Criminal Mastermind run #2 in 2020

[Nutduster]

Hi all,

 

Easy question, perhaps: has anything significant changed or been patched with the original heists in the past two years or so?

 

Background: I used to play the hell out of this game, and beat the Criminal Mastermind challenge (plus the elite challenges and all kinds of stuff) with my old crew. Have recently been playing on a new platform with a new character, with other friends. I'd like to help them make a boatload of cash in a short period; this seems like a good way. I remember all the old heists pretty much backward and forward, but I don't know what all has been patched, buffed, or nerfed since my day. Anything?

 

My most immediate concerns are the Savages on the Convoy mission, did they get buffed? I feel like I remember reading that, but I'd stopped playing. And also, the Kuruma/garage trick on Pac Standard--is that still an option? Certainly safer than the bikes, and while these friends are capable players, they aren't motorcycle enthusiasts. If they ever truly patched the Kuruma method, I'll just take these guys on the long, safe route I know rather than Lester's.

 

Anything else I should be aware of?

[Lonely-Martin]

The savages can be shot down with 2 explosive sniper rounds I think, it has been a while, so not 100% sure, sorry. Not sure if that counts as a buff as pre-explosive ammo, I'd use a minigun or rockets which still take those out quickly if on target.

 

The Kuruma/apartment thing did get patched though. There is a way to get a helicopter, but I've never really looked into that aspect on Pac standard, I tend to ride the bikes to the end or trigger the noose guys in the bank by killing hostages and then steal the noose van near the roadblock you pass if following the GPS. 

 

The heavy vest still works a treat of course though (in case you forgot that helpful bit of clothing) so be sure to set player saved outfits. But good luck there Nutduster.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Lonely-Martin
Wording.

[Nutduster]

Thanks man! Getting us all a vest was definitely high on my list. Not surprised to hear about the Kuruma--I'll just break out my super-low-risk, takes-forever bike route.

 

None of us have explosive rounds unfortunately. Does the heavy sniper at long range still work okay? If not, rockets it is.

 

One other question too, is the helicopter still on the police station on the rescue Ari mission?

[Lonely-Martin]

1 minute ago, Nutduster said:

Thanks man! Getting us all a vest was definitely high on my list. Not surprised to hear about the Kuruma--I'll just break out my super-low-risk, takes-forever bike route.

 

None of us have explosive rounds unfortunately. Does the heavy sniper at long range still work okay? If not, rockets it is.

 

One other question too, is the helicopter still on the police station on the rescue Ari mission?

Yes to both. The heavy sniper is a good call, and on the Avi setup that chopper does spawn too, although on the odd occasion it may not. (More if you approach the area too quickly I believe).

[Spectre "2K"]

i'm not sure of when exactly you stopped, but the Vigilante remains the only vehicle with god missiles that you can use in heists and setups, and since it's a mission your self explosions won't blow you up

 

other than that, taking an insurgent pick-up custom with some form of gunner armor for setups like convoy is a convenience worth it's weight in gold. But if on a budget, the armored kuruma still has a place everywhere besides the finale of pac standard, and a little less in valkyrie and convoy due to the explosive helis

[PetrolCB]

You can still do the scarf swap while wearing a heavy vest so that you can run faster. I dunno if you did that before or not.

[MechanicMammal]

The savages in convoy are easy as long as your prepared, and if one suddenly spawns above you then get out of the vehicle your driving deal with it (I have only ever died facing a Savage while in a vehicle, or stood right next to one) especially if you are wearing a heist vest, and if your doing mastermind you should be.

normaly on the convoy set up I concentrate fully on wiping them out while the other 3 guys worry about getting the truck. I normally use a motorbike to get to sniping positions quick.

I go up the cliff next to the check point and snipe the first chopper before the convoy get close.

My mates will barricade the bridge.

