Thank you for responses

EDIT: Realized I forgot to add a TLDR so here goes nothing lol:
Buy a mansion and have AI run your MC businesses, CEO businesses, and Bunker. Start a crew of AI and start building yourself up as a kingpin. Then, buy a customizable private island and start a cartel. Open up massive labs and add entertainment for tourists, if you so desire. Compete against AI-run cartels for control of major cities in the GTA universe (Even ones that aren't accessible in GTA online). Become allies with other cartels or enemies. Topple other cartels and take control of their assets. (Islands, territory, production, etc.) Go head to head with the government like Pablo Escobar did or stay more lowkey like the Cali Cartel.
Now I want to preface this by saying I have no insider information whatsoever. This is literally just what I’d like to see going forward in this game.
So moving forward after the Cayo Perico heist (which is the best money maker in the game by far) I’m not really sure where there is to go for Rockstar. I highly doubt they want to make something that pays even better than this because of shark card sales. So from here, I think they could head in a slightly different direction than heists with every other update.
-The Mansion Update: The apartments in-game are borderline useless for everything but the garage. You can do the original heists but that’s about it, unfortunately. I’d love to see mansions added into the game with the highest-end one being something like 20 million and the lowest end being say 5 million. From the mansion, you can get a central area to control all your businesses. Maybe you can get a massive garage with this. (A 40-60 car garage like the CEO office) Beyond this, you can start a crew and have them work under you as dealers for your various businesses (MC, Bunker, Nightclub, Vehicle warehouse, and Crates). You have to pay the dealers say 10-20 grand a day but they manage your business and sell them for you and pay you the money. You can also give them secondary tasks like going to collect money from your businesses, etc.
Now the big update
-The Cartel Update: Owning the mansion will be a precursor to all this content. With this update, you would be able to buy your own private island. My thought is it would be extremely expensive. Starting at around 30 million and going up to say 80-100 million. With this update, you can take the crew that you had with your mansions and expand it to become your own cartel. All of your businesses would run through this. Bunker, MC, CEO, and any others you may have. You’ll have bigger and better labs and warehouses on this island than you do in LS but you’ll still own the ones in LS. You can hire hitmen and enforcers or even hire old characters from prior DLC’s as these roles. (Vincent, for example) You’ll be able to employ drug dealers such as the Madrazo’s and new ones too. They employ dealers and move your product. They get a percentage based on how good they are. Eventually, they’ll be able to move all the products you can produce across all businesses. For example, the Madrazo’s could be good at moving your drugs but then not be very good at moving your weapons and vice versa with a new character. You’ll be able to choose which dealer moves which product. You can get your products and shipments seized and again that will depend on the quality of dealers you employ.
The Island itself will be originally blank except for a small airport. It will cost money to build labs and bunkers for your island but they will be worth it. They will be much bigger and able to store way more product and completely AI-controlled and maintained. You’ll start out with a smaller house on one side of the island that you can designate as your residency space. You can build guard towers and security checkpoints which will help boost the morale of your employees as well as keep your island safer from enemy cartels and the government. You can build entertainment spaces like a casino and nightclub or even a nightclub if you want to have tourists come to your island. This will be a security risk, of course, but will bring in money for you. You’ll be able to build garages below your home on the island and store whatever cars there that you want. You would be able to build yourself a race track if you wanted to. If you run out of room on your island you’ll be able to upgrade your island to a bigger one with a slightly different layout. It certainly would not be cheap but you’d have more space. Once you run out of space on the biggest island that’s as big as your cartel will be able to get until you topple other cartels and take control of their operations.
Now the big part of this DLC would be the AI-controlled cartels and government. We have one cartel in the game now to some extent (El Rubio) and you’ll be able to interact with these cartels. You’ll be able to choose what to say to them and how you handle business. If you choose to be offensive towards them and take over their territory they won’t like that which will start beef between you and them. You can have wars and, if you play your cards right, topple the cartel and take its resources and territory. You can also ally with other cartels and use each other’s routes and just generally help each other out.
If you topple another cartel (AI-controlled) you take control of their resources such as their island, territory, and supply lines. You can annoy other cartels if you wish by selling in their territory, robbing them (Cayo Perico heist), and killing their soldiers. This will make them less trusting of you if you do it obviously but if you’re careful they’ll be less trusting of everyone. Including any allies they have and this can be used to weaken them and hopefully topple them. The goal would be to become the biggest drug lord in the world which would probably mean toppling other big cartels. Play your cards right and these cartel leaders will have their guards lower around you and your cartel and you can make a move against them and kill them and topple the cartel swiftly. Of course, none of your allies would trust you anymore but you would have toppled a cartel and given yourself more control. The territory would be split up with you selling in LS and other cartels arguing over Vice City, Liberty City, Las Venturas, San Fierro, London, Capital City, etc. These areas would not be able to be traveled to but you would be able to see which cartel controls which cities and the cities population and a few other stats. Any cities added in future games that came to GTA online as free-roam areas would be added to that list, of course.
You can be a high profile drug lord like El Chapo and Pablo Escobar or you could be more low profile like the Cali Cartel. These are the two extremes but you can always fall somewhere in the middle. You can raise your public opinion meter by giving out money, building apartment buildings, parks, etc. With this update, there would be elections introduced. Only for President and maybe one or two other government roles but they can be elected and they’ll have different stances on issues that directly affect you. One can be hard on the cartels or another can be more lenient and open to working with them. If you want to go the low profile route you can try and rig the election in favor of the candidates you want to win. Of course, this won’t always work but you can always try. If you go the high profile route you can just assassinate (or attempt to, depending on how good your hitmen are) the candidate you want to lose. You’ll also have a meter of popularity and at each point the citizens of the country will either love you or they’ll hate you. The higher your popularity the easier it is to conduct business, higher prices for your products and if the government ever decides to launch a manhunt against you the citizens won’t help the government catch you. This will be seen as you’ll be able to move around LS and any other new cities freely and all you have to do is just stay away from police stations as much as possible. If you commit a crime or are seen near the police station you’ll instantly get a 5 star wanted level that you can’t cancel using Lester. If you use a CEO ability or any of your cartel abilities to try and bribe the police it’ll only take it from a 5 star to a 4 star. If your relationship with the public is bad it will be much harder to move around the city. There’ll be police checkpoints near any businesses, homes, or offices you have. You will be able to get around them but it won’t be easy. On your island, you’ll be completely safe and won’t have to worry about getting wanted. Of course, there will be a limit to how much stuff you can do before the government steps in, in a much bigger way. If your cartel kills too many politicians, cops, or other government officials the manhunt will become much larger and more intense. By this point, the relationship you have with the people will be essentially down the drain so everything with the low relationship will apply in this situation.
If your relationship is this bad you will essentially be staying on your island and away from the mainland because it won’t be safe for you. But periodically, the government will send the military to your island to try and take you out. You and the crew you employ as island security will have to hold off the military and at least attempt to kill them all. It won’t be easy but it will be possible. If you’re allied with any AI cartels they will send reinforcements to help you. This will happen for two weeks straight every two days unless you raise the meter with the citizens. After these two weeks of hell, the manhunt will reset back to just the low punishments and your island will be safe again. If you get killed by the military you will lose a lot and respawn in Bolingbroke with some of your crew coming to break you out. This will be a tough fight but it will be scripted like a heist mission and if you die then it will restart. After you’re outside the prison you’ll need to lose the cops, no help from Lester or CEO/Cartel abilities either since you won’t have a way to contact them just yet. After you lose them you will need to escape to a warehouse of yours that isn’t known by the police. (Facility or new underground safehouses) until you decide to make a break for it and try to get back to your private Island. Once back, most of your workers will be in jail or dead so you’ll have to hire new ones. Your lead enforcers and hitmen won’t be killed but will be in jail so you can decide during your escape whether you want to attempt to break them out too. If you choose no, you’ll have to hire a crew of players to break them out. You’ll pay something like 1 million per player and the players will have to break them out. To sum up the price of getting caught it will probably cost you somewhere in the region of 30 million dollars of lost product and workers on the low end and around 75 million on the high end.
Your cartel will bring in lots of money for you. Somewhere around 5-10 million per week on the low end and 30 million at the high end. You will NOT compete with other players, only against AI cartels. Elections will be for you and you alone, not other players.
As you can see this will be an endgame thing primarily based on the amount of money the buy-in would be. For the first update, it will be mainly vehicles that the people without a ton of money can buy but if you have a high-end apartment you’ll be able to become a kingpin for an AI-controlled cartel. It’ll be something to get your foot in the door and build some infrastructure for yourself. The pay won’t be amazing as you won’t be able to build that big of a crew but it will be something. Probably 50-100 thousand every GTA day. Eventually, the players will (ideally) save up money to buy the mansions which will mean you can employ more people and go higher up in the food chain with the AI cartel you chose. Eventually, once you get enough money to buy the private island you can split off from the AI cartel and start your own. You’ll be able to bring the infrastructure you built up under the AI cartel to your new cartel. The AI cartel will not like this for obvious reasons and this will set off a lot of beef and wars between your cartel and the AI cartel.

Some days ago I made a post on the best possible payouts you could get, but forgot some variables. As such I have decided to, now that I am certain that I understand it, explain it to others since I still see many misunderstandings of how the heist really works.
Difficulty
When starting the heist it will either be hard or normal. You get the hard mode by paying the 25,000$ buy-in within 48 minutes of finishing your last heist. If you start the heist outside this 48 minute cooldown you will have normal mode.
What does the difficulty do?

1. Hard mode raises the main targets value by 10%. a 1.000.000$ target becomes 1.100.000$ if it is done on hard mode. Notice that value of secondary target does not change.
   
2. If you get Elite challenge then you get a 100k bonus reward, as opposed to the 50k bonus that you get on Normal difficulty.
   
3. Every fingerprint hack will have one more fingerprint, and it will be slightly more difficult.
   
4. The AI and cameras will have slightly larger vision cones
   

Elite Challenge
The Elite challenge is essentially a reward for flawlessly pulling off the heist in stealth. The requirements are:

1. Under 15 minutes. Must be 14:59 or less, 15 exactly won't count.
   
2. Everyone in the heist crew must have full loot bags when the heist is finished.
   
3. You must not alert the guards
   
4. Do not quick restart the heist, you must do it first try.
   

The main Targets.
There are 4 main targets that can be had at this moment. The first number displayed is their base value, second number is with the 10% increase in hard mode. In order of value:

1. Sinsimito Tequila - 900.000/990.000
   
2. Ruby Necklace - 1.000.000/1.100.000
   
3. Bearer Bonds - 1.100.000/1.210.000
   
4. Pink Diamond - 1.300.000/1.430.000
   

There is also the panther staute. This is a special item that will likely only be available during special events. Anyone that you have seen take it so far is either using mods or hacks.

1. Panther statue - 1.900.000/2.090.000

Secondary Targets
Each secondary target gives a different pay, and some take up more or less space in your bag. The first number specified is how much a full bag of this secondary item will give, and the second number is how much of your bag one stack of this item takes up, so in the case of cash you will need 4 piles of it to reach the indicated value. From order of most to least profitable:

1. Gold. 490.000 - 75% ¹
   
2. Cocaine. 450.000 - 50%
   
3. Weed. 400.000 - 37%
   
4. Cash. 385.000 - 25%
   
5. Art. ??? - 50%. The value of art is random, it seems to be based on the specific painting but not certain. It always takes up 50% of your bag.
   

1 - The gold only spawns in the compound within rooms that require two people to use keycards at the same time, similar to the vault in the Diamond Casino heist. Therefore you need to bring at least one friend to get to the gold.
Mandatory fees

1. There will be a Fencing fee of 10%, and Pavel gets a cut of 2%. If you have 1.4 million in your bags, then expect to loose 160k in fees.

Secret safe cash
There is a safe in Mr. Rubios office that contain small amounts of money. These do not take up space in your bag, but the amount is often miniscule. The value in the safe seems completely random, but I have seen anywhere between 50.000$ to 90.000$
Cuts - is it worth it to bring a friend?
You can do the heist solo. The smallest cut that another player can take is 15%. We will run a small experiment here to see if it is actually profitable for you - the host - to bring a friend or if they are going to be leeching from you.
Gold takes up 75% of a bag, so you need to find 3 stacks of gold to fill the bags of both people. this seems simple enough, I have seen 5 bags spawn, so there could theoretically be enough gold for 3 people.
Let's do a virtual heist with one person then do another with a friend. For simplicity this will not include elite challenge bonus nor secret safe cash.- here goes:
Only you:
Main target - Bearer Bonds, 1.100.000$
Secondary targets: 2x Cocain for 450.000$
Total take: 1.550.000
10% in fencing fees and 2% in Pavel fee: -186.000$
Host gets: 1.364.000
One friend, gold secondary.
Min target: Bearer bonds, 1.100.000$
Secondary targets: 3x Gold for 980.000$
Total take: 2.080.000
12% fees: -249.600$
15% cut of friend: 310.000
Host gets: 1.520.400
One friend, Cash only secondary.
Min target: Bearer bonds, 1.100.000$
Secondary targets: 8x Cash for 770.000$
Total take: 1.870.000
12% fees: 224.400
15% cut of friend: 280.500
Host gets: 1.365.500
TL;DR:
If you bring one friend then host almost always gets more money. You will break even with cash only as secondaries, and make a loss if some bags are not full of if you get some paintings. If you pick up any cocaine or Weed then you will get more money than if you were alone.

