Tutorial

Once you reach the parking lot with Lamar you will have the opportunity to pick a car for the obligatory race, and you are placed into a pick-up game with real-word players who are at your level, which is Level 1 with starter Characters.

Try to place in the top three for the money and obviously higher is better with respect to how much scratch you walk away with. You have the option to bet but you should keep your bet low since you are betting you will finish first but, if you fail to do that, you lose the money you bet. Your call on how much but $200 seemed right to us.

Job Tute -- Jack the Dealers

Once the race ends the tutorial will then have you go with some of the other players for a cooperative crime job that Lamar sets up. Your goal is to steal the drugs from the dealers and deliver them to Lamar's buddy.

Basically this is an armed jacking in which you are going to need to kill the dealers in order to succeed. Only one of the dealers will actually have the drugs, but you will need to take out his buds first and then chase him down, kill him, and take his stash.

Once you have it (or one of the other players does) you head for the nearest vehicle, pile in, and drive to the location marked on the map. You can either be driver or passenger for this.

When you get to Lamar he introduces you to his buddy -- a man of few words -- you get your reward and the mission ends, with the same summary award of XP, Rep and Money that you saw when you finished the race.

Clothes & Shopping

The next item on the agenda is for you to experience using the clothes store in the game -- even though you very likely have already had that experience in the single player game you still have to do it in the tute just to get it out of the way.

Head to the nearest Clothes Store and shop for some better threads -- more respectable threads if you will.

Once you find what you want and spend what you want hit the door to complete this task.

Alone or with help you need to rob the store and then escape the cops! Using your mic can speed things along

Robbing the Store

With your new threads in place Lamar sends you a job and the game prompts you to open your cell phone and accept it. The job is to rob a store, and the location is marked on your GPS. You can either do it alone (if you are the first to get there) or with other players if they arrive at the same time as you do.

If you have a headset with microphone you can yell into the headset to cause the clerk to fill the bag faster, but either way he already tripped the alarm and the cops are on the way so, once you have the bag of money you need to beat feat and get away from the cops.

Either you drive or you are a passenger, but once you get loose of your wanted level you get the next tute assignment in the form of a phone call from Simeon (the sleazy car dealer from the single player game).

Los Santos Customs

Simeon offers to upgrade a car for you at Los Santos Customs as a one-time free gift, so head to the nearest LSC and drive in (in a car you actually want to customize that is).

When you drive in you will be able do do the following:

• Repair the Car -- Free

• Bumpers: Custom Front Splitter -- $1000

• Bumpers: Custom Rear Bumper -- $1000

• Loss/Theft Prevention: Tracker -- Free

• Loss/Theft Prevention: Full Coverage -- Free

• Plate: Blue on White 1 -- Free

• Plate: Blue on White 3 -- Free

• Plate: Yellow on Blue -- Free

• Plate: Yellow on Black -- Free

• Respray: Free

• Spoilers: Tuner Wing -- Free

• Wheels: Wheel Type -- Wide Variety of Selections -- Free

• Wheels: Wheel Colour -- Wide Variety of Selections -- Free

• Wheels: Wheel Accessories: Custom Tires -- $5000

• Wheels: Wheel Accessories: Bulletproof Tires -- $25,000

Every other option is locked with the exception of Crew Tags but only if you are part of a Crew...

You can do any of the options above including those that cost money if you like, but the three that you should absolutely do are the Repair, Tracking, and Full Replacement. They are all free and so worth doing...

The game notifies you that with the insurance you have you can call the Insurance Company if your vehicle is stolen or destroyed.

Hooking up with Gerald

When you exit LCS you get a page from Gerald asking you to go to Cypress Flats. BEFORE you do that it would be a good idea for you to hit the nearest gun store and buy some ammo for your pistol -- just saying... Chances are you have less than 20 rounds right now.

When you arrive and step into the blue circle the Jobs System is explained to you -- read the information that the game gives as it is fairly important that you understand the difference between the job types. It also explains that new jobs will open up as you progress through the game.

After you read the information go ahead and Join (or host) an instance of the job. As the lobby fills you have the option of choosing your weapon (if you have more than the Pistol) and buying ammo - but you should have already obtained ammo.

Note: If you end up in a game with a lot of younger players who prefer to grief rather than play co-op, well, that sucks. You can try to find a better game or just lump it... The point here it to get through the tutorial and hopefully you will get a decent group who won't spend all their time in giving you grief...

