, you won’t be using iMovie on Linux, so you may not encounter the same sorting problems as when using iMovie. On Linux, you’re likely to be using ShotCut. And yes, ShotCut is available for MacOS X.
Let’s explore recovering and setting the original creation date and time for these imported PS4 video files when using a Mac.
Before Getting Started / Liability Waiver / Assumption of Risk
This is a relatively deep dive tutorial and is designed for intermediate to experienced users who are comfortable running command line tools in UNIX, Linux and MacOS X. This article also expects that you are at least somewhat experienced and familiar with writing Bash shell scripts. While every care has been taken to ensure these instructions are fully accurate at the time of authorship, risk is always a possibility when running commands. Make sure you know what you’re doing and always proceed with caution when performing any shell commands.
Assumption of Risk: Should you follow any instructions provided in this tutorial, you do so at your own risk. This author and the Randocity blog holds no responsibility for how you use and/or misuse the information provided herein NOR does this author or Randocity hold any liability over any damage that may result directly or indirectly from this article’s included information. This information is provided to you AS IS. You assume all risks herein.
By proceeding with reading the remainder of this article, you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree with these terms, then navigate away NOW and go find something else to do.
Recovering Dates and Times on Files
There are two primary date/times stored as metadata with each file: creation date and last modified date. While it’s easy to set the last modification date using the ‘touch‘ command, this same command cannot be used to set the file’s creation time. Pity.
That left me looking for alternatives. If you have installed the command line development tools from Mac OS’s Xcode, there are a couple of handy command line (CLI) tools available to help with this date-setting task. These two tools are getfileinfo and setfile. Unfortunately, it seems that while the commands do get installed with Xcode, the manual pages (man pages) do not get installed. Thus, you can’t easily see or find the parameter usage of the command.
I had to refer to searching Google for the man pages for these two. Here’s the man page for getfileinfo. Here is the man page for setfile. These two commands will help get you started. If you don’t have these commands installed, you’ll need to install the Xcode command line tools.
First Step
Setting the last modification time from the above filename supplied is relatively easy by extracting the filename’s included datecode, slightly modifying it and feeding it back into the command ‘touch‘ to set the last modification date onto the file. Here’s a shell script which does just this on all files in the current directory:
#!/bin/bash
#
# setmodificationdate.sh
# FILE: "Grand Theft Auto V_20231021102822.mp4"
# DATECODE EXAMPLE: 20231021102822 => 202310211028.22
# Set IFS delimiter to EOL marker to ignore whitespace in filenames
IFS="
"
# Loop through files in current directory and update each file's last modification
# time to ${DATECODE}.${DATESS} using touch -mt [date]
for i in `ls`
do
FILE=$i
DATECODE=`echo "${FILE}" | awk '{print $4}' | awk -F "_" '{print $2}' | cut -c 1-12`
DATESS=`echo "${FILE}" | awk '{print $4}' | awk -F "_" '{print $2}' | cut -c 13-14`
# The touch command requires the date format to be YYYYMMDDHHMM.SS. Some
# conversion is required.
if [ $DATECODE ]; then
touch -mt ${DATECODE}.${DATESS} "$FILE"
echo $FILE ${DATECODE}.${DATESS} done
fi
done
The reason it’s important to update the files using the touch command first is that we’ll later use the getfileinfo command on these updated files to extract the modification date set with touch, making it easier to extract the date format which is used by the setfile command. Otherwise, if we don’t do this, we’ll have to spend a boatload of time reformatting that 20231021102822 string into the string format required by setfile. No, thanks.
Because I’m generally lazy when I see other easier formatting alternatives, I don’t wish to spend a full day of shell scripting on reformatting strings when I don’t have to. Since both the last modification and creation dates should be set identically, using two different commands is the easiest way to get these files back to their original dates.
Second Step
After having updated the last modification date of each of the video files using ‘touch‘, we’re halfway there. The other half is updating the creation date using the ‘setfile‘ command. Right now, even though the modification date is updated, the creation date is still set to the date and time when the file was copied from the PS4 onto the USB drive. I’m still at a loss why PS4’s Capture app does this. No reason to dwell on stupidity from Sony. Let’s move on.
If you would like to see the current creation date on the files, check it with following command:
$ ls -lhU -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 334M Oct 21 20:10 Grand Theft Auto V_20220826114603_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 452M Oct 21 20:05 Grand Theft Auto V_20220918194930_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 390M Oct 21 20:04 Grand Theft Auto V_20220922235359_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 398M Oct 21 20:04 Grand Theft Auto V_20221002025349_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 347M Oct 21 20:03 Grand Theft Auto V_20221007034124_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 389M Oct 21 20:03 Grand Theft Auto V_20221013095807_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 1.3G Oct 21 20:00 Grand Theft Auto V_20221022131151_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 342M Oct 21 20:00 Grand Theft Auto V_20221113174109_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 55M Oct 21 20:00 Grand Theft Auto V_20221124014001_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 389M Oct 21 19:59 Grand Theft Auto V_20221211111225_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 288M Oct 21 19:59 Grand Theft Auto V_20221213064150_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 419M Oct 21 19:58 Grand Theft Auto V_20221223001116_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 414M Oct 21 19:58 Grand Theft Auto V_20221230055654_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 77M Oct 21 19:57 Grand Theft Auto V_20230108204052_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 427M Oct 21 19:57 Grand Theft Auto V_20230108210502_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 133M Oct 21 19:57 Grand Theft Auto V_20230114165648_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 471M Oct 21 19:56 Grand Theft Auto V_20230205042420_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 441M Oct 21 19:55 Grand Theft Auto V_20230222025805_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 424M Oct 21 19:54 Grand Theft Auto V_20230227022823_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 373M Oct 21 19:54 Grand Theft Auto V_20230307124853_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 420M Oct 21 19:53 Grand Theft Auto V_20230311090033_1.mp4
To see the last modification time set from above touch command, use the following:
$ ls -lh -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 334M Aug 26 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20220826114603_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 452M Sep 18 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20220918194930_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 390M Sep 22 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20220922235359_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 398M Oct 2 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221002025349_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 347M Oct 7 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221007034124_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 389M Oct 13 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221013095807_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 1.3G Oct 22 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221022131151_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 342M Nov 13 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221113174109_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 55M Nov 24 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221124014001_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 389M Dec 11 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221211111225_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 288M Dec 13 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221213064150_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 419M Dec 23 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221223001116_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 414M Dec 30 2022 Grand Theft Auto V_20221230055654_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 77M Jan 8 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230108204052_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 427M Jan 8 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230108210502_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 133M Jan 14 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230114165648_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 471M Feb 5 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230205042420_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 441M Feb 22 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230222025805_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 424M Feb 27 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230227022823_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 373M Mar 7 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230307124853_1.mp4 -rwxrwxrwx 1 owner staff 420M Mar 11 2023 Grand Theft Auto V_20230311090033_1.mp4
Note that once a file’s date is considered “too old”, the ls command no longer shows the time of the file, only the “MM DD YYYY” date. The time is still there on the file, but it’s simply not shown. With ls, this will have to do.
Extracting the Date for Setfile
To extract the date string format needed for setfile, we’ll use the getfileinfo command on the now touched files. That’s done with the following:
$ getfileinfo -m "Grand Theft Auto V_20231021102822.mp4" 10/21/2023 10:28:22
The getfileinfo -m command returns the last modified date string in the date string format “10/21/2023 10:28:22”, which is a properly formatted string to immediately use with setfile -d. Thankfully, we just set this date on the file above. This output string value from getfileinfo should match the date value in the filename. If the date value doesn’t match, the touch command above might not have worked correctly.
To set the creation date on the file, we will use the following:
$ setfile -d "10/21/2023 10:28:22" "Grand Theft Auto V_20231021102822.mp4"
The -d option is used to set the creation date on the file. This command only changes one file, though. Not very helpful since we’re needing to update a bunch of files all at once. To do this, we’ll need a shell script for batch changes.
#!/bin/bash
#
# setcreationdate.sh
# Set field separator to EOL marker to ignore whitespace in filenames
IFS="
"
# Loop through files in current directory
for i in `ls`
do
FILE=$i
# Extract properly formatted creation date using getfileinfo
FCREATEDATE=`getfileinfo -m ${FILE}`
# Update creation date using setfile with date extracted from getfileinfo
# above, stored in FCREATEDATE
setfile -d "${FCREATEDATE}" "${FILE}"
echo ${FILE} done
done
Both of these shell scripts have been tested and worked perfectly to update the creation and modification dates on all of my PS4 video files back to their original dates recorded.
How do I use the scripts?
To use the above scripts, simply copy and paste them into your favorite MacOS X editor such as ‘vi’ or TextEdit, then save each script to whatever name you like. I named them setmodificationdate.sh and setcreationdate.sh, respectively. You can name them however you like. To make the script executable, do this with the following command:
$ chmod 755 scriptname.sh
Do these scripts work with vFAT formatted drives?
Yes, they do. These tools will work with vFAT as well as HFS+.
Is this the only way to change file dates?
No, there are other ways. You can use tools like ‘uuencode’, ‘tar’, ‘cpio’ or maybe even ‘zip’ to create an archive backup, then modify the dates inside the backup, then restore the files with newly updated dates. This is more complicated. The above is a simpler solution than mucking about with backup and restore processes. However, this archive solution may be the only way forward on operating systems that don’t allow modification of the creation dates on live files.
Why do all of this?
The iMovie app has an import library. In this imported clip library, the sorting feature uses the creation date, not modification date to sort the files. To make sure iMovie can sort these files properly date ascending, the creation date must be set correctly. Because copying the files to USB from the PS4 reassigns the date the mp4 was copied to the USB, not the date it was originally created on the PS4, this makes sorting from oldest to newest in iMovie a big problem.
When attempting to create a new movie using PS4 clips in chronological order, not having correct datestamps on each file makes it a challenge to locate the correct clips in the iMovie library. To correct for this, setting the creation date stamps on all of the mp4 files allows iMovie to sort them in the correct order, rather than sorting them based on the random date they were copied to the USB drive.
Note that once you have updated the dates on the mp4 files, you’ll need to restart iMovie to make sure it sees the newly updated dates on the files. iMovie won’t see these file changes until it’s been restarted.
Good luck and happy rendering!
↩︎
No Man’s Sky: How to get a Sentinel Ship
Unlike the very long tail quest line to obtain a Living Ship, the Sentinel Ship is easy to obtain by comparison. There is no long multi-day process to obtain this one, thankfully. Obtaining the Sentinel ship is fairly straightforward and easy to obtain in one game session, about an hour worth of effort, after getting the quest. Let’s explore how to get this newest ship.
Pre-Requisites
The items you’ll need to make this quest successful are:
- A well outfitted starship, for battling Sentinels successfully
- Living Glass (supplied)
- Pugneum (supplied)
- A well outfitted Multitool, for battling ground corrupted Sentinels successfully
- A hyperdrive and enough fuel to jump
- A pulse drive with enough fuel
- An Advanced Mining Laser on the Multitool (for Radiant Shards)
- One free ship slot or, alternatively, a ship that you’re willing to trade
[Update 4/14/2023] After trying for several hours across multiple saves (other than the first save, which worked), I’ve been unable to reproduce Step 1 on any save other than my very first save. The very first save actually had the pulse drive interaction occur the very first time I pulsed. I believe I have an answer.
I suspect that Hello Games may have introduced a bug in this process. It seems that Hello Games may have made this pulse interaction available one-time-only on ONLY ONE SAVE. This means that if you wish to obtain a Sentinel Ship on a second, third or any later saves, you’ll need to use the 5 Star wanted approach to get an Echo Locator OR a Dreadnought AI Fragment (via blowing up a Sentinel Freighter). I don’t know why Hello Games would have done this, but I do know that there are global variables which can be set and which are visible to across all saves (e.g., Preference Settings). It seems Hello Games may have set a global variable to indicate that the Sentinel pulse drive interaction has already occurred, thus preventing this interaction from occurring again on any other save… since every save has visibility to this variable.
What does this mean for you? If you have several saves that you regularly play, this bug means that you’ll need to choose which save where you wish to have your first Sentinel ship. Otherwise, once you’ve had this interaction on one save, on the rest of your saves, you’ll need to perform the 5 Star wanted steps for an Echo Locator device OR destroy a Sentinel Freighter for a Dreadnought AI Fragment which will lead you to a crashed Sentinel ship. [Update Complete]
Step 1 — Pulse Drive
This first step in obtaining your Sentinel ship is to grab whatever starship you have that fits the above requirements and head into space. Then, trigger the pulse drive. Remain in pulse until a distressed Sentinel ship appears in front of you. This should hopefully happen relatively quickly, but it may not. You may have to do this for a while to get it to happen. Once you get the right interaction, drop out of pulse, then a new Sentinel ship will appear and seem to be in distress. You will not be able to do anything for or to this ship, but the game will pretend to give you options. Whichever option you choose, the ship will disappear. If this pulse interaction occurs for you quickly, skip down to Step 2. If it doesn’t, please continue reading Step 1 for alternative means to get a Sentinel ship.
Alternative Ways to Begin The Salvage Quest
I had the pulse drive interaction appear almost instantly in my first attempted save. In a second save after having already had this pulse interaction previously, I tried for several hours to get it to occur and it didn’t (see more details in Update area above). Meaning, using the pulse drive to launch into this Sentinel salvage quest seems to only work one time and with one save only. Choose your save carefully.
If you wish to obtain more Sentinel ships after the first, you cannot use the pulse drive process. To begin at this point, you’ll need to fight Corrupted Sentinels (on a Corrupted Sentinel World) to a wanted level of 5 and then complete all ground kills or destroy a Sentinel Capital ship in space, which also requires a 5 star wanted level before it appears.
At the end of all ground based kills, your character will be awarded with a Sentinel crash site detector called an Echo Locator.
There is also the possibility of getting an Echo Locator from destroying Dissonance Resonators (the same drill structure that gives you Inverted Mirrors). You’ll need to step out of your starship or exocraft and check which type the Dissonance Resonator gives you. Also note that some Dissonant worlds are way more generous with the chances for finding Echo Locators than others. You may have to scout several dissonant worlds before you find one with Dissonance Resonators offering Echo Locators. If you find such a world, you should create a base there. Note that the easiest method of destroying a Dissonance Resonator is to use your starship’s weapons. Then, heading to space to eventually evade the sentinel wanted status.
Alternatively, you can destroy a Sentinel Freighter in a space battle and receive a Dreadnought AI Fragment. Each of these items will lead you to a new Sentinel ship crash site. Reaching that crash site, the below steps should remain the same.
To be fair, it may be easier to destroy a Sentinel capital ship in space than it is to perform ground combat with most of the crappy Multitool weapons they’ve hobbled us with… in combination with the fact that all corrupted Sentinels can heal each other at will. It simply takes a bit of time to destroy a Sentinel Capital ship, first by targeting the weapons and then by targeting the freighter itself.
For your second, third or further ships, it is strongly recommended that you leave the system where you found your first ship. If you use an Echo Locator or Dreadnought AI Fragment in that system, the game may locate a crash site to a ship model you already own. The game’s code is not intelligent enough to realize you already own a ship from your local system and will likely choose to send you there again. Don’t waste your Echo Locators or Dreadnought AI Fragments by using them in a system you’ve already visited. Hyperdrive somewhere else far away and then let the game use that new location to locate another ship.
If you’re really, really lazy and don’t want to fight Sentinels AND you have a full 30 fleet of Class-S 5 Star frigates, you can send your frigates on missions with the possibility of an expedition returning with a Dreadnought AI Fragment. I didn’t realize that these devices had been added as possible loot from frigate expeditions, but they have been included.
Note that Echo Locators may lead you to a Sentinel ground encampment which will give you a new Sentinel Multitool. You will have to dig around that encampment to find a way to reveal the crashed Sentinel Interceptor.
Note: You may have to complete the quest line “Under a Rebel Star” before the game allows this interaction to occur in pulse. The reason isn’t because the “Under a Rebel Star” quest is part of or even related to this Distressed Sentinel Pilot interaction, but because this quest line appears to take precedence over all Pulse Drive interactions until the quest is completed. Meaning, if you haven’t started or completed this quest line, your pulse drive interactions will be geared towards getting you to complete “Under a Rebel Star.” I recommend getting this quest out of the way.
Step 2 — Obtain the Salvage Quest
After the Sentinel ship disappears, the game will give you a Sentinel Salvage quest line. This quest will lead you to a Sentinel Salvage Site located on a Corrupted Sentinel planet (a new planet type). The game will either put a marker to a local planet in your current system or it will put a map marker onto the galaxy map for a different system. Most likely it will be the latter of the two options, requiring you to hyperjump into a new system. This is why you’ll need to have a Hyperdrive and the required amount of fuel.
Step 3 — HUD Marker
Once you have jumped into that new system, a HUD marker will appear on a planet. Head to the planet’s location, which will be an approximate location on the surface. When you get close to the marker, I suggest flying around the general vicinity of the marker to look for a crashed starship site. If you can’t find it, you’ll need to land and use the scanner to locate the general direction and head there on foot. For me, the crash site was quite visible and easy to spot from the starship.
Step 4 — Crash Site
Once you arrive at the crashed ship, there are many steps you’ll need to take to fully repair the ship. Though, as I said above, the steps are relatively simple with no long waiting periods in between. However, unlike other crashed starships, repairing this Sentinel ship is a bit different.
When you click-hold to open the ship the first time, you’ll see some components that, at first, you might think you need to repair. Don’t be fooled. You don’t repair these. Instead, Hello Games has added the questionable mechanic of requiring you to take those items out of the ship by grabbing them and dropping them into your inventory. It’s an odd play. I was a little confused at first because it’s the first time this mechanic has been used on a crashed ship. The items supplied by the ship are Living Glass, Pugneum and Hyaline Brain.
Once you have taken the items from the ship (including the Hyaline Brain), a new slot will appear that you need to repair called Pilot Interface. To repair the “Pilot Interface” slot, you’ll actually need 3 items that you likely won’t have:
- 3 x Radiant Shard
- 1 x Inverted Mirror
- 1 x Harmonic Brain
Since you might not already have Living Glass or Pugneum needed for this process, remember to take the items from the ship as supplied. If you don’t take ALL of the supplied items, the process may fail to work. Take everything the game gives you. I actually had everything I needed from past Sentinel battles (in addition to the items supplied) including having already scavenged the new crystals. The only exception was that I didn’t have the Harmonic Brain.
One of the three items you’ll receive from the ship is a Hyaline Brain. This object, like a Emergency Broadcast Receiver or a Sentinel Boundary Map, allows you to activate it (“Probe”) and find a location to visit. This location will help you in repairing the Pilot Interface in Step 8.
Step 5 — Gathering Resources
Because this quest line leads you to a new “Corrupted Sentinel” world, you’re going to need to spend some quality time with your Multitool gathering both Atlantadeum from Living Fragments via the smaller purple crystals and the Radiant Shards via the bigger purple crystals (using the Advanced Mining Laser) and, of course, obtaining the Inverted Mirror (see Step 7).
Step 6 — Getting a Radiant Shard
This is the easiest and quickest of the 3 steps required to repair the Pilot Interface. Simply head out and find a pile of large purple crystals. Once you aim your reticle at the crystal, it should say ‘Radiant Shard‘. You’ll need to have an Advanced Mining Laser to obtain 3 of these, but it’s easy and quick with the mining tool. I’d suggest mining for more than you need, just in case.
