RUkered

Nope. I told my buddy, who hasn't played in about a month, if he wants money, to log into a room with a player that's at least 200 or higher and just wait a few minutes. Within 10 minutes someone gifted him 100 million. Then he killed a bounty worth 1 billion. It's literally harder to be broke than to be a billionaire at this point. A part of me doesn't like it because I liked the grind of slowly getting money to improve my character. On the other hand, I have found that since I don't have to worry about money anymore, I'm much more carefree in the game. All I do now is ride around looking for jumps and being a dick to people. It's a lot more like GTA4 free roam now.

Shit - one other thing I just remembered. Might be my proudest moment in the game yet. Mel and I decided to just absolutely destroy the first person that kills us. Some guy finally sniped us both, so we're on him constantly. Mel is good at sniping, so he was getting most of the kills. I chase the guy down, but he goes into his garage. We get into cover near the door and I toss two sticky bombs on the ground - and we wait. Several minutes go by, and it's obvious the guy ain't coming out. I told Mel that he was probably in there looking at our white dots on the map. Then, he sets a $1,000 bounty on a random player. I'm like "Why in the hell is he putting bounties on other people?" Mel bets he's trying to lure us away from the door. I tell Mel to drive me around the corner so it looks like we're leaving, and I've already got Lester's number up on my phone. I dive out of the car, go invisible, and go back to the garage. Sure enough, the bounty was his plan all along. He spawns outside of the garage so quickly that I miss him with the sticky bombs. But he drove right past me without a clue. Carbine rifle to the back, and he's dead once again. He left the session after that one.

It's been 10 solid minutes and I'm still dying at this. That is pure gold. While I was busy posting the screenshots of my gifted money, somebody else hit me again. I'm up to 220 million now. I played a lot this past weekend and free mode is absolute anarchy. Bounties were popping up left and right with numbers so big I couldn't tell if it was millions or billions. Then some guy started trolling melraz09. He was damn near invincible. Melraz hit him with grenades, sticky bombs, and a whole host of stuff and the guy was just absorbing it like the T1000. Then he started putting those crazy bounties on another guy in his crew. I went over to try and help melraz out - you'd get a couple shots in on the guy and then he'd just vanish into thin air. He leaves the session, and about 5 minutes later I get a voice message from him that says "I'm hosting a money lobby. Reply back if you want an invite." No thanks, pal. I submitted a ticket on Rockstar support letting them know it happened. I don't know yet whether that was a great or terrible idea. I read an official statement from them that said (paraphrasing) "you won't be put in the cheater's pool for gifted money - as long as you weren't glitching/hacking you'll be fine." But then there are other posts of people whining that they got banned and they did nothing wrong. I'm assuming they're liars and trying not to get caught, but who knows. Either way, if it all blows up then I'll be joining jstout in GTA jail because I gave into temptation and bought myself an Entity and fully modded it. Then I maxed out all my ammo in every weapon. One last thing and I'll end this novel. Melraz and I decided on what is now my favorite method to deal with assholes in tanks (although now I think Cristobal's method is vastly superior). Get just out of sight of the tank. Take a car and cover it in sticky bombs. I don't know how many it takes to be effective, but I had at least 10-12 on there. Call Lester to go invisible, and then drive up to the tank calmly like you're an NPC. Goodbye, tank asshole.

Here's a crap cellphone picture. Notice my name in the top-right and the green text toward the bottom left.

So uh...I just got gifted 106 million dollars. I'm aware this happens to people, but I'm not real sure what to do. I've read an official Rockstar post that they won't punish people for gifted money, but they've got the automated cheater pool thing now. All I know is I don't want to deal with crap because 100% of my money has been made legitimately. Hell, I only had about 80k to my name tonight when I started playing. I guess I'll submit a ticket to let them know it happened.

I think it's just a stat in the menu. One of them tells you the fastest you've ever driven. Speaking of, what were you driving to go that fast J.T.? The fastest I've managed is 140-something.