Oh ever wondered if tear gas is useful? FYI you can actually take out the convoy without firing a shot.(I still shoot the gunner on the insurgent tho) make sure they are on the bridge and fill it with gas the ai panic less and because you have them trapped on the bridge the Barracks will not end up down in the water.

I leave the guys to attain the truck and I race to the road block blow it up and take down 2 more helicopters from this position, then you have to keep your eyes out for 2 more which sometimes spawn sometimes dont I will regroup with the team and keep a eye on the minimap and be ready to jump off the bike and deal with them if needed.

 

[PaeganLoveSong]

For the Pac Standard finale, what I've found works best is you take the bikes and start heading to the western highway, steal a couple cars along the way (Bullets and Infernus...es spawn often), and gun it up the highway to the boat.

[suicidal_banana]

20 hours ago, Nutduster said:

Hi all,

...

Savages on Convoy are as easy as ever, snipe the first one from the hill next to the bridge, drive to the convoy, shoot the guards, steal truck & insurgent, tell insurgent gunner to focus on shooting down the heli's & ignore the rest, then just race to the marker

The pac standard thing with kuruma/other personal vehicles was fixed, but they didnt fix the actual underlying glitch at all, heres (afaik) the current 'gamer' way of doing this, wall of text below:

Spoiler

Requirements:

- Bati801(RR) motorbike or similar quality motorbike that can do some stunting

- The appartement thats next to where the pac standard bikes are parked
- At least one car in the garage of that appartement

Steps to take:
- Spawn with your bati or other motorbike you're comfortable stunting with
- Tell the team to wait for you at bank, drive to the police station thats next to a bridge opposite of the drainage canal to lester's hideout.
- On the other side of this bridge, opposite to the police station is a brick building with a set of stairs, park bike at stairs, run up
- Most of the times when you take this approach/use these stairs it will SPAWN a heli on top of the police station (mostly a buzzard too!) if it doesnt just drive your bike to Ammunation/Simeon nearby and back to this building/stairs and try again (game doesnt like doing this when there are several players in the area, thats why its best to go alone)
- Use the bati to jump from the bridge onto the police station (wheelie into the wall of the bridge where its closest to edge of police station roof) nick the buzzard (or police maverick) and fly it to the bikes
- Land the heli on the blue basketball court, enter your nearby garage
- Now tell your teammates to shoot random pedestrians to force a restart, then QUICKLY get in a car inside the garage
- Mission should fail while you are in a car in that garage, on the end screen everybody hit restart
- Everybody spawns at bank now, heli is saved at the basketball court (no matter how terrible your team will do/how many restarts, heli stays there until you touch it, once touched and theres another restart this plan will go to sh*t & you need to use the below backup plan)
- Do the bank as per usual (crowd control shouldnt kill any civilians, one of them hold an RPG to keep crowd controlled, other shoots guards coming from upstairs) as a little extra safety precaution only one person should pick up all the money (only one person that can be hit to lose money = less of a chance to lose money)
- After cutscene of cops pulling up to bank team waits inside, you clear street
- After you clear street tell them all to step outside for a second (until they see yellow marker about going to escape route) then they should go back inside and wait

- If needed the 2 non-cash-carrying players should be prepared to protect the cash player, because sometimes (randomly) 1 or 2 cops will come into the bank.
- You run too the bikes (im sure you know of the slightly optimized route you can take here) and blow up all the bikes
- Kill yourself (multiple times if needed because of difficulty setting) to force restart

- Everybody spawns at bikes, blow up all the bikes again

- Take the heli, go to boat, at the last bit try stay close to the mountain while descending to boat, this makes the cops spawn on a road where they cant really reach the boat
- Boat the hell out of there, if all went well you should've just completed the heist without a single dollar lost.