Step 7 — Getting the Inverted Mirror
To get an Inverted Mirror, you’ll need to destroy a Dissonance Resonator. This is another new Sentinel creature type which looks like a moving crystal shard, but also kind of like a drill. Once you begin shooting this creature, Corrupted Sentinels will appear making you wanted. I’d suggest simply keeping up your barrage (ignoring the Sentinels) until you get the Inverted Mirror, then dive into the ground using the Terrain Manipulator and hide to get rid of the wanted stars.
If you hop into your starship and take off, your wanted status will be carried into a space battle with the Sentinels. It’s easiest to dive into the ground and wait it out.
Step 8 — Getting the Harmonic Brain
To obtain the Harmonic Brain, you’ll need to have a Hyaline Brain. The Hyaline Brain is given to you from the crashed Sentinel starship as one of three components given to you which includes Salvaged Glass, Pugneum and the Hyaline Brain. If, for some reason, you didn’t get a Hyaline Brain from the ship, you’ll need to go back and get it or, if you destroyed it, restore from a save before destroying it (the easiest way). Once you “Probe” the Hyaline Brain, it will give you coordinates and place a map marker on your HUD to an Ancient Monolith. Head there.
Once you arrive at the Monolith, you will hand over the Hyaline Brain in exchange for a Harmonic Brain.
Note, as stated above, you will need to take ALL of the components from the ship for the Hyaline Brain to activate. If you do not have any Pugneum and/or Living Glass and you fail to take these items from the crashed Sentinel Ship, the Hyaline Brain probably won’t activate. This includes having put these components into your Starship inventory and then having your Starship out of range. There is no warning why it fails to activate, it just won’t. Make sure to have ALL of the necessary components in your inventory before attempting activate the Hyaline Brain.
Step 9 — Head Back and Claim Your Starship
As the title says, it’s pretty straight forward. From the monolith and after receiving the Harmonic Brain, head back to the crash site, fix the Pilot Interface and claim your starship. Much, much simpler than the Living Starship.
Once again note, you’ll need to have at least one open starship slot or be willing to trade one of your starships for the Sentinel ship. I’d suggest salvaging a starship at the space station so you get all of the materials out of the ship and to free up the slot. Getting the materials from the ship is the far better option than giving over a starship in trade.
Step 10 — Build A Base
While this step is not required in getting your first Sentinel Ship, it is a step you should do to help you get more of these ships. Since this is a new world type and since you’re likely wanting to look for more of these ships, you’re going to need the resources available on this planet, since future crashed ships may not hand you all of the things you need like this first quest does. Since the game sent my character to a Paradise planet with otherwise no sentinels at all, it was the perfect place to establish a base to obtain these new resources.
Obviously, if your world is a charred, volcanic, radioactive or otherwise a rather inhospitable world, you might want to find a better world to establish a Corrupted Sentinel base. If the game sends you to a Paradise world, then it’s well worth establishing a base as there’s no way to know how these resources might be required in future updates.
Is the Sentinel Ship Worth It?
I’ll leave this up to you to decide. I find the ships to be rather blocky and odd shaped. There are a few sleeker design types, but many look like big tanks. When you’re going through this process, you don’t really get to pick and choose your ship’s design. The only way to sort-of pick is to go through this process multiple times, trading in the ships as you find better looking ones. You never really know what you’ll find, though. I was hoping for sleeker designs, like the Exotics. The Sentinel interceptors that fight us in combat actually look better. I was hoping to be able to get these.
Additionally, the Sentinel ship itself has some odd qualities. When you enter the ship, the entire ceiling of the ship becomes transparent to show the outside. The transparent effect is cool, but it also pulses an odd red circuitry pattern way too frequently while flying, which is highly distracting. I cannot guarantee all Sentinel ships have this cockpit behavior, but they probably do.
It’s not so much that the red pattern appears at all. It’s that this red pattern appears in a repeating pattern about 6 times in a row in various dimmer and brighter shades, then stops. Then the pattern repeats about every 10-20 seconds. The pattern repeats far too frequently. It would be fine if it pulsed perhaps in relation to the acceleration and/or deceleration OR with certain combat elements, like being fired upon or at most every 3-5 minutes, but it doesn’t work like this. It’s just a pattern that rotates in and out on a timer far too frequently as you fly the ship. It’s really distracting when in combat.
All-in-all, it’s an okay ship to add to your fleet, though it’s not more maneuverable than a fighter or better armored than any other class ship. Even though the slots are named oddly and the technology itself has its own special naming, it supports all of the standard technology modules, unlike the Living Ship. With that said, the Sentinel class ships don’t really have a reason to exist over other ships in the game. This is ultimately the real disappointing thing about the Sentinel ships specifically and No Man’s Sky in general… a point that Hello Games keeps missing.
Ships of various classes need to hold specific unique qualities to that class. For example, these Sentinel class ships should be better armored and better suited when used against Sentinel fleet attacks, but perhaps weaker against Korvax attacks. Focusing on these kinds of ship specialities, as a player you must plan your ship battles more thoughtfully. Instead, Hello Games keeps giving us ships that are more or less the same any other ship in the game. Even the Living Ship, which has weird technology naming and features, is really the same as every other ship. The only real differences between each of the ship classes and types are the shape of it, the size of it, the paint job and the ship’s max maneuverability. All of the ships can be modified using modules to basically become identical for use in No Man’s Sky as a Starship.
It would be great if Hello Games would get past this “sameness” and expand starships by giving us ships that both specialize in and are designed to specifically excel in certain activities, but are weak in other activities. For examples, fighters are intended to be for fighting, but they shouldn’t be at all good at anything other than fighting. Haulers are good for hauling, but not necessarily great at fighting. Shuttles should be for smuggling. Sentinel ships should be great at fighting sentinel fleets. Part of the reason for this unfortunate starship genericism is that the game makes it impossible to switch ships when in space. Only when you’re on the ground or in your freighter can you switch ships. Even then, if you’re in the middle of combat, Hello Games has made it so certain activities are impossible until the battle is over, making switching ships even more of a problem.
Know then that while the Sentinel ship may look somewhat cool, it doesn’t buy you anything more than what you already have in other ships you already own, at least not at this point in time. Here are some snaps of my ship.
Sentinel Ship Models and Availability
After having read more about this update, I thought it would be a good idea to explain how many different model Sentinel ships there are. Because there are a myriad of different parts (wings, fins, colors, etc) that can be attached to any specific Sentinel ship, the variation in ships is probably on the order of millions. With that said, there are some basic model shapes that get created from all of that variety; basic shapes which range from large tank sized ships to flat triangular style ships. Thus, there are effectively about 6-10 basic model shapes. After seeing about 6 different ships, the remaining variations are mostly minor and won’t change the overall shape of the ship. Effectively, there are only a handful of parts that affect the overall ship’s shape with the remainder of the parts changing only minor cosmetic aspects of the ship.
As for where to find any specific model ship in NMS, it’s still way too early in the release to yet have that answer. However, Reddit is a good place to start. There are subreddits dedicated to cataloging locations of specific ships in the NMS universe. If you’re looking for a specific style Sentinel ship, heading over to Reddit is probably your best answer. Such subreddits are adding new content every day. Finding a specific model Sentinel Interceptor ship is best found in one of those subreddits. With that said, I always find it much more satisfying when I can find my own ships on my own. Locating another solar system with the help of Reddit isn’t quite as satisfying knowing that you didn’t discover that system or that ship. It’s much more satisfying to be the one to discover something new.
As for how Sentinel Interceptors spawn in the game, it goes like this. Only one model Sentinel ship is available in each solar system. Meaning, if you land in a specific system, find a ship and add it to your collection, don’t bother looking for any more ships in that system if you’re looking for a different model. You’re wasting time doing this because when you do find another, it will be identical to the one you’ve already have, with the exception of its class. The only reason to go looking in the same system for another crashed Sentinel ship is when you’re looking for that same ship you already have, but in higher class (and you don’t want to pay Nanites to upgrade it).
It’s worth noting that abandoned systems as well as dead worlds and exotic / anomaly worlds do not spawn crashed Sentinel ships, even if the world is “Corrupted”. What this means is that if you’re using an Echo Locator or a Dreadnought AI Fragment to locate a ship, be prepared to reload your game quickly if the probe doesn’t find anything.
Sentinel Bug Analysis
Hello Games’s No Man’s Sky is not a bug free experience by any stretch. A question arises then, can this bug described in the update above be fixed? Not easily. Hello Games seems to have inadvertently (or possibly intentionally) used a global variable. To fix this, attempting to turn that global variable into a local variable for each save would mean every existing save would then be converted to and marked as having had the interaction if you’ve already had this interaction on one save.
That further means that only newly created saves after the bug is fixed would be able to have this interaction, but that also means starting over from scratch on a brand new save. It also means your other saves would still be required to go through the 5 Star Wanted process to get a Sentinel ship.
The better approach to fixing this bug is to have Hello Games unset the variable entirely, convert to using a save-local-variable and allow all of our saves to again get this interaction. However, that means that one of the saves could end up with two Sentinel ships using the pulse interaction. I personally don’t see this as a problem, but Hello Games probably will. If Hello Games decides to fix this bug, they’ll likely take the first approach, meaning all existing saves won’t benefit from that fix.
And Yet More Bugs
After having dived deep into Reddit around the Interceptor update, I’ve come to realize that there are many, many MORE bugs around obtaining Sentinel ships. Some of the bugs may depend on the platform you play on. For example, PC players seem to have the most problems with this update, but that doesn’t preclude problems for console players.
Here’s a short list of problems that you may encounter when playing the No Man’s Sky Interceptor update while attempting to get a Sentinel ship:
- Bug 1: The Hyaline Brain may not work correctly. Instead of leading you to a Monolith to exchange the Hyaline Brain for a Harmonic Brain, activating the Hyaline Brain instead acts like an Echo Locator, which will lead you to another crashed Sentinel ship instead of to a Monolith.
Workaround: None. - Bug 2: Arriving at the crashed Sentinel ship goes fine, but then after returning from the Monolith, the ship has disappeared.
Workaround: Disable Multiplayer while completing the quest. Because these ships are very popular, leaving multiplayer enabled allows another player to come take the ship and leave the crash site empty. - Bug 3: Arriving at the crashed Sentinel site after the Monolith, the ship flies away on its own.
Workaround: Immediately enter the ship and fix it. Don’t dawdle when you get back from the monolith. If you idle outside of the ship for longer than a few minutes, the ship may fly up and away on its own. If this happens, reload your game from the last save point and try again. - Bug 4: The Hyaline Brain doesn’t work at all.
Workaround: Ensure that you have the necessary amounts of Pugneum and Salvaged Glass in your inventory. Without this, the Hyaline Brain may not activate. If it still doesn’t activate, there may be another bug present. - Bug 5: Locator to the crashed ship doesn’t appear. This bug is actually a bigger problem within the Interceptor update than just with Sentinel crash sites. HUD markers sometimes don’t show up on planet surfaces (and in other locations) for quests. This prevents you from finding the site where you need to be.
Workaround: None known. We’ll have to wait until Hello Games finds and fixes this problem. - Bug 6: The game locks up hard even though the sound still works.
Workaround: None. You’ll need to restart the game and hope it doesn’t lock up again. We’ll have to wait until Hello Games finds and fixes this problem.
Good luck and happy hunting!
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Fallout 76: Map locations of Wood Piles
Many players are wondering where to find Wood Resource Piles (aka Wood Piles) throughout Fallout 76. While there are websites showing map locations leading the way to gold, concrete, steel, lead, waste oil and acid deposits, none yet show where to find wood resource piles for your camp. Yes, there are a number of these wood piles in Appalachia. Let’s explore.
Wood Pile Sites
Starter List
Wood Pile Update #1
Wood Pile Update #2
Wood Pile Update #3
Wood Pile Update #4
Legacy Removals and Wood Piles Update #5
The links above lead to the list of wood piles that have been found. Unfortunately, as many others have found, there are no maps to find these resources easily via Google. Well, now there is. The research for this article is time consuming as it requires searching all over the map for these wood piles. That’s where this article comes in. I’ve done this work for you and now the article is closed.
For ease of writing this article, I will abbreviate C.A.M.P. to simply the word ‘camp’ except when I’m referring to the device itself. There are a number of workshops that have wood resource piles. This article does not include wood resource piles located in workshops. If you wish to know which workshops have wood piles… then from the Fallout 76 map, hover over the workshop icon and the game will display resources available at each workshop.
Wood Resource Deposits
What are these deposits and why are they special? Like iron deposits that produce steel scrap and crystal deposits that produce crystal scrap, wood deposits produce wood scrap when equipped with a proper resource extractor in your camp. Some of these deposits exist inside of workshops, but you cannot build a camp in a workshop. Many players want to build their camp on top of a wood resource deposit so they can extract wood scraps at their camp.
Yes, these deposits do exist separately throughout the Forest and even into the Cranberry Bog. Wherever there are forests and wood, these wood pile deposits exist. That I’ve also discovered while scouting, these wood deposits seem to exist near, but outside of workshops and usually aren’t far off of a road. Though, they don’t always appear near workshops and they are not always near a road. These wood piles can be claimed using your C.A.M.P. device and used within your own camp with a wood resource extractor.
Wood resource piles have a distinctive look and shape from regular logs of wood in the landscape. Here’s an example:
Note that the cones on this pile are only for this specific pile. All other wood piles I’ve found do not have these orange cones. Additionally, note the four posts that constrain the wood pile. These wood resource piles always look like this (with the exception of the cones).
If you see one of these wood piles in the wild AND which is not located in a workshop, you can use it in your camp to extract wood by placing down a wood resource extractor. The extractor will produce wood scraps for you. The above is how a wood pile looks when a resource extractor is placed down. Resource extractors require power to operate, hence the reason for the two solar panels to power it. While you can use any generator of sufficient power, I prefer using two solar panels which can be placed right on top.
Settlers and Wood
Since the introduction of Wastelanders, the game now offers random NPC settlers living in the wasteland. These settlers can sometimes point the way to finding such wood pile resources. For example, if you hear the sound of wood being chopped, there’s a high probability that locating the sound will lead you to a settler and a wood pile. Settlers don’t spawn all of the time, but they do occur the vast majority of the time. This means that some wood piles must be found by stumbling onto them. By following the sound of wood being chopped, it is likely to lead you to a wood pile.
Again, these wood pile deposits are available to use as resources in your camp, just like ground copper, silver or iron deposits.
Wood Resource Deposit Locations
Let’s get right to the heart of this article and the reason why you are here. These are all of the wood pile resources I’ve found. Every single resource I’ve scouted is available for use in a camp, allowing for a wood extractor resource to be placed. The vast majority of these piles are located in The Forest. However, a few do exist in the Cranberry Bog and other locations around the map. As I find more, this article will be updated.
I’ve also tested all of these locations to ensure that a C.A.M.P. device can be placed which will include the wood pile. Though, placement on some may not work if placed directly in front of the pile. These piles may require you to walk around a little to find a suitable location where the device turns green and allows placement while still including the wood pile.
Let’s start with this first set of wood pile locations …
Location #1 — Gilman Lumber Mill (Forest)
This wood resource deposit is located near the Gilman Lumber Mill just below Vault 76. The arrow marker points to the spot. This location actually contains two wood deposits. Unfortunately, the deposit closest to Gilman (next to a fence) cannot be claimed for use in a camp. This second one which is farther away and not sitting against a fence (see the arrow marker) is usable in your camp. It looks like so…
This wood pile below, unfortunately, is NOT usable in a camp. It is shown to prevent confusion from the above pile, which can be used in a camp. Again, this pile just below placed next to the chain link fence cannot be used as a camp resource, but it can be harvested for wood by your character. Yes, it would be nice to have two wood extractors in the same camp, but alas it’s not to be. Thanks Bethesda.
Location #2 — Back end of Wixon Homestead (Forest)
This wood deposit exists not far from the Wayward, but sits at the very back end of the Wixon Homestead’s farmland, not far off the nearby road leading to the Wayward.
Location #3 — Hunter’s Ridge (Forest)
This wood deposit is near Hunter’s ridge along the road where the marker shows. This pile has two orange cones.
Location #4 — Pylon V13 & Drop Site C2 (Cranberry Bog)
This wood deposit is somewhat near the Abandoned Bog Town workshop, but is not part of it. It’s fairly far off of the road and you can hear a settler chopping wood all the way from the road if they are there.
Location #5 — North of Twin Pines Cabin (Forest)
Near where the road forks into two, you’ll find a wood deposit which is not far from Twin Pines Cabin (the Blood Eagle symbol on the map).
Location #6 — Deathclaw Island (Forest)
Slightly off of and north, just up the road from the spawn point for Deathclaw Island (pine tree marker on the map), here’s another wood resource which can be used at your camp. See the arrow marker. The wood pile looks like this.
Note that the building seen in the background is the small red shed which is part of the Tyler County Dirt Track workshop. However, this wood pile is not part of that workshop and can be used in your camp.
Location #7 — Point Pleasant (Forest)
This wood pile is very close to Point Pleasant. However, the spawn point for Point Pleasant leads you to the south entrance. This pile is near the north entrance of the city with no fast travel point close. You’ll want to fast travel to Black Mountain Ordnance Works and walk down the road towards the north entrance of Point Pleasant. Immediately after you pass a red colored large hauler truck, it’ll be on your left. Careful of a possible Blood Eagle camp nearby.
Location #8 — Silva Homestead (Forest)
This wood pile is located a little bit south of Silva Homestead and is also a little bit off of the road near and sorta behind a red tractor. This location is a little bit tricky to place the C.A.M.P. device. However, if you are creative with your C.A.M.P. device placement, you might be able to include both water and wood as resources in your camp. Note that you only need to cover about half of a ground resource with the green perimeter circle for that resource to be usable. Placement of water resources are a bit more finicky.
Location #9 — Billings Homestead (Forest)
This wood pile is located just up the road a little from the Silva Homestead pile. This pile is close to, but not part of the workshop. Like Silva Homestead, this one also requires creative placement of the C.A.M.P. device to be able to use this pile as a resource.
See the placement of the C.A.M.P. device below. Any closer to the pile and it turns red due to the workshop proximity.
Location #10 — Grafton Steel (Toxic Valley)
This wood pile is near Grafton Steel, but is on the north side. Similar to Point Pleasant, the fast travel point for Grafton Steel is on the south side. You’ll need to trek up the road to the point where the marker is. It’s just a little bit off the road, but you can still see the pile from the road.
Location #11 — Near Black Mountain Ordnance Works (Forest)
From the fast travel point at Black Mountain, travel down the road to the point you see. There’s a small gravel road that leads into an unmarked junkyard which looks like this…
At the back of this makeshift and unmarked junkyard resides a wood pile…
I didn’t scout this area carefully to see if there were any other resources present, such as a junk resource. You’ll need to visit to determine this. It looks like there might be a junk resource available off to the right as shown in the wider picture of this makeshift junkyard.
Location #12 — Alpine River Cabins (Forest)
Just above Alpine River Cabins there’s another wood pile. Seems like there’s a lot of these in the Forest area. Makes sense, though. It looks like this…
New Piles Update #1
Location #13 — Mosstown (Mire)
Very near Mosstown, but just outside of it is a wood resource pile. This resource pile is usable in your camp even though it’s very close to Mosstown.
Location #14 — WV Lumber Co. (Forest)
This wood pile is so close to the water line, you can likely claim both water and this wood pile in your camp.
Location #15 — Groves Family Cabin (Forest)
This one is closer to Groves Family Cabin than Darling Sister’s Lab. The trouble with this map image is that when the Groves marker is selected, the text obscures the arrow. I selected the Darling Sister’s Lab marker to give you a better idea of the map location.