Be jealous no more. I sold it because I wanted the Coquette and was out of garage space. I wasted a ton of money modding it out to the max, and I swear I think full speed on a bicycle would be faster. I now have a couple of decently fast cars - the Coquette I mentioned and a Bullet - both modded as much as I can at my level. I thought I would be content with that, but I was in an xbox party with a crew member and another guy for a while last night. The other guy kept pulling cars out of his garage for me to drive around. I think I drove a Feltzer (?), and I know I drove a modded Entity. Needless to say, I'm now saving for an Entity. That thing handles like a dream even at four million miles an hour. I have determined it's impossible for me to have any cash beyond 400k, which is gonna make getting that Entity pretty tough. Every time I get between 300-400k, I end up blowing it on car and weapon mods. Even stupid ones like putting a scope on a grenade launcher. Why in the hell is that even an option? It doesn't appear to even affect the performance of the weapon. But who's the idiot who bought it anyway? This guy.

The only time I ever bother to go to the impound lot anymore is when I have my more expensive rides out. Even then I don't bother sometimes. Most of my rides are hunks of shit, so it only costs me a couple hundred. When something gets impounded, I immediately call the mechanic to deliver something else so the impounded car will be destroyed. Then I call Mors Mutual. Rinse and repeat. If any of you are ever doing the mission where you have to deliver 3 planes to Simeon's docks, shoot me an invite. I liked that mission but I can never get in a room with people who are competent enough to do it. And now that I've said that, I'm guaranteed to ram a plane into a container.

I don't know this for sure, but I've always assumed that the deathmatches work like they did in Red Dead - your dot only appears if you shoot or sprint. I just assume that because you only see dots flash occasionally. At least that's the way I always play them - I could just be the moron who walks his way through deathmatches instead of running for cover. And jstout - I think there must be some magical pull to Fort Zancudo missions with you and melraz. That's the buddy I've referenced playing with in other posts on here. He was the other guy playing with us when we did the same mission and you rammed us full tilt into the fort gates on the motorcycle, although he wasn't a crew member at the time. He isn't a forum member, so I was telling him that you mentioned you guys playing together. He was laughing because, in his words, "I don't know what he's talking about because I sucked ass." And speaking of absolute chaos - it must have been a full moon last night because everybody was absolutely insane. I spent the majority of my time messing around in free roam, and at one point, it looked like a Call of Duty commercial in the city. I rounded a corner on my motorcycle and got blasted by a tank. When I respawned, I took cover just to watch the action, and in the span of about 10 seconds, these things happened in this order: 1) Tank blows up 3 players in a car 2) Jet does an extremely low flyby, pelting the tank with rockets 3) Rocket from an RPG comes zipping past the tank and me My screen didn't stop shaking for a solid minute. Fortunately, I got a mission invite and escaped the madness.

I won't even lie and say I didn't pretend like it was an action movie when the notifications started popping up and I saw that you were getting ganged up on. "SOMEBOYD'S MESSING WITH CREW MEMBERS?? I GOT TWO WORDS FOR YA" I specifically called in my Hexxer so I could ride up with my pump shotgun, but that scenario didn't really get to play out. I didn't realize you were in that session, or I would have left my character the way I had him earlier. I decided to shake things up a bit from the camo/hockey mask setup I usually have. I just really wish I could have rolled up as the cavalry in this getup: If you have the stones to go after crate drops with a $9000 bounty on your head, remind me to never mess with you.

I was afraid that was the case. I come in here crowing about shooting a -4, you responded to it, and then the next golf game was my worst one yet outside of the first time I played. Unless I'm forgetting something, that's the first time I've had an unplayable lie. I just could not compensate for the sideways wind. Nonetheless, it was really fun because there was some back-and-forth to it. And in line with what jstout said - never apologize to me for driving. You drive better than I do, because I'm the idiot who risks a team life to cut through the mountains or plow a truck/trailer through 19 fences just to shave off 4 seconds. For example, I'm sure I absolutely pissed off some random players the other day because I caused us to fail a mission. It was the one where you have to steal a trailer from the Lost. We killed mostly everybody, and I got impatient and took the trailer even though the Lost was still riding up. I ended up plowing into their motorcycles in the road, which I dragged along for a quarter mile until they exploded, thus destroying the truck. Actually, I know I pissed them off because, on the restart, one guy blew the horn on his bike wanting me to get on with him. He never let off the gas and plowed us both smack into the middle of the Lost vans. We got shot down before we had the chance to even stand up, and I laughed my head off. I've said it here before, but anytime I'm in a mission with jstout and he waits on me, I'm hopping on the back of the bike. It's half the fun of doing the mission. Bike shenanigans, I tell you.

