This page should contain facts about missions, how specific missions work, but not necessarily how to do them in a certain category. Questions like "What triggers X?" or "Is Y on a timer?" should be answered here.

Los Santos

Big Smoke

You don't have to stay on the bike, but you have to stay close to the others so they keep moving. The first cutscene is triggered by Sweet, the mission end is triggered by Ryder (of course you have to be there as well).

Ryder

Why did you blow up Ryder's car?

Failing the mission makes 30s worth of cutscene in front of the pizza place that is the tutorial for eating skipable. Since you can easily blow up Ryder's car, this mission can be failed easily.

Drive-Thru

Killing the passenger of the Drive-By car makes the driver get out.

Drive-By

It seems that the Pay&Spray is completely scripted and is needed for the Mission End Marker to appear. After you were in the Pay&Spray, you can even get police stars again and still finish the mission.

Sweet's Girl

This mission has more dangerous AI when you were in a car before, getting on a bike resets the AI to normal.

Life's A Beach

You can skip the dancing:

• Find Grove Street Gangmembers and recruit one of them.
• Drive/get them to the locked van and try to get in (doesn't matter on which side). CJ won't be able to open the door, but if you keep trying, the homie will eventually open the passenger side door and get in.
• Once the homie opens the door, hold down the Gang-Button until CJ says "See you later homie." which means the gang is disbanded.
• You then run towards the water behind the car parked there and shoot the homie in the van. If all goes well, he falls out and leaves the door open, so you can steal the van. Careful when shooting. If you aren't far enough away, the mission fails. Even aiming at the party can fail the mission, so you should practice an exact shooting position first.

Burning Desire

• You need to pick up the Molotovs in this mission to make the house vulnerable to fire, picking them up prior to the mission does not help.
• In the house, you have to pickup the Fire Extuingisher to trigger the cutscene with Denise after which she follows you. If you go up without there is a cutscene that tells you to get it, but even if you enter her room (you can jump over the fire), she just stands there and it doesn't trigger the cutscene after which she follows you.
• After getting the Fire Extuingisher, you can jump over the fire in her room and trigger the cutscene, but she won't follow you unless you put out the fires in her way. If you let her stay in her room and go out the front door, it still tells you to go back in and get the girl.
• After triggering the cutscene in Denise's room (after which she follows you), the fires disappear when you go out and back into the house. But since you still have to go back up and guide the girl out of the house, it's probably not very useful.

Home Invasion

This mission has a special walking animation that makes you move slower. However, if you hold certain weapons, you don't get this slower walking. Most importantly this also affects walking speed when you carry a crate (which is the only time you would be walking anyway, since moving crouched is faster), even though CJ isn't actually holding the weapon in his hands.

Weapons that seem to work for this are weapons you can't sprint with, including: Baseball Bat, Shotgun, Combat Shotgun, Rifle, M4, AK, Sniper Rifle, Flame Thrower, Rocket Launchers

With the Shotgun in particular (and maybe other weapons like the M4 or AK, but not the Baseball Bat) there's another strange behaviour where the noise-meter doesn't fill as fast. Normally if you just run, it fills almost instantly, but while holding the shotgun (again, also when carrying a crate) you can run for about a second before the noise-meter reacts. It fills about 2/3 when you run too long and fills completely after about 0.5 seconds. Important is that you don't press the walk button at all when doing this. Changing between walking and running seems to trigger the noise-meter a lot faster. Just run normally by pressing the move forward button, let go of it after a second, then run again.

This allows you to take one of the further away crates as the last one and just run back to the door all the way. This fills the noise-meter, but you get out before the cutscene plays (it would play when you go back in, but you won't have to after the last crate). Without the delayed noise-meter, the cutscene would play before you get out if you run all the way.

Even with the delayed noise-meter while having the shotgun selected, the noise-meter seems to fill faster if it is already filled a bit, so be careful with that.

Also sliding to the further away crates saves about 1 second for each crate.

• Video: Comparison between different moving speeds in this mission
• Video: Demonstration of running with the shotgun

The Green Sabre

Enemies you kill before driving into the marker where you have to save Sweet, just respawn. The first van spawns once you killed 3 enemies, the second van once you killed 6 enemies and the car once you killed 9 enemies. The mission is completed once you killed all enemies.

San Fierro

Snail Trail

Picking up the Sniper Rifle triggers the train coming into Cranberry Station. Not picking up the Sniper Rifle doesn't seem to fail the mission, so you can technicially take as long as you want.

