GTA 6 missions and story tips from the first 20 hours

Light spoilers for mission names and systems. No plot. The opening 20 hours of GTA 6 are generous if you do not fight the structure, and they are a slog if you treat every yellow marker like a checklist.

Mission order

Do the character-swap tutorial missions as soon as they appear. Several later jobs silently require you to have swapped at least twice. The game does not tell you. Players who ignore the swap and mainline one character hit a wall around hour 12 and think it is a bug.

Safehouse timing

• Buy the first safehouse. Obviously.
• The marina locker is the second purchase, not a sports car. It persists across the swap.
• Delay the second safehouse until Title Update 1.08 if you care about property income actually paying.

Skills the game under-explains

Driving in rain uses a different traction model than GTA V. Brake earlier. The wanted-level decay is faster in civilian cars than in sports cars, which is why the money route guide keeps yelling at you about it. And the “send a text” prompt during chases is not flavor — it is a skip for a two-minute cutscene later. Use it.

Leonida is not a loot island. If you are optimizing before hour 10, you are missing the point — and also probably failing Palmetto Run.— Nolan Reeves