I'm in a golf game with a crew member as we speak, and I just have to say, hole 5 can kiss my ass. Edit: Scratch that. Hole 8.

Since the patch (I think this is just a coincidence) I haven't had any new missions. I'm around level 84 and haven't really had anything new since about 81 or 82. For you higher level guys - am I just out of new stuff until higher levels or is something wonky going on here? I played a round of golf with some random person yesterday. Shot my best game ever, -4, and still lost. I was beating them by two strokes early on, but they were good.

Pure, sheer luck is how we made it - not because of any skill on my part. I noticed the first time that going around the right side of the mansion - I managed to shoot the target, but died before I could get a picture of him. I've never even gotten close to him before. So I figured if I could just kill enough people and survive long enough to take the picture of him that it wouldn't matter if I then died. One of us would still be alive to go to Madrazzo's house. Either way, I finally completed it and I'll never do it again if I can help it. I got some of the details wrong about my buddy. What actually happened is even more hilarious to me. The first time he died, it was because he flew over a ridge and didn't realize a cliff was on the other side. He was afraid the car would explode, so he jumped out and parachuted - only he was basically 4 inches off the ground when the chute opened. When he respawned, he was back on top of the mountain, so he thought - screw it - I'll just parachute down. What he didn't realize is that he no longer had a parachute. So he more or less just dove off a mountain to his death. I ended up getting through that Pier survival last night - again - basically dumb luck. I kept my same spot behind that wall the majority of the time. My buddy stayed near the bathroom at those vending machines. A third guy was to the left of the vending machines where the trucks drive up. He was really good at taking out the trucks and helicopters. A fourth guy basically just ran around taking out as many as he could before he died. When it started getting overwhelming, me and my buddy would run into that bathroom for cover and kill guys as they came in the door. When it got to Wave 10, it ended up just being me and my buddy. Still had a lot of guys left and three (holy shit, three) helicopters in the air. That bathroom may not be the best strategy, but it worked out pretty well because the people coming in the door had miniguns. Obviously you risk getting annihilated by them, and I did get shot a little, but I also got their miniguns. I just stood back in the bathroom and waited until the dots got close, then just opened fire and let them walk into the stream of bullets. Once they were dead, I stepped out and took out the helicopters. That strategy seems to have about a 50/50 shot of working, but it's the best thing I've figured out so far.

I hate Lester so much it makes my balls ache. "Hey go get this thing for me. You'll need a chopper. Go fetch one." "Hey go get this other thing for me. You'll need a truck to haul a trailer. Go drive around Cypress Flats for 9 hours until you find one that spawned." Hey Lester, it's really hard to escape this 3-star level in an 18-wheeler. If I give you $500 can you get rid of them for me? "Nope." Go choke to death on Cheetos dust. The rest of my frustration was totally my fault. After spending probably 10-15 real world minutes finding the truck, losing the cops, killing bad guys - I get RIGHT AT THE TURN for his garage. Overshot it. Backed up. Disconnected the trailer and knocked it over. But, for the first time ever I actually managed to ram it enough to get it turned upright and finish the mission. Oh yeah, and who designed his warehouse layout? I'm trying to not turn the trailer over again while navigating through turns a Mini Cooper would have trouble with. Jstout and I were on and off most of the day, and he helped me get through some missions (big thanks for helping me FINALLY beat Death From Above) and we did some random voting screen missions. Sorry for picking that new survival. I couldn't get backed out of it in time. And before I forget, my buddy wanted me to apologize to you on his behalf. While you and I were completing Death From Above, he was trying to take a shortcut through the mountains and ended up dying in a fireball while tumbling down the hillside. When he respawned, he got run over on the highway. He figured you'd think he was actively trying to sabotage the thing.