Location #16 — Miner’s Monument (Forest)
This wood pile is just across from Miner’s Monument.
Location #17 — Southern Belle Motel (Mire)
Next to the Southern Belle Motel is, you guessed it, a wood pile ripe for claiming in a camp. This one is directly next to water. With this one, you can definitely claim both water and the wood pile in your camp. You can probably even put up a bunch of water purifiers along side your wood extractor.
New Piles Update #2 — Cranberry Bog
There are apparently a number of wood piles strewn around the Cranberry Bog, but not close to roads. Some of these wood piles reside fairly close to various Firebase sites, but not always. Here are the four newest wood piles I’ve found. Thanks go to a game friend who knew about two of these piles and helped me locate them with markers near the sites. That also spurred me to traipse around the Cranberry Bog looking for the two others included.
This player also told me he was unable to place a wood extractor at the wood pile located near Drop Site V9 when he had his base there. I have tested this location by placing an extractor and have experienced no difficulties (see below). Please let me know in the comments if you experience any problems with any of these sites listed.
Location #18 — The Thorn (Cranberry Bog)
Not far from The Thorn (see marker) is another wood pile. Sometimes a settler is not there.
Location #19 — Bootlegger’s Shack (Cranberry Bog)
And another near a grove of Sundew Trees.
Location #20 — Drop Site V9 (Cranberry Bog)
A small trek north of Drop Site V9, you’ll find another wood pile. This one is far enough north that it shouldn’t be inside of a blast zone very often, if ever… unless it’s a newbie player who doesn’t know exactly where to nuke.
This is the wood pile I was told wouldn’t place an extractor by someone who had a camp here previously. I have tested this site and I was able to place down a wood resource extractor without any difficulties, like so…
Location #21 — Firebase LT (Cranberry Bog)
Halfway between Firebase LT and that fissure site, you’ll find another wood pile. It looks like so…
New Piles Update #3
Location #22 — Sunrise Field #1 (Cranberry Bog)
This wood pile is the first in three wood piles located near Sunrise Field. You’ll need to take a close look at each marker location and correlate that with each image. Note that one of the locations that would seem natural to have a wood pile instead has a uranium deposit (see below). The third wood pile is farther away and in a different area than one might expect.
Location #23 — Sunrise Field #2 (Cranberry Bog)
This is the second wood pile located near Sunrise Field. It exists next to this small red shack.
Location #24 — Sunrise Field #3 (Cranberry Bog)
This third wood pile is located halfway between Sunrise Field and Sparse Sundew Grove. I’m connecting this one to Sunrise Field due to its close proximity.
Sunrise Field — Uranium Deposit (Cranberry Bog)
For completeness, I roamed to an area near Sunrise Field (to the right and below) where I thought another wood pile might be located. Instead of a wood pile, I see a uranium deposit. Here’s the location of this uranium deposit in case you’re curious.
The reason this uranium deposit is included here to keep you from wasting time roaming over to this area thinking there might be another wood pile there. There isn’t. It’s a uranium deposit.
New Pile Update #4
For this update, I’ve finally found the location that I remember seeing months back and it’s actually in the Savage Divide! I originally thought this wood pile site was much closer to The Whitespring than it is. It’s actually very close to the Garrahan area of the Savage Divide right where it meets the Ash Heap. These wood piles, though, are considered in the Savage Divide.
Location #25 — Bastion Park (Savage Divide)
From Bastion Park, travel down the road and you’ll find this wood pile just off of the road near a semi truck with logs on the back.
At this location, you’ll see this semi truck with logs on the back right next to the wood pile.
Location #26 — Monongah Power SS MZ-03 (Savage Divide)
From site #25, trek just a little ways down the road and you’ll find this wood pile which is close to the substation fast travel point. This wood pile is the pile I thought was very close to The Whitespring. Instead, it’s much farther down near Monongah Power Substation MZ-03 and not far from the Garrahan Mining HQ. I was also surprised to find that there are actually a number of wood piles in close proximity in this area.
Location #27 — Garrahan Mining HQ (Savage Divide)
Even further down this same road near the Garrahan Mining Headquarters, you’ll find another wood pile to use. It looks like so…
This wood pile is located near a small unmarked village of houses.
Location #28 — Braxson’s Quality Medical Supplies (Mire)
This one is in The Mire. From Braxson’s Quality Medical Supplies (the icon looks like a factory), trek to the below location and you’ll find this wood pile…
Location #29 — Crimson Prospect (Cranberry Bog)
We’re back in the Cranberry Bog for yet another wood pile. Halfway between Crimson Prospect and the Ranger District Office, you’ll find another wood pile ready and waiting for a camp to be placed.
Legacy Removals and Wood Piles
As a result of Tuesday January 24th’s removal of Legacy weapons (aka Black Tuesday), I have made the decision to no longer search for any more wood piles. There are now 29 Wood Piles in this list, well enough to satisfy anyone who wishes to base their camp around one. While I was unable to find any of these wood piles in the Ash Heap, Toxic Valley or the vast majority of the Savage Divide, you’ll need to search in these areas yourself if you want your camp in a specific area not listed near a wood pile.
If you’re simply wanting a wood pile to base your camp around, there are plenty of sites listed in this article from which to choose. If you’re specifically wanting one in a region where none is listed above, I’ll leave it to you to go find one close.
My reasoning for closing this article at this time is that Fallout 76’s player base is actively under siege by Bethesda, which I further foresee many players leaving this game over the course of the next 30-90 days as a result. Without Legacy weapons, the game is likely to become “boring” and “no longer fun to play” by many. That reduction in players leaves fewer and fewer players playing Fallout 76 on all platforms. That further means that information articles like this one will see fewer and fewer searches from a dwindling set of players who need this information.
With the 29 sites already discovered above in combination with the likely significant reduction in player base, there’s no reason to continue searching. If Bethesda changes their stance on legacies or finds a way to entice a whole lot more players back into the game, then I may revive this article and continue to update it. As of now, this article is officially closed with the 29 sites listed. I am no longer actively searching out any more wood piles.
Ending Notes…
I haven’t tested placing extractors down on each of these wood piles in this list. Some of these locations may or may not allow for placement of an extractor. You’ll need to test this. The only test I have performed is to see whether it’s possible to place a C.A.M.P. device at or near the wood pile. Every wood pile in this list turns green when testing a C.A.M.P. device placement, but that test doesn’t guarantee that a wood extractor will place once a camp is established.
For map reference, the arrow marker not only denotes the location of the wood pile, the arrow’s direction also points directly towards that wood pile.
If you happen to locate a wood pile not listed or find that one of these wood piles above doesn’t work to extract, please leave a comment below. If you find a pile that is missing from this list, please tell me where it is located is in a comment below and I’ll credit you for having found it. Even though this article is closed for updates, I am still actively accepting comments from people who may find a wood pile not in the above list. You will be duly credited for having found any wood pile not in this list.
Enjoy and happy camping!
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No Man’s Sky: Benefits of Organic Frigates
As a follow-on to Randocity’s How to Get the Living Ship in No Man’s Sky article, you may be wondering what the difference is between an organic frigate and a technology frigate in No Man’s Sky. Yes, it ties into the Living Starship. Let’s explore.
How To Get an Organic Frigate
If you haven’t played through the Leviathan community expedition and received The Leviathan frigate, you may be wondering how to get more organic frigates if you’re starting a fresh game. Yes, you can get more organic frigates (and better ones too). To obtain an organic frigate, you’ll need to obtain certain key items:
- Dream Aerial
- Anomaly Detectors
To be complete, we’ll need to step back further. You’re also going to need to grind No Man’s Sky until your character has picked up enough items and unlocks to allow for use of the above items. These additional items and unlocks include:
- Have a ship outfitted with a Hyperdrive (and fuel) and Pulse Drive
- Enough Tritium to refill the Pulse Drive
- Enough Fuel to fill the Hyperdrive (you’ll hyperdrive jump to find each organic frigate)
- Obtain a Freighter
- At least 100-500 million units on hand. The more you have, the better. You need this to buy the organic frigates.
Getting a Freighter
Obtaining a freighter is relatively easy. You’ll simply need to jump into enough systems to find one in distress. After the ensuing space battle is completed by you, the captain will allow you to purchase that freighter. Note, the first freighter you come upon will be free, at least as of this writing.
Meaning, it’s worth waiting until you find at least an A-class or S-class freighter before accepting it. An S-class freighter is well worth waiting for because your frigate expeditions gain a HUGE bonus every time you send your frigates on expeditions. Picking up a free S-class freighter is the best option here. However, any freighter will work with organic frigates.
S-Class Freighters
I’ll be honest here. S-class freighters are relatively rare to find, but if you’re diligent enough by jumping into many different systems, you’ll eventually happen upon one. If you’ve already picked up your free freighter earlier, you’ll be required to buy an S-class freighter… and they’re typically exceedingly costly. Some S-class freighters can cost around 330 million units. Some even more than that. On one of my sessions, I found an S-class freighter that cost 13 million units, but it had very few slots and technology open. That meant I had to grind for many, many Salvaged Frigate Modules and Cargo Bulkheads to unlock everything on that freighter. Though, it was well worth it.
It doesn’t matter the number of slots opened or the amount of technology unlocked on an S-class freighter. It matters that it is simply an S-class freighter. If you find an S-class as cheaply as I found mine, buy it instantly. Don’t hesitate. The frigate expedition bonus is well worth the amount of grinding required to unlock the rest of the freighter. In fact, that bonus will help you do that via your frigate expeditions.
Dream Aerial and Technology Frigates
Circling back around, to get the Dream Aerial you’ll need to buy a number of “standard” technology frigates. In fact, you’ll need to buy enough technology frigates to be able to run 3 star missions from your freighter’s expedition board. Once you can run 3 star missions, there’s a chance a Dream Aerial will be found by your technology frigate expeditions. You can always dismiss frigates later. Once you have the plan to build a Dream Aerial, you can then locate your first organic frigate (or second, if you’ve run the Leviathan expedition), which then unlocks the ability to find more via Anomaly Detectors.
Once you have a Dream Aerial built, activate it, then use the pulse drive to obtain your first (or second) organic frigate. One down, ~29 more to go.
Anomaly Detectors
After you have your first organic frigate from the Dream Aerial, you can delete the Dream Aerial device. The Dream Aerial is only useful once to obtain your first organic frigate. From here, you’ll have to rely on Anomaly Detectors to obtain the rest of your organic frigates for your fleet.
To obtain Anomaly Detectors, you’ll need to perform a bit of grinding in the game. First, find a dense asteroid field. Second, begin destroying the asteroids non-stop, avoiding the random ships also roaming the field. Once you’ve destroyed enough asteroids, the game will award you an Anomaly Detector. Rinse and repeat until you have as many Anomaly Detectors as you need.
You’ll use up one Anomaly Detector to locate each organic frigate you wish to find. If you want all 30 frigates to be organic, then you’ll need 29 Anomaly Detectors if you didn’t play Leviathan, 28 if you did. That means grinding through an asteroid field until you have enough detectors.
How to use Anomaly Detectors
To use Anomaly Detectors, it’s nearly identical to the Dream Aerial. Activate it, then zip into pulse drive and wait. From here, you’ll see many “Rare” deep space objects appear. Ignore them and do not drop out of pulse. Instead, in 15 seconds they’ll timeout and disappear, then another will appear. Eventually, you’ll see a Whalesong. This is the one you want.
Drop out of pulse at the first sign of Whalesong and pick up your organic frigate. Organic frigates come in classes C through S, but most are likely to appear as C-class (the least costly). Typically, a C-class organic frigate might cost ~8 million units. However, an S-class organic frigate might set you back 53 million units. Be sure to have enough units on hand before performing this step. You don’t want to see Whalesong only to find you don’t have enough units on hand to buy the frigate.
Note, you may occasionally find an organic frigate that you’ve bought does not appear back at your freighter. This is a known bug. Ignore that system and don’t try to pick that frigate up again. Some organic frigates are bugged and won’t appear at your freighter even after you’ve paid for them.
One Organic Frigate Per Star System
You can only obtain one organic frigate per star system via Anomaly Detectors. This means you’ll need to hyperdrive jump to an unexplored system and use your Anomaly Detector again there. This means you’ll need a hyperdrive on your starship or freighter so you can jump into various new systems to pick up another organic frigate.
Abandoned systems may not produce organic frigates. I’d suggest caution when attempting to locate an organic frigate in an abandoned system.
30 Slot Limit
No Man’s Sky offers a maximum of 30 frigate slots. Once you reach your 30th frigate, you can’t buy anymore. If you locate an organic frigate, but find the game won’t give you the option to buy it, you have reached the maximum number of frigates you can own. You can check the number of frigate slots consumed on your freighter’s bridge at the fleet management console.
You can also check how many frigates you own by number using the Multi-tool scanner when inside of your freighter. Simply activate the Multi-tool scanner (pointing it at your freighter) and it will quickly show you your fleet number at a glance. This also means you don’t have to visit your management console to manually count your fleet size.
Always make sure that you are under the 30 slot limit and that you have enough units before venturing out with your Anomaly Detectors. Anomaly Detectors are hard enough to find without wasting them because you didn’t have enough frigate slots or units.
Benefits of Organic Frigates
You might be wondering what the difference is between an organic frigate and a technology frigate since they appear to do the same thing. Yes, both are very, very similar in what they do. However, organic frigates offer two very important differences over technology frigates, at least as of this writing:
- Organic frigates don’t break that I’ve found. Meaning, you’ll never have to venture over onto them to repair them (as of Waypoint). I’m assuming an organic could die, but I’ve never had one do that.
- Organic frigates offer benefits that can’t be found with technology frigates. Organic frigates can discover organic items such as Spawning Sacs and Psychonic Eggs. These items are not located by technology frigates! If you own a Living Ship, these extras are very important.
Spawning Sacs and Psychonic Eggs
These items are quite useful to the Living Ship. Spawning Sacs add inventory slots to the Living Ship in the same way as Storage Augmentations add slots to technology starships. Spawning Sacs are rare to find and can only be found by using S-class organic frigates on frigate expeditions. Psychonic Eggs extract into useful technology additions for the Living Ship, much like buying Starship modules from vendors at space stations.
Psychonic Eggs are not the only way to obtain Living Ship modules. You can also obtain them through random, but occasional pulse drive travels between worlds in a star system. You don’t need to consume anomaly detectors to find these. They’ll randomly appear while in pulse drive. Psychonic Eggs, however, give you the ability to unlock these at will rather than waiting on random encounters.
Unfortunately, you first need open slots in your Living Ship before Psychonic Eggs can become useful. That requires Spawning Sacs. In rarity, Spawning Sacs are probably the rarest items you’ll encounter, with maybe the exception of the white and gold guppy Exotic ship. Sending out 20-30 frigate missions, you might see 2 Spawning Sacs.
Note that you must send out S-class organic frigates to even have a chance of them finding Spawning Sacs. That means leveling up your organic frigate fleet to S-class before you’ll have any chance at receiving Spawning Sacs.
I didn’t begin seeing Spawning Sacs as a frigate expedition rewards until I began sending out S-class organic frigates. Even then, these Sacs are relatively rare spawn rewards.
Technology Frigates vs Organic Frigates
Because of all of the above, I strongly suggest filling out your frigate fleet with organic frigates. It’s a little more time consuming, but if you have a Living Ship and want to outfit it fully, you’ll need organic frigates to do this. Because organic frigates find all of the same stuff as technology frigates, but even more, it’s worth replacing your technology frigates with organic frigates in the long run.
Feeding Organic Frigates
One additional thing that’s been added is the ability to feed your organic frigates. However, you don’t need to feed them constantly. Instead, this feature adds a feeding slot that allows you to modify the stats of your organic frigate depending on what you “feed” them. By feeding the organic frigate with certain foodstuffs, you can modify the stats of each organic frigate.
This is something that cannot be done at all with technology frigates. Whatever stats a technology frigate has, that’s what it remains. If you want something better, you buy it. With organic frigates, you can spend time crafting unusual foods and feed them to each organic frigate to see how the stats change.
Note that some foods reset stats and some foods boost stats. Because it’s random, you won’t know what a food does what until you feed it to the frigate. After that, you’ll know. Also, what works with one organic frigate won’t work with another. Meaning, if you feed one frigate bread and it gains 20 to exploration, that doesn’t mean all frigates will respond this same way. You’ll need to trial-and-error your way to find the best foodstuffs to see the stats you’re wanting for each individual frigate.
For example, if you want to boost Combat stats on a specific frigate, you’ll need feed it a variety of foods until you find the right combination. I will say, though, that you should limit feeding your organic to basic foods. Don’t go overboard producing the rarest of cakes as it is typically overkill. Simply feeding the frigate Cake Batter might afford the same response as feeding it the cake itself.
I always recommend trying basic food components before spending time building expensive and time consuming cakes and pies. Organic frigates don’t yet have picky palettes and stats can be boosted with simpler crafted food items, like sugar, batter, pie crust and so on.
Leveling Up Organic Frigates
One question that has surfaced is how to level up less than S-Class organic frigates to S-Class. Don’t worry. They do this all on their own. All you need to do is send them out on expeditions. It doesn’t take long to see a fleet of S-Class organic frigates. It takes maybe 10-20 expeditions to see a C-Class level up to S-Class. This leveling up system works with both technology frigates and organic frigates. Admittedly, organic frigates seem to level up at a faster rate than technology frigates.
This ultimately means it will take a little bit of time to get your organics up to S-Class to begin seeing those ever elusive Spawning Sacs. Though, you may see Psychonic Eggs appear as rewards long before your organics reach S-Class.
Subject To Change
Because No Man’s Sky is an ever evolving game, due mostly to Hello Games continual meddling of it, the rules defined in this article may change with a major update in the future. For example, even though organic frigates don’t seem to become damaged or die on missions now, a future update could make this change possible. This might mean that your organic frigates could potentially die or become injured in a future update. Right now, it’s not possible. Please keep this in mind if you’re reading this article a year or two from when this article was written.
Organic Frigate Gallery
To end out this article, here’s a small gallery of images from my fleet:
Oh, and Happy New Year to everyone reading. Please feel free to leave a comment or question below.
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How to pair your PS5 controller wirelessly
As a follow-on to Randocity’s original How to Pair your PS4 Controller Wirelessly article, here’s how to do this for your PS5 controller. Yes, it’s still possible to pair a controller wirelessly. Let’s explore.
Intent
This article is intended to allow PS5 owners to pair a PS5 controller to your PS5 console without the need to use that ever elusive USB cable. If you’ve lost or misplaced your cable, no need to fret if you have certain prerequisites available. Unfortunately, if you don’t have any of these requisites, you’ll need to dig up a USB cable.
PS5 Controller
The PS5 Controller is much the same as the PS4 controller in terms of its buttons, with the exception of the controller’s labels. Instead of clearly worded ‘Share’ and ‘Options’ labels, they now have obscure icon labels. If you’re familiar with PS4 button placement, it is identical on PS5 controllers. Left upper button next to the touch pad is Share, right is Options.
To pair your PS5 controller wirelessly, however, you’ll need to have at least one controller active on your PS5. That controller doesn’t necessarily need to be a game controller. If you’ve enabled the HDMI link on your TV, you can likely use your TV’s remote to navigate the PS5’s UI to the proper settings location to pair your controller.
Many people don’t know that your TV’s remote control (via HDMI) can be used to navigate the PS4 and PS5’s menu systems by using the arrow controls on the TV’s remote control. With your TV remote, you can navigate to the settings area needed to pair your controller. Note that the HDMI Link must be enabled on the PS5 and may not work on all TV models. It seems to work correctly on Sony TVs (as expected), but brands other than Sony may or may not work. You’ll want to test your TV for functionality to ensure control with your TV’s remote works via HDMI.