To bring everyone up to speed on network topology in games:
GTA Online uses what's called a peer-to-peer mesh network setup. This means that every PC/console on a connected session is talking to every other PC/console in that session. The preferred alternative for most multiplayer games is sever-client, where in every PC/console is talking with a single server.
With p2p mesh, this means that everyone shares authority. What this translates to is that a server is not the single authority checking for malicious activity, much of which anyone who has played GTA Online for is familiar with. This also means that anyone with the know-how can figure out what IP every other person is connecting from. This can lead to other malicious activity outside of the game.
But standing up dedicated servers costs money. Why not avoid that?
There are plenty of cases to be made where peer-to-peer connectivity makes sense, especially from a cost-savings perspective. But in some cases, like GTA Online, the benefits/gains from using a server-client setup far outweigh the costs.
So, in no particular order:

What Dedicated Servers Would Have Brought to RS/T2:

More purchases of cash in the Social store.
We'll start with the obvious here. When someone can get into a game and ask about [redacted method of obtaining money] and get a response 50% of the time, it's an obvious miss on being able to purchase prepaid in-game credit cards from the store. There's no incentive. And if they don't want to ask someone to do it, they can do it themselves.
Higher volume of Twitch streamers.
It seems easily correlated, but Twitch's research shows that livestreaming leads to better game sales. The reason this isn't streamed as broadly is because not everyone can get enough reliable people for a heist. Private sessions can be invaded by the same people who also [redacted method of obtaining money]. This is regardless of the privacy of a lobby, because those same people can find a unique identifier on the public Rockstar social site and join it, regardless of whether or not they're a friend or a crew member-- or simply not invited.
What this translates to are people who have such a low bar to pass to join a streamer's game and hold the experience hostage, crash the session or do any other number of malicious things. They can also impersonate people and send messages as them. So this further leads to things like not being able to do:
Twitch Rivals streams between competing streamer teams.
Imagine this: the game is pretty solidly protected from people who [redacted method of obtaining money] and those incidents they generate are rare, and when they do pop up, they're punished. So, streaming this game is far more viable. Competitive crews start forming, and Rockstar promotes an event with streamers where they're able to host lobbies and get 24, 36 or even 48 streamers in one session running 12 different crews for things like:

• Business goods battles
• Arena wars
• Deathmatches
• Races

And so on and so forth. But because items have to be obtained through legitimate game mechanics, it also implements a grind. Maybe these groups/crews have been running for a while. But then you'd also be able to do:
Streamer Drops through Connected Accounts
We've seen other games do this, where viewers can get "drops" into their game by watching the streamer play it. These drops could have been literally anything that was on the Diamond Casino Wheel of Fortune. It could have even been a bonus spin at the wheel, to encourage getting the player in the game.
The Long-Term, Sharded MMO Experience
This translates to cash because people would be continually playing the game, which means more people paying for in-game cash and general popularity because more people would be streaming it, but this is the bigger buyback to the player, too.
Imagine a crew that worked hard at completing a certain set of heists on hard difficulty, no deaths, consecutive. Four people who are streaming their attempt like people do for raid bosses. And their reward was a unique yacht only available for them.
A ranked arena war system that awarded players who got 100 wins with a unique vehicle or livery.
The system could have been adjusted to make some things a grind. Making that money with friends, and then knowing that if someone had a high-end apartment, much less a casino penthouse, that they earned it through blood, sweat and hard work.
Powerful crews that were running around and happen to land on the same lobby and an all-out war with tactics, reinforcements and a consideration of cash drain to get the win in Los Santos.
These are the things that Rockstar and Take2 missed out on by not having dedicated servers with protections against [redacted method of obtaining money]. They were on the verge of greatness. They were this close. And I know that a lot of this translates over for Red Dead Online, too.

Is It Too Late to Do All of This?

No, I don't think so. If RockstaTake2 were to seek redemption from this, here's what they'd have to do:
Implement a dedicated server gamemode, and only allow characters created for this game mode specifically.
If people want to continue messing around in peer-to-peer sessions, maybe they allow that for a time before slowly forcing people over (because it's all about that money, right?). But create a new character (or duplicate the looks of one), and make it only available for play on controlled, dedicated servers.
You can even put Ye Olde GTA 5 spin on it and have Lester come in and say, "Yeah, I know the simulation was pretty fucked, right? It got hacked by kids on Christmas break. But anyway, now that you know what's possible out there in this stupid, god-forsaken world, well... uh, perhaps it's time we started making some money. And you remember Fleeca, right?"
Then people start off fresh, and work on earning things through the grind. I promise you, that'll net you some untold money and viewership. And I have faith enough that even if you made a very solid push into authoritative client-host conversion from peer-to-peer mesh, allowing the authoritative client-host to be controlled by Rockstar servers, you'd get something out of it.
And I will put a disclaimer on here: I don't know if the game engine is so archaic that it wouldn't allow for this kind of change. And if that is indeed the case, then the only thing that I can say is you missed out on all of the above by choosing to design what you did, because it is a proprietary engine.
But if you can, imaginary Rockstar or Take2 directory reading this, please, I implore you. Push for the change. This has been one of the best social games for me during lockdown, and I can't overstate how much everyone will benefit from this.
Sincerely,
~The Village Idiot

So it’s been a few days since the update dropped so I think it’s been a good enough to let the update’s content sit and allow us to play around with everything.
To address the elephant in the room, let’s talk about the island: it is very, very, VERY underwhelming. I already made a post explaining the problems with the island, so I’ll just keep it brief: it’s all run down industrial drug manufacturing and no resort town area thingy for the tourists at the party. It’s quite unrealistic thinking about the people there and where they’re going to stay. If they wanted to make the infrastructure of the island undeveloped, then make it be like Cuba, where it’s all old timey buildings with classic cars on the unpaved roads. It’s all off-road areas, which TBH are pretty cool if you wanted some off-road/rally cars to try out BUT OH WAIT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE THE ISLAND ISN’T ACCESSIBLE IN FREEMODE. I don’t know what Rockstar was thinking when they said “an entirely new location.” When you say it like that, of course people are gonna expect it to be in freeroam so they can have fun with their friends and hang out in their cars and whatnot, and no having tiny portion of the island where you can just do what you do in your nightclub and the Music Locker, and that is to just dance and drink and entertain yourself for 5 minutes. If you try to leave the island, the guards stop you and your character automatically walks back toward the party. You can’t even sneak or swim around the guards you are just stuck at the party until you decide to go back to Los Santos. From what some people say, it’s because of the limited hardware, and that the entire island is free to explore in freeroam on the XSX/S and PS5, but very few of us have those consoles, and those who do say that claim is false. It’s just either the game is old or that Rockstar just wanted to be dicks to us, and if they did know we were expecting a map expansion, then I’d like to believe the. They really did do us dirty like that.
The very first prep/scout might be the worst mission in the entire game. All you do is take pictures of stuff you need for the heist, which is fine, except the stuff spawns in random locations and if you wanna fully complete the prep missions and get your crew completely equipped you have to find 4 of the stuff, like the bolt cutters and grapples. I like the idea of posing as a DJ’s entourage then sneaking out scope out the island. It’s cool, except for the fact the mission is goddamn awful. It’s a mandatory stealth mission, which doesn’t sound that bad, then you remember stealth in GTA is just so, so bad. “So what if it’s a stealth mission, just quietly take out everyone in your way.” That’s the problem: you can’t eliminate anyone in this prep mission, not even punch or judo chop or whatever on the guards. As soon as you get too close to any of the guards, you are spotted and instead of dying and respawning, you’re dragged back to the party (or airport, if you’re doing the prep after the first play through) and have to sneak your way back all over again. It gets pretty frustrating after awhile. To make it worse, if you’re spotted too much, you are thrown off of the island and wash up on the shores of Vespucci Beach, which doesn’t make sense geographically, since Cayo Perico is confirmed to be in the Caribbean and LS is next to the Pacific Ocean. After getting thrown off the island, you have to go back to the Kosatka, restart the prep, and do the mission all over again.
The other prep missions are somewhat of a step up from the Casino Heist preps. For one, there aren’t any missions where you have go back twice for any of the equipment; it’s a one and done deal. The missions utilize different interiors from previous updates, like the CEO office, Import/Export garage, etc. and I find that somewhat cool. The missions themselves aren’t that hard, so they should be able to be breezed through.
The heist itself was in many ways a step up from the Casino Heist, in a way. All the different kinds of approaches, entries, methods, setups, etc. made the heist very unique with different levels of replay ability. As annoying as the guards on the island are, it’s good that they spawn randomly, as to encourage more challenge and thought as to how to approach the heist, unlike the Casino where they all have fixed locations, and after a few play through you figure out the formula and breeze through it like no problem. The guards are still ridiculously hard to all kill, even with all the prep missions to weaken them done. They still have aimbot, not surprised there. There’s a juggernaut in El Rubio’s mansion, but it’s not that bad, since there’s only one that spawns, and you can just use explosives. It is a heist that encourages stealth, and is very unforgiving to those who fuck it up. The enemies are fairly weak if you do the preps, but they just swarm you everywhere, especially in El Rubio’s mansion where they flank you at all corners, and if you’re not careful, you can go through all your snacks and armors quickly.
The amount of content released day one is very underwhelming, and the drip feed line up lowkey sucks. Half of the cars showed off in the trailers and promos were actually released on launch but the rest are to be released weekly over the next few months. I get it, Rockstar wanted to artificially extend the lifespan of this update, but did they really have to make us wait weeks for vehicles we can drive around during the heist? If they wanted to drip feed some vehicles from the heist itself, make it like the Manchez scout or that ATV cause no one cares about those vehicles, well, at least I don’t. Leaving out less vehicles from the heist to be released as drip feed would leave room for some more original cars to be added or different versions of cars that need updating, like the ARENA ZR380 PLEASE JUST GIVE US A CLEAN JDM VERION OF THAT CAR. The line up of original non heist cars is actually quite solid, still fitting the theme of the update. Cayo Perico gives off some Cuban vibes, minus the whole communism thing, so it would make sense some of the cars added would be classic cars from the 50s-60s, like the Fiat 500 (Brioso 300), BF Weevil (finally, they added a better version of the Injection), and Slamtruck (if that thing doesn’t allow us to put cars on it I’m gonna get very mad).
The new clothes and outfits are nothing amazing, but there was a change I appreciate so much, and that is we can finally put body armor on other tops like hoodies, service shirts, other utility tops. Finally will I no longer have to use the merge glitch. The new armored vests tho kinda suck, since they’re just designer and don’t exactly fit anything. The new button down tropical shirts do look cool, I just wish we could unbutton them to give more of a casual tourist vibe. I just appreciate we have more ability than variety.
The weapons were ok. The military rifle looks way too similar to the bullpip and advanced rifle, so it’s nothing really special. The Perico Pistol was a cool unlock for a random event that has a somewhat painful chance to get by finding a body in LS and searching it for a key, but the gun itself is just a golden marksman pistol, needing to be reloaded after every shot. I have yet to find the combat shotgun in the heist, but I imagine it’s just a cooler looking version of the pump shotgun.
The music in this update was very meh. Didn’t like the songs on Kult FM too much, maybe because I’m not into rock that much and kinda used to listening to pop songs and some Broadway musicals here and there. Couldn’t really judge Still Slippin since I need to be in a specific area of the map to listen to it, I haven’t been around Mirror Park in awhile, so I just went back to putting the music on mute and turning on blast LMP on Spotify (Owl House fans you know what I mean). It doesn’t really help that Rockstar is drip feeding radios and music too, since Still Slippin won’t be broadcasted to the entire map until a few more weeks. Maybe when it’s finally released for the entire map then I’ll take a listen. That one Moodymann song they played for the trailer goes hard and I’m sure his other works go hard too; too bad no one goes to the Music Locker, which is literally a stripped down version of our nightclubs under the casino. Come to think of it, music and nightclubs are a major part of this update, making me think Rockstar just wanted to do an After Hours Pt. 2.
Overall, the Cayo Perico was had the potential to be one of the best updates the game has ever seen: a map expansion for us to explore, but we were given a heist with ruthless AI and mediocre to subpar content to make up for it. As it stands, it might be one of my least favorite updates, not living up to the community’s expectations whilst being quite content dry.

I've been playing for 7 years, across 2 Sony platforms. I still suck at it. I've completed all the heists with randoms over the years (save for Doomsday and Casino). I have a few real-life friends who enjoy the game, but are not gamers, and a couple more who just recently bought GTA V because of the great sale.
I tried to string them along for a Cayo heist, but the stealth/infinite enemies were overwhelming us. I can solo the heist, but telling my friends to stay underwater while I slowly complete the mission isn't what we are looking for. I'd be happy spending an entire Sunday completing a heist with them.
So, all that said, what would be the best heist for 4 weak wristed gamer-dads, who are looking for fun and success over payouts? I see this has been answered a few times in the past, but I don't know if patches have changed anything in the past year.
TL;DR I'm looking to identify a casual, fun heist. I've got the crew, don't need the GTA$ per se, and I'm not looking for advice on how to run the heist, just what you guys think is a fun noob friendly one. (Not Flecca though, we've all done that one).
Thanks.

Okay, so, I saw a post by u/NewAccountNam-e waaaay back in august, that said "Idea: TRAIN HEIST" but he didn't really know how to execute it, so credit to him, that post made me think.
Personally, I think the best heist yet has been the casino heist, as it lets you choose how you want to do it, so I think this one should be somewhat like that too. 3 approaches, selectable crew, optional preps, all that. I'll be posting the approach ideas now, and will tell more about them (basically the options to do the approach) in my next few posts.
For the first approach, I thought of "The Stop & Rob" or something like that. It probably is very obvious what it would consist of. This would kind of be the aggressive approach, as after a bit, people would realize the train stopped, quickly alerting the cops. Just to clarify, this would consist of stopping the train, going in and out fast. It wouldn't necessarily be the Aggressive approach, as we wouldn't go in guns blazing, because we wouldn't be robbing a train full of passengers, we would be robbing the containers, taking whatever is in them. I know the name is cheesy, so if you have an idea, comments are welcomed.
Next on the list, "On The Go", pretty self explanitory, we hit the train on the go. This would kind of be the sneaky option. If done right, you don't get detected, but of course, there's a time limit before the train reaches it's destination. This would be done by getting on top of the train, sneakily cutting through the container from the top, jumping in, and getting the loot, and repeat.
The third and final approach would be kind of the big con of this heist, which I haven't decided on a name yet, so please comment if you have an idea. It would consist of stealing a train driver outfit, a train schedule, and then basically train parts. Maybe from a junkyard, but of course, not a fully destroyed one. Then, the switcheroo happens. On the day of the heist you stop the actual train, put the stolen/rebuilt one on the rails, then rob the real train while your driver drives the fake train to the destination. This would give you a good amount of time, but without a wanted level it isn't fun, so you're done robbing it, the original train driver calls the cops, you lose the heat, deliver the loot and profit.