Bucky - if you're up for spending 200-250k, you're already up to 10-gar garage apartments. I like my little $205k place, but like you guys are talking about - I really wish they'd sell actual apartments up north. I spend a lot more time there than I do in the city. I would ditch my place for a garage up there, but I enjoy watching players on the apartment TV sometimes. Although I do gripe a lot about how long it takes to walk from the bedroom to the door. I wish they'd patch in the ability to run in the place. By the time I walk from the shower (I hate when it spawns me in there) to the door, then wait for the garage to load and walk to my Elegy on the far side of the garage, it feels like 10 hours have gone by.

Hahahahaha I forgot all about that. That was awesome. And because of it, if I see on you on a bike from now on, I'm hopping on because I want to see how many rivers I'll end up flying into. When I got up, I saw that my buddy and the other guy were waiting in a car. That's the guy who drove around the base to the highway and made the jump over the fence. On our previous attempt at the mission, I did the same thing you did and drove my bike all the way around the base. I still have no idea how to get in there without that guy's fence jump or flying in. From now on, I'm just going to call a Merryweather helicopter in and skydive down.

If I'm remembering right, weren't you in the mission where we had to get inside Fort Zancudo and kill some guy trying to escape in a military plane? I think it was you, and I was cracking up because you drive exactly like I do on motorcycles. Me and my buddy got in a car with the other player, and he goes around the fort and down the highway a bit. Turns around and jumps a hill to dukes of hazzard us over the fort fence. We're on the runway basically playing chicken with the plane. I see his arm sticking out the window with a sticky bomb, so me and my buddy followed suit. I wish I had time to get a picture, because it was hilarious seeing the three of us screaming down the runway basically looking like we're fist pumping. Anyway, we all toss the bombs when we're near the plane, but all we managed to do was blow ourselves up. I respawned in the fort, grabbed a jet and took off. I don't know how fast those planes are normally, but I was so far off the map before I caught up to it that it started shutting my engines off. I managed to shoot some rockets just before it happened. Took out the plane, crashed in the ocean, died. At that point it's jstout and the other guy. I'm watching jstout, who is way up in Blaine county on a motorcycle with a 2-3 star wanted level. And that's where I mentioned earlier that you drive bikes just like me. Haul ass, hit guardrail, go flying into the weeds. Get back on bike, haul ass another mile or so, hit guardrail, go flying into weeds. Did wrecking finally kill you? I can't remember. Either way I enjoyed the show. Anyway, the last guy managed to deliver whatever needed to be delivered, so we barely squeaked by on that one. I want to try it again - it was one of my favorites so far. On another note, I bought and souped up a Comet, and have now decided I hate it. It just doesn't fit my driving style at all. I can't stand how it corners. I tried to sell it, but it said something like "you can't sell vehicles valued above $50,000." What the hell? I don't want to just destroy it, because I bet I have about 200k in it. Does anybody know if you can remove the tracker and insurance? If that's possible, I'll just give it to one of you guys if you want it.

I learned the same thing about myself playing with J.T. I didn't realize it before, but even though I use cover way more in this game than I do in most others, I'm still a haul ass/blaze guns type of player. I have to work hard to rein it in because the crew members I've played with are pretty tactical and I don't want to be the hotshot who has to turn in his badge and gun to the chief. Like when J.T., Mark, and myself were doing the mission where you have to go up into the mountains and steal an RV full of meth. All three of us were on motorcycles, and I hate those stupid winding roads. Without thinking, I just jammed the steering to the right and tore down the mountain. J.T. goes, "Dude are you...going through the woods?" I hadn't thought a thing about the fact that I could crash horribly and cost us a team life. So yeah, I think I know what he meant when he said I was crazy a few pages back. Now I try to tone down the Smokey and the Bandit driving as much as possible.* *I stil can't promise I won't tear ass through the woods.