Backup plan:
So something went to sh*t and you lost the heli? not the end of the world:
- Everybody get on a bike of their own, tell them all to NOT SHOOT AT THE COPS
- Tell the one guy that has all the money to go to the suggested route, other 3 players STAY THERE

- After like a minute (or more if you're comfortable with the cops closing in) the other 3 players can go, but instead of going the suggested route like the money-bag-player (taking the first left, heading towards casino) you go the opposite way, go right then immediately right again (so you're heading into mountains) within a few seconds route re-calculates and gives u a new one trough the mountains, follow that
- Depending on how long the 3 non-cash-carrying players waited, they might get close to the money-bag-player when near sandy shores, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE
- Everybody make their way to the jump, parachute to boat, done.
The thing that makes this backup strategy work is that the cops prefer to come after the bigger group of players, if done right the one guy with money bag will get no attention from cops at all, meanwhile the group of 3 will get all the cops attention, the thing about not shooting cops is another low-key trick, as soon as you shoot a cop ALL cops will increase their accuracy, so if you never shoot them they will have terrible aim, which obviously is a good thing.

Its what i've been doing since they patched the personal vehicle thing and its super easy once you get used to it, takes a few minutes of initial setup but obviously worth the effort considering you end up being much faster after the bank, and if done right no losses at all, if you gotta go for backup strat no worries, if you follow that guide properly you should also get away with the full amount, or at the very least close to it.

 

 

  

19 hours ago, Nutduster said:

None of us have explosive rounds unfortunately. Does the heavy sniper at long range still work okay? If not, rockets it is.

Yes, i usually just put idk 6-8 normal rounds into the heli with the heavy sniper and then it falls apart mid-air, use the provided 50cal on the insurgent to deal with any of the later heli's

 

  

19 hours ago, Nutduster said:

One other question too, is the helicopter still on the police station on the rescue Ari mission?

Yes, but they tried to patch that too, what you do now is you fly the heli to the jetski's, all players get on a jetski, then you can all hop in the heli and do the same thing as before, what was changed is that nothing is spawned on the island now until all players sit on a jetski, so thats why you have to make this little detour now, the part on the island and after that is still the same as before

 

  

3 hours ago, Spectre "2K" said:

i'm not sure of when exactly you stopped, but the Vigilante remains the only vehicle with god missiles that you can use in heists and setups

When you see anybody with this vehicle in Convoy be super wary, because 1 of those rockets is enough to destroy the truck and fail the mission

Edited July 21, 2020 by suicidal_banana
Some more replies

[Spectre "2K"]

1 hour ago, suicidal_banana said:

When you see anybody with this vehicle in Convoy be super wary, because 1 of those rockets is enough to destroy the truck and fail the mission

yeah in general the Vigilante is a poor vehicle for convoy. On top of the endless horde of jeeps and delicate truck you're escorting, the second savage can eviscerate you if you aren't paying attention, especially with it's armor buff. Insurgent custom is much better for it

[suicidal_banana]

1 minute ago, Spectre "2K" said:

yeah in general the Vigilante is a poor vehicle for convoy. On top of the endless horde of jeeps and delicate truck you're escorting, the second savage can eviscerate you if you aren't paying attention, especially with it's armor buff. Insurgent custom is much better for it

Kuruma best option for most people imo, let them use that best-in-class mid-tier-armor for taking over the convoy, then just use the provided insurgent, its good enough, custom one is nice but totally optional. Personally i've played these classic heists too much at this point and got like double HP from being level ~910, so i literally just bring whatever vehicle i bought last, got the experience to do the entire thing solo without even needing armor/armored vehicle, not sure if thats something to be proud of or ashamed of tho  

[Mdc]

3 hours ago, suicidal_banana said:

Savages on Convoy are as easy as ever, snipe the first one from the hill next to the bridge, drive to the convoy, shoot the guards, steal truck & insurgent, tell insurgent gunner to focus on shooting down the heli's & ignore the rest, then just race to the marker

The pac standard thing with kuruma/other personal vehicles was fixed, but they didnt fix the actual underlying glitch at all, heres (afaik) the current 'gamer' way of doing this, wall of text below:

  Hide contents

Requirements:

- Bati801(RR) motorbike or similar quality motorbike that can do some stunting

- The appartement thats next to where the pac standard bikes are parked
- At least one car in the garage of that appartement

Steps to take:
- Spawn with your bati or other motorbike you're comfortable stunting with
- Tell the team to wait for you at bank, drive to the police station thats next to a bridge opposite of the drainage canal to lester's hideout.
- On the other side of this bridge, opposite to the police station is a brick building with a set of stairs, park bike at stairs, run up
- Most of the times when you take this approach/use these stairs it will SPAWN a heli on top of the police station (mostly a buzzard too!) if it doesnt just drive your bike to Ammunation/Simeon nearby and back to this building/stairs and try again (game doesnt like doing this when there are several players in the area, thats why its best to go alone)
- Use the bati to jump from the bridge onto the police station (wheelie into the wall of the bridge where its closest to edge of police station roof) nick the buzzard (or police maverick) and fly it to the bikes
- Land the heli on the blue basketball court, enter your nearby garage
- Now tell your teammates to shoot random pedestrians to force a restart, then QUICKLY get in a car inside the garage
- Mission should fail while you are in a car in that garage, on the end screen everybody hit restart
- Everybody spawns at bank now, heli is saved at the basketball court (no matter how terrible your team will do/how many restarts, heli stays there until you touch it, once touched and theres another restart this plan will go to sh*t & you need to use the below backup plan)
- Do the bank as per usual (crowd control shouldnt kill any civilians, one of them hold an RPG to keep crowd controlled, other shoots guards coming from upstairs) as a little extra safety precaution only one person should pick up all the money (only one person that can be hit to lose money = less of a chance to lose money)
- After cutscene of cops pulling up to bank team waits inside, you clear street
- After you clear street tell them all to step outside for a second (until they see yellow marker about going to escape route) then they should go back inside and wait

- If needed the 2 non-cash-carrying players should be prepared to protect the cash player, because sometimes (randomly) 1 or 2 cops will come into the bank.
- You run too the bikes (im sure you know of the slightly optimized route you can take here) and blow up all the bikes
- Kill yourself (multiple times if needed because of difficulty setting) to force restart

- Everybody spawns at bikes, blow up all the bikes again

- Take the heli, go to boat, at the last bit try stay close to the mountain while descending to boat, this makes the cops spawn on a road where they cant really reach the boat
- Boat the hell out of there, if all went well you should've just completed the heist without a single dollar lost.

Backup plan:
So something went to sh*t and you lost the heli? not the end of the world:
- Everybody get on a bike of their own, tell them all to NOT SHOOT AT THE COPS
- Tell the one guy that has all the money to go to the suggested route, other 3 players STAY THERE

- After like a minute (or more if you're comfortable with the cops closing in) the other 3 players can go, but instead of going the suggested route like the money-bag-player (taking the first left, heading towards casino) you go the opposite way, go right then immediately right again (so you're heading into mountains) within a few seconds route re-calculates and gives u a new one trough the mountains, follow that
- Depending on how long the 3 non-cash-carrying players waited, they might get close to the money-bag-player when near sandy shores, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE
- Everybody make their way to the jump, parachute to boat, done.
The thing that makes this backup strategy work is that the cops prefer to come after the bigger group of players, if done right the one guy with money bag will get no attention from cops at all, meanwhile the group of 3 will get all the cops attention, the thing about not shooting cops is another low-key trick, as soon as you shoot a cop ALL cops will increase their accuracy, so if you never shoot them they will have terrible aim, which obviously is a good thing.

Its what i've been doing since they patched the personal vehicle thing and its super easy once you get used to it, takes a few minutes of initial setup but obviously worth the effort considering you end up being much faster after the bank, and if done right no losses at all, if you gotta go for backup strat no worries, if you follow that guide properly you should also get away with the full amount, or at the very least close to it.