Diamond Casino Guide:
So you decided that you wanna rob a casino, great! The Diamond Casino Heist is one of the best ways to earn money, but you're wondering, how do I get started? Well you're in luck! This guide is going to teach you the ways to get the best out of the Diamond Casino Heist!
Step 1: Arcade
Alright to get started, you’re going to have to own an arcade. Now, it may seem better to go for the arcades on the top of the map to save yourself some cash, however this will make all the preps much harder, as most of them take place in LS or Sandy Shores.
The best arcade locations are 8-bit ($2,530,000, located in Vinewood) and Videogeddon ($1,875,000, La Mesa). When buying your arcade, none of the upgrades are necessary, as most of them are cosmetic. You’ll have to complete a quick arcade setup mission to access the basement where the diamond casino heist planning board is located.
Step 1.5: Arcade Income
While this isn’t related to the diamond casino heist, I thought I would put this in there. The arcade generates income based on how many games you have, going up to 5k per in-game day (48 min). The game doesn't matter, so you can just buy the cheapest one (Monkey’s Paradise, $90,000) and fill up your arcade with it.
Step 2: Scope out casino
After you’ve finished watching Lester scribble a big mess over the whiteboard, you’ll be able to start the casino heist. Normally, you’ll have to pay a setup cost of 25k, but since it’s your first time doing it, it’ll be free. After you’ve confirmed that you want to start the casino heist, you’ll need to finish the scope out mission. For the scope out mission, you’ll need to take a variety of pictures for lester in order to unlock entrances for the heist. A full guide is linked here but I’ll sum up the most important ones.

• Staff Lobby: This entrance is arguably the best entrance for the Silent and Sneaky approach. It gives you easy access to the control room where you can get the daily vault easily. It is also the best exit for most approaches as not many guards patrol it. The staff lobby should be around the back of the casino, and should look like a white door behind some yellow bollards.
• Security Tunnel: By scoping out this entrance, it gives you the ability to enter the casino as a Gruppe Sechs team for the Big Con. This entrance is the best if not one of the best approaches to the casino heist. The disguise will allow you to go straight to the vault undetected and back up, however you will be detected when going back out of the casino on the casino access floor, so I would suggest getting some exit disguises to make your escape easier. The security tunnel should look like a big metal garage door with a security camera watching over it under the racetrack.
• Sewers: The sewers allow you to burrow down right into the vault access floor giving you easy access as you are right next to the vault mantrap. The sewer exit, however, is only available in the aggressive approach.
• Roof Terrace: At first glance, the roof terrace may seem like a horrible entrance/exit, however as it turns out, the roof terrace is actually a contender for one of the best aggressive exits. By taking the roof terrace, you can shoot down the guards at the racetrack while them not being able to shoot back and then parachute down.

You’ll only need to do this mission once, and it will be completed for all future casino heists.
Step 3: Vault Contents
The vault contents mission is pretty easy. You’ll be given the rough location of a duggan security guard, once you find him, you can either hack him, which can take some time but you won’t get the cops on you if you do it right, or you can kill him and grab the phone, which will save you some time but you’ll need to lose the cops before you can enter the casino.
After you’ve entered the casino, you’ll need to bring out the sightseer app on your phone to find a wifi signal. After you’ve located the wifi signal, you’ll need to figure out the vault contents. Beware that you only have a limited time to do this (2 min).
Since it’s probably your first time, I would recommend that you go through every camera to scope out each POI. The target will be cash since it’s your first time, which has a payout of 2.1 mil on normal. The first time will always be cash (payout of $2,115,000 on normal), but if it’s not your first time, the targets can be either cash, artwork (payout of $2,350,000 on normal) or gold (payout of $2,585,000 on normal).
There is a 4th target, which is diamonds (payout of $3,257,100 on normal) however this vault content is only available for special occasions and has been removed from the vault contents.
If you do the heist on hard by doing the same approach after you’ve done another one, the payout will be 10% larger. If you’ve completed all 3 approaches to the heist, you can cancel the heist which can be helpful if you’ve got a bad target. Link to this is here.
Step 4: Selecting your approach
Once you’ve finished the vault contents mission, you’ll be able to select your approach.
There are 3 approaches to the diamond casino heist. Silent and Sneaky, The Big Con and Aggressive.
For beginners, I would recommend alternating between Big Con and Aggressive, because those are the easiest ones. For Big Con, choose the Gruppe Sechs disguise for the easiest entry. Aggressive is good for newer players however it does end up in a lot of money loss. After you’ve got the gist of it, alternate to doing Silent and Sneaky in place of aggressive for a bigger payout.
Step 5: Selecting your support crew
After you’ve selected your approach, you’ll need to select your support crew before you can do any of the prep missions.
Selecting your support crew is very simple. You’ll need a gunman to source guns, a driver to source cars and a hacker to delay the nerve agent inside the vault.
Selecting your support crew depends on the approach and target in the vault. For Big Con, SnS, any any target EXCEPT for art, you’ll want the worst gunman (Karl Abolaji, take his Micro SMG on big con, heavy revolver on aggressive and on SnS the choice is up to you), the worst driver (Karim Denz, take his sentinel classic) and the best hacker available to you, for most people, this will be Paige Harris (unlocked when the terrorbyte is purchased, gives 3:25 in the vault when undetected and 2:23 detected).
For aggressive, you’ll still want to have the worst driver and best hacker, however the gunman is up to you since you’ll be using guns a lot. I normally go with Charlie Reed (unlocked when purchasing a hangar), he takes a 7% cut (2% more than Karl) and gives you an assault smg, however you can get by with Karl, as every gunman gives you a SMG to go along with another weapon, which is still a perfectly fine weapon.
For Big Con, SnS and the target is Art, if you and your heist partner can both hack very well, you can get by with Yohan Blair (takes a 5% cut and gives you 2:51 in the vault if you are undetected and 2:01 if you are).
Step 5.5: Secret heist crew members
There are 2 hidden heist crew members that can’t be unlocked by purchasing a business like most heist crew members. There 2 are Patrick McReary and Avi Schwartzman. Patrick McReary is a gunman who takes an 8% cut and gives the choice a Combat MG or an Assault Shotgun in aggressive. Avi Schwartzman is a hacker that takes a 10% cut and gives 3:30 undetected in the vault and gives 2:22 if you are detected. To unlock Patrick, he spawns as a random event around the map. He spawns in a police car that you will need to hijack. A guide is linked here. To unlock Avi, you’ll need to destroy 50 signal jammers that are located around the map. A guide is linked here.
Step 6: Prep Missions
Now that you’ve selected your support crew, you’ll be presented with a plethora of prep missions. Some mandatory and some optional. To complete these missions, I suggest that you use a Kuruma, Buzzard or Oppressor Mk2 to make your life easier. In some prep missions, you will not be able to call lester, so be prepared. All of the missions can be done solo but it makes it easier if you have a friend with you to help you out.
Now onto the optional prep missions. Optional prep missions, are, as the name suggests, optional. The optional prep you should do depends on the approach. If you own a penthouse and have completed all of the missions, you will gain access to the security intel mission. It’s very easy to complete and you will only need to do it once. A nice trick is that the gauntlet actually spawns when you start the mission, not when the cutscene is triggered, so you can just shoot the driver and take the gauntlet. A guide will be linked below.
Let’s start with Silent and Sneaky. For Silent and Sneaky, the optional prep missions depend on your skill level. If you’re an experienced player, you don’t need to do much, only level 2 security passes. Power drills you can do if you think you have enough time. However if you are a very new player, I’d recommend that you do patrol routes, duggan shipments (you only need to destroy 3 to get rid of their bulletproof helmets), level 2 security passes, emp device and infiltration suits and power drills if you think you have enough time. If you do all these, the heist should be a breeze.
Going onto the Big Con, if you’re doing Gruppe Sechs, you don't need to do much. You only need to go through one door if you exit out the staff door, so you can decide if you want to do level 2 security passes or not. Patrol routes do make things easier, however are not necessary. Again, only do power drills if you think you have enough time. Make sure you do exit disguises. Noose and firefighter are exactly the same, so do firefighters since it has the easier mission.
For aggressive, again, patrol routes make it easier, but are never necessary. Make sure to do duggan shipments. You can solo it, but it will be much easier with another person. If you don’t get them all you can just close the game and you’ll be able to do the mission again. Reinforced armour allows you to take more damage, so I would recommend it even if it makes you slower. Be sure to also do boring machine as it allows you to enter through the sewers. Make sure to also do level 2 security passes unless you really like hacking doors.
Step 7: Finding people to play with
Now that you’ve completed all your required prep missions, you need some people to play with. If you don’t have any friends to play with, I recommend checking out HeistTeams or the GTAO Discord LFG Channels to find people to play with. Make sure to have good communication between your teammates otherwise the heist will be in chaos.
Step 8: Completing the heist
Now that you’ve got a solid heist crew waiting to grab all of that sweet loot out of the casino’s vault, you’ll be able to start the heist. If you're doing aggressive, the plan is pretty simple, shoot your way in, grab the loot, then shoot your way out. The easiest entry for aggressive is sewers, and the easiest exit is the eastern roof terrace. If you exit through the staff lobby, you’ll get shot a ton when going over the racetrack, however if you exit through the roof terrace, you can shoot the guys behind the stones on the racetrack then safely parachute down.
For The Big Con, I’m going to assume you’re doing the Gruppe Sechs approach. By doing the Gruppe Sechs approach, you can pretty much waltz into the vault and back out of it, just be careful that this has some limitations. When going back up the stairwell/elevator to the casino access floor, the guards will have checked the vault and know it’s been robbed, so you disguise ain't gonna work anymore. I strongly suggest getting exit disguises, as they will greatly help your escape. The easiest exit for this is the staff lobby.
For SnS, I’m not really going to go into too much detail here because there’s a full video linked below. What I will talk about is when to use the emp (If you did the prep mission). I recommend emp’ing when you’re at the vault access floor, allowing you to waltz into the mantrap, or when you're coming back up to the casino access floor and are in the mantrap.. Be warned that if you decide to get the daily vault when you trigger the emp, the emp’s timer will run out before you can get to your exit, so plan ahead. The easiest entrance for this is the staff lobby and the easiest exit is also the staff lobby.
Tips and tricks to complete the heist

• If you are disguised, do not bump into any of the guards. They will detect you and start shooting.
• In the control room there is a button that you can press to open the door to the daily vault. One person has to hold the button while the other goes in and grabs the cash. This can be done with any approach.
• Running and jumping is faster than just running normally, use this to your advantage while inside the vault.
• Running in first person is actually faster than 3rd, so use this to your advantage when trying to knock out guards.
• Don’t bother trying to escape the cops by hiding in an alley or something, either take your car into the sewers down by the LS river or take the heli that usually spawns on top of the police station. The sewers will result in you losing less money, however will be much slower. I will link both of these methods below in the useful media section.
• Normally when exiting the casino from the staff lobby without any disguise, you’ll need to knock out a guard to the left of the swat fan to your right, before hugging the race track wall and then dropping down. I have found that sometimes if you run, the guard will hear you and detect you, causing you to get shot at. To prevent this, walk up to him making sure you stay out of his FOV then knock him out.
• You walk much faster in the casino if you are in first person, making the vault contents mission much easier.
• In prep missions, you can change any accessory (glasses, hat, ect.) to lose 1 star which is useful on missions where you can’t call Lester to remove your wanted level.
• On some missions, you can lose the cops by entering your Terrorbyte/MOC/Avenger.
• On some missions, you can lose the cops if you accept Lester’s apartment heist invite. This only works if you have a heist active.
• In the hacking device mission where you have to infiltrate the FIB building, you walk a lot faster if you aim down sights on any gun, however if you go into any agent’s LOS you will get detected instantly, so be careful when using this trick.
• You can upgrade your getaway vehicles in the arcade by getting in them and pressing the button showed on the prompt that appears on the top left.

Useful media

• Practice casino fingerprint hacking
• Easiest way to complete Silent and Sneaky
• Casino Heist Big Con Gruppe Sechs
• Casino Heist Aggressive Sewer Entrance
• How to make the most money out of the Diamond Casino Heist
• Casino Heist Sewer Escape
• Casino Heist Heli Escape
• Security Intel

Credits
Special thanks to:
u/Pepperooney_ for adding a bunch of info on the tips and tricks section
u/what_it_dooo for suggesting the roof terrace and the hacking device trick

I see players asking on reddit and discord servers about what is the best approach, target etc. to the casino heist for a single person to get maximum final cut out of all casino heist approaches. So here is a little guide to the players who are confused by the same.
**Heist Approach**: *Silent and Sneaky* (controversial ik, but please keep on reading)
**Vault target**: *Diamonds* (2 days left, hurry up!!)
**Crew**: Driver: *Karim Denz* ; Gunman: *Karl Abolaji* ; Hacker: *Paige Harris*
**Number of players required**: *3* (including host)
**Heist difficulty** : *Hard*
Ok now that we are all set with the pre-requisites, let's get down to the explaining.
After all of the set-up, your Heist take should be around **$2,750,000**. In order to get the maximum take for host, set your cut to 70% and the other 2 players as 15% each. 70% should amount to $1,925,000 for the host + extra bonuses :) Keep on reading.
We are aiming for the elite challenge to get that sweet 100k, so in order to do that, we have to plan out our heist finale to get the elite + some nifty little cash.
1) Start the heist as usual, disabling cameras and guards and stuff. Get the daily when going thru the control room as you usually do. One player takes the daily vault, the other two clean out the vault floor during the same time. *Efficiency 100*
2) It's a bonus if all 3 players are good hackers (2 of them can also do it easy). Hack all doors and grab loot as you usually do. You should get full loot easily in the stipulated time (If u don't, not being mean but you need to be better at hacking).
3) After going through the mantrap, when you are the end of the mantrap, turn on EMP and buzz through. Now, DON'T TAKE ON DAILY VAULT THIS TIME. Just waltz through and go the exit.
4) Go through the usual shit and take on Heli. Do not even think of sewers. (You might lose some cash here but it ain't much). You have already made up for it :)
5) And the heist finale is done!!
If everything went smoothly, you as host should get around *$1,925,000 + Elite bonus of $100,000 + 0.7x0.76x(Your daily vault loot)**
**Your final heist take is $2,025,000+ percentage cut of daily**
As for the approach, I agree while bigcon g6 is easier than Sns, if you are experienced you can take advantage of the daily vault too! As for new players, take the g6 approach and your final take will be minus the daily vault loot.
Thank You for reading this guide and I hope you found this helpful!!. If you did, please upvote for others to see. Moderators if you are seeing this, please consider pinning this post if you found it useful as well.
Go spend that fat cash on strip clubs I guess lol....Cya!!

