A couple weeks ago, I had the weird urge to play GTA Online again. Just as quickly as I dropped it back when I got bored, I got back into it... which isn't unusual for me, because this happens all the time with games I like. But much like with Fortnite, it's a love-hate relationship of sorts - games like these let me play with my friends, at the cost of these games expecting you to grind stuff out for unlocking... stuff. Or, in other words, at the cost of my sanity. I can't play the same game all the time, it drives me insane eventually, no matter how hyperfocused I am on it.
Either way, from the previous times I've played GTA Online, and including the new recent knowledge I've acquired, I gathered my thoughts earlier today to write down a bunch of ways that makes money-making in the game an easier-to-overlook process. This is by no means an "ultimate and perfect" list, but rather something I've noticed from my own observations. I figured it'd be worth sharing with the world, at least.
DISCLAIMER: All of this assumes you're playing GTA Online solo and can spare ~15 minutes of active playtime between idling. I usually spend the time idling to tend to other, active income sources.
Here's what I've been able to gather for when you want to try playing GTA Online like an idle game.
General info for idling/money-making:
- Move your character at least once within 15 minutes of the last input to prevent idle timeout. The game doesn't like it when you're AFK and will kick you out if you idle for too long.
- You're better off buying supplies and not sourcing any yourself.
- This means less income, but sourcing supplies is a process and will not fill up supplies to full, unlike buying them.
- Avoid staying registered as a CEO or MC. The game will forcefully put you into "Business Defense" events on occasion that you can't back out of.
- Failing these will result in product loss or even entire business closures that you then have to set up again.
- You can't interact with your businesses while unregistered, but you can still enter them and they will still generate income/product.
- You can't get kicked into these events while you're in another Freemode task (such as stealing supplies or selling goods).
- If they're chained together (I've had three in a row happen once), there's a small cooldown between clearing one and when the next one can happen - a good chance to unregister if you need to.
- MCs have access to Cocaine, Meth, Fake Cash, Weed and Fake ID businesses, which will get Defense events much more frequently.
- Nightclub events will only happen if you have a lot of product stored (~$1,000,000 in value).
- There's probably a way to cheese these events by disconnecting or something, but I don't really want to risk losing my stuff.
About Nightclubs:
They're a solid source of income and require little attention. You get income every in-game day (48 real-life minutes) and the amount is determined by your Nightclub popularity.
- 100% and 95% popularity give you $50,000.
- 90% popularity gives you $45,000.
- 85% popularity gives you $25,000.
I haven't tested any other amount of popularity (or at least I didn't keep track of it), but the above numbers make it look like there's a harsh drop-off if you don't keep an eye on it.
If you do want to go the idle route, do it outside the Nightclub, not inside - every time you enter your Nightclub with 95% or less popularity, there's a pretty high chance of one of two events spawning:
- Troublemaker: walk up to the person and kick them out - this is the much faster one out of the two.
- VIP Treatment: drive a VIP to their home or hospital - the location is random and could be very close or further away.
Both event completions will increase the Nightclub's popularity by 20% (I think, I don't usually let it drop below 90%). The Nightclub PC does have an option to "Promote Club", which fills up the bar to full, but these smaller events are easier and faster to do, so I never touch that.
By the way, if you own MC businesses (Cocaine, Meth, Fake Cash, Weed and Fake IDs), these will provide additional goods to be accrued by your Nightclub staff members - you can assign them on your Nightclub's PC. While selling Nightclub goods requires more involvement to get money out of it, getting them accrued does include a lot of waiting across multiple real-life days as well.
About Acid Labs:
If you don't mind doing the occasional selling mission, these are the fastest source of money I can think of while also keeping things lazy. A fully-supplied Acid Lab will generate ~$200,000 (assuming your Acid is named) over the course of a few hours - that means you can more than triple your investment when you fully supply an empty Acid Lab. If you use the production boost (which you can do once a day), it'll even chew through the supplies in under an hour. Unlike other timed cooldowns in the game (such as the casino wheel taking 24 hours), the production boost will regenerate every real-life day at 6 AM GMT.