To make the TV’s controller work, however, it must also be the active controller at the time you sign into your PS5 (or PS4). The controller that signs into the PS4/PS5 is the active controller. You can’t switch to the TV’s controller after a PS5 controller signs in. You’ll need to sign out or reboot your PS5 / PS4 to get back to the sign-in screen.
Also note that the TV’s remote control itself will not power on the PS4 or PS5. You’ll need to press the power button on the front of the PS5 unit if you have no PS5 controller handy. Alternatively, your PS5 should power on by switching to the PS5’s HDMI port using the TV’s remote control. If switching to the HDMI port doesn’t work, then you’ll need to press the power button on the PS5.
If you’re new to the PS5 and don’t know where these buttons are, they are on the opposite end from the blue USB port on the front of the unit. The longer button is the power button, the shorter button is the disc eject button. The Digital version might not have a disc eject button.
Pairing the Controller
Here’s the meat of this article. There are two pieces involved:
- The PS5 needs to see and be ready to accept the device once it’s found
- The PS5 controller needs to be placed into pairing mode.
Ensure that you have a controller that functions, such as your TV’s remote control or a second PS5 controller. Once you have this, on the PS5 navigate to Settings -> Accessories -> General -> Bluetooth Accessories. This places your PS5 onto the correct screen to continue the next part of this process.
Here are the PS5 controller pairing steps:
- For 5-6 seconds or so, press and hold the Share button and the PlayStation (PS) button simultaneously until the controller light begins to flash in rapid succession. Once the lights begin to flash, look at your TV screen to see the controller appear under new Bluetooth accessories.
- The new controller will show up as ‘Wireless Controller’ below all other paired controllers.
- With your TV remote or your currently active controller, navigate down to that “Wireless Controller” and select it with the X button on a PS5 controller. TV remotes may use an OK or ENTER button for selection.
- Once selected, the PS5 will ask, “Do you want to register this Bluetooth Accessory?”
- Choose “Yes”.
- The PS5 will ask you to select an account for that controller. Choose an account.
- That new controller will be paired to your PS5.
- Done.
Your new controller is now paired and ready for use. If you have questions or if this article has helped you, please leave a comment below.
Enjoy.
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PS4: How to repair extended storage that won’t repair
Occasionally, you may find the need to unplug your PS4 because, well, it’s hung. Or maybe, the whole system just crashed hard. It happens. When rebooting from these conditions, it causes all hard drives to need a filesystem repair upon reboot. If you have an extended storage hard drive plugged in via USB, sometimes the PS4 will attempt to repair the extended storage, but then refuse to complete the repair. Fret not. If your hard drive was working fine prior to the crash, it’s likely still working just fine. Let’s explore.
PlayStation 4 (and PS5?)
Note that while this repair tutorial was written to address the PS4’s external storage, it likely also works with the PS5. With that in mind, let’s understand what goes wrong under these circumstances.
After rebooting from a crash, the PS4 system naturally takes a longer amount of time to boot up than is otherwise normal. This is expected. The internal boot drive filesystem needs to be repaired. I’ve never encountered a problem with the system repairing the internal drive unless the internal hard drive has failed. If your system won’t boot after a hang, you’ve got a lot bigger problems than the extended storage hard drive.
Swapping the PS4’s Internal Hard Drive
Here’s another scenario where this HowTo article may apply. If you’ve had to rebuild your PS4 with a new boot drive or you simply wanted to upgrade to a bigger drive, you’ll need to boot into safe mode and reinstall the latest boot system and operating system to get the system bootable once again. Once you’ve done that, you’ve got a whole lot of work ahead before your system will be back to the same state before replacing that internal drive.
That setup process is not within the scope of this article, however. This article also applies to the situation when your PS4 is fully once again bootable after a reinstall, but your external hard drive refuses to repair.
Extended Hard Drive after PS4 Crash
If you’ve encountered any issue where the PS4 refuses to repair the extended storage media connected via USB, then you’re not alone. It’s a relatively common problem and usually has a very easy fix, one that’s also not obvious.
Note that the operating system on the PS4, under this failure-to-repair scenario, is likely misleading you when that it suggests that the extended hard needs to be reformatted. Don’t listen to this advice. It very likely doesn’t need reformatting. Raise your hand if you enjoy having to download gigs and gigs of games again from the Internet! No one? Alright then, let’s continue.
Because of a crash or a hang, the operating system might have lost some critical data stored on the primary internal hard drive that prevents the repair and misleads you into an action that’s actually not needed.
Licenses
Every game that operates on the PS4 requires a license to operate. If you’ve purchased digital copies from the PlayStation store, these licenses are stored on your console’s internal boot drive. For physical disk copies, the license is the physical disk. This is why the PS4 requires insertion of the media into the drive before it allows the game to operate.
If your PS4 (or PS5) has had a crash or a hang, a hard boot may occasionally corrupt that licensing data, specifically about the game that was operating at the time. It only takes one corrupt license to prevent the external hard drive from repairing properly.
Don’t fret here. Game licenses are easily recovered, but may require two different steps.
Extended Storage and Licenses
Why do corrupt licenses cause this problem? When the operating system needs to repair an external hard drive, it seems to validate every license for every game stored on that extended storage before attempting a repair the external volume. If the licenses are invalid or cannot be found, the PS4’s operating system will refuse to repair the extended storage and suggest reformatting the hard drive… which, in turn, seems to suggest there’s a physical problem with the hard drive itself. Under this condition, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the the external hard drive.
In fact, all of the data is still completely intact. You just need to recover the licenses. So let’s do that now.
License Recovery
To allow your external volume to repair, ‘Restoring Licenses’ is the operation that needs to be performed. This action is done through the PS4’s settings area. This is located under:
Settings => Account Management => Restore Licenses
When you activate this function, the PS4 will clear all old licenses and then download all authorized game licenses anew from the PlayStation store. Then, write those licenses to your PS4’s boot drive. Once this action is complete, the game licenses for all of your digital game versions will be restored.
A second action may also be required called ‘Rebuilding the Database’. This isn’t done from within settings. It is performed from the PS4’s safe mode menu. To get into Safe Mode, you’ll need to use the following:
- Shutdown your PS4 fully (not Rest Mode) until it powers off.
- Press and hold the power button your PS4. You’ll hear one beep upon pressing and ~7 seconds later, you’ll hear a second beep.
- Once you hear the second beep, stop pressing the button.
- The system will boot into Safe Mode and show you a menu of options.
- Choose the option ‘Rebuild Database’ and activate
- Once this function is complete, choose ‘Restart PS4’ to boot the console into normal mode.
Repairing the External Hard Drive
Now that you have restored the licenses and rebuilt the database, your console has been prepped for your external hard drive to be repaired. At this point, plug the drive into a USB port. The system should automatically detect the drive needs to be repaired and prompt you to repair it.
This time, your hard drive should fully repair without any problems. If so, you’re good to go and enjoy your fixed up console.
Failure Continues?
If your external hard drive fails to repair after all of these steps, then clearly there’s something amiss with your hard drive that is likely not related to licensing. From here, you can try to reformat the drive and see if that works. However, if the PS4’s operating system cannot properly format the drive, attempting a reformat may not fix this problem. In fact, this problem may indicate your hard drive has gone bad or is in the process of failing.
Because you’re going to need to reformat the drive, I might suggest connecting the drive to a Windows or Mac system and attempt to have the drive perform a full long format on the drive. This might take several hours. This process allows the operating system to check every sector of the drive and explicitly mark bad sectors while formatting.
Unfortunately, the PS4 doesn’t offer this deep level of formatting. Thankfully, Windows does, but Macs don’t do it easily. As long as you format the drive as exFAT, you will be able to use it on the PS4 later. However, you may not be able to use it as an extended drive on the PS4 as that may require the PS4 to reformat the drive, which may release all of the bad sectors that Windows was able to find and mark as bad. Though, it’s worth a shot to try.
If you convert that drive to an extended drive and find that the PS4 can’t repair the drive again later, then you may want to repurpose that drive strictly for your Windows or Mac use and go buy a new drive for your PS4.
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CEO Question: Should I sell my business to a Venture Capital group?
This may seem like a question with a simple answer, but there’s lots to consider. The answer also depends on your goals as CEO. If you’re here reading this, then you’re clearly weighing all of your options. Let’s get started.
Selling Anything
A sale is a sale is a sale. Money is money is money. What these cliché statements lack in brilliance is more than made up for in realism. What these statements ultimately mean is, if the entire goal of selling your business is to make you (personally) some quick money, then it honestly doesn’t matter to whom you sell.
Selling your company to your brother, a bank, another corporation or, yes, even a Venture Capitalist group, the end result is the same: a paycheck. If your end goal is that paycheck and little else matters, then you can end your reading here and move forward with your sale. However, if your goal is to keep your hard built business, brand and product alive and allow it to move into the future, I urge you to keep reading to find out the real answer.
Selling your Company
Because you are here reading and you’ve got some level of interest in the answer to the question posed, I assume, then, that you’re here looking for more than the simple “paycheck” answer. With that assumption in place, let’s keep going.
Companies are complex beasts. Not only does a company have its own product parts that makes the company money, companies must also have staffing parts, the people who are hired to support those product parts and maintain those new sales. Basically, there are always two primary aspects of any business: product and staff. As a CEO, it’s on you to gauge the importance levels of each of these aspects to you. After all, your staff looks to you for guidance and they rely on you for continued employment. There’s also your legacy to consider and how you may want to be remembered by the business (and history): positively, negatively or possibly not at all.
Reputation
Let’s understand that in countries like China, reputation or “face” is the #1 most important aspect of doing business. I don’t mean the business’s reputation. I mean the person’s own reputation is at stake. If the person makes a critical misstep in business, that can prevent future opportunities. In the United States, however, “face” (or personal reputation) is almost insignificant in its importance, especially to CEOs. Short of being found guilty of criminal acts (i.e., Elizabeth Holmes), there’s very little a CEO can honestly do to fail their career.
Indeed, I’ve seen many “disgraced” CEOs find, start, and operate many more businesses even after their “disgrace”. It’s even possible Elizabeth Holmes may be able to do this after serving her sentence. As I said, in the United States, someone’s business reputation means very little when being hired. In fact, a hiring business only performs background checks to determine criminal acts, not determine whether the person has a success or failure track record at their previous business ventures.
Why does any of this matter? It matters because no matter what you do as a CEO, the only person you have to look at every day in the mirror is you. If you don’t like what you see, then that’s on you. The rest of the industry won’t care or even know what you’ve done in the past unless you disclose it.
Venture Capitalist Buyouts
At this point, you’re probably asking, what about those Venture Capital Buyouts? Are they good deals? That really all depends on your point of view. If you’ve put “blood, sweat, tears and sleepless nights” into building your business from literally nothing to something to be proud of and you still hold any measure of pride in that fact, then a Venture Capital group buyout is probably not what you want. Let’s understand the differences in the types of buyouts.
- Direct Business Buyouts — These are sales made directly to other businesses like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and the like. These are sales where the buyer sees value in not only maintaining the brand and products under that brand, but building that brand as a sub-product under the bigger buyout company. With these kinds of buyouts, your product will live on under that new company. Additionally, the staff have the option to remain on board and continue to maintain that product for the new company for potentially many years. This kind of buyout helps maintain the product and maintains “face” among staff members. This kind of buyout rarely involves resale and, after the acquisition dust settles, is usually seen as a positive change.
- Venture Capital Buyouts — This kind of buyout is an entirely different beast. Venture Capitalists are in the purchase solely to make money off of their “investment” as a whole. The business itself is the commodity, not the products sold by the company being purchased. No. Venture Capital buyouts are a type of investor who buys a “business commodity” to “fix up” then “flip” to make their investment return. Thus, Venture Capitalists don’t honestly care about the internals of the products or solutions the company offers, only that those products / solutions become marketing fodder for their sales cap. Venture Capitalists do weigh the value in the products prior to the purchase, but beyond that and once the purchase completes, the business is treated not as an ongoing concern, but as a commodity to be leaned out, fixed up and made attractive to a buyer. This kind of buyout always involves resale. This fact means that remaining staff must endure acquisition twice in succession, probably within 1-2 years. This kind of buyout is usually viewed by staff (and the industry) as a negative change.
Thus, the difference between these two types of purchases is quite noticeable, particularly to staff who must endure them.
Undervalued
[Update 2/8/2022] Everything up to this point has only implied what this section actually states. I’ve decided to explicitly state this portion because it may not be obvious, even though I thought this information was quite obvious while writing the initial article.
Bottom Line: If a Venture Capital group is considering a purchase of your business, know that what the VC group is offering is only a fraction of what your business is actually worth. They can’t make money if they pay you, the seller, the company’s full value. Keep in mind that the VCs consider the business a “fixer upper”. That means they will invest “some” money into the business to “dress it up”. How that “dress up” manifests isn’t intended to turn your business around, however. What “dress up” means is investing money to make the business look pretty on paper… or, more specifically, so the books look better. That means they’ll pay an accountant to dress up the numbers, not pay to make your business actually better. Though, they will cut staff and then pull out the whips to make sure everyone sells, sells, sells so the business appears to have better year-over-year profits. When a prospective buyer looks at the books, the buyer will notice improved numbers and, hopefully, be willing to fork over double (or more) what the VCs paid to buy the “company” from you, the original seller.
Even the smartest, brightest, most intelligent CEOs can be taken in by the lure of a Venture Capital Group company purchase offer. Know then that what VCs have offered you isn’t what your company is actually worth.
Ultimately, it also means that you as the seller are being taken for a ride by the VCs. You can dress up your own company and do exactly as the VCs. Then, find a direct buyer willing to pay double what the VCs offered, which will make you twice as much money AND remove the VCs entirely from the picture as an unnecessary profiting middleman.
Acquisition Woes
Being the acquired company in an acquisition is hard on staff. Lots of questions, few answers and during the transition there’s practically silence. It’s a difficult process once the deal closes. It only gets worse. Typically, the then CEO becomes a lesser executive in the new firm. However, most times the CEO changes position not because they want to, but because the buyout contract stipulates a 6-9 month transition period and obviously most companies don’t want two CEOs. Though, I have rarely seen transitions that agree to co-CEOs. It’s an odd arrangement, though.
This means that the newly demoted executive is only on board to complete the transition and receive 100% of their contractually agreed buyout payment. In fact, most buyout contracts stipulate that for the CEO to receive their 100% payout, they must not only remain on board in a specific position for a specified period of time, they may also be required to meet certain key performance indicator (KPI) metrics. So long as all goals are met, the contract is considered satisfied and the former CEO receives 100% payment.
However, if some of the goals are only partially met, then reduction of payment is warranted. Such other metrics may include retaining key staff on board for a minimum of 6 months. If any general staff have ever gone through a buyout and have received a special bonus or incentive package, that’s the reason. The incentive package is to ensure the CEO’s KPI is reached so that the contractually defined buyout payment is paid at or as close to 100% as possible. This is also why these acquired executives can get both grumpy and testy when they realize their KPIs are in jeopardy.
Trust
Let me pause for just a moment to discuss a key issue, “trust”. While contracts stipulate very specific criteria, such as payment terms, not everything in a buyout is covered under the contract. For example, the acquiring company’s executives can find anything they wish wrong with the KPIs to reduce payment. Contracts usually do not contain intent clauses that hold the acquiring company execs accountable if they “make up” flaws in the agreement that don’t exist. It is ultimately the acquiring executives who decide whether the KPIs have been met, not the incoming CEO. If you trust these people to be morally and ethically sound, then you have nothing to worry about. However, because Venture Capitalists aren’t always practical in what they do and are driven by the need to see a return on their investment, they could find faults in the KPIs that don’t exist, solely to reduce payments. Basically, you’ll need to be careful when extending trust. Meaning, you must place full trust in those VCs willing to purchase your company. This means, doing your homework on these people to find out where they’ve been, who they’ve worked with and, if possible, get references. Let’s continue…
Buyouts with Strings
Every buyout has strings attached. No buyer will purchase a company outright for straight up cash without such strings. Such strings ensure the company remains intact, that key staff remain on board and that the product remains functional. These are handled via such stipulated “insurance policy” clauses in the form of KPIs applied to acquired CEO and executive team. These KPIs, when reached, allow the business seller to receive payment for reaching those KPIs. Were key staff to leave and the product have no knowledgeable or trained staff left to operate the product, then the purchase would be useless and the product would fail. For a buyer, requesting such insurance policies in the contract is always a key portion of buyout contracts. Expect them.
Saving Face
Circling back around to Venture Capital group buyouts, it’s important to understand that the point of such a buyout is for those “investors” to return their investment sooner rather than later. The sooner, the better. That means that their point in a company purchase by a Venture Capital group is not to take your business into new and bigger directions by dumping loads of money in and growing it. If they dangle that carrot in front of you, know that that’s absolutely not how these deals work. Don’t be deceived by the dangling of this carrot. This carrot is absolutely to get you to sell, but will almost just as definitely not pan out… unless it’s contractually obligated.
On the contrary. They’ve spent loads of money already simply buying the company. They’re not planning on dumping loads more cash into it. Instead, they plan to lean it out, get rid of stuff that wastes money (typically HR, insurance and such first), then move onto erasing what they deem as “useless” staff and wasteful costly third party services (ticketing systems, email systems, marketing systems, etc).
As for staff cuts, this means asking managers to identify key staff and jettisoning those staff who aren’t “key”. This usually comes down in the form of a mandate that only X people can be kept on board out of Y. For example, 10 people may be employed, only 3 may stay. Who will you pick? That then means jettisoning 7 people from the staff roster.
You won’t know this aspect going into the deal because they won’t have made you privy to these “plan” details. It also likely won’t be in the buyout contract either, unless you requested such a buyout stipulation. It’s guaranteed you’ll find out this plan within 10-20 days after the deal closes. As I said, the Venture Capitalists don’t look at it as an ongoing business to help flourish, they look at it as commodity to lean out, pretty up and hope for a high priced buyer to come along.
Venture Capitalists understand that it does cost some money to make money, but they’re not looking for a money pit. The purchase price is typically where the money pit ends. You shouldn’t expect an infusion of cash as soon as the Venture Capital firm closes the sale, unless such investment has been stipulated in writing in the purchase contract. Of course, you are free to take some of your own sale money and invest it into the business, but I don’t know why you’d do that since you no longer own the company.
What this means and why this section is labeled “Saving Face” is that eventually you’re going to have look into the face of not only the 7 people you had to fire, but the 3 people left and explain what’s going on. These situations are extremely hard on morale and makes it exceedingly difficult for those 3 who stayed on to remain positive. Surviving a huge layoff cut is not a win. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s also not simply a perception issue, either. Such a huge layoff places an even bigger burden on those who remain.
The 3 who remain feel as though they’ve lost the lottery. Now those 3 must work at least 10 times harder to make up the work for the 7 who are no longer there. Honestly, it’s a lose-lose situation for the acquired company. For the venture capitalists, it doesn’t matter. They’ve leaned out the company and the books now “appear” way better and the business also “appears” far less costly to operate in the short term. “Short Term” is exactly what the VCs are banking on to sell the company. This makes the “business” look great on paper for a buyer. As I said, the quicker the Venture Capitalists can flip their investment and make their money back, the better. The VCs are more than willing to endure hardship within the acquired company to make the company appear better for a buyer. As the saying goes, “It’s no skin off their noses”.