Hi there, so I platinumed GTAV a while ago and I ranked them based on difficulty, how long they took, and just generally how fun they were to achieve. This also is kind of a walkthrough of some sorts and includes tips for some of the more difficult ones. Oh and keep in mind that this is just my opinion, some trophies can be achieved easier by other people.
And there is some swearing in this, but that shouldn't be a concern considering this is talking about GTAV Pick option C at the end of the game so you don't miss any achievements

1. Pimp my sidearm- works on any gun, recommend beating the game and then fully mod a pistol for the cheapest results.
   
2. Los santos customs- beat the game and take franklins car (trust me, do franklin's car) and go to a Los Santos customs and buy every option
   
3. A lot of cheddar- When you finish the game go to one of the stock websites and purchase every stock you can, which means you should be able to purchase 40 million worth of stocks at a time, do this until you unlock the achievement. This should take around 2 minutes.
   
4. Out of your depth- Purchase a boat or call a taxi (if you do the taxi achievement before this one the taxi skips are free) and go to the ocean, drive or swim to the very end and swim down to find a shark, annoy the shark so he will kill you. Depending on how you do it should only take around 5-15 minutes.
   
5. Off the plane- nothing needed to be said here, just complete it.
   
6. Clean sweep- Just stay behind cover and purchase snacks and body armor, and use a gun like a pump shotgun or a one-shot weapon, such as the revolver.
   
7. Trading pure alpha- you can do this anytime within the game, just purchase a stock and then kill yourself repeatedly until next to your stocks a green arrow pointing up appears, sell it and you should get the achievement. Can take up to 5 minutes if stock prices don't go up quickly.
   
8. Three-man army- Play as franklin and call Micheal and Trevor and pick them up, get a wanted level and stay in your car, kill a cop so you can get 3 stars, and start driving away but still have the cops on your ass. Do this for 3 minutes and you should get the achievement easily. Make sure your car has some armor upgrades though.
   
9. Alls fare in love and war- After beating the mission Mr.Philips you are able to purchase businesses when you're able to play as franklin purchase the taxi business for 200k and then you should get a call after a while, do the job and you should get the achievement. The missions themselves don't take a long time, maybe around 5-10 minutes, if you don't get the achievement to try to do another one.
   
10. Red mist- After completing the Trevor Philips industries mission this will just look like standard strangers and freaks, complete it, and then the others should pop up after you finish the one before. Complete all 5 and you should get the achievement. Can take up to 30 minutes to an hour if you're not good at it, I recommend trying to get the gold for all these for another achievement.
    
11. Altruist acolyte- There are certain markers that will appear as you get close to them, play as Trevor and go to the "Domestic" random event, there are a few closer to the location such as the hitch lifts but I wasn't able to spawn them. Drive to the cult and you should get the achievement after the cutscene. Took me around 10 minutes if you use the domestic random event.
    
12. Wanted: Dead or alive: This will also appear as Trevor strangers and freaks, after doing it you will get an email giving a picture of where he should be hidden, you can search it up on youtube as I did and capture him, don't kill the target no matter what, deliver him to Maude and you should unlock the achievement. Took around 10 minutes.
    
13. Kifflom! Play as Micheal and go to the Epsilon Program website, and pay the 1000 dollars to start this, I recommend using another guide for this but whenever you need to do something like wear the robe for 5 days just go to Michael's house and sleep until you are able to go on another mission, and when you need to walk around the desert for 5 miles just walk in a circle. this can take up to 3 hours if not done correctly.
    
14. San Andreas sightseer- Purchase a helicopter for the quickest results but can be done using a car or a boat. Travel around and get 95% of the map uncovered, you can tell if it's uncovered by it being transparent, meaning you can see through the map. The reason why I recommend a helicopter is you also need to uncover the ocean as well, which can be done with a boat but the helicopter is faster, you can either steal one or purchase a helicopter hangar and a helicopter. Took around 5 minutes because I already had a lot of the map uncovered.
    
15. Multi-disciplined- You'll need to get a single gold in only one of the shooting range challenges, triathlon, a flight school lesson, a sea race, a street race (which only franklin can do), and an off-road race. Complete all of them anyway for 100% achievement. This can take up to 30 minutes to an hour if you aren't able to gold one.
    
16. TP Industries arm race- After beating the mission Mr.Philips you need to purchase the hangar after beating the mission, it should cost 100,000 dollars. You get a special marker for the dune buggy and the airplane, there are 10 in total, 5 for the dune buggy (which is mainly just collecting supplies) and another 5 for the airplane (which is also mainly just supply drops) After doing the two quick save your game and reload it for the two missions to spawn. Can take up to an hour if doing the quick save method.
    
17. Crew cut- To easily finish this you either need to make a crew for a friend to join or join a friends crew
    

and play a contact mission with them to get the achievement.

1. A new perspective- Just leave one of the characters in the first person and just wait for the 15 hours or play some of

the story in the first person, I just recommend leaving it on overnight.

1. Calling digits- reach rank 20 and have 5000 dollars, call up Merryweather and ask for a backup helicopter.

20- stick up kid- rob every store on the map, can take up to an hour depending on how fast you move to each store.
21- enjoy your stay- for this achievement you need to play golf, play tennis, play darts, arm-wrestle,
win a shooting range challenge, rob a store, buy a lap dance, buy any clothes, buy a tattoo and change your hairstyle. Make sure you win or lose the sports activities because if your teammate leaves in the middle of the match it won't count.

1. Three-bit gangster- Pretty simple since ranking up is easy, just play 3x or 2x events or contact missions for the best RP. Can take up to an hour or two.
   
2. American dream- You're most likely going to need at least 1,000,000 dollars for everything, grind the 3x or 2x event or play heists for money.
   
3. 4-bit gangster- Same as a Three-bit gangster but more grinding is required. Can take up to 5 hours of pure grind.
   
4. Full refund- After rank 50 have a friend call Lamar so he can call a thief on you, kill the thief and take back your money. Takes around 5 minutes.
   
5. The midnight club- You can have a friend let you win 5 races by going to the menu-jobs-races and then
   

invite your friend and have you win 5 with a custom vehicle, depending on the map you play on
(I recommend taxiing, takes around 2 minutes to complete it) this can take up to 10-30 minutes.

1. Backseat driver- Do this with a friend, wait for people to join or join a rally race, and then guide them through the map. Once again I recommend making the rally race so you can play on a map you are familiar with.
   
2. Run like the wind- I did this in a solo match, I stole a car, got a bounty, and survived a GTA day (which is around 48 minutes) Move around and don't get kicked, you can die by anything but another player. You can do this with a friend where they have Lester give you a bounty.
   
3. Show off- Use an upgraded vehicle (preferably franklin's personal car) and search up a guide for all locations, ill put a link to the guide I used in the description, while most are easy 10 of them are a complete bitch, and took me around 15 minutes just to do one of them because of the requirements. This can take up to 3-5 hours.
   
4. From beyond the stars/a mystery solved- I can't really decide on which one is harder so I will group them up into one, both took me around 3 hours to do since there are so many. You can use the rockstar social club website or use a guide on YouTube as I did.
   
5. Waste management- After the second heist Micheal or Trevor and purchase the old dock for around 250,000 dollars, while it can be confusing just follow the dot on the map. Took me around 2 hours to do.
   
6. Close shave- Look up a guide, it's pretty much required for this. Buy the buzzard helicopter for the under the bridge and keep in mind not to do too much damage to your helicopter or it won't count, while most recommend stealing a jet from fort zancuddo I instead bought the mallard for 250,000. Took me around 3-4 hours.
   
7. Decorated- In GTA online there are certain rewards for doing certain things such as killing people with a pistol a certain amount of times, every single platinum that I earned were headshot kills, sniper kills (not sure how to be honest) Kill people using melee weapons, kill people using sticky grenades, kill players in GTA online, kill psycho's (I recommend doing most of these in deathmatches) win 10 waves of survival, (it's painful and achievement on its own), rob 20 stores which is also an achievement, pay for 25 lap dances (all you need to do is pay for the dance and then exit it) buy 25 haircuts, have a friend drive you around for a few hours (sit in a car with your friend in it, pretty simple one) Flippin hell (go to a stunt race with a flying car, get high in the air and do the flips) steal vehicles (pretty simple) Achieve the fastest lap in a race (can be done with a friend) land jumps 300 feet in a road vehicles win every deathmatch and race mode (can be done with a friend) participate in 25 races, buy 25 pieces of clothes (just buy 25 shirts) get the most kills in a 4 player survival (not too hard unless you camp all game, can be done with a friend) get the most kills in a gang attack (also can be done with a friend) shoot cop choppers down (when you get 3 stars start shooting the choppers down with a homing missile) win every race mode at least once (needed for 2 achievements) get a tattoo on every body part, win a race in a custom vehicle (needed for achievement anyways) wheelie for over 2000 feet (I don't remember getting this one, but the best way is to do it at the airport) Activate a 2 person key switch (I did this on the diamond casino heist) Complete the fleeca heist finale, do the aggressive approach on the diamond casino heist and earn 1,000,000 dollars and use the elevator on the diamond casino heist.
   
8. Solid gold, baby!- Do the heist setups and the strangers and freaks, every mission and strangers and freaks I got a gold in (not including prologue) was
   

Franklin and Lamar, Complications, Fatheson, marriage counseling, friend request, chop, the long stretch, daddy's little girl, the good husband, carbon rifles, Mr.Philips, Trevor Philips industries, Deadman walking, did somebody say yoga, by the book, Tow truck, boiler suits, masks, The multitarget assassination, Mr.Richards, Hang ten, Fresh meat, The ballad of Rocco, reuniting the family, Architects plans, doting dad, fire truck, meltdown, stingers, every gauntlet, something sensible, the times come, every Pulling favors, every rampage, shift work, Grassroots Micheal, grassroots the drag, Paparazzo, paparazzo the sex tape, Paparazzo the highness, every vinewood souvenirs expect Al Di Napoli, Exercising demons-franklin, liquidy risk, minute man blues, exercising demons Micheal and Trevor, targeted risk, uncalculated risk, a starlet in vinewood, chasing the truth, the last one, delivering the truth.
I may have missed a few but those were the ones I counted, this can take up to 5-10 hours unless if you already have quite a few on gold. You don't have to do every single challenge at once, so you can try to beat the level as fast a possible, reload it and try to get as many headshots as required for example.

1. Career criminal- This one requires pure fucking grind, let me tell you everything I did for the 100% completion. for hobbies and pastimes, I did Stunt plane time trials, 3 medals in every shooting range challenge, won every race (meaning offroad, street, and sea,) won every sport, got par or under in golf (getting par or under is required,) Bail bonds quarry and farm, every flight school mission, every arms traffic race (required for an achievement anyways,) got a private strip club dance, hunting, yoga and parachuting. Only franklin's strangers and freaks are required, my random events were the ATM robbery, Bike theft 1, construction accident, gang imitation, mugging 1, 2, and 3, security van 3, 4, and 6, sportbike theft, a countryside gang fight, a deal went wrong, and the drunk driver. To find out the spawn points of the random events go to the rockstar social club. All 30 misc were buying a haircut, weapon, any clothing, a car mod, a tattoo, and 5 properties, a vehicle from a website, ride the cable car, use the car wash, go on the rollercoaster, friend activities (meaning call up Micheal, Trevor, or franklin as any of the 3 characters) Visit the cinema, bar, play tennis, darts, golf, go to a strip club, 25 stunt jumps, 8 knife flights, rob a store, purchase stocks, watch T.V. (do at Micheals) complete a booty call (Play as Trevor in a strip club and get one of the girls like the bar to the max and drive them to their apartment) 25 under the bridge, walk and play fetch with chop, get 30 submarine pieces (one of Micheal's strangers and freaks) 30 nuclear waste (it's an achievement anyway) get all 50 spaceship parts and letter scraps (both achievements.) This can take up to 10-20 hours, it's a fucking pain.
   
2. Unnatural selection- Holy shit, this took me so fucking long to do, me and 2 other friends grinded for 10 hours straight and couldn't even beat it. Buy max snacks and body armor and the best map to do is the nuclear silo,
   

there is a certain hiding spot near the stairs and the stairwell that if you hide behind it's super difficult to get shot unless you peak for too long. Use the combat MG, does a lot of damage and can shred through enemy health, be careful at the beginning when getting health and armor not to be out for too long for else you will lose all your health and maybe even die. This took me prolly around 10-30 hours to complete.

1. Above the law- This requires so much god damn grinding that I grinded for 3 days straight, I started grinding hard on level 67 and got to level 100 by doing the 3x event "Target assault race" But by the 3rd day, it was this stupid deathmatch where if you die you can come back to life by an enemy dying or some shit, heists are also good ways of gaining RP, and heist setups too. this took me around 10-20 hours to complete starting from rank 67.
   
2. Numero Uno, the requirements for this achievement is to win a single Bike, Land, Sea, Air, Rally, and GTA-Race, win a Deathmatch, Team-DM, Gang-Attack, and Survival (10 rounds), and win Arm Wrestling, Darts, Parachuting, Golf, Tennis and Shooting Range. So not only do you need to complete the survival bullshit but more on top of it, now everything but a rally race, team deathmatch, and survival you can boost with a friend. But even then this still took me around 10-40 hours to complete due to the fucking survival bullshit.
   