Selling the product itself is usually fairly quick and not particularly difficult, though you might get attacked on the way. I find the Acid Package ones the most fun, since you simply drive around and put them into crates with a well-aimed throw. Just be careful not to drive into water or otherwise destroy your delivery bike... it's happened to me more than once.
About Agencies:
These are only worth if you've had a significant time investment beforehand to complete 201 (note the one!) security contracts. That's where the income caps out at $20,000 per in-game day, similar to the Nightclub. Any amount of security contracts inbetween scales your income linearly. 101 contracts will give you $10,000, for example. However, not every contract cleared will increase income - initially it'll be every 2 contracts, until you eventually land at every 5 contracts. Even then, the amount it increases by remains linear - just imagine every cleared contract roughly equals to $100.
This is pretty much the best idling machine (minus the ridiculous amount of setup involved) as Agencies require no attention whatsoever to generate income. All you have to do is empty the safe occasionally.
The return on investment is also relatively low (aka. buying the Agency), as cleared security contracts provide you with an individual payment on top of the increased income. The least amount you can get paid for per contract is $31,000, so assuming you bought the most expensive Agency, you've essentially "paid it off" after no more than 92 contracts... but RNG will more than likely lower that amount, and Specialist/Specialist+ contracts pay more anyway.
Either way, beyond 92 contracts, you're guaranteed to get your money's worth, and that's without the passive income factored in.
About Salvage Yards:
Similar to the Nightclub, these use a popularity system to determine income, except Salvage Yards keep the popularity value hidden. I haven't fully figured out yet how it works, but towing vehicles with the Tow Truck Service will increase it. Towing four cars is enough to cap out the income at $24,000 per in-game day, so I assume each car provides a 25% popularity increase.
Also similar to the Agency, every towed car that's been salvaged will give a payment as well, although that payment is delayed by two in-game days (1 hour and 36 minutes). This is reduced to one day if you buy the staff upgrade for your Salvage Yard.
This is essentially a slightly worse Nightclub for idling, but you can get more active income from the salvaged cars. Selling cars from car robberies is also an option, however that in turn also requires more active play.
About Arcades:
Very expensive to get passive money out of. You need to buy the Arcade plus machines, which will exceed the Arcade's cost several times over. Once fully set up however, you'll get $5,000 every in-game day - the Arcade requires no further attention afterwards, just like the Agency... aside from clearing the safe on occasion, obviously.
The Arcade does include other benefits such as the Master Control Terminal for $1,740,000, which allows you to manage some, but not all, of your other businesses. It gives access to both CEO and MC businesses, however you still need to be registered as the one that it requires. It's pretty useful if you need to buy supplies for multiple businesses at once and/or need to reassign Nightclub staff, but feels moreso aimed towards active play.
You should only go for the Arcade machines if you have a LOT of spare funds - about $6,000,000. You could buy a yacht with that kind of money!
...not that it's any more useful than an Arcade. At least you can do the Casino Heist with it.
About Bail Offices:
About Offices and Bunkers:
If you're out of cash and need some free money, both offer a $50,000 delivery task that regenerate after an in-game day. Expect enemies and a bumpy ride. These are not great income sources, but they work in a pinch, or if you've got nothing else you could be doing. Clearing security contracts for Agencies is probably better in the long run if you haven't reached 201 cleared contracts yet.
Warehouses (provided by Offices) do offer goods collection similar to the Nightclub warehouse, albeit less automated and with a price tag attached to it, and Bunkers offer weapon manufacturing goods similar to the Acid Lab, but it takes much longer and selling isn't as easy as it is with the Acid Lab. I guess they're there as an option if you want them.
That pretty much covers my process of earning money in GTA Online. There's still the Auto Shop that I've barely touched, which is supposedly pretty good too, as well as other things that I probably forgot about. With this though, I tried to summarize the laziest possible combinations to earning cash. Maybe it sucks, but it keeps me busy, and hopefully it helps you find the right approach to lazy money making that feels comfortable to you.