Technologists vs Venture Capitalists
Being a Venture Capitalist and being a Technologist are two entirely separate and nearly diametrically opposed jobs. It’s difficult to be both at the same time. As a technologist-founder-turned-CEO, the point is to build a business from scratch, allow the business revenues to help grow the business further and expand and build a reputation and customer base. Building a business from scratch is a slow road to a return on investment, which typically takes many, many years. That investment takes years to accrue, but can make an executive a lot of ongoing money. Just look at Jeff Bezos and Amazon. It can and does work.
As a Venture Capitalist group buying companies, the point isn’t to build a business. It’s to buy already built businesses as “commodities”, lean them out, make the books look great, then sell them for at least double the money, usually in months, not years. If the VCs dangle a “five year plan” in front of you, claiming to grow the business, please re-read the above again. To spell it out, there’s no “five year plan”, unless it randomly takes the VCs that long to line up a buyer. That’s more of an accident than a plan. The VCs would prefer to line up a buyer far sooner than 5 years. The “five year plan” rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. It was told to you, the seller, to keep you interested in the buyout; not because it is true.
If the “5 year plan” carrot is dangled in front of you, then you need to have the VCs put up or shut up. What this means is, make them write the “5 year plan” investment explicitly into the purchase contract. If they are legitimately interested in growing the acquired company, they should have no problems adding this language into the buyout contract. This will also be your litmus test. I’d be highly surprised to actually see VCs contractually agree to adding such “5 year plan” language into the purchase contract.
As I said above, these two types of jobs are nearly diametrically opposed.
One method slowly builds the company as a long term investment opportunity, the other uses the existing whole company itself as a commodity to sell quickly as a fast return on an investment. As a CEO, this is what you must understand when considering selling your business to a group of Venture Capitalists.
If you want your business and brand to continue into the future and have a legacy listed in Wikipedia, then you want to keep your business going and growing. Once you sell your business to VCs, the brand, product and, eventually, staff will all disappear. Nothing of what you built will remain. Selling to a Venture Capital group likely ensures that this process happens in less than 1 year.
Selling to a direct business, the brand naming may hang around much longer than 1 year. It’s really all about whether you care about your legacy and your resume. You can’t exactly point to producing a successful business when nothing of it remains. Selling the company makes money, yes, but has a high chance of losing everything you’ve spent loads of time building. Unfortunately, Venture Capital group purchases almost ensure the fastest means to dissolution of the brand and of that time spent building your business. Still, a paycheck is a paycheck and you can’t argue with that in the end.
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How to poach an egg in the microwave?
There are a number of YouTube videos claiming to poach an egg in a microwave. Almost every one of them is wrong and, worse, exceedingly dangerous. So, how do you poach an egg in a microwave? Let’s explore.
The Art of Egg Poaching
Poaching an egg is a cooking style which “poaches” an egg in hot water. Let’s understand that like oil and water, microwaves and water don’t always mix well, specifically when the water is heated. Microwaves tend to heat water excessively hot, to the point that the water becomes superheated. Superheated water is water that has reached a temperature beyond the boiling point.
Whoa! Wait a minute! Hold on. “Beyond the boiling point”, you say? You ask, “So why doesn’t it boil?” Good question. Microwaves are exceedingly efficient at heating water molecules rapidly. In fact, this is exactly how microwaves work. Microwaves target water molecules and energize them into moving rapidly. Molecules moving rapidly release heat. However, because the speed at which the microwave can heat water, it can get the molecules moving beyond the boiling point, but the water remains entirely still (i.e., no movement).
This is a dangerous and very deceptive condition. It means that the first thing placed into the water will cause the water to instantly explode into a boiling frenzy and spray boiling hot water everywhere, including potentially all over you causing burns. The point is, you never want to submerge an egg (whole or cracked) into water, then attempt to cook / poach it using a microwave. This is not at all a recommended cooking method. It’s also exceedingly dangerous.
Proper Egg Poacher Cookware
As with anything cooked in the microwave, appropriate cookware is required. Not only is each microwave cookware designed for a specific purpose, it ensures the safety of the person using the cookware for that purpose.
For the microwave, there are a number of different egg poachers that you can find. The most common is a clam shell style cooker with two compartments, into which you can crack two eggs. For example, here’s one type of clamshell style egg poacher at Amazon. If you prefer to buy name brands, here’s a Nordic poacher at Amazon (see inset image). You can sometimes find these style poachers at dollar stores and clearance home shops, like Home Goods.
How to Poach an Egg in a Microwave?
This method assumes you have acquired one of the above microwave cookers. DO NOT use an uncovered bowl instead.
Before I get into the how to portion, let me say that eggs, particularly the yolk, cook exceedingly fast in a microwave regardless of wattage. What this means is that even the best microwave poached egg won’t have a texture like an egg poached in a pan of water over open heat. This further means that if you are set on the texture and style of an actual poached egg, you’ll want to prepare it using a pan of heated water on a stove top, not by a microwave… especially if you like your yolk runny. On the flip side, poaching an egg in a microwave is easy and fast. If speed is important, then this method is the preferred choice.
With that said, to poach in a microwave egg poacher, the instructions are as follows:
- Crack one or two eggs into the compartment(s)
- Place one teaspoon of water on top of each egg
- Close and lock the lid over the egg(s)
- Place the cooker into the microwave, being careful to keep the unit level to avoid spilling
- Cook the eggs in the microwave for 1 minute
- Open the lid and check for doneness (careful, as steam may release which will be hot)
- If the egg is still not done, close and heat again in 20-30 second increments until done, checking after each 20-30 seconds.
Note that when poaching, the yolk will likely cook completely. It’s almost impossible to prevent this in the microwave. Once done, the egg whites will have a similar texture to poached. Unfortunately, the yolk is likely to be fully cooked and have that crumbly fully cooked texture.
This is a super fast way to cook an egg, but it may not provide the exact “poached” texture you’re looking for in the stove top method. However, this method, when used in the recommended microwave cookware, has very little chance of causing scalding hot water burns.
Also, be cautious when piercing the yolk with a fork immediately after coming out of the microwave. The yolk has a tendency to build up steam pressure inside and explode upon being pierced. You’ll want to wait for the egg(s) to cool for a few minutes before piercing. Alternatively, cover the egg with a paper towel and gently pierce it with a fork underneath, keeping your hands clear or covered with an oven mitt. If it explodes, the paper towel will catch it.
Be Safe and Happy Cooking!
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Fallout 76: Best location to farm XP?
Many people playing Fallout 76 are asking this specific question, specifically because nerfing has become so commonplace not just with weapons, but also spawning creatures and the reduction of XP received from creatures. Let’s explore.
The Whitespring
One of the staples for farming Experience Points (XP) in Fallout 76 has always been the Ghoul Run at The Whitespring (and the larger events like the Scorchbeast Queen). The plus with the Ghoul Run is that you’ll get a fair amount of XP out of the deal. The minus is that once you run it, it takes ages for the ghouls to respawn on the same server. This means you cannot continue to farm XP indefinitely. This slow respawn rate was intentionally changed to prevent players from farming this area constantly. However, you can mostly avoid this issue by server hopping. The other downside is that Bethesda has consistently and continually nerfed the XP received from killing high level ghouls. The amount of XP that can be had at The Whitespring Ghoul Run isn’t slouchy, but it’s nowhere near the levels that were formerly available when the game was new. You might have been able to level up once fully by a single Ghoul Run the first year the game was around. Today, it would take probably 10 runs to get the same amount of XP to level up.
This is why the Ghoul Run is still a decent run to do, but you can’t rely on it to take your character up to the next level quickly. Instead, there are other locations more suitable for high XP farming.
West Tek Research Center
With the addition of Steel Reign (part of the Steel Dawn series), a new location was opened at West Tek Research Center. This area is available via an elevator in the research wing of the facility. The area is named ‘FEV Production Facility’. Here’s the magic of this location. With the add on of this sublevel area, the interior of the entirety of West Tek Research Center is now farmable for XP infinitely.
Not only are the Super Mutants spawning at level 100 (mostly), they offer at least 300+ XP with every kill (as a base). The XP only goes up from here. This is at least twice the amount of XP you’ll receive from killing a high level ghoul at the Whitespring.
The important thing here is that once you’ve cleared out the upper level area of West Tek Research Center, you can then visit the FEV Production area and kill all the Supermutants down there. Be careful, though. The FEV area also spawns Supermutant Suiciders. Once you’ve cleared that area out, return to the upper floors and all of the Supermutants will have respawned yet again and you can clear the upper area out all over again.
Then, rinse and repeat. You can move between the lower FEV area and the upper research area then back. Every time you do this, each interior respawns all of the Supermutants again.
Better, each time I’ve done this, at least one Supermutant and/or Hound is a 2 or 3 star legendary. It’s not a lot of Legendary enemies, but they’re high level and multi-star. What this also means there’s no cooldown on the area at all. Just move back and forth between each of the areas and keep the kills going for as long as you want.
Effectively, West Tek Research center is the new XP run. You can farm XP here indefinitely when moving between these two interior spaces. This allows you to grind, grind, grind your way to leveling up quickly. This also quite useful when you’re wanting to complete the ‘Level Up’ challenges to gain S.C.O.R.E. points.
Increasing the XP bonus?
While 300 XP per kill isn’t too bad, you can really do much, much better at WestTek Research Center per Super Mutant kill. In fact, I’ve been able to achieve just over 1900 XP per kill for each level 100 Super Mutant! Because this area is instantly farmable non-stop, you can level up even your highest level character(s) around every 30-45 minutes. You’ll need a one or two shot per kill weapon, though, to achieve this level up speed. That’s a crap ton of XP in one or two shots. To achieve that ~1900, you’ll need to stack several XP boosters, combined with a Double XP weekend.
Basically, the XP bonus stack goes as follows:
Adding all of this up, that’s 2 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 10 + 15 + 100 + 100 ~= +242% XP. Unfortunately, this stacking math and Bethesda stacking math don’t always align in Fallout 76. Bethesda always math stacks to offer the least amount of bonus possible. Meaning, the stacking math I describe here might not be exactly what Bethesda uses to calculate the perk stack. Knowing Bethesda, it probably doesn’t work out perfectly like the math above. Regardless, this XP bonus stack shown above raises those base 300 XP Super Mutants to greater than 1900 XP per kill.
Without a Double XP Weekend, this halves the XP amount to around ~960 XP per kill. That’s still an excellent amount of XP per kill and can level almost any character up reasonably quickly, not to mention adding up all of those 100 extra S.C.O.R.E. points quickly.
Note that these are not the only foodstuffs in the game that offer bonus XP, but these above are the ones that offer the best bonus XP. This is the XP stack you’ll want to setup. Other foodstuffs offering bonus XP include Canned Meat Stew (+5% XP) and Cranberry Cobbler (+5% XP). Unfortunately, these only offer 5% bonus, so it’s better to craft Cranberry Relish or Tasty Squirrel Stew for the 10% XP it offers instead.
Fasnacht
When Fasnacht is active, there are lots of squirrels around. Take advantage of all of the extra squirrels and create Tasty Squirrel Stew for that 10% extra boost. Just remember, though, Tasty Squirrel Stew requires salt. You’ll need to hit up many diners, restaurants and kitchens to locate the amount of salt needed to craft all of that Tasty Squirrel Stew. In general, it’s a lot easier to source ingredients for crafting Cranberry Relish than it is for Tasty Squirrel Stew.
Cranberry Relish, for example, uses sugar. It’s very easy to craft sugar by picking a bunch of Snaptail Reed. Unfortunately, neither salt nor pepper cannot be crafted in Fallout 76. To find salt and pepper, this means lots and lots of scavenging places like the Whitespring Golf Club, all of the diners throughout Appalachia, every house with a kitchen, The General’s Steakhouse and even kitchens inside of bunkers, within the Enclave bunker, within the missile silo lunch rooms and even on picnic tables at Foundation. There are lots of kitchen locations all over the map where both salt and pepper spawn. Specifically, you want the salt and pepper shakers that are white and black, respectively. You don’t want the green salt and pepper shakers that are classed as “junk” and which can only be scrapped.
Additionally, salt and pepper containers only spawn once per 24 IRL hours. Once you’ve picked up salt and pepper containers at a location, you must wait a full 24 hours before the containers respawn.
Teams and Stacking
Keep in mind that Inspirational relies being on a public team and may or may not require 4 team members. It doesn’t matter which kind of team you create. You simply need to be on a public or private team.
Team Bonuses: There is an XP boost by joining any type of public team and establishing 4 bonds. Public team XP bonuses apply separately from the team goal. By joining a public team, such as a Casual team, in addition to the Intelligence boost, you’ll also receive an up to ~+2% XP boost for establishing 4 bonds. As I said above, this XP boost is separate from the team’s defined perk bonus such as Intelligence (Casual), Charisma (Roleplay) or XP boosts from Legendary Kills (Hunting). It’s definitely worthwhile joining public teams to gain this continuous small boost to your XP bonus. Note that this XP boost isn’t documented well and the amount of total bonus isn’t large, but a bonus is a bonus and every little bit adds up.
Also while you’re on a public team, take advantage of the Magazine and Bobblehead team bonuses. Stacking of shared Inspirational cards by multiple players while on a team may or may not work.
A note about foodstuffs. Only one foodstuff can be stacked at a time. If you eat Cranberry Relish, for example, you can’t add more XP by eating more foods, like Cranberry Cobbler (+5%) or Canned Meat Stew (+5% from Feed the People event). Eating any other foodstuff will replace the previous bonus with that new bonus. For example, if you eat Cranberry Relish and gain 10% XP, then eat Cranberry Cobbler, that 10% bonus will be replaced with a 5% bonus.
Yet, different classes of XP bonus items CAN be stacked like Bobbleheads can be stacked with Magazines, can be stacked with Foods and can be stacked with Lunchboxes. As long as each bonus item is of a different class, you can stack the XP up for a lot of bonus XP. Simply look at your character’s EFFECTS area to see how the stacking works.
With Magazines and Bobbleheads, you can extend the duration of these bonuses by using the Curator card. This perk card doubles the duration. If a Magazine normally lasts 1 hour, it will last for 2 hours with the Curator card. Unfortunately, there are no perk cards that increase the duration of Lunchboxes, Kindred Spirit or Food and Drink bonuses.
Finally, keep in mind that environmentally gained bonuses from sleeping, the bench press, the slot machine, the fortune teller, the punching bag or similar all disappear from your character should your character be forced to respawn. You’ll have to spend time reacquiring these environmental bonuses each time you respawn. This highly annoying issue is similar in frustration to dropped loot. Bethesda seems intent on making this game as frustrating as possible.
Dropped Loot
A caution is in order for this area. If one of the Super Mutants kills your character and you respawn, be sure to pick up your dropped loot instantly. If you fail to do this and transition to the other area using the elevator, the previous interior will be wiped and reset, which includes wiping and losing your dropped loot. Don’t expect your dropped loot to hang around after an interior resets.
Intelligence + Chems Debate
Some sites have debated that having higher intelligence offers better XP returned from killed creatures. I’ve personally not found this to be the case. I wear a full set of Unyielding armor which raises intelligence by +15 points and yet there’s no difference in XP on a kill with or without the armor.
Some have claimed that consuming Berry Mentats or other Intelligence boosting chems may offer better XP returned from kills. I’ve not tested using chems for this purpose, but it may be possible that the use of chems does offer some kind of random bonus to XP as either a bug or a misfeature in these game substances. Your mileage with using chems to boost XP may vary.
The Clock’s Ticking
Bethesda is very skittish when it comes to information like this. Therefore, the clock is ticking on the relevance of this information dated as of Oct 2021. Use this information while you can. Bethesda will ‘fix’ this area in a future update to prevent the above farming situation. As I said, use and enjoy the West Tek Research Center to farm loads of XP while you can. It won’t last.
In answer to the above question, if you’re looking for a reasonable place to continually farm high level enemies, legendaries and a decently high amount of XP per kill, West Tek Research Center is the place.
Good Luck
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10 Best Ways to Make Money in GTA Online
Unlike Grand Theft Auto V, where lots of money is thrown the player’s way all the way to the end of the game, Grand Theft Auto Online isn’t at all like this. Let’s explore the top ways to make money in GTA Online. Before we get started, let’s clarify several issues.
Daily versus In-Game Day
There is some confusion with GTAO using the word, “daily”. The game world has a day that lasts around an hour of real world play time. Then, there’s an actual in-real-life (IRL) day.
The use of the word ‘Daily’ below in the Type area means 24 real world hours must pass before that challenge or event resets in the game world. The challenges do not reset based on the in-game day, but instead reset based on waiting a full 24 clock-on-the-wall hours from the last time you played it.
You can specifically see this timer when you visit the Lucky Wheel at the Casino. However, other events which also require a 24 hour waiting period do not have visible timers. Instead, you must remember the last time you completed that specific event to know when you can play it again.
Costly Purchases
Unfortunately, too many activities in Grand Theft Auto Online require spending significant amounts of GTA$ to unlock access to those missions and areas (i.e., Cayo Perico Island). Once unlocked, you can then run those missions and make whatever money is given. However, the game is severely lopsided with too many of these missions and areas, such as Heists, falling into this category. What this all means? It means that Rockstar requires that you spend millions in GTA$ to gain back only a fraction of that money after completing the missions. This article intends to focus on the easiest ways to make money including ways that are entirely free (no costs involved), which don’t cost too much and/or ways that return a significant or passive amount of GTA$ for any money spent.
Any mission or activity which requires you to become a VIP, CEO or Motorcycle Club President (MCP) means you’ll need to purchase at least one of a VIP organization, an Executive Office (CEO) or a Motorcycle Clubhouse (MCP). All of these require at least GTA$1,000,000, with the VIP option being the worst deal in the game as you get no property out of the deal. If you’re going to pay at least GTA$1 million, you might as well get property out of the deal.
For activities in GTAO which primarily seek to take your GTA$, these are mentioned at the bottom of this article. Though, these activities aren’t worth playing simply to make money and should be avoided for that purpose. These up-front cost missions should only be played for their entertainment value… and only if you have the spare millions of GTA$ needed to unlock them. However, you don’t need to pay to unlock these expensive missions. There are plenty of activities which will yield GTA$ without paying anything.
Update for June 2022
Rockstar has permanently upped the ante for the Nightclub daily payout. Instead of the pittance of GTA$10,000 per in-game day, the game is now paying a whopping GTA$50,000 per day with a maximum safe capacity now at GTA$210,000. Normally, we would only see this kind of bonus as a short term weekly promotion. It seems that Rockstar has upped this payout permanently (or at least as permanently as Rockstar’s payouts can be… which probably means that it was a mistake and once Rockstar notices it, it will go back to GTA$10,000 per day). For now, gain from this while it lasts. So far, it’s lasted quite a while.
Is this update worth buying a Nightclub? Yes. In fact, I definitely recommend this purchase as the first property after purchasing an MC, VIP or CEO property. At GTA$50,000 per in-game day, you could see your Nightclub purchase refunded in around 30 in-game days assuming the Nightclub costs around GTA$1.5 million. In real world time and at 48 minutes IRL per in-game day, that would mean ~24 real life hours to see a GTA$1.5 million payout. If you play 4 hours a day, that’s around 6 days to recoup the cost of the Nightclub. After that, all money is bonus.
Tuners Update — Reduced Payouts
After the Tuners update rolled on July 20th, 2021, many payouts (including the nightclub missions) seem to have been reduced. This article is intended as reference, but know that with every update that Rockstar rolls, Rockstar can reduce payouts on any of what’s documented below without warning, as is the case with Simeon’s request and Nightclub missions. Simeon’s car request formerly offered up GTA$20,000 per car prior to Tuners, but has since been reduced on some cars to GTA$15,000 after this update. Rockstar just can’t seem to get enough of continually screwing us over.