This is mostly written in the GTA Online perspective, though it has crossover into RDR Online as well.
To bring everyone up to speed on network topology in games:
GTA Online uses what's called a peer-to-peer mesh network setup. This means that every PC/console on a connected session is talking to every other PC/console in that session. The preferred alternative for most multiplayer games is sever-client, where in every PC/console is talking with a single server.
With p2p mesh, this means that everyone shares authority. What this translates to is that a server is not the single authority checking for malicious activity, much of which anyone who has played GTA Online for is familiar with. This also means that anyone with the know-how can figure out what IP every other person is connecting from. This can lead to other malicious activity outside of the game.
But standing up dedicated servers costs money. Why not avoid that?
There are plenty of cases to be made where peer-to-peer connectivity makes sense, especially from a cost-savings perspective. But in some cases, like GTA Online, the benefits/gains from using a server-client setup far outweigh the costs.
So, in no particular order:

What Dedicated Servers Would Have Brought to RS/T2:

More purchases of cash in the Social store.
We'll start with the obvious here. When someone can get into a game and ask about [redacted method of obtaining money/goods/vehicles/XP] and get a response 50% of the time, it's an obvious miss on being able to purchase prepaid in-game credit cards from the store. There's no incentive. And if they don't want to ask someone to do it, they can do it themselves.
Nevermind that the same group of people who can [redacted method of obtaining money/goods/vehicles/XP] will also just grief sessions. Better yet:
Better Control on Hackers/Modders
Anyone who is on the outside of RDR2 or GTA multiplayer has probably only heard telltale of what modders do in these games. Here's a list of what I've personally experienced:

• Crash game sessions for individuals or the whole lobby
• Send text messages as players in a session
• Cycle the daytime so frequently that it can cause seizures
• Blow up and kill all players instantly in a session
• Join sessions regardless of session privacy settings (friends only, solo, crew only, invite only)
  • This is done by finding a unique identifier in Rockstar online. I don't know the details; that's how a modder described it to me.
  • This is especially impactful to anyone who streams, as they only need to see their in-game name and do the aforementioned to join their session and hold it hostage/ruin it. Getting rid of this yields more, is written about later.
• Grab other players and teleport them around the map
• Attach objects to players so they can't get anywhere
• Cage players
• Generate endless in-game currency (which is something Rockstar offers as purchasable in their store).

The list goes on. The biggest reason for using dedicated servers, honestly, is to get rid of the griefers. It's enough so that I've seen people ask if someone is running a specific type of mod, and they know the commands to use to get gifted vehicles, cash, etc. It's prolific and horrible.
But cleaning those things up and preventing them means:
Higher volume of Twitch streamers.
It seems easily correlated, but Twitch's research shows that livestreaming leads to better game sales. The reason this isn't streamed as broadly is because not everyone can get enough reliable people for a heist. Private sessions can be invaded by the same people who also [redacted method of obtaining money]. This is regardless of the privacy of a lobby, because those same people can find a unique identifier on the public Rockstar social site and join it, regardless of whether or not they're a friend or a crew member-- or simply not invited.
What this translates to are people who have such a low bar to pass to join a streamer's game and hold the experience hostage, crash the session or do any other number of malicious things. They can also impersonate people and send messages as them. So this further leads to things like not being able to do:
Twitch Rivals streams between competing streamer teams.
Imagine this: the game is pretty solidly protected from people who [redacted method of obtaining money] and those incidents they generate are rare, and when they do pop up, they're punished. So, streaming this game is far more viable. Competitive crews start forming, and Rockstar promotes an event with streamers where they're able to host lobbies and get 24, 36 or even 48 streamers in one session running 12 different crews for things like:

• Business goods battles
• Arena wars
• Deathmatches
• Races

And so on and so forth. But because items have to be obtained through legitimate game mechanics, it also implements a grind. Maybe these groups/crews have been running for a while. But then you'd also be able to do:
Streamer Drops through Connected Accounts
We've seen other games do this, where viewers can get "drops" into their game by watching the streamer play it. These drops could have been literally anything that was on the Diamond Casino Wheel of Fortune. It could have even been a bonus spin at the wheel, to encourage getting the player in the game.
The Long-Term, Sharded MMO Experience
This translates to cash because people would be continually playing the game, which means more people paying for in-game cash and general popularity because more people would be streaming it, but this is the bigger buyback to the player, too.
Imagine a crew that worked hard at completing a certain set of heists on hard difficulty, no deaths, consecutive. Four people who are streaming their attempt like people do for raid bosses. And their reward was a unique yacht only available for that achievement.
A ranked arena war system that awarded players who got 100 wins with a unique vehicle or livery.
The system could have been adjusted to make some things a grind. Making that money with friends, and then knowing that if someone had a high-end apartment, much less a casino penthouse, that they earned it through blood, sweat and hard work.
Powerful crews that were running around and happen to land on the same lobby and an all-out war with tactics, reinforcements and a consideration of cash drain to get the win in Los Santos.
These are the things that Rockstar and Take2 missed out on by not having dedicated servers with protections against [redacted method of obtaining money]. They were on the verge of greatness. They were this close. And I know that a lot of this translates over for Red Dead Online, too.

Is It Too Late to Do All of This?

No, I don't think so. If RockstaTake2 were to seek redemption from this, here's what they'd have to do:
Implement a dedicated server gamemode, and only allow characters created for this game mode specifically.
If people want to continue messing around in peer-to-peer sessions, maybe they allow that for a time before slowly forcing people over (because it's all about that money, right?). But create a new character (or duplicate the looks of one), and make it only available for play on controlled, dedicated servers.
You can even put Ye Olde GTA 5 spin on it and have Lester come in and say, "Yeah, I know the simulation was pretty fucked, right? It got hacked by kids on Christmas break. But anyway, now that you know what's possible out there in this stupid, god-forsaken world, well... uh, perhaps it's time we started making some money. And you remember Fleeca, right?"
Then people start off fresh, and work on earning things through the grind. I promise you, that'll net you some untold money and viewership. And I have faith enough that even if you made a very solid push into authoritative client-host conversion from peer-to-peer mesh, allowing the authoritative client-host to be controlled by Rockstar servers, you'd get something out of it.
And I will put a disclaimer on here: I don't know if the game engine is so archaic that it wouldn't allow for this kind of change. And if that is indeed the case, then the only thing that I can say is you missed out on all of the above by choosing to design what you did, because it is a proprietary engine.
But if you can, imaginary Rockstar or Take2 directory reading this, please, I implore you. Push for the change. This has been one of the best social games for me during lockdown, and I can't overstate how much everyone will benefit from this.
Sincerely,
~The Village Idiot

To skip the drilling at the vault door press pause and then rb on Xbox (I don’t know what that is on other platforms)
Never shoot your weapons at the guards with helmets
With the noose outfits you can walk right past the police officers outside the casino
In the big con (yung ancestor) you can run past all the guards in the staff lobby
If you are fast enough you can run past the cameras
When leaving the casino on Silent&Sneaky it is not necessary to stun the metal detectors
First person makes you run faster during the heist especially when you are carrying gold
When hacking in the vault press pause and rb when your character does the animation of putting the device in to save a few seconds comes in handy for elite challenge
If you’re a crew member on a casino heist and you hear the train when starting the heist that means it’s the la mesa arcade. The best one for the finale. If not it’s most likely the eight bit arcade.
In big con gruppe sechs entry disguise when selecting an outfit use one without a helmet because in the hallway to the vault door your character will keep moving the helmet glass up and down.
Don’t use the elevator because there’s a bug where you can be stuck on a black screen.
There is a helicopter that spawns on the police department closest to the casino but it doesn’t always spawn.
To always make the helicopter spawn look for the helicopter tail on the edge of the building and if you don’t see one drive one block away turn around the block and it should spawn.
Useful tips for preps: On gruppe sechs part 1 you can call Lester to remove the cops and for the vault lasers (the mission where you steal the drills from military soldiers) you can call in your terrorbyte to refill your rockets on your oppressor mk2 and lose the cops. For preps with vehicles that hold 2 crates of weapons in them like the police van and Tula plane can be destroyed and recovered as individual crates. You can lose cops during casino preps by accepting a job invite on the in-game phone. For the prison prep for the vault keycards get far away from the prison, easy way out and you’ll automatically lose the cops and complete the prep. For the vault keycards mission where you get them from two different npcs use your stone hatchet to quickly and silently take them out to avoid cops.
Useful glitches: you can change the loot in the vault by completing all approaches of the casino heist at least once and then calling Lester after you have discovered the vault contents while still in the casino. When you get back to your arcade set it up again and it’ll most likely have changed. To obtain all optional preps for free 1. Change outfits to force a save 2. Pay for all optional preps 3. Start duggan shipments and when you load in to begin the mission close application. 4. Start your game and load straight into online (also change spawn location to your arcade)
If there is anything that you think one might find useful, you can leave it down in the comments

In a previous article I looked into the practicality of building a Mage Tower for yourself. That was received fairly well, so I think I'll move onto my favorite class, the Artificer. Now, an Artificer doesn't necessarily need a tower as a base of operations, and given the somewhat more limited spell selection and 1/2 Caster nature, thought I'd focus more on the innate ability of an Artificer to be a small business owner by merits of Tool Proficiencies! Mundane and Magical Item are simple to make with all the Tool Proficiencies you are able to acquire at a relatively low level.
This guide could also be quite beneficial to Forge Clerics or any Wizard, Bard or Caster that knows Fabricate.
I recommend several resources to look up or familiarize yourself with before you take on this enterprising business opportunity.
1) Chapter 6 of the DMG features the Downtime Activity of Running a Business. It breaks down to 1d100+X, X being a number of downtime days that you spend running your business. If you can get above a 60 on the roll, congrats, your business makes a profit for that month.
2) Eberron: Rising from the Last War. You'll need this book if you want to play an Artificer.
3) Exploring Eberron presents two new Artificer Subclasses as well as a few new infusions I reference here, namely Healing Salve and Quiver of Energy.
4) Acquisition Incorporated is a great source for new rules to allow a business to be run while you continue to adventure, allowing a constant background stream of income to help fund future adventuring opportunities. You can use as many or as few options as you'd like, but the Hireling options to run the business in your absence are a nice touch.
5) If you don't want to use traditional Hirelings, but a more customizable NPC, you could use the Sidekick Options from the Essentials Kit and the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. I will be recommending Sidekicks for each of the business models in the examples below.
6) Waterdeep: Dragon Heist gives basic operating costs for running a tavern and One-time and Recurring fees for Guild Memberships. Given the prominence of Guilds in Eberron and other settings, it is a good standard to use for other settings.
7) Xanathar's Guide to Everything has a fantastic breakdown of Artisan Tool uses and Skill Checks that will be immensely useful to Artificers or businessmen looking to practice a trade.
The following examples will be based on the following assumptions:
1) You will be running this business on your own.
2) You have options to get hirelings or other PC help should you want/need it.
3) You are level 6. This is the first level where a lot of this becomes feasible because you gain your Tool Expertise class feature and are now the best on the block at using Artisan Tools. You also gain a nice expansion to your Infusions that you can learn and I would think that knowing the Enhanced Weapon Infusion would count as having a schematic allowing you to enchant a basic +1 weapon.
4) We can use the upcoming Tasha's Rules for Character Creation on the Sidekicks so that you can swap out one Skill Proficiency for a Tool Proficiency. Wouldn't make sense to hire someone to run a weapon smithing shop who couldn't use Blacksmith Tools.
Feel free to submit your own business models using the following format:

• Business Focus
  
• Artificer Subclass or Subclasses best suited.
  
• Tool Proficiencies needed.
  
• Helpful Infusions. I include these here because I believe that having a relevant infusion should count as the required schematics necessary to create a magic item. I also think that they should definitely look different than the standard fare that traditional enchanters sell.
  
• Business location.
  
• Primary focus of business. What you will be selling or offering to customers.
  
• Common or Uncommon Magic Items to supplement mundane sales when you hit level 10 and can make them in 1/4 the normal time and 1/2 the price of anyone else.
  
• Sidekicks you could use in the business.
  
• Other Party members who could help you besides the Forge Cleric, Bards, Rogues or any Spellcaster that knows *Fabricate*. You can Assume that the above classes are inferred good business partners for any of the jobs listed below. This guide will be focusing on those with Tool Proficiencies from Class, as anyone could grab a Guild Member background and be helpful as well.
  

Businesses

Wandsmith/Arcane Focus Maker

• Artillerist. This subclass lends itself well to a Wandslinger and the level 5 class features give a lot of attention to the Wand.
  
• Armor of Tools, Woodcarver's Tools, Jeweler's Kit, Glassblower's Kit. Woodcarving for Wands, Rods and Staves. Jeweler's for Wands, and Crystals. Glassblower's for Orbs.
  
• Enhanced Arcane Focus, Replicate Magic Items (any common wands or staves, Wand of Magic Detection, Wand of Secrets), Homunculus Servant, Replicate Magic Item (Wand Sheath). The Enhanced Arcane Focus should lend you to easily make decent wands and even Infused Wands. Replicating Magic Items for schematics for easy to make Common Magic items to upsell to customers. Homunculus Servant for extra help around the shop.
  
• Cart, Wagon, Boat, Shop. You could have 2-3 wands on hand in a cart, a covered wagon with carving tools set up or even a section of a ship dedicated to making and selling your wares. If applicable, you could even buy a permanent location to sell your wares, this will be your best bet for glassblowing, as your toolkit still requires you to find a suitable heat source to form liquid glass. Work your way up to being your own Gilmore's Glorious Goods, Invulnerable Vagrant, or Fantasy Costco.
  
• At this location, Wands, Rods, Staves, Crystals and Orbs will be your meat and potatoes. Basic Spellcasting Foci for any aspiring Wizard, Sorcerer or Warlock. You could even branch out into Holy Symbols, and Druidic Foci if the demand is there. While a basic Spellcasting Focus only needs to be between 5gp and 20gp. These are easily made in a single day of downtime crafting. You could even customize more expensive version of them for Nobles or highly opinionated casters to distinguish yourself from other magic shops.
  
• Common and Uncommon Wands and Staves. Mostly Imbued Wands or Orbs of Resistance. Wands of Magic Missile, Burning Hands, Ice Knife, Catapult would all fall under these categories. Could even make a Common Wand that requires attunement, and grants the attuned the ability to cast a single Cantrip (always at Level 1) as a Novice Wandslinging item. Scrolls could be re-flavored as single use wands.
  
• For Sidekicks, an Expert would be great to help you churn out mundane items, while a Spellcaster would help you keep a steady stream of lower end Magic Items available.
  
