How to start

Start here

You start with nothing and you answer to nobody. Everything below is a way of getting money, and money is how you get everything else.

The first ten minutes

Go to Crimes and commit one. Wait, then do it again. That is the engine of the whole game and it never stops being useful.

Turn Autocrime on. It keeps committing crimes while you are not here. You will find it on the crime page.

Then go to Search the Streets and GTA. Both are free, both are on their own timers, and doing all three is always better than doing one.

Your sign-up points

When you sign up you share out 1,000 points. Offence, Defence and Stealth take up to 750 each and become what you start with. Money takes up to 50, and every point is £10,000 of cash on top of the usual start. All of them have to be spent.

The online list

The online list at the foot of the page shows all, your crew, your buddies or nobody, and keeps whichever you picked. You are in bold, your crew is underlined and your buddies are in bold italics.

Shortcut keys

On a computer you can jump about with the keyboard once you turn Key Control on, under Settings on the User Interface tab. C for crimes, D for trade, E for events, S for stocks, T for travel, M for mail, P for your profile, J for the cells, and H shows the lot. Esc logs you out.

The four numbers on your card

Cash: What you are carrying. Somebody who kills you takes all of it. Bank it.
Bank: Safe. Nobody can ever take money out of your bank.
Rank: Goes up with XP. Higher rank means every earner pays more, and some things do not open until you reach them.
OFF, DEF, STL: Offence, defence and stealth. They decide fights, they decide whether an OC step goes right, and they go up when you do crimes and OCs.

The one rule the money follows

Crimes pay the most per hour. Everything else in the game pays less than crimes do, on purpose. Nothing you can leave running will ever beat sitting down and playing.

That is not a guess. Every earner in the game is priced against what crimes pay before it goes in, and they follow your rank.

Bank it. This is the one that catches people out

Somebody who kills you takes every pound you are carrying, and you do not get up afterwards.

Neither one can reach your bank. Bank the cash and the worst day is an annoying day. Leave it in your pocket and somebody else gets to spend it.