Legend
The legend includes a Difficulty Level that ranges from 1 (Easy) to 5 (Medium) to 10 (Hard). The rest that appear in the legend are self-explanatory.
With these problems clarified, let’s start making some entirely free GTA$ starting with the best first …
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1. Spin the Lucky Wheel
The first way to earn money in GTA online is by spinning the Lucky Wheel every day in the Diamond Casino. This activity costs nothing.
Landing on the GTA$50,000 spot each day for 7 days will net you a cool GTA$350,000 a week. Performing this activity for a full 31 days will net you GTA$1,550,000. How do you land this spot every day? The simplest way is to close the application before the wheel stops spinning. Once you know the wheel is not landing on GTA$50,000 (easy to see), close out, then reload into the game and try spinning again. There are also other money spots on the wheel such as 25,000 casino chips (which can be converted to GTA$), GTA$30,000, GTA$40,000 and others. While the highest is GTA$50,000, landing on any of these money spots is free money. Take advantage.
The best thing about this activity is that you don’t have to spend any money or perform any silly activities to get this free money, but you do have to sometimes restart the app several times before you can land on the exact spot, which takes a bit of time.
Cost: Free
Type: Free Money, Daily, Recurring
Reward: up to GTA$50,000 max depending on which space you land
Difficulty Level: 1 (Easy)
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2. Simeon
This free activity appears once per day. Simeon will send you a text to locate one of several cars from his list. It can take about 30-45 minutes real play time before Simeon’s text pops up. If you’ve waited that long without a text, this likely means it hasn’t been a full 24 hours since the last time you performed this activity. These cars range in cost and only one of those listed cars will reward a maximum of ~GTA$20,000 (some cars reduced to $15k after Tuners update July 20th, 2021). Locate the highest cost car in the list, lose the 2 wanted stars, take it to Los Santos Customs and paint it for free. Then, drop it off at Simeon’s dock warehouse garage to pick up your free ~GTA$20,000 (or whatever you find your car is worth). This one only appears every 24 hours, like spinning the wheel.
If you do Simeon’s text mission every day, in 31 days you’ll have made GTA$620,000. The challenge with this mission is in finding the car Simeon wants. The biggest hint I can give is try looking at the Diamond Casino parking lot. At least 2 times out of 5, you’ll find his highest priced car parked there, just waiting to steal.
Note, this one can be tricky. The game’s car spawning mechanic doesn’t sync up with this quest and won’t always spawn the cars Simeon wants. This means you can literally spend hours waiting on specific cars to spawn. Sometimes, the cars are readily available at a parking lot, sometimes you can drive around for hours looking. If after driving around for about 5-10 minutes without success, I recommend logging out and logging into a new server and waiting for Simeon to text you his newest list again. Moving to a new server can sometimes make this quest easier and faster. It’s worth noting that whatever it costs to repair the car at Los Santos Customs, after being chased by the cops, will be reimbursed to you upon turning the vehicle in. You don’t need to treat the car with kid gloves when heading over to Los Santos Customs. Once you’ve repaired and painted the car, then yes, you’ll want to be careful when driving over to Simeon’s warehouse at the docks.
Cost: Free
Type: Active Income, Daily, Recurring
Reward: Max GTA$20,000 + repair costs reimbursed per day, depends on which car you drop off.
Difficulty Level: 3 (Medium… depends on whether cars spawn + must get rid of a 2 star wanted status + must drive car safely to the docks without damage)
Correction: I have since found that even though some cars have had their take reduced to GTA$15,000, some have not. The maximum is still GTA$20,000 + repair costs if you choose the correct car.
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3. Stealing Cars
This is a free activity that can be had once per day. As in the game’s name as Grand Theft Auto, stealing random cars off of the street and driving them to Los Santos Customs can net you between GTA$3,000 to GTA$9,000 per car, depending on the car model you sell. You can only sell one car per day. While this isn’t a whole lot of money each time, it’s still enough that it’s worth doing for some quick cash.
Cost: Free
Type: Active Income, Daily, Recurring
Reward: Up to GTA$9,000 per day depending on which car you drop off
Difficulty Level: 1 (Easy)
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4. Robbing Convenience Marts
This is a free activity. While this activity can be a bit more on the fun side, it isn’t without its downsides. The difficulty isn’t so much with holding up the store, but that the maximum money you’ll get from each store is maxed at around GTA$1,000. That amount of money almost seems not worth the hassle, except there are 19 stores that you can hit up around the map to net somewhere close to GTA$19,000 per day. Not the best haul in this list, but it’s decent.
Cost: Free
Type: Active Income, Daily, Recurring
Reward: Up to GTA$1,000 per store with 19 stores
Difficulty Level: 3 (Mostly easy, but will need a decent getaway car)
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5. Gang Attacks
Gang attacks appear as a large red circular area on the mini map and full sized map. These activities have you take down a bunch of thugs in that area. Upon successful gang attack completion, you receive 500 RP. Where you make your payout here is looting all of the gang bodies and the weapon crates. Gang members may drop between GTA$20-50 each. Each weapon crate drops GTA$500. Most areas have around 5 crates or more. The crates can total at least GTA$2,500 + whatever money you can loot off of the gang members.
Cost: Free
Type: Active, Daily, Recurring, Multiple map areas, Time Suck
Reward: ~GTA$2,500 + loot + 500 RP * ~36 Gang areas on the map >= GTA$90,000 per day
Difficulty Level: 6-8 (Medium hard, requires ammo, decent shooting skills and persistence)
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6. Visit the Casino Cashier
This one offers free money every day. Visiting the casino cashier allows you to pick up 1000 visitor bonus casino chips every single day. You can cash these chips out to GTA$ at any time. This one is down the list because it doesn’t offer a lot per day, but it is free money with no catch. Like the Lucky Wheel, this one also takes a full 24 hours before it resets. If you do this one just after spinning the wheel, the Lucky Wheel timer can be used to cover both activities.
Cost: Free
Type: Recurring, Daily
Reward: 1000 chips daily or GTA$70,000 every 7 days or GTA$300,000 every 30 days
Difficulty Level: 1 (Easy)
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7. Freemode Events
To participate in Freemode events, you’ll need to play in public servers. Private servers of any type do not spawn Freemode events. These events are random in type and require specific things, like opening a parachute closest to the ground. Whomever does this the best gets first place and the highest prize.
Cost: Free
Type: Multiplayer, Recurring, Random throughout the day
Reward: GTA$18,000+ to a little more than GTA$20,000
Difficulty Level: Depends on the event and how many participate
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8. Hidden Caches
Here’s another treasure hunt that was introduced as part of Cayo Perico. This is similar to the treasure hunt that’s also available on Cayo Perico Island (see below), except this hunt is much, much better for GTA$ and doesn’t require purchasing the expensive Kosatka Submarine. In this case, there are 10 hidden caches to find and because there are so many and because these caches can be found daily, it’s makes the list at spot 8. However, there are 100 locations from which those 10 caches can spawn, making it a medium difficulty event. This means you’ll need to check a lot of different locations to find all 10. The caches can be picked up inside or outside of a vehicle. This means you can use an underwater vehicle, like the Toreador, if you have one or you can use a scuba diving suit, your choice. If your vehicle has a sonar (i.e., you have bought the Kosatka), the sonar will make it somewhat faster to find all 10.
This one rewards GTA$7,500 and 500 RP for each cache found. Finding all 10, you will net GTA$75,000 and 5,000 RP. The caches reset daily, allowing you to pick up that GTA$75,000 each day. In 7 days, that’s GTA$525,000. In 28 days, that’s GTA$2.1 million. That’s a lot of GTA$ to get if you do it every day for a month. In fact this one is far easier than doing the Daily Objectives and awards more GTA$ in 28 days, though less RP at 140,000.
Cost: Free
Type: Daily, Recurring
Difficulty Level: 5 (Medium — must be tenacious)
Reward: GTA$7,500 + 500 RP per cache (10x = $75,000 + 5,000 RP per day)
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Income which requires a purchase….
Here are the final two of our top 10, but these require buying properties to gain a daily income. These final two are included in this top 10 list because these are the only properties you can own in GTA Online that produce truly passive income.
Update: There has been one new property added that also adds passive income, although very little per day at around $500. This new property is the Agency. This is the Franklin Clinton and Partner property. It isn’t included in the top 10 because these two below are still the highest paying for passive income in the game. The Agency’s passive income is too low to be of any real value. The game claims that if you do Security missions that the daily income increases. Unfortunately, I’ve not found that to be the case. I’ve done at least 20-30 of the Security missions and the daily income remains at a low $500 per day.
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9. Nightclub Promotion
As of June 2022, the daily nightclub payout has been increased to GTA$50,000 per day. The safe capacity has also been increased to GTA$210,000. Nightclub ownership activities have now moved into the top spot for residual income from a property purchase.
Because this activity still requires investment, it has moved up one place to 9. However, because of the GTA$50,000 per day income, owning a nightclub is now the #1 activity to do once you can afford this property purchase. In other words, this is the recommended first property to purchase (after buying an executive suite to be CEO) and to milk for cash once you have grinded enough GTA$ from the top free list above. With this new increased in-game daily payout, in 4 hours of play, you can earn GTA$200,000 for mostly doing nothing.
Owning a nightclub is a property type that you must purchase before you can reap the passive monetary rewards. However, this property comes with a catch. To make the maximum money per day (GTA$10,000 now raised to GTA$50,000), you’ll need to complete various Nightclub management missions. These activities promote the nightclub and keep the club full. So long as the nightclub remains full of people and the popularity progress-bar is filled, the nightclub will earn you GTA$50,000 per day doing next to nothing. As the club popularity decreases and the popularity bar dips, so does the income. However, you will also need to invest in the nightclub security to drastically slow down the loss of income each in-game day.
Like arcades, nightclubs cost around GTA$1.5 million depending on the property. However, once you own it, it is guaranteed to generate some amount of passive income. If you do nothing and choose not to promote the club, the club still produces a minimum amount of passive daily income, maybe GTA$1,000 per day or possibly higher.
You’ll also net various amounts of GTA$ from 2,500 to 5,000 for each successful promotion activity completed, such as putting up posters yields GTA$5,000 and a small amount of RP on completion.
Note that to run nightclub missions, you need to become CEO, which also costs GTA$. To become CEO, you’ll need to buy an Executive Office or pick one up in the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack. Becoming VIP or MC might also work, but these also cost GTA$ to buy into.
Cost: GTA$1-2 million depending on property + GTA$1-2 million for Executive Office to be CEO
Type: Active or Passive Income, Daily, Recurring
Passive Income: GTA$50,000 per day down to GTA$1,000 per day depending on popularity.
Mission Reward: GTA$2,500 to GTA$5,000 + RP depending on promotional activity
Safe Capacity: GTA$210,000
Difficulty Level: 1 (Easy) to 3 (Medium) depending on activity
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10. Arcade
Owning an arcade requires buying it with GTA$. The cost to buy an Arcade is around GTA$1,300,000. However, Rockstar regularly puts properties on heavy discount throughout the game. At a 40-50% discount, you might spend as little as GTA$500,000 to get a property.
Sometimes you can even get some properties included in a bundle or possibly free from Rockstar promotions. Bundles such as in the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack (CESP), which costs somewhere between USD$10-$20, includes a bunch of properties, weapons, vehicles, outfits and tattoos… including a bonus of GTA$1,000,000. This bundle might also be included with the purchase of certain game versions. Take advantage of freebies included with such bundles if you can afford them.
For example, the CESP bundle includes the following properties:
- Maze Bank West Executive Office — No Garage w/o GTA$
- Paleto Forest Gunrunning Bunker — 1 Car Garage
- Senora Desert Counterfeit Cash Factory (must be a motorclub president)
- Great Chaparral Biker Clubhouse — 17 Bike Garage (10 for you, 1 each for 7 members)
- 1561 San Vitas Street Apartment — 2 Car Garage
- 1337 Exceptionalists Way — 10 Car Garage
However, CESP doesn’t include an Arcade property. Take advantage of the property discounts when they roll around each week, which may include discounts for an Arcade, a Hangar and Nightclub properties.
Keep in mind that owning properties isn’t without cost. Every property you buy has a daily payment that is subtracted at the end of each game world day from your GTA$ (about every hour of play). This means that you won’t make exactly GTA$5,000 per day… it’ll be more like GTA$4,500 after daily expenses are subtracted for that specific property. You will see the full GTA$5,000 deposited into the safe and the daily expenses are subtracted separately.
However, you don’t have to do anything to get that income. It rolls in without even being there and I’m not even sure you have to buy arcade machines either. Just be sure to stop by and pick the money up before the safe fills up. Yes, you must stop by the arcade to pick it up. You also have to remain online for a full in-game day for the money to show up.
Finally, it’s worth noting that unlike GTA V, you cannot own multiple businesses like arcades or nightclubs as you might expect. In GTA Online, you can own one of each type of business property including the executive office, arcade, nightclub, hangar and motorcycle clubhouse. Garages and apartments are the exception which you are allowed to own up to 6, excluding garages attached to businesses like the executive office, casino penthouse, arcades, nightclubs, bunkers and facilities. For completion’s sake, you can also only own one each of these vehicles including the Super Yacht, Kosatka, Mobile Operations Center, Terrorbyte and Avenger.
If you attempt to buy a second “one-only” property or you’ve used up your 6 slots, the game will apply credit from your old property towards your new purchase so that you only pay the diffence in price between the first and second. If the new property is less costly than the old one, you’ll get money back. Note that freebie properties might not offer a trade-in allowance towards a new property.
Cost: Minimum GTA$1,300,000 for Arcade (may be able to get one free)
Type: Passive Income, Daily, Recurring
Passive Income: GTA$5,000 per day
Active Income: None
Difficulty Level: 1 (Easy)
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Runners Up
Here are some other runner up events and activities that didn’t make the top 10 but are well worth considering. Note, the Payphone hit payouts have been reduced from GTA$85,000 per hit to GTA$50,000 per hit after the 2022 Summer update. Rockstar has seen the error of their ways and reinstated the GTA$85,000 per hit reward.
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Franklin’s Quests (First Runner Up)
[Updated 7/26/2022] After the 2022 summer update (July), Rockstar has lowered payouts for Payphone hits to GTA$50,000. The GTA$85,000 reward recently reinstated for payphone hits. This means payphone hits are back to being an excellent money making opportunity in the GTA Online.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this recent addition and I’ve come to the conclusion that this Agency addition is way better than I had originally thought and is pretty much better than any other update for money making purposes. In fact, it’s so great, I would bump The Agency update into the number 10 position if not for one thing (well, a couple). It costs a LOT of cash to buy an Agency plus it costs to buy an Executive Suite and it offers very little passive income in return per day. The passive income isn’t where you make money.
It’s the Payphone Hits which can definitely net a crap ton of GTA$ in very little time. In fact, Payphone Hits can make you so much money so rapidly, that it will pay for the cost of the Agency property in ~30 Payphone Hits (less when they boost the return). After that payback time, it’s all profit. With Payphone Hits, you can make around 6 hits per hour. Meaning, in about 5 hours of doing nothing but Payphone hits all returning $85,000 per pop, these will completely pay for the Agency.
[Updated: 3/11/2022] I’ve been remiss in updating this article, but here’s the 2022 update including Franklin’s new quests. Franklin’s quests cost around GTA$2.2 million because you have to buy into the new Agency property. Like the Auto Shop addition just before this one, you must pay to unlock the Franklin quests by buying a property. For that money and property, however, you will also unlock 20 new garage spaces. If you’re like me, forever running out of new car spaces, getting a new 20 car garage is a pretty sweet deal. However, it also means shelling out around GTA$2 million… a lot of grinding.
The biggest deal unlocked with Franklin’s quests, besides the property, is Dr. Dre’s quests. Though, Dre’s quests aren’t the best way to make money from this update. No, it’s the Payphone Hits!
Dr. Dre
I’m including the Dr. Dre quests here because it’s technically part of Franklin’s quests. Dr. Dre’s quests only unlock after you run at least one Security mission, which requires being a CEO, MC or VIP.
However, know that Dr. Dre’s quest line is like the Heists… effectively one time, but restartable. Yes, you can do them over again, but must start from the beginning. The haul for these quests is decent, but I don’t at all recommend these for ongoing money making opportunities due to the complexities of Dre’s quests. For each mission, you’ll earn GTA$100k. For completing the entire Dr. Dre quests, you’ll earn GTA$1 million. It’s a decent haul, but the missions are not simple and may require trying multiple times if you’re doing it alone. These quests are also easy to fail.
Cost: GTA$2.2 million to buy an Agency PLUS Buying a VIP, CEO or MC property
Type: Not Free, Restartable One-Off
Reward: GTA$100,000 per mission + GTA$1,000,000 for completing them all
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Agency Security Quests
These missions require that you to become a CEO, VIP or MC to complete them. This means you will need to purchase a VIP pass, a Motorcycle Club (MC) or an Executive Suite (CEO) before you can run these. One of these costs around GTA$1 million to GTA$1.5 million depending, but you only need one. This is in addition to cost of purchasing the Agency to get access to Franklin.
Franklin offers your character multiple types of agency Security Missions from protecting supplies, to stealing items, to protecting a person, to stealing vehicles. Each of these missions earns you a random amount of GTA$ decided by the computer system on your Agency desk. Whatever the computer says the mission will earn, that’s what it earns. It typically ranges from about GTA$33k to GTA$64k. It depends on the mission and what the game decides that mission is worth.
The Agency Security Missions are decent hauls, but the missions can sometimes go south easily. If you fail a mission, that mission disappears from the computer and cannot be repeated. It will be replaced with a new mission, usually offering a much smaller haul. Because of the randomness with these agency quests, the complexity of them combined with the ease for which they can fail, I don’t recommend these for ongoing cash grabs in the game. There’s also a cooldown timer between each quest.
You can do them, but know that they aren’t always worth the time and effort for the money return involved. Do them for fun, not for profit.
Cost: GTA$2.2 million to buy an Agency PLUS Buying a VIP, CEO or MC property
Type: Not Free, Recurring
Reward: GTA$33k to GTA$64k
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Payphone Hits
These quests are where the GTA$ are. Not only do Payphone hits not require being a CEO, MC or VIP to run them, when you complete the Bonus, you will get an extra GTA$70,000 for a total of GTA$85,000 for each successful hit completed. You can even run these in Invite Only Sessions to avoid interaction with other players. Because there’s no limit in how many you can do of these in a day, doing 10 will net you GTA$850,000. Doing 12 will earn you, GTA$1,020,000. Keep in mind that it takes a minimum of about 10 minutes per hit, that means it will take you about 120 minutes (2 hours) to earn GTA$1 million. There is a cooldown timer on these hits, but this can be avoided if you save immediately after receiving your cash by changing your outfit, then killing and restarting the game. However, doing this means you have to wait through the very long game restart process (around 4 minutes to load and another 2 minutes to get online). After that, it takes another 4 minutes to complete a hit. That totals right around 10 minutes per restart and Payphone Hit. This means you can complete about 6 per hour netting you $510,000 per hour of play.
Occasionally, Rockstar increases this bonus by 50% earning you GTA$105,000 as Bonus and GTA$22,500 for base fee, for a total of GTA$127,500 per successful hit. This will net you GTA$1 million a whole lot faster (in about an hour).
Hits consists of 5 types:
- The Cofounder — This type of hit requires you visit a motel, wait for him to check out, then perform the action required to take him out such as a sticky bomb on the car or using a scoped weapon to blow the engine.