• Eldritch Knights and Tome Warlocks would make great business partners. Eldritch Knights would probably push you to sell Rubies of War Mages also, bringing in a new area of clientele and the ability to advertise through Weaponsmiths for when they have some adventurers come through.
  

PainteSculptoGeneral Artisan

• Any Artificer
  
• Armor of Tools, Painter's Kits, Calligrapher's Kit, Glassblowers Kit, Woodcarver's Kit, Mason's Tools. These cover the gambit of common medium to work with.
  
• Homunculus Servant. Most other Infusions are combat based, but a Homunculus is a nice extra set of hands(tentacles or claws?) to help pass you the right tool and to clean off your brushes.
  
• Can work from Cart, Wagon, Boat or Shop. You might want a combo of Wagon and Shop, with a mobile studio to get different landscapes and to collect different material and a shop for a gallery from which to sell things.
  
• Paintings, Sculptures, Wood Carvings, Reliefs and finer doo-dads will be your main stock. From carvings of monsters that you've fought, self-portraits of people you've met, landscapes of other planes, or just finely made custom Dragonchess sets with pieces that look like real people. You could even specialize in ship figureheads or shop signs for taverns or other businesses. If you can find a way to make a permanent Magical Tinkering effect of the static visual image, that's a nice storefront display right there.
  
• Illusion enchanted paintings for a Harry Potter style feel would be good magical items, or even Dragonchess sets that can move themselves.
  
• Experts will probably get more mileage for the tool proficiencies than the Spellcaster unless your Enchanted portraits become a real hot commodity.
  
• Kensei Monks and Battlemaster Fighters each get proficiency in a set of Artisan's Tools as a Class Feature. Monks get Calligrapher's kit, but Battlemasters get to pick their choice, so could easily be Painter's or Woodcarver's.
  

Crossbow Manufacturer

• Battlesmith, Artillerist
  
• Armor of Tools, Woodcarver's Tools, Tinker's Tools, Smithing Tools, Carpenter's Tools. You will be mostly working with Wood and steel. Woodcarver's Tools lets you make 20 arrows as part of a Long Rest per Xanathar's.
  
• Repeating Shot, Quiver of Energy, Enhanced Weapon, Homunculus Servant. Enhanced Weapon for a reason to be able to make +1 crossbows. Quiver of Energy might be useful for some arrows that add a bit of elemental damage to a shot, even if only +1 fire or lightning.
  
• You can run a smaller shop out of a cart or wagon and be mostly custom orders, or you can have a fixed shot with dozens of different styles ready for sale and enchantment services on request.
  
• Hand, Light and Heavy crossbows as well as arrows and bolts will be your primary trade. You can also Silver arrows and bolts and filigree the crap out of some crossbows if people are interested in flaunting their status that way. Pretty straight forward with these mundane items.
  
• Walloping Ammunition, Unbreakable Arrows, Elemental Burst Arrows and Quivers of Ehlonna will be easy sources of magical flare in your shop.
  
• Experts will be your main shopkeepers and re-stockers. Warriors if you want someone to do demonstrations.
  
• Rangers, Arcane Archer Fighters, Kensei Monks will make excellent business partners. The Ranger especially brings a host of appropriate spells for later game enchanting. The Kensei will probably focus on more "traditional" Bows, which can help expand your clientele.
  

Potion Brewer

• Alchemist
  
• Brewer's Kit, Alchemist Supplies, Herbalism Kit, Poisoner's Kit. It is called out in Xanathar's Guide that an Herbalism Kit is required to make Healing Potions. So that's something you're definitely invest in. Also, in Xanathar's for .5lbs and 25gp of material, you can make one Alchemist Fire as part of a Long Rest with an Alchemist Supply Kit. That's not even counting what you can make during the day as Downtime. Stock up before you leave the city and you can make yourself one firebomb a night!
  
• Healing Salve and Homunculus Servant. Healing Salve is basically a 4 use touch range Healing Word you can make. This would be a great basis for Keoghtom's Ointment. I also feel like at this point I don't need to explain why Homunculus Servant keeps appearing on these lists.
  
• You could run this out of a cart or wagon, but i'd be worried about all those Alchemist Fire supplies rattling around. Same with a boat, unless you're just a Riverboat. A physical Shop would be best for what you need, although a cart/wagon for traveling with already made merchandise is a nice way to spread the brand name and to gather exotic or non-local supplies.
  
• Healing Potions! You are the local healer. You will also probably have on hand a good number of natural remedies for people who can't afford a constant stream of Healing Potions and instead use the Medicine Skill Proficiency to treat wounds. You can also make a single item of either Alchemist Fire, Acid, Antitoxin, perfume or soap as part of a Long Rest with an Alchemist's kit, so you can have a varied catalogue. makes sense to me that Sunrods (fantasy glow sticks) would be something you'd make with Alchemist's Supplies. You could even dip into Poison's, that wouldn't be advertised of course, but would include a bit of a premium on their sale for those in the need of such a thing.
  
• As you level up you can more easily make Potions of: Greater Healing, Fire Breath, Hill Giant Strength, Resistance and Water Breathing. You can also easily make an Alchemy Jug, which can make you day to day operations even cheaper as you can simply have the jug produce some of the more mundane liquids you may sell. The Decanter of Endless Water is also a must have item and too easy of a sale to anyone adventuring near or into a desert. Keoghtom's Ointment is also a nice Emergency Medicine that you could sell to a local Hospital or Militia.
  
• Expert's are your best bet at brewing basic potions for you and keeping the mundane supplies stocked. A Spellcaster would be able to expand your inventory with Climbing Potions, Beads of Nourishment, Beads of Refreshment, Candle's of the Deep, Perfume of Bewitching and Tankard's of Sobriety.
  
• Druids, Eldritch Knights, Monks and Rangers would be good partners as they can easily get Nature and Medicine proficiencies for a good number of the items that you make.
  

Tavern Owner

• Any Artificer, but strong lean to Alchemist due to class flavor.
  
• Brewer's Kit, Carpenter's Kit, Cook's Utensils, Alchemist Supplies, Herbalism Kit, Glassblowing Kit. The Brewer's Supplies should be obvious, but outside of the business, you can Purify1 gallon of Water over a Short Rest and 6 Gallons over a Long rest, a handy skill to have if you aren't near someplace with Fresh Water, like the open ocean. The Cook's Utensils are also a given with a Tavern, but outside of combat they allow a creature to regain 1 extra HP per Hit Dice they spend on a Short Rest. That may not sound like much, but it effectively makes each Hit Dice one higher on average (1d6+1 has the same average as 1d8). The Carpenter's Tools are so that you can fix all the furniture that will break during the inevitable bar fights. The Alchemist Supplies are actually for embalming creatures you encounter so you can have that Mindflayer Taxidermized as a display item in your bar! That's a feature I don't think any other local bar will have. Herbalism Kit is for working with hops, or branching into a bit of Potion Making if you want. Glassblowing is for you to make your own signature glassware that you can serve with the expensive drinks and offer as souvenirs.
  
• Homunculous Servant, Replicate Magic Item (Tankard of Sobriety). Tankard's of Sobriety seem like the perfect item for a bartender or bar owner. You can drink as much as you want but still stay sober. Might not be as much fun as regular drinking, but good for keeping your head about you and one hell of an advantage in a drinking contest.
  
• You could run this out of a Cart or Wagon as a kind of portable bar for just drinks. If you got a decent sized ship you could even expand it to a casino boat. However, a physical shop is the best choice here, specially if you plan to expand it to housing several rooms. Location is also key here, so make sure you spend some downtime doing some Investigation, Insight and History checks to learn all you can about potential locations you might set up.
  
• Beers, Wines, and Spirits of all kinds, with tasty food to boot! This is the stereotypical D&D Player business. There's an entire chapter of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist dedicated to setting up and running a tavern if you want inspiration. Feel free to include specials following your adventures of meat from creatures you've slain! Hydra-Burgers should be tasty.
  
• Mostly Wands of Prestidigitation and Decanter's of Endless Water for cleaning the bar and Alchemy Jugs for an easier way to produce cheap beer and wine with basically no overhead costs. Dust of Dryness might be nice to have on hand for cleaning up spills as well. Oh, and don't forget to keep a Wand of Magic Missiles behind the bar for those rowdy patrons.
  
• Spellcasters might make the best brewmasters of the sidekicks due to their increased Mental Stats. They can also help out with cleaning, and if they get to a point where they can Detect Poison and Disease, that would be a huge help come Health Inspection time. Experts will make good Brewers and can step up behind the bar to help out with their wide range of proficiencies. Warriors are good Bouncers and a way to take care of those pesky Dire Rats in the cellar.
  
• Way of the Drunken Fist Monks will either be a godsend or a curse for you as a business partner. Other Monks and Rangers would make a good partner as their naturally high Wisdom scores would help with Insight and Perception to keep an eye on patrons and employees. And no one is better in a bare knuckle brawl than a Monk, you could even put a fighting pit in your tavern if you want that kind of atmosphere, but I'd be sure to have a place to check weapons at the door so fights don't escalate too much outside of the fighting pit. Barbarians and Fighters have the CON to put down the drinks for Taste Testing and still being able to be a Bouncer. Beastmaster's can use their companion as a novelty server or even tavern mascot. And while I said I wouldn't include them on the list, I just have to say that any Bard would go here wonderfully.
  

Weaponsmith

• Battlesmith (It's in the name)
  
• Smithing Kit, Alchemist Supplies, Leather Working, Jeweler's Kit, Woodcarving Kit. The Smithing Kit and Woodcarving kit should be obvious as 95% of the weapons are made from metal or wood. The Leather Working Kit is for grips and wraps on the handles of weapons. Jeweler's Kit is for making fancy versions of weapons. Alchemist Supplies is for Silvering Weapons or using chemicals to stain the metal other colors.
  
• Homunculus Servant, Armor of Tools, Enhanced Weapon, Returning Weapon, Radiant Weapon, Replicate Magic Item (Moon-Touched Sword), Replicate Magic Item (Armblade). I think both the Radiant Weapon and Moon-Touched Sword Infusions would be good enough to count for the schematics to make Moon-Touched Swords for you. Enhanced Weapon for a basic +1 weapon.
  
• You need a forge for these, and that means that Carts and Wagons are only good for transporting completed merchandise to sell. The sheer weight needed for your forge makes a boat out of the question. Like the tavern, a physical location is the best bet for you.
  
• Anything that isn't a strictly ranged weapon is your stock and trade here. The most expensive mundane melee weapon is the Greatsword at 50gp. That means it will take you a full day (25gp) to make a single one. All other weapons can be made in a few hours. You'll also want to have some farming supplies and tools on hand in order to maximize your customer base. Hoes, pick axes, crowbars, buckets, barrels, Caltrops, Ball Bearings, metal religious symbols etc. Silvering Weapons and adding gold/silveelectrum/gemstone decorations to mundane items are a great way to offer wares to richer customers. Yes, Lord Grantham ir'Lupiloo has a fine rapier, but he doesn't have a rapier made of Bulette-scale Damascus steel, with a hydra skin wrapped pommel and his name engraved in gold embossed Draconic along the crossguard. That's how you make a name for yourself, because Lord Brendit ir'Flaglap is going to HAVE to have a nicer Longsword than that cur for next week's gala.
  
• Moon-Touched Blades, Weapons of Warning, +1 Weapons and a weapon with a single minor property from the table on page 143 in the DMG will be the easiest and fastest for you to replicate.
  
• The Expert and Warrior will be best for if you want mundane items being churned out of your forge. The Spellcaster would be a better hire if you want to focus on enchanted items. The difference in what you will be able to do will be based on your location. Rural areas will focus on mundane most likely, while cities will have more demand and client base for fancy mundane and enchanted.
  
• Fighters, Barbarians, Monks, Paladins and Blade Pact Warlocks would do great here as partners.
  

ClothieArmorer

• Armorer, Battlesmith
  
• Smithing Kit, Leatherworking, Weaver's Tools, Cobbler's Tools, Alchemist Supplies. SMithing and Leatherworking are straightforward. Weavers is for non-armor clothing if you want to instead open up a clothing boutique. Cobbler's tools for if you want to make shoes. Fun fact, with Cobbler's Tools you can spend a Long Rest to add in a 3" by 1" hidden compartment into a pair of shoes or boots.
  
• Homunculus Servant, Enhanced Armor, Reflecting Shield, Boots of the Winding Path, Armor of Absorption, Armor of Tools.
  
• You could do a clothing store, shoe repair and custom designing, make and sell leather armor, custom tailoring or a dry-cleaning business (Prestidigitation + Mending) out of a cart, wagon or boat, but for the same reasons as with a weaponsmith you need a physical location if you want to make metal armor. Make it work, people!
  
• Congratulations, you are now you party Rogue's favorite person and source of disguises. You'll have to decide the breadth and scope of just what kind of business you want to run first. Focus on just mundane clothing for commoners to nobles, or do a combination of common clothing and simple armors. Metal armors and shields will require a forge. If you are able to build yourself up, you could eventually do everything out of a large building with a little bit of everything like your own fantasy Macy's. One storefront for expensive dresses, gowns and suits. Next door is more common or work wear, and out back is the forge with protective armors, leathers and shields. This would be a nice way to ensure that all your armor pieces match, because nothing is worse than finding a great piece of new armor that just completely clashes with your personal aesthetic. This also to me just seems like a great way to play a Garrak like character. (If you don't know who that is, please see yourself over to Netflix or CBS All Access and watch all of Deep Space 9 as soon as possible.)
  
• Cloaks of Defense, Cloaks of Many Fashions, Cloaks of Billowing, Cloaks of Elvenkind, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, Sentinel Shields, Robes of Useful Items, Brooches of Shielding, Cast off Armor, Boots of Elvenkind, Gleaming Armor, Boots of the Winterlands, Winged Boots....there are so many thematic Common and Uncommon Magic Items for you to make here.
  
• Experts will be your go to for mundane sewing, forging and cobbling. Spellcasters if your enchanting business takes off and can run the Dry-cleaning aspect while you're gone.
  
• Rangers, Monks and Arcane Archers will do well here are they tend to favor DEX and WIS. Also, if you do end up going into a clothing business with a rogue and you don't name it "Cloak and Dagger" then I think you actually lose a Character Level.
  