The mission type that we drew for this was team-based last man standing -- sadly if you get killed you lose money, so try not to do that? Once you finish the mission you can continue to do more or you can quit out of the mission menu and return to the game.

After you exit the game will explain that you can earn job points by doing the Jobs, and tells you to press down on the D-Pad to see your total.

At this point you have completed the tutorial and are now on your own! Well done you!

Near the end of the tute you will get a call from Simeon telling you to visit the mod shop - before you do that jack a car you really like as when you are done, it will belong to you!

Open Your Map

Now the first thing you should do BEFORE you start any other Missions or Jobs is open the map and check out the new icons! The following Activities have been added to your Map and the game now that you have completed the tutorial:

• Ammu-Nation

• Ammu-Nation with Range

• Barber Shop

• Beecker's Garage

• Bike Race

• Binco Clothing

• Car Wash

• Deathmatch

• Discount Store

• Land Races

• Los Santos Customs

• Missions

• Ponsonbys (for class threads)

• Stores (Convenience Stores for Health/Snacks)

• Suburban Clothes Stores

• Tattoo Parlors

• Team Deathmatchs

• Vespucci Movie Masks

• Water Races

Some Helpful Tips

The following are useful things for you to know...

Using Los Santos Customs as a Safe Haven: If you want to spend time in the Pause Menu and not want to worry about coming out of it with a gun to your head, drive into an LCS shop and then access the Pause Menu.

Working Your Character's Stats Up: You will recall the stats that your Characters in the single player game had? Well your online character also has those stats and it will help you a LOT if you raise them as much as you can, as soon as you can. At a minimum you should try to quickly work on raising the following:

Driving: Drive fast -- take your car on the highways and go! Drive around the county and back to town and do that again! Drive mates! Increasing your Driving Stat will allow you to maintain much better control over your Vehicles, from cars and trucks to motorcycles and ATV's.

An easy way to raise your stats in Driving is to start a race like the Airport Race but in Solo Mode (not with other players) and set the laps to 50. Depending on your driving skills and the car, this will take you anywhere from 25 minutes to 40 minutes and will give you a good boost to the Driving Stat.

Flying: OK this is not really a required stat in the online game but if you like flying then hey, why not raise it up? You do that by flying a variety of different planes. Have fun with it. Listen to an audio book :)

Lung Capacity: This is tricky in that it requires you to basically swim underwater -- a lot. The easiest way to level this (assuming you are not on a server with people who want to kill you) is to head to one of the beaches, put an audio book on your iPhone, and listen to it while you spend a long time swimming underwater.

The reason you want to raise this is that Lung Capacity sort of combines with Strength, and contributes to your Stamina. High Stamina is good -- particularly when you are battling other players in Deathmatches because you can run longer and farther than a player who has not maxed those stats. Just saying.

Shooting: While the stat is not as easy to raise at The Shooting Range, there are Shooting Range competitions you can participate in. These are one or two player, and there are three different types of shooting for each weapon. More in-depth information is available in the Shooting Range Section of the Guide, but you can definitely use the range to help work on your shooting skills.

Head to an Ammu-Nation with a Shooting Range (the gun in the white lozenge) and head to the range, where you will find a Mission Disc awaiting you... This is for 1 or 2 players to compete in the three different competition challenges. You CAN play solo, and just so you know, if you DO play solo you will still be awarded RP and Stats. So hey, win-win! Just be sure to set it to unlimited rounds so you can really get a good workout in.

Stamina: Probably the most important of the stats to raise other than Shooting and Driving, because your Stamina level is what dictates how long you can do a strenuous action like running, swimming, climbing, and the like.

You will raise this as you do physical Activities like running and swimming, and it is also raised by hand-to-hand combat, though that may be the slower route.

Stealth: While this ability and stat are not really as useful PvP as it is Versus NPC's it is still worth leveling. You never know when you are going to need to kill someone all ninja like, right? To level it you can either move around in Stealth Mode or you can go into Stealth Mode and kill NPC's to raise it.

Strength: Raising this stat is really kind of important and something you should seriously consider doing. The bonus is that you can raise it by playing the sport games in GTAO -- so you can do Tennis, Golf, and etc. and raise the stat. We suggest you do that as soon as you feel you can.

Bank Your Money: As soon as you can either find an ATM use it! Or you can open your wireless phone and transfer the money from your pocket into your bank too. Just decide which and use it so that the first player to find (and kill you) does not get a large chunk of your hard-earned dough.