Wanting to play GTA V for the first time nearly six years after it was originally launched can be a bit overwhelming because, in that time, this game from Rockstar has been updated with new expansions and mechanics that veterans have learnt little by little as they came out. A newbie, however, will have to assimilate it all at once.

To make your first foray into the vast city of Los Santos a bit easier, we have some easy tips so you’ll know what to do first, how to make a bit of cash and which activities are both beneficial and fun.

Make your first million

The first goal you should set for yourself is to make one million dollars so you can start your rise to glory. With this money, you can get a flat and access to the weapons and vehicles you need to participate in more lucrative activities.

It will take you a few days to put together this amount (unless you’re lucky enough to get one of the Rockstar deals giving out one million dollars for doing nothing). To rack up this small fortune, you need to get acquainted with some of the first mechanics and missions available to you, like becoming CEO and VIP to get access to missions with several thousands of dollars in rewards.

You can also do other things like visiting the casino once a day to spin the roulette wheel, where you can win up to $50,000 a day in prizes or new vehicles. If you can convince a friend to join you on this adventure, you can take part in heists, which are fun, complicated missions that earn you several hundred thousand as a reward. It will cost you about $200,000 to get a luxury flat and then you can start committing heists. Completing the first set of heists in order on normal difficulty will get you one million dollars in the bank.

Understand the game’s progression

Buying cars and weapons isn’t just fun because you can see how they move and work. It’s important that you improve the contents of your arsenal and garage so you can take part in more complicated, more difficult missions without too much trouble. Having armoured cars or grenade launchers can mean the difference between an impossible heist and one you do all the time because it’s easy with these tools and the payoff is great. Like being a VIP or CEO helps on other types of missions.

Try to contain your desire to put together an extravagant wardrobe, get the rarest vehicles and the flashiest weapons right from the start. Analyse the missions you have to do and get the tools you think best suit your needs.

Become your own boss

There are loads and loads of business ventures you can acquire, manage and run on GTA Online: drug trafficking, purchasing bunkers to lead a small army and selling vehicles, to name just a few. To start off, we recommend getting a bunker, because they unlock missions with great rewards that are also loads of fun.

As your income grows, you should start acquiring business ventures like drug trafficking because they generate money on their own, making them the perfect way to make sure cash flows in while you’re focused on more entertaining things.

Try to understand how the businesses you’re involved in work to make as much profit as possible. For example, if you acquire a car dealership, you may want to start selling off all of the vehicles in stock to make money fast. However, it’s better if you put together a collection of cars because at a certain point in the game you can use them as a revenue stream without having to sell them for a one-time lump sum. This happens in other business ventures, too.

Don’t make the game a job

There are many ways to make money in GTA Online if you make it a grindfest (meaning repeating tasks that aren’t much fun but make you money as the hours go by). But it’s just as important to progress through the game as it is to not get burnt out by repeating tasks that aren’t any fun just for money.

You can make good money with heists, missions unlocked when you get a bunker, many competitive playing modes like racing and death battles and if you alternate between them, you won’t get bored of doing the same one over and over again. Plus, places like bunkers generate quite a bit of money if you know how to manage them.

Invest wisely

You may want to spend your first $10 million on a yacht so big it blocks the view of anyone enjoying summer on the beaches of Los Santos, but it’s better you use this money to buy business ventures and for the many improvements you can acquire for them. A good collection of businesses working effectively will have you earning back the initial $10 million in days, while loads more comes flowing in.

Get some friends involved

It isn’t at all impossible to enjoy hundreds of hours playing GTA Online alone, but this type of MMO is even better with a group of friends so you can manage your business ventures together, do the most lucrative missions more easily and not end up feeling like you’re working to complete the thousands of tasks that pop up as the hours go by.

Enjoy the view

GTA Online has one of the most detailed, carefully crafted worlds in the history of multi-player video games and it would be a shame to miss out because you get frustrated trying to understand its endless mechanisms and want to find a way to get rich as quickly as possible to get access to the best prizes.