Shipwright

• Any, but Battlesmiths and Armorers might do best as they would tend to have higher STR.
  
• Armor of Tools, Carpenter's Tools, Woodworking Tools, Smithing Tools, Navigation Tools. You're mostly going to be working with wood here, and a bit of metal also. Navigation Tools just seems like a good choice, unless you want the RP of being a master of building ships, and then being completely unable to use or navigate in them.
  
• Homunculus Servant, Replicate Magic Items (Cap of Water Breathing, Ring of Water Walking, Cloak of the Manta Ray). The Magic Items that you can replicate allow you to fully inspect or repair any ship while it is in the water.
  
• You're going to want a shop. Located next to a large body of water. And depending on the size of the ships you intend to build, it should also be connected to an ocean eventually. You could theoretically have this business from a boat, if you make a large enough ship that you could pull alongside other ships to repair them, but I think you're best off with a permanent location.
  
• As a Shipwright, you make ships! Boats, galleys, rowboats and everything in between. You'll want to start off with smaller boats first to build up your money until you can invest in making a large ship. According to the DMG, a Rowboat costs 50gp to make, a Keelboat costs 3,000gp a Sailing Ship or Longship costs 10,000gp and a Galley costs 30,000gp. Other than Rowboats, which you can make in a single day, these are going to be very long projects. From 120 days for a Keelboat to about 3.3 years for a Galley if you are working by yourself without any magical aid. Even if you do hire multiple sidekicks or just general hirelings, you aren't going to get paid until the entire job is done, but they will all need to be paid while they work on the ship. Instead of making brand new ships, you could also repair existing ones, and as an Artificer, you almost certainly have the Mending cantrip which can help you.
  
• Candle's of the Deep, Heward's Handy Spice Pouch, Orbs of Direction, Ropes of Mending, Alchemy Jugs, Caps of Water Breathing, Decanters of Endless (fresh)water, Eyes of the Eagle, Gloves of Swimming and Climbing and Wind Fans are all magic items that you could sell to shipowners and crews to help them in their travels. Ghosts of Saltmarsh also has a number of Ship Upgrades that you could offer.
  
• Experts are going to help you the most here as they can get the most amount of kit proficiencies to help across a variety of problems. Spellcasters can help if you decide for focus more on maritime magical goods.
  
• If you plan on building ships from scratch, then you are going to need every Forge Cleric and Fabricate Spell you can get your hands on. But be careful, if you are able to start churning out ships in a week for half the cost of the competition, then that is a LOT of people that you are putting out of business and there is sure to be repercussions. For a non-magical approach, just about every party has something that they can contribute to this project. Martial classes will DO WORK on cutting down lumber and getting that ship together. Partial Casters can help speed up certain aspects of building and augment others through buffs.
  

Updated for multiple spelling, grammar and formatting errors

Please Feel Free to Submit your own Business Ideas! I'll add them if they fit the stated format. Punny Shop names encouraged!

I see players asking on reddit and discord servers about what is the best approach, target etc. to the casino heist for a single person to get maximum final cut out of all casino heist approaches. So here is a little guide to the players who are confused by the same.
**Heist Approach**: *Silent and Sneaky* (controversial ik, but please keep on reading)
**Vault target**: *Diamonds* (2 days left, hurry up!!)
**Crew**: Driver: *Karim Denz* ; Gunman: *Karl Abolaji* ; Hacker: *Paige Harris*
**Number of players required**: *3* (including host)
**Heist difficulty** : *Hard*
Ok now that we are all set with the pre-requisites, let's get down to the explaining.
After all of the set-up, your Heist take should be around **$2,750,000**. In order to get the maximum take for host, set your cut to 70% and the other 2 players as 15% each. 70% should amount to $1,925,000 for the host + extra bonuses :) Keep on reading.
We are aiming for the elite challenge to get that sweet 100k, so in order to do that, we have to plan out our heist finale to get the elite + some nifty little cash.
1) Start the heist as usual, disabling cameras and guards and stuff. Get the daily when going thru the control room as you usually do. One player takes the daily vault, the other two clean out the vault floor during the same time. *Efficiency 100*
2) It's a bonus if all 3 players are good hackers (2 of them can also do it easy). Hack all doors and grab loot as you usually do. You should get full loot easily in the stipulated time (If u don't, not being mean but you need to be better at hacking).
3) After going through the mantrap, when you are the end of the mantrap, turn on EMP and buzz through. Now, DON'T TAKE ON DAILY VAULT THIS TIME. Just waltz through and go the exit.
4) Go through the usual shit and take on Heli. Do not even think of sewers. (You might lose some cash here but it ain't much). You have already made up for it :)
5) And the heist finale is done!!
If everything went smoothly, you as host should get around *$1,925,000 + Elite bonus of $100,000 + 0.7x0.76x(Your daily vault loot)**
**Your final heist take is $2,025,000+ percentage cut of daily**
As for the approach, I agree while bigcon g6 is easier than Sns, if you are experienced you can take advantage of the daily vault too! As for new players, take the g6 approach and your final take will be minus the daily vault loot.
Thank You for reading this guide and I hope you found this helpful!!. If you did, please upvote for others to see. Moderators if you are seeing this, please consider pinning this post if you found it useful as well.
Go spend that fat cash on strip clubs I guess lol....Cya!!

