Join me, then, in our continuing series, getting gold in every damn mission, in GTA 5 as we look at the first heist The Jewel Store Job.
…and don’t forget to hang about until the end, so you can catch our bonus tips, for improving the take.
Getting gold in this one is a bit challenging, so don’t be surprised if it takes a couple of runs at it. We’ll need to:
Know any neat mods we could use to do a bit more exploration in Lost Santos, or North Yankton? Leave your suggestions in the comments.
Franklin sends Michael in a van to the jeweler’s, the driver and the gunman. Donning helmets, they’ll reach the hostages and order them to get down. While the gunman is holding the hostages, Michael and the driver begin ransacking the store while Franklin waits with the bikes outside. The store manager will attempt to interfere and it will be done by a good gunman (Gus Mota or Packie McReary), but if a bad one is selected (Norm Richards), he will do badly with crowd control and Michael will have to kill the boss, or they will sound the alarm and fail the task. The amount of time available before the alarm starts will depend on the selected hacker, but since the gold medal requires the player to steal the jewelry within fifty seconds, either of them will do so (in the enhanced edition; in the original version Rickie Lukens can only hold off the alarm for thirty seconds, while in the Loud approach it takes at least 49 seconds to clear all the jewel cases). A poor driver (Karim Denz) drops some of the jewelry, bringing the take down to about $4.5 million.
Both methods lead to similar escape. Having committed the robbery, Franklin escapes with the driver and the gunman on a bike. The motorcycle is driver-dependent, but does not make much of a difference. Karim Denz, a bad driver, can send panicky and unhelpful radio traffic instead of pro Eddie Toh ‘s calm and competent instructions, but that doesn’t really have any impact either. Join the crew, escape the cops and drive into the tunnel for sewer entry. If a low-skilled gunman is selected, then he will crash and fall off his bike before entering the tunnel along with his bag of jewels. When the player picks up the pack, the take won’t change, but otherwise; a large amount of the take is lost. There is a casualty cost to the gunman’s shooting, regardless. If you choose a highly skilled gunman, none of this happens.
The group finally ends up on the Los Santos River in a pack of waiting police cars using the Los Santos sewage network to escape the officers. Michael and the hacker have meanwhile went to get the delivery truck and use it to violently drive the cops out of the way.
If the focus of police is lost, the bikes are loaded into the truck and transported to Lester’s lockup where the crew is broken up. The maximum take for the mission is $4,946,153 if the player smashes all 20 displays and selects either a good shooter or a good driver (for the Noisy approach). Martin Madrazo will then earn $2,500,000, while the remainder will be divided between the crew members. Note that Franklin receives a fixed percentage as a hired gunman / driver for this, his first Heist, rather than splitting the take with Michael in equal measure.