 

 

  

Yes, i usually just put idk 6-8 normal rounds into the heli with the heavy sniper and then it falls apart mid-air, use the provided 50cal on the insurgent to deal with any of the later heli's

 

  

Yes, but they tried to patch that too, what you do now is you fly the heli to the jetski's, all players get on a jetski, then you can all hop in the heli and do the same thing as before, what was changed is that nothing is spawned on the island now until all players sit on a jetski, so thats why you have to make this little detour now, the part on the island and after that is still the same as before

 

  

When you see anybody with this vehicle in Convoy be super wary, because 1 of those rockets is enough to destroy the truck and fail the mission

 

Pac standard signal completely isn't patched. I've taken heli killed everyone and rescued avi before anyone even got to the island, recently. The biggest problem is when some moron jumps in the boat after you jump out and then rides off with him to their death. Can compensate that by turning the boat round and crashing it up on the island, but then someone will likely steal the heli (and crash it) anyway.

 

Pac finale can use a vigilante to boost above police station roof and parachute down to the heli.

 

Convoy there's loads of easy ways to do it and safe for CMM. Drive it up hill and down train tracks with a good driver. Helis despawn at paleto and it's just a longer route.  Stay on hill sniping until one can get in then drive truck up hill. Snipe all savages then drive it to drop. You can even blaze past the truck and have it turn around and follow you towards the drop... 

 

 

[Nutduster]

38 minutes ago, Mdc said:

 

Pac finale can use a vigilante to boost above police station roof and parachute down to the heli.

 

 

Color me intrigued. I've never done the heli, we always used the Kuruma method. Why are you boosting up instead of just climbing up there like on the Avi mission?

[Airwolf359]

57 minutes ago, Mdc said:

 

Pac standard signal completely isn't patched. I've taken heli killed everyone and rescued avi before anyone even got to the island, recently. The biggest problem is when some moron jumps in the boat after you jump out and then rides off with him to their death. Can compensate that by turning the boat round and crashing it up on the island, but then someone will likely steal the heli (and crash it) anyway.

 

Pac finale can use a vigilante to boost above police station roof and parachute down to the heli.

 

Convoy there's loads of easy ways to do it and safe for CMM. Drive it up hill and down train tracks with a good driver. Helis despawn at paleto and it's just a longer route.  Stay on hill sniping until one can get in then drive truck up hill. Snipe all savages then drive it to drop. You can even blaze past the truck and have it turn around and follow you towards the drop... 

 

 

You typically don't start a criminal mastermind run with the kind of moron that does the things you mention. Have some faith in the team. This will not be a problem on a proper CMM run. OP was just asking what to look out for when trying a CMM run in 2020.

 

On the convoy setup, definitely use an Insurgent if you have one, to take out helicopters safely. If you don't have one, use the one from Merryweather. Try not to use explosives, as you risk blowing up the truck. And don't use the Vigilante. That results in a blown up truck every time.

Edited July 21, 2020 by AirWolf359

[Spectre "2K"]

3 hours ago, suicidal_banana said:

Kuruma best option for most people imo, let them use that best-in-class mid-tier-armor for taking over the convoy, then just use the provided insurgent, its good enough, custom one is nice but totally optional. Personally i've played these classic heists too much at this point and got like double HP from being level ~910, so i literally just bring whatever vehicle i bought last, got the experience to do the entire thing solo without even needing armor/armored vehicle, not sure if thats something to be proud of or ashamed of tho  

haha man, i did criminal mastermind as a level 27 (first attempt i may add) and my ego still hasn't worn off. I treat GTA like an arena shooter more than a cover shooter because of it

 

i just point out stuff i see speedrunners bring on their runs, you bet your ass i'm showing up in a hot pink rhapsody with a bug catcher intake on it

Edited July 21, 2020 by Spectre "2K"

[Mdc]

2 hours ago, Nutduster said:

 

Color me intrigued. I've never done the heli, we always used the Kuruma method. Why are you boosting up instead of just climbing up there like on the Avi mission?