- The Tech Entrepreneur — This type of hit requires a taxi cab. You pick up a cab at the designated location, then drive the Tech Entrepreneur to the location required and do the deed by drowning or the scrapyard.
- The Judge — This type of hit requires visiting the golf course. You will do away with her by golf club, running her over with a cart or blowing her up with a sticky bomb.
- The Popstar — This type of hit requires you to chase the popstar in the car and take them out with a specific method, like chasing them in a cop car to intimidate them, taking them out Vagos style with a driveby or using a truck cab to ram them into submission.
- The Trolls — The Trolls are 4 hits. You must visit all 4 locations and take out the trolls with various criteria, such as in 7 minutes, using headshots or running them over in a vehicle.
- The CEO — This mission requires taking out a CEO playing construction worker. The mission will require you to use various construction equipment to take him out, like blowing up a gas tank, dropping a container on him or triggering a dozer to run him over.
Two additional missions exists, but only if you are logged in as a CEO or MC and have two people. All of these missions are most easily launched by calling Franklin from the contact on your phone. Though, you can also wait until Franklin randomly launches one. Using the phone makes these missions the fastest to get started, because you don’t need to visit the Agency computer at the office.
Note, for missions that require you to pick up a taxi or police cruiser, you don’t need to wait for the message. Go to the taxi location near the Casino or to the Chili restaurant or similar. For the police cruisers, they will spawn sometimes at a location closest to the Popstar’s car. Though, not always. Once you locate a cruiser, you may find yourself driving all over Los Santos go get to where the Popstar is.
Bugs exist here. If you are using a Deluxo, any Trolls Bonus will fail if you accidentally run them over in that specific car. Meaning, if you are given the criteria to run the Trolls over in a Vehicle, don’t do it in a Deluxo. Choose another car. However, even if you’re running a different Bonus requirement and accidentally run a Troll over in the Deluxo, that bonus will also fail even if unrelated. This bug has been reported. Note, this issue may affect all types of special weapons vehicles like the Toreador and the Stromberg.
Bugs in the GPS leading to the Scrapyard (The Tech Entrepreneur) and the door of the Von Crastenberg Richman (also The Tech Entrepreneur) is inaccurate. If you follow the GPS, it will lead you incorrectly. You will need to find these two locations on your own and remember how to get there when these mission requirements appear.
A bug exists with The Judge missions. All of The Judge missions occur at the golf course. If you fail to change into the Golf Outfit and Golf Club, the mission bonus will automatically fail even if you successfully do what the bonus requires.
A bug exists with The CEO. If you accidentally wander too close to the construction site, this will disrupt The CEO’s walking path. Once this occurs, there’s no way to recover to receive the bonus. He simply won’t resume his walking path once disrupted. In fact, any targets that follow a walking path will fail to recover that walking path if they are disrupted. However, some targets that lose their walking path can still see a successful bonus, it’ll just be a whole lot more difficult. However, The CEO will fail the bonus because he won’t line up with the requirements.
One last thing about these Payphone Hits is that they’re not all equal in time and effort. Some hits are way more complex than others. For example, one of the Popstar hits requires taking him out in drive-by style using a Vagos wagon. Shooting while driving in this game is, at best, a miss affair. While it is possible to do it, it’s not easy nor is it accurate. Another more complicated hit is The Judge hit that requires taking her out with a sticky bomb planted somewhere close to her on the golf course. That’s next to impossible to do. Anytime you get close to her and take out any kind of weapon, her goons start firing on you. That spooks her and she runs away, failing the “sticky bomb” Bonus. If she runs away with either of the other requirements, it is possible to get the bonus. When these overly complex missions appear, I kill the game instantly and try again. There’s no reason to do these complex missions when most of the rest of the missions are straightforward and relatively easy.
Complicated Hit Example
As an example of a complicated and time consuming hit, one of the The Judge hits requires you do it with a sticky bomb at a specific hole on the golf course. This one is so specific about where and how you must do it, you are required to know the golf course like the back of your hand. The one thing Rockstar forgets is that even if you play the golf course through, the game takes control over which hole you’re on and automatically transports you to the next one after completion.
You don’t get the benefit of actually walking from hole to hole yourself. This means that even if you play the golf course, you still don’t get to know the course. You get to know the holes specifically, but not where they are located on the property. To run this specific sticky bomb mission, that means you’ll need to spend time at the golf course learning exactly where each of the holes are, how they are laid out and how to get to each one of them. That’s something you must do on your own, wasting a lot of time in the process. Oh, and once you get onto the property, knowing which hole is which is not terribly easy to determine. As I said above, some hits are way more complicated and time consume than others. I don’t even get why Rockstar would think people could actually perform this hit. Yet, it’s included in the batch of hits. I always drop from this one when it appears. I don’t have the time to scour the golf course to find exactly where hole 3 is or hole 6 or any other hole.
Cost: GTA$2.2 million to buy an Agency (may require VIP, MC or CEO first time to unlock)
Type: Not Free, Recurring
Reward: GTA$22,500 to GTA$85,000 each hit depending on bonus success
The best of all of the above are most definitely the Payphone hits. However, I can’t remember if the game requires completion of at least one Security contract and/or Dr. Dre’s missions to unlock the Payphone Hits. If so, that means you will need to invest in CEO, MC or VIP to unlock these Payphone Hit missions. I’m assuming it does. These expensive investments is why the Franklin missions failed to make the top 10, even though the Payphone Hits net a lot of GTA$ quickly.
For the Payphone Hits alone, however, this is the reason the Franklin section has been placed immediately below #10 as the first runner up.
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Auto Repair Shop + Los Santos Car Meetup
This brand new addition arrived as of July 20th, 2021. Two new features have been introduced into GTAO. The first is the Los Santos Car Meetup. This is a large warehouse building where players can meet and show off their cars, but unfortunately only one car at a time. As you show off and mod your car, your Meetup reputation points will increase. These reputation points are separate from standard RP. There are 32 parking spaces in the warehouse where cars can be parked. There’s also an indoor track that can be raced. The second is the Auto Repair shop, which you have to buy.
To begin this whole deal, once you get inside of the meetup building, you’ll meet with Mimi (the organizer) who introduces you to Sessanta and KDJ. Sessanta and KDJ want to open an auto repair and modification shop with you. However, Rockstar leaves it up to you to buy this new business location in the game. To buy an auto repair shop, you’ll need to visit Maze Bank Foreclosures. Here, you’ll find several locations which you can purchase. As of now and with Prime Gaming, one of the locations (Strawberry) is free to obtain, the rest cost around GTA$1.5 to 1.9 million. If you have Prime Gaming, grab the freebie now before Rockstar kills the promotion. Without Prime Gaming, you’ll have to pay.
Once you own an auto repair shop, like most other Heist operations, there’s a contract job board. To access it, you’ll need to become a CEO. Here’s the expensive catch.
To become CEO, you’ll need to own an Executive Office Suite (~GTA$1,000,000, see below OR ~USD$20 to buy the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, see Arcade above). See, I told you that Rockstar gets you to spend massive amounts of GTA$ all over the place in this game.
The first job given by Sessanta is to rescue Sessanta’s car from the impound lot at the police station, the same car you first saw her in at the meetup. This is a fairly difficult mission because you have to mow down a bunch of cops at the impound lot. However, as soon as you arrive there, you get a 3 star wanted rating causing even more cops to swarm. Suffice it to say, you’ll need to grab the car as fast as possible and attempt to lose the wanted status quickly. Once you do this, bring it back to the auto repair shop and the actual jobs begin on the job board.
There are three ways to make money with the auto repair shop. The first is to perform the job board contract jobs. The second is to wait for customers to arrive to have their cars repaired and modded. The third way is to complete one contract to unlock specific wanted cars to jack and return for GTA$, like Simeon’s request above. Here’s where the second way gets convoluted.
Repairing and modding cars forces you to pay out some amount of GTA$ from your own pocket which will get reimbursed by the customer plus their service fee on top. I’ve done two of these. The first one was -GTA$50,000 to repair and +GTA$30,000 as the car repair payment, for a total of +GTA$80,000 once the car is delivered. The second car was -GTA$20,000 to repair and +GTA$20,000 as payment, for a total of +GTA$40,000 once delivered. If the car is delivered damaged, the game reduces the amount you get paid. You’ll need to have at least GTA$100,000 in your account if you intend to run these repair jobs.
However, Rockstar failed us with this new feature because I’d like to have an Open sign that I can turn on and off. If I don’t want the jobs to appear at all, I’d like to turn off the Open sign and prevent Sessanta from calling me with new jobs.
As for the contract jobs, KDJ takes a 10% cut of whatever payment amount is offered. Note that all of the contract jobs are reasonably complicated and difficult to complete when playing solo. However, they can be completed solo, but you’ll have to play them multiple times learning strategies via trial and error. The three jobs that appear for me are as high as GTA$185,000 and as low as GTA$170,000. I have personally confirmed that KDJ’s cut is, in fact, 10%. You definitely will not get the amount listed on the job board. For a GTA$178,000 job, I got GTA$160,200 + another $75,000 about one minute later for some odd reason. Maybe Rockstar is offering up a bonus for the first contract completed? *shrug*
For car repairs and mods, you do get the full amount listed on the job order. You just have to be sure to follow the instructions on the bottom of the screen to do exactly what the customer requests. If you choose to place random mods on the car, the customer likely won’t pay you for them. Also, if you choose not to hire a tech, you’ll have to deliver the cars yourself. If you hire a tech, you’re going to see a higher daily fee to pay the staff at the auto repair garage. These jobs appear several times in the same day. These are not limited to one repair per 24 IRL hours… yet. If you buy a second lift (GTA$650,000), you can repair two cars at the same time and double your income.
Note that the auto repair shop doubles as a new 10 car garage. Getting a new 10 car garage for free (with Prime Gaming) is a pretty sweet deal. Also note that if you buy any add-on decorations for the auto repair shop, they will not show up until you complete Sessanta’s first mission to rescue Sessanta’s ride from the impound lot (assuming everyone gets this same mission as the first mission).
There’s also one more way to make additional GTA$ from the auto repair shop:
Once you have completed at least one contract from the board, the game unlocks a list of wanted vehicles that can be searched for, jacked and sold in similar form to Simeon. I’m not yet certain what the payouts for these are, but since you’re delivering to the docks, it is likely the same payout (max GTA$20,000 per car) as it is for Simeon… and this is probably the reason Simeon’s payout dropped. In fact, it is the same payout amount (GTA$20,000) as you get from Simeon’s car request. It does say you get a bonus if you deliver all on the board, but this is almost impossible to do. This also illustrates why it’s important to read the loading screens.
Difficulty
Attempting to locate each of the 10 cars each day is about as easy as completing the Daily Objectives for 31 days. Some cars are highlighted with a blue dot on the minimap. Cars that are “standard spawn” must be found and jacked in the normal way. Because of this harem-scarem means to locate the cars, you can’t rely on any one specific method. It also means you have to be super great a spotting specific cars by make, which is tricky enough in itself. Waiting for the blue dots for the ‘special’ cars to show up is near impossible. In fact, because other blue dots show up which aren’t related to this, you can literally spin your wheels doing unrelated tasks. Rockstar has made this task as difficult as possible and only 24 hours in which to complete it.
It’s great that this chalkboard car search is daily in that you the chance to get up to GTA$200,000 (plus bonus if you get all 10) per day doing this, but you can spend many, many hours looking for those 10 cars. Worse, the chalkboard can change out from under you when those 24 hours are up without you knowing… all while searching for a car that’s no longer on the board.
Note also that Simeon’s car quest and the Auto Shop car quest can conflict, requesting the same vehicle. This means you’ll need to make a choice to whom you intend to deliver. It also means that you’ll need to find that same car a second time for whichever one you didn’t fulfill. This is frustrating. Sometimes you find cars for both Simeon and the Auto Shop at the same lot. Again, you’ll have to choose which car to jack and deliver. The problem is, when you come back, the game will have despawned those other cars and respawned something else. That means you’ll have to go looking again. Also frustrating.
Tricks
One trick that sometimes works in finding one of the 10 cars is going in and out of the garage at the casino. When you enter the garage and then exit, the parking lot will respawn with all new cars. Occasionally, a blue dot will spawn there in the parking lot. The blue dot sometimes spawns in a space to the right of the the exit across from Downtown Cab, Co. This is probably the fastest way to get the parking lot to respawn with new cars. That doesn’t mean you’ll get a blue dot, but occasionally you might.
Bugs
There are a number of bugs with the auto repair shop. If you drive a car into the garage, you will be unable to repair a waiting car or even repair your own cars. The controller option never appears. You’ll need to exit the shop by walking out, then reenter to fix this problem. Another bug has just surfaced today, July 24th, 2021. If you attempt to deliver a car and enter the yellow ring, the ending does not complete. With this one, I thought that killing and restarting the game might help. It doesn’t. When I did that, the car was back at the repair shop awaiting delivery again. I tried delivery for a second time that took me to a new location, but the car still wouldn’t deliver. It seems that the game progress gets stuck when you can’t deliver the car.
Not getting jobs? Don’t stay inside of your Auto Repair shop or Sessanta can’t text you to give you car repair jobs. The game seems intent on avoiding refreshing the Auto Repair shop (required to put a car on the lift) with you in it. If you’ve been wondering why you haven’t been called for repair jobs and you’ve been working in the repair shop, that’s why. Also, you can’t cancel contract jobs while inside of the Auto Repair shop. To cancel a contract job, you need exit to call Sessanta. You can only call her outside of the repair shop. If you try to call Sessanta inside of the shop, you’ll get a busy signal.
There’s also some dumb logic when performing repairs… for example, the customer might request Secondary color bumpers or Secondary hood options, yet there’s no way to paint the car with a secondary paint job. All cars currently paint all surfaces the same color even if the car supports primary and secondary paint colors. What’s the point in requesting ‘secondary’ anything if you can’t paint the car with a secondary paint?
Blue dots and chalkboard cars bug. I’ve had this bug happen to me almost every single time I’ve played. I’ve found up to 6 cars on the chalkboard, but as few as one. Yet, after traversing the entire map from top to bottom, the game will not reveal any further cars via blue dots from the board. Even if the remaining cars are specialty cars that require a blue dot, no blue dot ever spawns anywhere on the map. This bug makes it impossible to complete collecting all 10 of the cars on the chalkboard.
Cost: Property is Free (with Prime Gaming) + cost of whatever decorations added to Repair Shop
Type: Mission Based + Intraday Recurring car repair jobs,
Passive Income: None
Active Income: Job based (around GTA$100,000 or so), Car repair (GTA$20,000 to GTA$30,000) per car
Difficulty Level: 3 (Somewhat difficult)
Daily Cost: Minimum GTA$250, more with staff
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Rockstar Newswire and Loading Screens
Each week beginning on Thursday, a new Rockstar Newswire is released offering all of that week’s newest promotions and activities. Many of these activities also appear as messages on the loading screen.
Be sure to read each of these loading screens carefully. For example, the week this article is written, Rockstar is offering 2X GTA$ and RP on new survival map challenges. Participating in these new survival events during this week will earn you 2X GTA$ and RP plus a bonus of GTA$100,000 simply for participating in a Survival. Reading these screens closely can help you nab $100,000 or more simply by doing whatever Rockstar is requesting. Usually, it’s not hard to do what they’re asking you to do.
However, sometimes Rockstar might require the purchase of a Mobile Operations Center, a Terrorbyte or an Avenger, which can negate the GTA$ bonus. If you know you don’t have the vehicles needed to get the bonus, then skip it. By simply being required to participate, such as the Survival Challenge above, its easy to nab that GTA$100,000.
Type: Free
Difficulty Level: Depends, usually easy
Reward: Depends
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Daily Objectives
This free activity is just barely a runner up because while the payout is big, it is incredibly difficult and you need to be level 15 or higher. However, you can make some serious bank if you’re tenacious. This one requires performing 3 Daily Objectives for 28 consecutive days. Some of the objectives can be extremely obscure, difficult to do, take a lot of time, dependent on challenges that may not appear and/or require loads of cash to complete (like Complete a Heist Setup). For these complicated reasons, it’s not included in the top 10. If you’re tenacious and willing to attempt the objectives each day, you can earn some serious bank after 28 days. If you miss a day or cannot perform one of the objectives, you lose the streak and must start over. To perform each daily objective, you’ll need to read the objectives closely.
Note that you can effectively change two of your three daily objectives by launching into GTAO, then immediately checking your current objectives in the character menu. The bottom two are not set in stone if it’s a new day. If you don’t like the bottom two objectives, kill the game and restart.
Keep restarting the game until you get two objectives you can perform, like Visit the Casino OR Relax in a hot tub OR Mod a car. Once you’ve got two objectives you like, modify your character’s appearance by wearing glasses. This will force a cloud save and lock the objectives in. Make sure to read the Daily Objectives closely, otherwise you might be stuck with objectives you cannot complete. Don’t hesitate long. You’ll only get a few minutes before the game automatically performs a cloud save and then those objectives are locked in for that day.
The topmost objective is always set in stone for the day by Rockstar. You’ll have to perform this one whether you want to or not. Examples. If you don’t own a hangar, you can’t perform an objective like Modify an aircraft at your hangar. Rockstar might also set the objective as Complete a Heist Setup. If you’re already past all of your setups, the only way to complete that objective is to join another player who hasn’t yet done it.
Progressive Rewards
- 1 day of objectives will earn you GTA$30,000 and 5,000 RP (28x = GTA$840,000 + 140,000 RP)
- 7 days (week) worth will earn you GTA$150,000 and 20,000 RP (4x = GTA$600,000 + 80,000 RP)
- 28 days (month) worth will earn you GTA$500,000 and 50,000 RP
In 28 days, you earn (D) GTA$840,000 + (W) GTA$600,000 + (M) GTA$500,000 = GTA$1.94 million + 270,000 RP
As implied above, some objectives can appear that are impossible to complete either because you can’t afford to buy something or because you’re past that part of the heist. This can cause failure when attempting to do this for 28 days, thus making this challenge quite difficult.
Cost: Free
Reward: GTA$30,000 to GTA$1.94 million depending on how many you perform daily + 5000+ RP
Difficulty Level: 10 (Hard) — requires performing challenges for 28 days straight, though you can still get the daily challenge reward even if you miss a day in between.
Level to Complete: Rank 15 or higher
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Cayo Perico Treasure Hunt Challenge
This is a runner up because it requires significant cash outlay and is not super easy to do. However, it offers okay payout. This means that even though it will cost you a lot to unlock, you can keep doing these treasure hunts daily until you’ve recovered whatever it’s worth to you. Before I get into the hunt, let me explain the costs.
To unlock Cayo Perico Island, you’ll need to buy the Kosatka submarine from Warstock Cache and Carry to launch the mission to take you to this new island. This sub costs GTA$2,200,000 base price. If you wait for Rockstar to slash the price, you can get it for around GTA$1 million, which is what I paid when I bought it on sale. Because of the daily treasure hunt, it’s worth the GTA$1 million (on sale) investment to buy the Kosatka. Buying it for the Heist? Not so much.
Now, onto the treasure hunt. There are 10 possible treasure chest locations across Cayo Perico Island. There are 5 locations on land and 5 underwater, all dotted around the island. You’ll need to check many of the locations until you find the two available treasure chests. You can only open two per day. Opening up both treasure chests yields GTA$15,000 per chest for a maximum of GTA$30,000 per day. That’s a reasonable amount of GTA$ income, which is why it is included here.
Rockstar has even been known to 2X these daily challenges, doubling the GTA$ to 60,000 per day for up to 7 days.