After that the mission is mostly timed, but there are some triggers. The following table shows different sections of the mission. The timing starts when you pick up the sniper. Sections enclosed in [ ] refer to the first appearance of the corresponding subtitle. The exact times of course depend on what exactly is used as a reference point, so other tests might have slightly different results if they are not exactly the same.

Section	Fastest	If you don't trigger..	Comment
Picked up Sniper	00:00
	+00:12
Train comes to a stop	00:12
Need to be at Cranberry Station to trigger	+00:00	Fails mission after about 2:00	The train start driving slowly after about 1 minute, then it's another minute until you fail the mission. Also be careful not to be too fast, you need to trigger the train after it came to a stop.
[Reporter entered the train]	00:12
	+03:12		The train always takes the same time, whether you are near it or not.
[Train approaching Market Station]	03:24
Need to be near Market Station to trigger	+00:20	Reporter leaves train after 2:19
[Reporter left the train]	03:44
	+00:59		The reporter always takes the same time, whether you are near him or not.
[Reporter looking for a taxi]	04:43
Need to be near the reporter for him to get into a taxi		Fails mission after 1:00	You should be close early enough, so the reporter can find a taxi. If he doesn't, the mission fails.

When the reporter arrives at the end of the pier, you can shoot him and the one he meets as soon as the subtitle appears that tells you to kill them. Although it might be easier to hit both fast if you wait until they stand closer together. Shoot the reporter (left one) first, because the first shot spooks them and the reporter runs aways, while the guy he meets runs towards CJ and eventuelly starts shooting if he gets closer (which he normally won't though if you snipe them from far away).

Links

• Forum: This and following posts include some tests of Snail Trail

Toreno's Last Flight

This mission has more dangerous AI when you were in a car before, getting on a bike resets the AI to normal.

Las Venturas

Fender Ketchup

You have to scare the guy by driving around. The fastest way appears to be doing left handbrake turns. You need to reach a certain speed, then press the handbrake and turn left (turning right doesn't work for some reason). You can do this on the parking lot where the mission starts/ends and just do handbrake U-Turns. If you use the whole space, you just gain enough speed for it.

You can also do the same strat on the street and not do full U-Turns, but instead only turn enough so it triggers, but then keep going straight so you can retain more speed and do the next turn earlier.

• Video: On the Parking Lot
• Video: On the Road

Explosive Situation

Be careful not to let the Dumper explode, it will fail the mission even after you got all the Dynamite. This can easily happen when you park the Dumper too close to the Forklift that can explode because you have to hit it go get the Dynamite.

You've Had Your Chips

Climb over the fence to the south and walk into the entrance of the factory building to do the "stealth"-approach. If you walk in through the area's main entrance or shoot the car in front of the factory, additional enemies spawn inside the factory.

Once you are inside the factory, it's all about destroying the machines:

• Once 3 machines are destroyed 3 enemies spawn outside, 2 running into the factory and 1 enemy with an automatic shotgun that can be very dangerous
• Once 6 machines are destroyed a car with several enemies with SMGs spawns outside and start driving towards the factory entrance
• Once 9 machines are destroyed you are done and have to head back to the Casino

However there is a way to skip the spawning of the 3 enemies outside. If you destroy the 3rd and 4th machine at exactly the same time (probably the same frame or something) the internal counter probably isn't checked when it is at 3, but only when it is at 4, so the spawn isn't triggered (this also works when you destroy more than 2 machines at once, just make sure the 3rd machine isn't destroyed by itself). The order of the machines doesn't matter, "the 3rd machine" only refers to the number of destroyed machines.

The car is actually technicially spawned when more than 5 machines are destroyed, instead of exactly 6, so the spawning of the car can't be prevented with the same technique.

To destroy several machines at exactly the same time, explosions are probably the only way (fire a rocket between machines that are near together or plant satchel charges).

• Video: Demonstration of spawning/not spawning enemies (and also of a specific strat for this mission)
• Video: Demonstration of the spawning car
• Video: Explanation of a specific strat for this mission
• Video: Possible safer Rocket Strat for the beginning

Don Peyote

At the snake farm, you need to kill all four farmers, or else they come after you once you activate the marker at the casino, which triggers a cutscene and apparently has a chance to softlock the game.

Return to Los Santos

Beat Down on BDup

This mission has more dangerous AI when you were in a car before, getting on a bike resets the AI to normal.