Hard mode explained – GTA Online

After you’ve completed the Cayo Perico Heist for the first time, you’ll receive a text from Pawel letting you know that you can attempt it again and saying:

…if we go straight away things will be more demanding. We wait a little, they will relax, we have an easier time. The choice is yours, captain

He is referring to ‘hard mode’.

The chances are that the first time you attempted the heist it descended into chaos and you were on the run from the guards smashing the snack and armour buttons to survive, so hard mode may be not what you’re looking for straight away… However, once you’re more confident it’s well worth attempting.

How to enable hard mode

To enable hard mode you have to go back to your Kosatka and its planning screen and activate the heist within 48 real-world, not in-game, minutes (an in-game day is actually 48 real-world minutes, hence this figure).

These elapse whether you have the game open or not, so you can’t exit and go straight back in the next morning. However, you can start the heist and come back to it any time later and hard mode will still be enabled.

There is one important additional point – if you’re not happy with your primary target, e.g. you get the Tequila and want something more valuable, as long as you call Pawel and restart the heist within the 48 minutes since his text above, then you you can still stay in hard mode.

If you don’t want to enable hard mode, then keep an eye on your in-game time and wait for a full day to elapse – topping up your snacks and armour is a good use of the time or you can just ‘play’ with your fellow GTA Online gamers to keep yourself amused…

What does hard mode consist of

Let’s start with the more challenging:

• There are more cameras
• There are more guards, outside the compound at least
• You have to solve one extra fingerprint scan, so four in El Rubio’s office, two if entering via the basement gates
• You only have one life, rather than the usual two

And now the benefits:

• You’ll receive an extra 10% value on your primary loot
• You can start the heist straight away and keep grinding for that extra cash to pay off your expensive Kosatka!
• The satisfaction of completing it in hard mode

Now if you’ve completed the heist a few times already, hard mode is not much more difficult. The main challenge is the extra guards, particularly if you’ve learned the existing guards’ positions and movements.

However, with a little practice and time, hard mode is a relatively easy way to save yourself time, generate extra cash and make the heist more interesting.