GTA Online Beginner Guide: Your First Hours in Los Santos

Start GTA Online by finishing the tutorial, putting every spare dollar in the bank, and playing your first sessions in an invite-only lobby where nobody can interrupt you. Your early goal is not a supercar — it is a steady income, and the fastest route there is contact missions and races for cash and RP while you save towards your first business property.

What should you do in your first hour?

Create your character, play through the opening tutorial rather than skipping it, and let the game walk you into Lamar's early missions. Those first jobs teach the basics that everything else builds on: shooting from cover, losing the police, delivering vehicles and working with other players. Open the interaction menu early and learn where things live, because you will use it constantly to bank cash, call in snacks and armour, and set your spawn location. Set your spawn to a property as soon as you own one, so you always log in somewhere useful instead of a random street corner.

Cash carried on your person can be dropped when you are killed, so deposit it through any ATM or the Maze Bank website on your phone whenever you have a meaningful amount. It takes seconds and removes the one penalty other players can actually inflict on a new account.

How do you stay safe from other players?

Public free roam lobbies are the game's Wild West, and some players treat low-level characters as target practice. You do not have to put up with it. From the pause menu you can launch an invite-only session that works exactly like a public one for most missions and business activity, with only the people you invite inside. Solo sessions exist too, though some business sales are designed around public lobbies and may be limited there. If you do stay in a public lobby, Passive Mode makes you untouchable — and unable to attack anyone else — which is perfect for exploring or driving to a shop in peace.

A practical habit: treat public lobbies as optional multiplayer spaces, not home. Do your learning, shopping and setup work privately, then dip into public sessions when you actually want chaos, events or other players' sales bonuses.

What should you buy first?

Resist the cars and clothes for now. Your first meaningful purchases should make you money or keep you alive: a cheap high-end apartment gives you a garage, a spawn point and access to the classic heists' planning room, and an armoured Kuruma — once unlocked through the early heist chain — is famous for making contact missions dramatically easier because most NPC gunfire simply cannot reach you inside it.

After that, think in terms of businesses. The well-worn path is an executive office that lets you register as a CEO and run cargo and vehicle work, followed by a bunker for steady Gunrunning income once funds allow. Exact prices shift with discounts and sales events, so the durable rule is this: buy income first, toys second, and never spend your last dollars on something that does not pay you back.

How do you earn money before you own anything?

• Contact missions from characters like Gerald, Simeon and Lamar — short, repeatable, and they teach the map.
• Races and time trials — even mid-field finishes pay, and time trials reward a clean run against the clock.
• Survival and adversary modes — decent payouts while you learn combat, with no entry cost.
• Weekly featured activities — the game rotates bonus money and RP through different modes, so check what is boosted before you grind anything else.

Playing with other people helps more than any single activity: a friendly crew shares heist cuts, fills mission lobbies quickly and watches your back during sales. Four strangers who communicate will out-earn a solo player almost every session.

Which daily habits build your bankroll?

Small routines compound. Spin the casino's lucky wheel when you pass by, complete the short daily objectives, and keep an eye on the weekly update, because Rockstar regularly attaches double-money bonuses to specific businesses and modes. If something you own is on a bonus week, that is your job until the rotation changes. Keep snacks and armour topped up from the interaction menu so you are never wasting time on avoidable deaths, and bank your cash after every paying activity rather than carrying a tempting stack around Los Santos.

What mistakes do new players make?

The classic errors are buying a flashy car before a business, carrying large amounts of undeposited cash, attacking everything that moves in free roam until the whole lobby retaliates, and quitting a paying activity because the first run went badly. Nearly every mission in this game is easier the second time, once you know where enemies spawn. Play patiently, let your income snowball, and the expensive toys will buy themselves surprisingly soon.