Yeah J.T. - I did that one by myself the first time and did the same thing pretty much by accident. For whatever reason, I assumed that was what I was supposed to do. I was halfway across the water before I saw any red dots pop up. I could definitely see them patching it too. I did a dumb thing last night. I had about 87k in the bank and realized I hadn't put any mods on my Merryweather Mesa. I added a bunch of armor, engine, and transmission mods. Got down to about 25k. My buddy jokingly shot at my tires because he knows bulletproofing them is the first mod I always do. Somehow, I had not. Despite having only 25k, I couldn't let it go. Drove out of Los Santos Customs with $57 to my name. My buddy shoots me in the head - $0. I didn't really care until we tried to start Boneyard to put some cash back in my pockets, and it denied me. I couldn't even join if someone else hosted. I somehow missed the fact that starting missions costs money. It's a sad day when you have to rob a convenience store to get enough money to make some money.

I just did the same thing a few days ago. It was the quickest thing I could find before I got a garage. It's speedy as hell, but it must weigh about a sack of feathers worth in the ass end, because I can't corner in it without spinning out and taking out 79 light poles. My Jeep is my " just gonna drive around" vehicle. But if I need to get somewhere fast, I either grab the Akuma or the Elegy. I love the Akuma because it makes 5+ mile trips not feel so daunting, but I always end up half dead by the time I get where I'm going. Stupid ass NPCs cutting me off... I've been finally focusing some money on mods for my favorite vehicles. I always go with bulletproof tires first, and then armor. Performance mods are always last. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before, but thank you again to whichever person suggested putting offroad tires on the Elegy. After doing that and installing a roll cage and some armor, I can tear through Blaine County for hours and the thing just won't die. It soars over hills like a glider. I waste way too much time in the mountains. Although what I really want is a dune buggy. I need to Google around and see how that's possible online. Edit: Apparently you can find it on a level 70 mission called Chopper Tail, but it can't be modded or stored. Dammit.

Oh hell yeah - Harbinger and I went to absolute war with some shitheads. It was great. No worries on wrecking the helicopters Vick. Glad we could all get through Boneyard.

Ah okay. I can definitely see the advantage of that then. I'll probably trade up at some point in the near future.

Is your last name McGowan? Toss on a hockey mask. That's how I hide my ferret looking dude. Apparently I didn't waste too much time tinkering with the character creator because I've seen a billion guys that look almost identical. Yeah J.T. - send those invites every time. If I'm able to join, I definitely will. I've been helping one of my buddies save for an apartment. I hadn't done much grinding so far, but we were taking advantage of that awesome hiding spot in Boneyard that someone posted the video about a few pages back. I also definitely want to get in on a big crew job like you've been talking about. If we can get that together, and if everyone is interested, I found a Granger the other day that I threw in my garage for just that purpose. For anyone who isn't familiar with that vehicle, it's the one the SWAT guys roll up on, hanging off the side with carbine rifles. We can roll 8 deep in that thing. If people want to use it for that, I'll spend the money to paint it the crew's color and put the logos on it. I can't guarantee I won't side-swipe you off the side rails and that it won't take 8 hours to get there in that slow ass thing, but it's more for the flair than anything. Also, had another fun experience last night that had nothing to do with missions. The same buddy I mentioned helping earlier and I were rolling around freemode, and two guys started trying to kill us nonstop. We escaped for the most part, but not without damage and my car blown to hell. We managed to not die by pure luck - that will come into play in a minute. They finally turned their attention away from us, and longer story short, I happened to get in a vehicle that Simeon wanted. I head to get it resprayed, and my buddy is keeping his eye on the map to watch for others. As we're getting closer to Simeon's place, he notices the same two guys that were messing with us were also headed to Simeon's place with a vehicle of their own. I roll around the back of the building and up the far side so they can't shoot us. Remember how I said we didn't die? Yeah - we had just come off a run of Boneyard missions and both still had miniguns. I stay in the car while my buddy wipes them both out. I deliver the vehicle and decide, "hell - why not just deliver the one they brought too?" My friend grabs it and gets shot. I wipe them out with my minigun. I ran to the car and one guy is up on a container sniping - damn near takes my head off. I got into cover to let my health regenerate while the non-sniping guy ran to the car. It was then that I remembered I also still had an RPG from Boneyard. I told my friend to retreat and not shoot at them. I called Lester to hide my blip on the radar and waited until they both got in the vehicle. Then I stepped out and crammed a rocket up both their asses. "If I can't deliver the car, nobody delivers the car." I then got sniped to death about three times before I went back to a private server, but hell yes it was worth it.