Cost: Kosatka costs around GTA$2.2 million
Type: Active Income, Daily, Recurring, Time Suck Activity
Reward: Up to GTA$30,000 per day or GTA$210,000 every 7 days or GTA$900,000 every 30 days
Difficulty Level: 5 (Medium — must scout many locations to find two) … must be tenacious
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Character Bounties
These are separate from the Bounty Missions described below. This activity costs nothing to the player and is somewhat easy to get. A character bounty is had when you steal a car and someone unknown puts a bounty on you. These are easy money and may be worth trying to get, but they don’t pay much and can be slightly difficult to find…. which is the reason it didn’t make the top 10. A bounty reward can range from GTA$1,000 to GTA$3,000. If you end up with a bounty and want that money, you’ll need to move to a private server so other players don’t try to collect on it. Then wait out one full in-game day on that private server (about an hour of play time). At the end of that day, you’ll be paid the amount of the bounty. You’ll need to play on a private server or with trusted friends until the bounty pays out.
Typically, these bounties will appear when you steal expensive cars parked on the side of a road. One vehicle that always gives up a bounty is the Sprunk Extreme van, which you can’t keep or own. This van is a trap and always issues a bounty. If you see this van, steal it, get the bounty and hide out on a private server for one full in-game day to collect the bounty. Though, there are plenty of other expensive cars which can also turn a bounty. The more expensive the vehicle is, the more likely the owner will put a high bounty on you.
Note that bounties hang around on your character until either another player collects on it in a public server or one full in-game day passes and you get the money. Also note that only one bounty can be active at a time. Can’t get greedy with this one.
Cost: Free
Type: Active, Recurring
Reward: GTA$1,000 to GTA$3,000
Difficulty Level: 1 (Easy, so long as you hang out on a private server until you get paid)
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Good Sport
Here’s another runner up that didn’t make the grade, but is worth realizing that it exists. This one is a periodic GTA$2,000 that is given to the player for keeping up Good Behavior. I’m not completely certain what all triggers ‘bad behavior’ and prevents this award, but I believe it is related to the character’s mental state. If you start mowing down civilians on the sidewalk with your car, for example, this raises the character’s mental state and may forfeit the Good Behavior award. This one doesn’t seem to award once per day. It seems to award the player this money at random times while playing.
Cost: Free
Type: Active, Recurring, Unpredictable
Reward: GTA$2,000
Difficulty Level: depends on how you play GTAO
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Sleeping Bums
This runner up is one that likely only shows up after you have visited Cayo Perico island. This, in turn, means you will need to own the Kosatka Submarine (see above).
How it works. Occasionally, the game will tell you that you have found a small key which is useful on Cayo Perico island. When you see this message, that means there’s a blue dot somewhere near you. Once you find the blue dot on the minimap, go to it and there will be a sleeping drunk bum. Loot the bum and you’ll get some GTA$. I’ve gotten up to GTA$7007 from looting, but the amount varies.
Cost: Requires Kosatka and visiting Cayo Perico island
Type: Random, Recurring
Reward: Varies, but can be up to GTA$8000 or possibly higher
Difficulty Level: 1 (Easy)
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Amazon Prime Gaming
Owning this type of membership offers freebies each and every month. However, to gain this freebie, you’ll need to subscribe to Amazon Prime. If you own this membership, you’ll link your Rockstar account to your Amazon Prime Gaming account once and each month Rockstar will offer various freebies and discounts for this linkage.
For a while, Rockstar was offering up GTA$1,000,000 each month at GTA$200,000 each week with the fourth week culminating in a payment of GTA$400,000. Recently, this has been reduced to GTA$100,000 a week for a total of GTA$400,000 each month. I don’t know if the last week culminates in an extra $100,000 as there has been no mention of this by Rockstar. In fact, there was no mention of the reduction of this Prime Gaming benefit.
Cost: Amazon Prime membership (USD$12.99 a month or USD$119 a year)
Type: Passive only
Reward: Up to GTA$400,000 a month
Difficulty level: N/A
Caveat: This benefit can be discontinued or altered at any time by Rockstar without warning
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Additional ways…
These didn’t make the cut for reasons listed below. However, they are still valid for making at least some money in the game. These events are free to participate, but may require the use of weapons, armor or the purchase of expensive cars (racing), specific ammo or expensive weapons to win.
Survival Events
I hesitate to include these events because they require crap tons of ammo (which you have to buy) and, in the end, net very little in the way of cash. In other words, you may spend more on ammo to win the event than you’ll get back from surviving it. However, I’ve included it because these jobs are open and available all of the time. You can join a survival job at any time. The longer you last, the more money you’ll make, but only to a point. Keep in mind that surviving a long time doesn’t necessarily net you more GTA$ in the way you might think. You’ll get whatever you get from the survival event, which includes both RP and limited GTA$, maybe around GTA$3,500 or so max.
Cost: Free
Type: Multiplayer Active, Recurring, Available all of the time
Reward: Depends on many factors, but usually no more than GTA$3,500 on average.
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Racing
Racing events can net you some GTA$, but typically you’ll need a decently fast car if you hope to win and win max bank. This means either buying an expensive Supercar from Legendary Motorsports or being lucky enough to win one from the Lucky Wheel podium. Racing is included because occasionally Rockstar will introduce a new racing type into the game and to promote it, they will award GTA$100,000 or more simply by participating.
Cost: Dependent on car needed
Reward: Limited GTA$ depending on placing, but probably no more than GTA$5,000
Notes: Sometimes newly introduced events will offer a large award for participating.
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PlayStation 4 Promotion
While Rockstar readies GTA Online for play on the PS5, they are giving GTA$1,000,000 each month to PS4 members who also have PlayStation Plus. In order to play GTA Online, you need PlayStation Plus for the network access. The way to obtain this money changed in April, now requiring each player to head to the PlayStation store to claim the GTA$1,000,000 on the first of each month until the PS5 version of GTAO becomes available.
GTAO on the PS5 may release as soon as August or September 2021, so this promotion may end very soon. This one is only included here now because it’s still active for a limited time. Note, if you’re logged into GTAO when you head to the store and claim it, you’ll have to log out and back in to see your GTA$ update.
Cost: Requires PlayStation Plus subscription and a PS4
Reward: GTA$1,000,000 monthly
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Gambling at the Casino
This one is not included in the top 10 because casino gambling is too risky for several reasons. I didn’t include this one in the ‘avoid’ area below because it is possible to win. It also takes GTA$ converted to Chips to make a bet and you can easily lose it all.
The problem with winning in the casino is that Rockstar monitors large wins coming out of the casino. If Rockstar determines you cheated to win, they can take all of your money away or outright ban you from the game. Be careful when attempting to win large bets in the casino. For this reason, I don’t recommend trying to gamble at the casino other than with the smallest bets (i.e., less than 100 chips). Even then, play only a little, win only a little and walk away. If you press your luck and win a large pot, Rockstar may flag your account for cheating.
Cost: Chips to bet
Type: Recurring
Reward: Whatever you win
Risks: Can be suspected of cheating and lose all money or be banned from the game
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One Off Activities
Rockstar includes a few one-off activities which are worth doing because you can net a decent amount of cash from each of them. These are not included in the top 10 above because they cannot be performed more than once.
Bounty Missions
A random NPC named Maude will ask you to help her with some bounties. As a result, you will receive GTA$300,000 and the Stone Hatchet for returning the bounties to Maude alive. Returning them dead yields less. There are 5 bounties to be had.
Cost: Free
Type: One off
Reward: GTA$300,000 + Stone Hatchet
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Rampage
This next activity requires using the Stone Hatchet that you got from Maude’s quests. Once you kill 25 NPCs while in Rampage mode using the Stone Hatchet, you will receive GTA$250,000. You must do this rampage specifically with the Stone Hatchet. There are other hatchets in the game, but only the Stone Hatchet unlocks this reward. Make sure you have the correct hatchet equipped.
Cost: Free
Type: One off
Reward: GTA$250,000
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Golden Revolver
This is a cross promotion for Red Dead Online. To receive the Golden Revolver, you’ll need to start with a treasure hunt email. This will lead you to 4 different clues which, if correctly decoded, will reveal a chest containing the Golden Revolver.
Once obtained, you can then jump right into the Golden Revolver headshot kills challenge. Once you have killed 25 NPCs with headshots using the Golden Revolver, you’ll receive GTA$250,000.
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Cost: Free
Type: One off
Reward: Golden Revolver + GTA$250,000
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Radio Signal Jammer
There are 50 radio jammers placed on various tall radio towers and buildings. This is part of the Casino Heist. These look like small black boxes with a red light and an antenna on top. These also beep so you can hear them at a distance. Once you destroy all 50 radio jammers, the game unlocks a person useful to the Casino Heist. That’s not really the money reason to do this challenge. By destroying all jammers you’ll net GTA$150,000 and 50,000 RP.
Cost: Free
Type: One off
Reward: GTA$150,000 + 50,000 RP
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Avoid these activities….
Most of what’s listed below are one-time and/or overly-complex activities. This means that once you complete those specific missions, you either can’t do them again or you must start over from the very beginning and do all steps again. You can also participate as a team member in a friend’s unfinished heist or mission if you need to do a specific step quickly. This top 10 list was designed to include easy and quick money making opportunities that can be repeated every day, which these below most certainly are not. This section isn’t meant to imply that you can’t enjoy these activities for the entertainment value, just don’t do them in hopes of making money in the game.
Heists
Heists are some of the most expensive and complex ways to make income in the game. Why? Because Rockstar requires that you buy very, very expensive real estate, boats, equipment, personnel and trucks to support the heist. All told, you’ll end up spending GTA$3-5 million (or more) in buying random in-game junk, just to net GTA$300,000 – GTA$500,000 back from the heist. You won’t make back even a fraction of what you spent to buy that boat, truck, warehouse, safecracker tools AND bunker. However, you can do it all again, but you’ll likely have to spend for at least tools, people and random junk running the heist for a second or third time.
Heists, while they may be fun when played in groups, are the worst ways to make money in the game.
Cost: Depends on Heist, but no less than GTA$3-5 million
Passive Income: None
Heist Reward: A paltry GTA$300,000 to GTA$500,000 max.
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Galaxy Super Yacht
The Super Yacht is a waste of money. Sure, the captain of the yacht offers up some missions, but like Heists above, you must sink at least GTA$6,000,000 into the thing to get a couple hundred thousand out of it. Don’t buy this thing for the mission reward money. However, there are six missions which can be performed only once.
Cost: The Super Yacht begins at GTA$6,000,000 and is rarely ever discounted more than 10%
Passive Income: None
Active Income: Around GTA$30,000 per mission
Reward: Captain’s Outfit after completing all 6 missions
Daily Cost: GTA$1,000
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Bunker Missions
Like Heists, you have to first invest in a bunker property, which is costly. Once you do this, you have to keep resupplying the bunker with more and more materials until you max out the products storage area. Then, you can take those products, load them into a crap vehicle and drive them across the map to the delivery location.
The problem is, bunker missions can only be performed in public servers. This means you’ll need to endure other players who are told you are moving goods and basically where you are on the map. Other players can come screw with you and those goods.
Once sold, you’ll get a fraction of the value because, in typical Rockstar fashion, they always skim GTA$ right off the top to keep you from getting as much as it says the goods are worth. Honestly, this one is too much of a hassle and costs too much money simply to net GTA$100,000 (or less). There are easier ways to get that amount of GTA$… see above.
Cost: Bunker cost begins at GTA$2 million, but you may be able to get it included in some bundles
Type: Recurring
Passive Income: None
Active Income: Requires carrying good across the map on a public server.
Reward: Some percentage of the value of the goods, if successful
Daily Cost: GTA$7,800
Note, the maintenance cost for owning a bunker is whopping GTA$7,800 per in-game day, but only if you’re actively CEO. Make sure to ‘retire’ as CEO before the day ends to avoid paying this stupid fee. This is the only maintenance fee you can avoid paying in this way. Also note, moving Bunker goods across the map requires at least two people to drive two separate delivery cars… it cannot be done solo.
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Nightclub Goods
For the same reason as Bunker Missions, moving these goods has the same problem… public server, public announcement and players can screw with you. On top of that, your nightclub manager takes a cut leaving you with 10% less than what the goods are worth.
Cost: Nightclub costs around GTA$2,000,000 to own, plus maintenance costs.
Type: Active, Recurring
Passive Club Income: GTA$10,000 down to GTA$1,000 depending on whether the club is promoted
Reward: Depends on amount of goods sold, less 10% to Tony
Daily Cost: GTA$800 to GTA$2,250
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Simeon Premium Deluxe Repo Cars
These missions are entirely multiplayer missions. If you can get a team of only your friends, it might be fun. If you are matched with randoms, likely there will be one who will torpedo the whole mission.
Cost: Requires multiplayer session with randoms. I’ve tried playing several times and each time the mission fails due to some random torpedoing it.
Type: Multiplayer, Recurring
Reward: Depends, but not as much as you’d hope.
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Casino Penthouse
To own the Casino Penthouse, it costs GTA$1.5 million to GTA$6.5 million depending on which features you choose to buy. However, along with owning the casino penthouse, you’ll unlock missions from Agatha Baker, the casino manager. There are 6 casino missions that, when completed, will reward you with $GTA100,000 and the Enus Paragon R Armored version, which you pick up at the docks.
Cost: GTA$1.5 million to GTA$6.5 million
Type: Once Only
Reward: GTA$100,000 and Enus Paragon R Armored
Daily Cost: GTA$500 to GTA$1,350
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Executive Suite Cargo Missions
Like most money making activities in the GTA Online world, for these you’ll need to invest in an Executive Office Suite, a cargo storage warehouse and probably several other things. All told, you’ll spend at least GTA$3-5 million (probably more) to net maybe GTA$100,000 every week or so. For example, the high value car cargo missions allow you to steal expensive cars, then store in them in the cargo warehouse. You can sell them immediately. The thing is, even though the car may be worth GTA$1.5 million, the maximum you’ll get by selling the best of them is GTA$80,000. In fact, it’s so little money and because it’s a real hassle, it’s not really worth the effort.
Cost: Executive Office (~GTA$1,000,000 or USD$20 for CESP) and Cargo and Crate Warehouse … ~GTA$5-7 million total
Passive Income: None
Active Income: Limited by Rockstar’s stupidity
Daily Cost: GTA$800 to GTA$950
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50 Stunt Jumps
Don’t bother with this activity if you’re looking for GTA$. The only reason to do this one is if you’re trying for the Collectibles trophy. There are 50 stunt jumps all over the map. However, completing each jump only earns a tiny amount of RP. At 1, 5 and 25 jumps, these will unlock paint jobs at Los Santos Customs. This activity rewards no GTA$ at all.
Type: Free
Cost: None
Rewards: Only RP and Unlocked paint jobs
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Stretching your GTA$ farther
As has been hinted all throughout this article, it’s better to wait for Rockstar to put vehicles, properties, weapons, armor and even outfits on sale. Each week, Rockstar chooses various items to discount. Some discounts are given straight up to all players. Extra discounts are given by linking your Amazon Prime account to Rockstar. These discounts never overlap, but do run concurrently with one another. For example, Rockstar typically puts properties or property features on sale regularly and then simultaneously discounts vehicles via the Prime Gaming benefits. However, when Rockstar puts properties on sale, they typically do not discount a property’s sub-features, which is a little frustrating.
For example, when Executive Offices are discounted, the Executive Office garages and the Cargo Warehouses are not discounted. This means, you’ll need to wait for the garages and warehouses to go on sale separately. This means you’ll need to wait until Rockstar puts those specific properties and features on sale, which might occur months apart.
For vehicles such as the Kosatka, Avenger, Terrorbyte and Mobile Operations Center, you’ll also find only one of these on sale at a time. Typically when a vehicle is discounted, its renovation features are not, though rarely they might discount both. You have to check.
When you find one of these vehicles heavily discounted, such as the Kosatka priced around $GTA1 million, you gotta jump on the deal quickly because it won’t come around again for at least 6-12 months.
Reviewing this article, you might notice I have a lot of these very expensive items in the game. I didn’t pay full price for any of them. I’ve been buying all of these items slowly on discount when the discounts occur. Some of the vehicles, I’ve won off of the podium, such as the Toreador, though I paid for the Stromberg, but on sale. However, I have been waiting for some vehicles to go on sale for several years, such as the Vigilante and the Oppressor. This is the only downside to waiting. However, waiting for discounts means you can stretch your GTA$ much, much farther and you get way more for less money.
That’s also how I afforded the Penthouse suite at the Casino. I first waited for the property to go on sale and spent about GTA$1 million. Then, I waited for each of the renovation features to discount and purchased those while also discounted. All told, I spent just over GTA$3 million to unlock all Penthouse features.
I’ve also specifically waited for many of the Super Cars to show up on the Lucky Wheel podium to win rather than spending GTA$2-4 million on each vehicle. Though, when I have occasionally purchased Super Cars, they have also been close to 50% off.
I know it can be difficult to wait, but waiting is far better than spending twice as much for in-game stuff that may never even be used. For example, the Avenger, Terrorbyte and Mobile Operation Center and even the Kosatka vehicles are a major waste of money. It’s a good thing I bought all of them when heavily discounted. In fact, I’ve never even used the Avenger, Terrorbyte or Mobile Operations Center. I also have a lot of vehicles I rarely ever use. My most used vehicle is the Deluxo, which I also won off of the podium.
Winning cars and using Rockstar’s discounts is the best way to stretch your GTA$ much farther. Also, take full advantage of any freebies Rockstar gives, particularly money giveaways for event participation.
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Overall
There are other activities not mentioned above which can yield various amounts of GTA$, like the impossibly stupid flying missions at Los Santos Airport flying school, which yield insulting amounts of GTA$ once each impossibly hard and useless test is completed. Unfortunately, the rest in the game are not really worth mentioning, like RC car races.
One thing Rockstar needed to add to GTAO was way more passive income features from purchasing and owning properties. For example, every owned property should offer some level of passive income… at least enough to cover the daily expenses.
Overall, Rockstar pretty much failed us with Grand Theft Auto Online. While GTA V’s in-game money balance was decent, all of that was removed from GTA Online. What’s left is a basic shell that teases the player by handing out a pittance of money each day here and there. Even the Heists in GTA V offered up a decent sized reward. In GTAO, the Heist rewards are entirely insulting after spending millions buying all of the garbage needed to complete it. The best use of money in GTA Online is buying the cars. However, if you wait long enough you can win most of them off of the Lucky Wheel at the Casino, not pay anything for them… the best way to get most expensive cars in this game.
What you can’t win off of the Lucky Wheel podium are vehicles like the Kosatka, the Mobile Operations Center, the Super Yacht, the Avenger and the Terrorbyte. What’s worse is that the MOC, the Avenger and the Terrorbyte are all effectively the same vehicle, each in a different class. It’s such a waste of GTA$ buying the same thing multiple times.
Worse, these mobile weapon-and-vehicle workshops only work on weaponized vehicles. Even though these mobile workshops allow similar customization features as Los Santos Customs, these mobile workshops can’t modify regular vehicles… thus rendering the convenience of paying for these mobile workshops pointless. Rockstar just doesn’t seem to get that the usefulness of these mobile ‘Los Santos Customs’ workshops is the fact that you can modify your cars anywhere you choose rather than spending time driving the car over to an LSC. As expensive as these mobile workshops are, why wouldn’t you allow us to modify any vehicle in that mobile vehicle workshop?
What difference does it make if we modify our car in our Avenger or at Los Santos Customs? We’re still going to pay the price for each mod.
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