Okay, I want to start this by saying that while Endless Summer is my favorite book due to emotional attachment ^{(Yeah, this is no longer the case as of October 31st, ROD GOAT}) I still think that Ride or Die comfortably surpasses it and every other Choices story when it comes to writing quality. I've been consuming some truly kino media like Steins;Gate, The Last of Us Part II and Better Call Saul in the past few months but seeing that the tumblr side of the fandom was having a ROD Appreciation Week made me have the book constantly wrestling for time in my mind along all those other things that I greatly enjoyed (Obviously, I'm not trying to imply this is anywhere near the same level of quality as these other pieces, cause that'd just be stupid) but yeah, I've been wanting to talk in depth about why I hold Ride or Die in such high regard for a long time now, so this post is for me, for anyone else that might be big fans of the book or even for people that didn't like it and don't understand why it's a fan favorite. It's also my late, not proofread contribution to the appreciation week since I can't really draw for shit.
PREMISE AND THEMES
Quick summary, it’s a story about growing up and finding oneself that focuses on an 18 year old girl in her last weeks of high school that joins a criminal crew without even realizing it due to her sheltered life making her feel like she missed out on her teenage years for the past 5 years since, after her mother’s death, her dad became incredibly protective of her. As she grows attached to the crew she gets deeply immersed in their world until she realizes what the pursue of freedom, fast cars and bad boys/girls truly entails. Of course, you all know that.
So, themes. Most Choices stories don’t have any big, noticeable theme that encompasses the entire story they’re trying to tell, which is completely fine since you can still write a good, compelling story without it ^{(Unless you’re David Benioff}). Of course, while not necessary, overarching themes elevate a story a lot more in my eyes if executed properly and I feel like Ride or Die excels at it. And what are these themes? Well, obviously, it’s up to every individual’s interpretation but to me the three biggest stand outs are freedom, obviously; the choice between someone’s own past and future; and how the typical Bad Boy Romance is not always the cheesy, idealized life most of us are used to. I’ll explain how the story presents these themes in the following segments.
ELLIE WHEELER, aka THE MC
I’ve raved about her at almost every chance I get because I feel like I can make a pretty compelling argument as to why she’s the best MC and one of the best characters PB’s ever written, but it’s about time I finally sat down to properly explain this stance. I might refer to her as Ellie at times instead of MC since I just don’t like having an essay this big and introspective and just referring to her as MC, even if I didn’t actually keep her default name myself.
So, let’s start from what most of the ROD MC masterrace knows about, she’s different from 95% of the MCs. She has a clear goal, a clear personality and, one of the most rare traits in MCs, her dad’s an actual character and he has an actual relationship with her. She’s also far from perfect, she’s an incredibly smart young woman that lacks “street” knowledge and as she gets in deeper and deeper with the MPC, her previous and new relationships suffer because of it, because she doesn’t know how to juggle both sides of her life. The hardships Ellie has to face are both products of the environment she lives in and a product of her mistakes, which acts as a nice balance so that she doesn’t come of as a bumbling idiot that fucks up everything for everyone and an overly perfect protagonist who’s only flaw is that the world just plots against her so that there can be a story to tell.
Her goal is a pretty simple one, she wants to go to Langston university, her dream school. The thing that stands out to me is how she never betrays her dream and it’s always present in the back of her mind, well, technically you can choose to skip out on all of her classes but that always seemed really out of character to me, so I’m not really taking that into account, since she expresses that she loves to learn and she sees it as a challenge to be better than herself from yesterday. She manages to involve Logan into her school life so she isn’t fully distracted from her studies and even when she’s living on the Gramercy Garage, she still finds time to study for her finals. Even when everything goes to shit and she starts losing sight of who she is, Logan, Colt and Mona know that being a criminal is not the life she’s meant to live and it isn’t until after prom that she realizes who she really is. There’s so many choices throughout the story that, while ultimately not relevant to the outcome, I feel can add a lot of character to her if you’re willing to “headcanon” a bit, so minor things such as picking the color of her car due to it being the same as Logan’s or the one Colt or Mona suggested, choosing to listen to rap music as she’s driving the MPC around since it can be seen as a rebellious sort of music that her dad probably wouldn’t have approved of, treating Brent’s party invitation as something of no importance to her, getting a tattoo… wait this one’s supposed to be big, why does no one acknowledge it dammit? Then there’s also some bigger choices such as her being able to tell Riya that she’s most excited about being able to leave LA on the first chapter or being able to choose to stay with Logan and help him fight Salazar, choosing to focus on her studies even when living with the MPC, and so on.
Now, how is she tied to the themes I mentioned above? Well, it’s clear that her desire for freedom and independence is what initially leads her to want to be a part of the MPC’s life, when Kaneko brought her to the garage for the first time she didn’t quite see them as criminals, but as people that lived as they wanted and were still, well, humans. She’s constantly seeking her own freedom from her dad’s overbearing presence and from her own boring life and she achieves it twice, one is the fake freedom she got when she ran away after her dad found out about her involvement with the MPC and the second one is what I like to think of as her true freedom. The definition of true freedom is tied to the second theme I mentioned, the choice between past and future, after the Brotherhood attacks her and her LI after prom she realizes that she can no longer try to keep on living both lives, the nerdy valedictorian girl and the criminal that gets a thrill by being behind the wheel, the inability to choose between one and the other is what initially landed her into that mess and it’s only by finally choosing that she’s able to get herself and everyone else from the MPC out. It’s a very unique way of showing a character being strong, she got herself out of the mess she herself helped cause and she did it without the conventional strengths of MCs such as being a warrior queen, a part of an alien entity that transcends time or a literal vampire.
Ultimately, she chose to embrace her future (And her past, in a roundabout way), her long time dream, which meant letting go of the life and people that once made her feel so free and alive and by doing so, she got the freedom she desired so much while also finding who she truly was and what she valued in life. That’s also tied to the third main theme I mentioned, in the end she couldn’t keep on living an idealized version of the bad boy romance where you get to keep a good life out of living on the wrong side of the law and while I could definitely go more in depth about how she embodies this theme, I’ll do that when I talk about other characters, since I’ve already talked about about Ellie a lot.
LOGAN
The cover boy, the boy with the car, the “bad boy”, the mandatory “good boi” LI, the only Love Interest that has managed to rival Quinn Kelly in terms of how much I love them. I feel like the love for all 3 LIs is mostly evenly distributed on this sub but I’ve definitely seen some people say that Logan is kinda boring compared to Colt and Mona and honestly, that just couldn’t be further from the truth in my mind. Prepare for another long ass analysis.
Being a fan of the anime/manga series Attack on Titan has made me gain a great, great appreciation for story recontextualization and that narrative element is exactly what Logan brings to the story at the end of Chapter 10 and boy, did Luke and the team knock that shit out of the park with how they implemented that tool into their story. ROD Ch. 10 is notorious for being the chapter that officially turned the book from an initially hated book that people were slowly warming up to, to a current fan favorite as far as online communities are concerned, seriously, you can look up the discussion for that chapter in the search bar and the first comment you’ll see if someone taking back everything negative they said about the book and then it’s just constant praising for the next 6 weeks. Why did all of that happen? Because of how much starts making sense or becoming clearer because of the reveal that Logan initially started dating (?) MC because he was trying to get whatever intel her dad had on them from her, seriously, everything becomes so clear after the end of the chapter, everything starts falling into place like a carefully crafted Lego build, be it for the stories’ themes or for characterization of characters like Colt, Mona, Kaneko, Jason and Logan himself.
Let’s focus on Logan for now though. A couple of chapters in, as we start learning more about his life, we can see that Logan is someone that’s never truly had someone in his life that could show him true human love and bonds, the closest he has to that prior to Ellie is his “cousin” Vaughn. Initially, it seems like a weak attempt at making the titular bad boy seem like a layered character, specially since he seemingly just fell for a random girl that literally stumbled upon him on a high school parking lot, but in reality the reason his fake interest in Ellie started to become reality was exactly because of the lack of proper, meaningful connections, which we couldn’t have known until after Colt reveals the truth. As we know, Logan always had the mentality that, no matter how good a crew might be, he should always be ready to bail when the heat is too much, that’s a philosophy that he adopted and he knows that any criminal that’s as good as him will share the same sentiment, which proves to be the case when the MPC immediately disbands after Kaneko’s death... but Ellie isn’t a hardened, professional criminal, she’s a girl that, while certainly enamored by the allure of their life, still sees them as people, not as mere means to an end that are just fun to hang out with, which is why she doesn’t run away after the escape from the mall or the encounter with Salazar’s crew at the drive-in cinema, that’s not something Logan thinks people are capable of, why would such a saint of a girl not get away from them after things like that?
That’s when Logan’s guilt enters the scene. He tries to undo what he now considers to have been a great mistake since he’s slowly catching real feelings for the girl that was just supposed to spill all of Detective Wheeler’s info and leave them as soon as she realized how dangerous their life was, but how is he supposed to do that now when doing so would mean losing this person that’s so incredibly unique in his world? We see how his guilt starts weighing on him more and more as the story progresses, until he almost does something very stupid by almost revealing the truth right before the stadium job, so he probably wouldn’t have lasted much without revealing it but, for better or worse, Colt was the one that did it for him and once again Logan turns Ellie’s whole world upside down. For the rest of the book, he does everything in his power to show her that, while he was lying in the beginning, he actually did come to care for her a lot (even if his actions might’ve pushed her into the arms of Colt or Mona, or at least acted as the final push in their routes).
After the MPC disbanded there was only one person I could see appearing on Riya’s doorstep when I played through ROD during release and that was Logan, because it just made all the sense in the world in my mind. Backtracking a bit, we know from his two diamond scenes on the early chapters that Logan dropped out of high school but he always liked to learn about random stuff, hence him reading while on the road, and that he always toyed with the idea of going back (He also says that he’d probably be graduating that year if he hadn’t dropped out, which tells us that he’s the youngest of the 3 LIs, which is a neat detail), so I always saw that as him showing up not just for Ellie’s sake but also for himself in a way, since it’d be a good way to live out the life he never had, even if just for a few hours. Speaking of prom night, I absolutely adore how when he tells Ellie he loves her, she can reply with “Logan… no you don’t.” since it’s only natural she wouldn’t believe him 100% since not only did they get together through a web of lies spun by him and Kaneko, but because as far as she knows, Logan can’t possibly know what real love feels like.
Fast forward to the final chapter and it’s time for the MPC to go their own ways, for real this time, to avoid getting entangled with the FBI and, even if Logan wasn’t your actual LI he still shows that he’s completely accepting of the fact that he isn’t the one Ellie loves, and on both cases he shows that he also grew to truly love her by deciding to not be a part of her life any more, because it just isn’t feasible for her to pursue her dreams while also being involved with potential suspects on the FBI watch list, so he chooses her future over his because he can’t and he won’t let her risk her future for something as small as a space rock lucky enough to burn up in her atmosphere for a moment and with that, a heartfelt kiss, an explicit and tacit declaration of love, a request for Troublemaker to give ‘em hell and a brief but tense showdown with Detective Wheeler, Logan speeds off into the night.
COLT KANEKO
The actual leather wearing bad boy of the story that sauntered his way into the hearts of many fans, both as a character and a love interest, he’s sarcastic, he’s funny, he’s soft-ish only with the MC and he’s also a multilayered character, how could he not be liked? I want to preface this section by saying that, just like with really popular LIs such as Jake Mackenzie, Damien Nazario or Ethan Ramsey, I could never bring myself to like Colt in a romantic way, even though I can certainly see the appeal of their route but even then, just like the aforementioned gentlemen, he’s still one of my favorite characters of the series regardless of that, simply because of how much he brings to the table. So without further ado, let’s get started with Mr. “Christ, who caaares?” Kaneko’s unnecessarily long essay.
Right off the bat we can see that Colt has a bone to pick with Logan due to their relationship with Kaneko, he’s always butting heads with Logan and Kaneko at the beginning because he resents both, the latter for sending him away to college and not being willing to let him in on the family business and the former for, in his eyes, being the son Kaneko always wanted, not knowing that the only reason his dad kept him away from the business and seemingly replaced him with Logan was because if Jason actually harmed the MPC he could live with the loss of Logan on his conscience, but not Colt’s. As time goes on Colt finds himself slowly warming up to Ellie, even if he initially just thinks of her as one of his dad’s mistakes waiting to blow up in their faces, and even if he does relentlessly teases/annoys her it’s very obvious that he can connect with her because of her complicated relationship with her dad and she can understand him, they both love their dads immensely but they severely disagree on the view they have of their respective child. And against Colt’s predictions, Ellie proves herself as a valuable asset to the crew (Not knowing until later on just how deep that rang true) and he eventually starts falling for her as well, which is what sets the Chapter 10 plot twist in motion.
After the MPC manages to steal the super cars for the Brotherhood, Kaneko opens up to the idea of letting Colt into the business, since it’s clear he won’t just pack up and leave for college anymore, especially after Kaneko is shot and threatened by the Brotherhood and he has to rely on Colt’s plan of kidnapping one of their members and at some point he reveals the truth about their current situation to his son, where Colt finds out about the truth behind Logan and Ellie but it isn’t until after the stadium heist that he makes shit hit the fan by starting a fight with Logan and spilling his secret. That always seemed to me that it came from a place that’s equal parts being mad at Logan for using Ellie like that but also him seeing it as a petty opportunity to sow discord between them, which is why she later has the choice to unload on Colt for deliberately keeping the truth to himself until the right moment. This also marks the moment where the somewhat toxic, somewhat supportive, somewhat wholesome and entirely complicated romantic relationship between them can start to flourish, since Ellie obviously doesn’t see Logan in the exact same way she did 24 hours before and depending on the player, she could’ve actually started to develop her relationship with Colt (Or Mona) prior to the reveal.
Something I haven’t seen being mentioned about Colt’s arc is how him being misjudged and misunderstood by both Ellie and Kaneko plays a huge role in it. After Ellie leaves the MPC, he decides to put the rest of his plan in motion, luring The Brotherhood into an illegal casino’s vault using the member they kidnapped and kill them via gassing. Toby completely disagrees with their actions and decides to recruit Ellie to help him stop the crew from crossing a line that they seemingly haven’t crossed yet, yes they’re criminals but much like Ellie’s initial impression of them, they’re not psychos and much less murderers, they’re still good people; so she sets out to stop them with the help of Toby and a Logan that’s desperate for atonement, but her biggest mistake was assuming that Colt isn’t the kind of person that can kill another person if it means protecting those he cares about. This is where it gets incredibly interesting and compelling to me, since not only does her misjudge of character ruin Colt’s entire plan but there’s also the possibility that she had been working for Jason and the Brotherhood the whole time, so in some cases they might’ve actually escaped the trap directly because of her and it doesn’t stop there, since as a result the MPC lose their entire advantage and are once again being targeted by The Brotherhood and that directly leads to not only another huge reveal from Kaneko’s part but also his death, him sacrificing himself so that the crew could escape as he let’s Colt know that he wishes for him to just let go of this life and do something better for himself. Before the rest of the MPC reunites at Gramercy Park, Colt tells Ellie how he plans to kill them all, to rebuild the garage and kill them all before finally breaking down on her arms as his loss catches up to him, right before the Mercy Park Crew splits up after their loss against Jason.
In the end, the two people Colt cared about the most failed at truly understanding him, his dad kept him at an arm’s length for a long time, missing out on time with his son because he never considered the fact that what he wanted for Colt was not what he wanted for himself, despite of all the risks it might entail, and Ellie played a part in Kaneko’s death by not realizing that Colt would be willing to cross such a fucked up line if it meant protecting the people and legacy he cared about so much. Those two factors play a huge role in the rest of the book since they’re the reasons why Colt is pushed dangerously close to a downward spiral that will most definitely only bring him more pain at the end of the book. After Jason is dealt with, he laments the fact that he and Ellie met under such circumstances and not in a classroom where they could annoy each other and become friends and/or significant others but he doesn’t lament his current situation, he’s dead set on becoming the king of LA, on carrying on his father’s legacy, now more than ever. I’d argue Colt Kaneko is the biggest cautionary tale in this book about the dangers of the often glorified life of the bad boys and fast cars and how it can consume you, he was very special to Ellie and Kaneko but they didn’t fully understand who he was, how he was shaped by his ideal future and they couldn’t see how the most important thing for him was his past, his legacy and as a result, he’s alone against a dangerous world, but that’s a danger that he very much welcomes.
If any of you have done Colt’s romance route and feel like I missed out on anything, do let me know in the comments, I feel like my appreciation for him only grew more as I wrote his section.
MONA
The bad girl, the loner, what even is her real name? I’m also going to dedicate an analysis to her but I also want to direct you to a post from a few months ago by user u/elbenji who has reviewed ROD from a WLW perspective that I think you should also check out if you’ve got the time. Anyway, Mona’s turn.
So, who’s Mona? Well, she’s kind of the Drake Walker of the book, which is a role that you don’t usually see being filled by a female LI. She doesn’t seem to like anyone, she’s pessimistic, she rarely misses the chance to mock people, she’s damn good at her job and she’s loyal to no one but herself, to some she might actually be the worse person of the 3 LIs during the early chapters but as everything else in this book, the layers to her start to show the more the story advances. She shares Logan’s worldview of everyone only being out for themselves but unlike Logan, she knows that not everyone is necessarily like that but in her eyes those people are in for a rude awakening from the world at some point for being dumb enough to think that they can count on someone else and that’s why she’s borderline condescending towards Ellie when the topic of interpersonal relationships comes up between them.
If Colt is shaped by his future, Mona is shaped by her past. Once upon a time she used to be little Miss Perfect like Ellie, honor roll, on the path to valedictorian, the whole thing, until she met a girl that she fell in love with, a criminal that made her enjoy life to its fullest and ended up becoming her whole world until one day they got caught and were taken to interrogation separately where Mona, fully trusting of her partner, lied about their involvement but was still arrested because her girlfriend ended up giving her up in exchange of freedom. That event shaped Mona’s entire philosophy, when it came down to it, people would always put themselves above everyone else and after Kaneko gave her back her freedom that’s the only code she stuck by, her own personal freedom and survival became the most important thing in Mona’s life, even when the man that saved her was in danger she considered multiple times to just leave the MPC to their luck. That is, until she met Ellie Wheeler.
Obviously, in typical Pixelberry fashion, Mona doesn’t have as much screen time as her male counterparts but what she lacks in screen time she more than makes up in both narrative and thematic relevancy. As mentioned previously, Mona’s always reminding Ellie how out of her depth she is and treating her like a dumb girl that doesn’t know what she’s doing (Which, to a certain extent, is true) but when shit goes south after the stadium heist it turns out that she’s the only LI that never actually played with Ellie’s feelings and was always straight (Heh) with her. It's things like this that I love immensely about ROD, the 3 love interests have so many layers to them, they do good and bad things and they feel like actual people that exist in this fictional Los Angeles, their actions are a product of what’s established as their characters, not just as stuff that happens because the plot needs it to. Back on track, just like with Colt, this is the point where Ellie and Mona’s relationship really takes off if the player chooses to and unlike Colt, her going after Ellie feels like it comes off from a place of actual concern since she understands what she’s going through, regardless of whether their relationship is platonic or not at that point, she still sees a girl that feels like she’s got no one left that she can trust in, so she takes it upon herself to be there for her, slowly shedding her walls that she’s put up for so long, probably without even realizing it.
After the failed job at the casino, Mona once again contemplates leaving the MPC in the middle of the shit storm but Ellie manages to get her to help since she owes Kaneko that much at the very least, only for her to find out a few minutes later that Kaneko knew The Brotherhood were corrupt cops from the beginning and never confided in them with that information and, in another cruel twist of fate, Kaneko ends up sacrificing himself so that Ellie, Logan, Colt and Mona could run away, once again, giving Mona her freedom even after completely betraying her trust. As the MPC discuss their course of action after that, she breaks and let’s out what’s probably my favorite quote in Choices: ”You wanted freedom? The fast cars, the bad boy, that whole life? This is it… and it’s not for you. Go home, for everyone’s sake.”, in that moment she let’s the entire pressure of the situation get to her and unleashes on Ellie, the main reason why they’re all in that whole mess. It’s an incredibly cathartic quote that perfectly encapsulates what ROD is all about, the criminal life is not something one can just juggle as if it were a part time job that’s there for the thrills, it can only lead to a life that most people, if presented with the choice, would never want for themselves. When I read that for the first time I completely forgot that I was just reading a story on a free Visual Novel app where you’d never expect to find writing of such quality. I can perfectly feel Mona’s anguish and anger in that quote, the whole weight of the events of the book finally come crashing down on us after we read those words and it’s just such a great feeling that I’ll never stop praising.
Let’s get to prom night though, much like Mona going after Ellie on Chapter 11, I feel like her showing up for her prom is still really fitting and the diamond scene that follows after is arguably the best wlw dirty thirty in the app, the dialogue during it is just top tier to be honest. But even better than it to me is the scene after that, where she decides to join The Brotherhood if it means Ellie gets to run away from them since they’re obviously looking to tie up lose ends, it is especially hard hitting if she’s your LI but the version with Colt or Logan is still amazing and I especially love how she uses the hot wiring skills Mona taught her to run away. After the Mercy Park Crew’s last ride together, Mona ends up taking a bullet for the girl that reminded her so much of herself and as Ellie drives her to the hospital she talks about how hard she’s going to be to forget, before reaching the hospital and walking herself inside, knowing that she’d be imprisoned once again before the day is over. I’ve seen a fair share of people that were unhappy with Mona having to deal with such harsh consequences but I personally love, love the end of her route since Mona’s always been about self preservation and only being there for herself but meeting Ellie gets her to slip, she starts caring for her and in the end chooses to give up on her freedom if it means Ellie gets to walk away with hers, in a way being for Ellie the complete opposite of what her ex-girlfriend was to her all those years ago (The dramatic irony can be turned to 11 if you choose the options that show her slowly adopting Mona’s philosophy during the final chapters, so she can slowly become more cynical as Mona slowly sheds her cynicism). In the end, Mona might not be free but she’s still on her element, she’ll be on a place where she’d have to count only on herself and while she’ll definitely have to face some time for her crimes, I’m pretty sure she’d thrive in prison.
End of Part 1
Okay, I initially wanted to talk about the supporting characters as well but this shit is truly living up to its title at almost 5K words, that’s already a decently sized one shot, so I’ll stop here since I still want to post it close to the appreciation week, though I might make some edits here and there as I reread it later on but I'm too lazy to do that right now. If I see there’s a good reception for a stupidly long post like this I’ll probably get to work on the second part where I talk about Kaneko, Jason, Detective Wheeler, Toby, Ximena and Riya and Darius, as well as maybe analysis for other books that I hold in really high regard such as the Endless Summer trilogy, Open Heart or It Lives Beneath. If you actually made it all the way here, I just want to thank you for taking the time of your day for reading my semi-coherent thoughts and definitely let me know what you think, if you agree, if you disagree, if you think I should go outside, etc. Thank you for your attention.