Different police station lol

2 hours ago, AirWolf359 said:

You typically don't start a criminal mastermind run with the kind of moron that does the things you mention. Have some faith in the team. This will not be a problem on a proper CMM run. OP was just asking what to look out for when trying a CMM run in 2020.

 

On the convoy setup, definitely use an Insurgent if you have one, to take out helicopters safely. If you don't have one, use the one from Merryweather. Try not to use explosives, as you risk blowing up the truck. And don't use the Vigilante. That results in a blown up truck every time.

Na true. Just pointing out some things on that setup. CMM a blown up truck doesn't actually matter, just nobody dies.

[MechanicMammal]

9 hours ago, Nutduster said:

 

Color me intrigued. I've never done the heli, we always used the Kuruma method. Why are you boosting up instead of just climbing up there like on the Avi mission?

Its a different police station further south near simeons etc you have to jump this one.

[MechanicMammal]

10 hours ago, AirWolf359 said:

You typically don't start a criminal mastermind run with the kind of moron that does the things you mention. Have some faith in the team. This will not be a problem on a proper CMM run. OP was just asking what to look out for when trying a CMM run in 2020.

 

On the convoy setup, definitely use an Insurgent if you have one, to take out helicopters safely. If you don't have one, use the one from Merryweather. Try not to use explosives, as you risk blowing up the truck. And don't use the Vigilante. That results in a blown up truck every time.

Heavy heist armour is probably the best tip I can give, there is loads of ways to do the heist and loads work but this is what I do.

 

Vans easy just set the 2 most experianced as the navagators let them hunt the vans they are always on the same route so learn the routes, I dont bother even opening the locating app anymore. The drivers can spend this time shopping for snacks and going to the ammunation to get armour this is close to the final van location, so they can jack it if bored.

 

The chopper for Signal is a must, it saves so much time.

 

Hack just Kuruma the yard, when leaving it is easier to drive the van if the passengers are not shooting.

 

The bikers just storm the place in a Kuruma again and clear it completely, then all leave the yard on the bikes at the same time and do not use the highlighted route. Again just concentrate on riding dont fight unless one of your crew has fallen.

 

Yeah the Kuruma is not the best choice for Convoy, and I do not say that often. And the Vigilate can be risky with wayward missiles, It is one of the few setups that the AI Savages can blow up a Kuruma. As Airwolf mentions the insurgent is the best Armored vehicle to use, which provides safety from the choppers.

But I have done it so often that I know when and where the choppers are likely to appear, so I always choose a fast civillian vehicle and fight on foot.

 

The Pac finale is also very easy I would just take the bikes personally, just dont shoot, follow the route and give each other space, I always send the single money carrier out in front a little bit. If I carry the cash, 90% of the time I will not lose any money.

There is one point that I do shoot, (if I am not carrying the money Ill just blow them up from the bike with the small drive by grenade launcher thing, if I have the money ill explosive snipe them from a distance) they are just by the tunnel up the mountain from where the convoy set up takes place there is a group of police and a vehicle I will take them out, because they will shoot at you and the money if you dont.

But the chopper is a option and I guess is a bit safer if one of the crew is not confident riding, and yeah it still works.

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by MechanicMammal

[Nutduster]

I probably won't do the finale chopper, or anything too fussy like that. We don't own a Vigilante and I don't want to make this too complex for a group of guys who haven't even done most of these heists before. Ideally our method on every mission will be simple and safe at the same time; if it takes forever or we lose some money, no big deal. I'm only concerned about getting them the 10 mil.

 

I figure I'll do the finale the way we always used to: pair up on just two bikes, ride through town to the railroad tracks on the east side, and follow them all the way up through the mountains. You encounter very little resistance that way; basically as long as you can get to the tracks without dying, you're good to go.