Having your skills maxed out can really give you a leg up against other players in Grand Theft Auto Online. Your character will be like a well-oiled machine, prepared to take on whatever is required, whether it's flying an airplane or staying under water for extended periods of time.

But how can you intentionally max these skill out so that you're ready for everything that comes your way? Read on to find out!

Contents:

How to Max Out Stamina Skill

Note: Before trying to increase this stat, consider first working on Shooting, Strength, and Lung Capacity. The reason for this is that you will likely gain some stamina as well in the process so you might as well not waste it.

No matter what you do, stamina will take awhile to max out. Some say riding a bike is a good way, since it can get you where you want to go while increasing stamina and is faster than running. However, it will still take about 5-10 minutes of bike riding for every stamina point increase.

As far as acquiring a bike, you can steal one or buy one online using the Internet on your Phone. Note: You can only do this if you have a garage with space to store it. You can get these for free if you have the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, or the cheapest one is Unit 124 Popular St, a 2-Car Garage that you can buy for GTA$ 25,000 on the Dynasty 8 Real Estate website from the Internet on your Phone.

Here’s how to buy a bike:

  1. From the browser menu click on the Travel and Transport tab.
  2. Scroll down to Pedal and Metal.
  3. The cheapest bike will cost you $800. That’ll get the job done.

Riding the bike is sort of a hybrid of running, swimming, and driving a car. You can break and reverse like in a car, but to make the bike go forward you’ll press the run button. Press it repeatedly to pedal faster, and potentially increase your stamina more quickly.

How to Max Out Shooting Skill

The best way to increase your Shooting skill is to shoot people in the head. However, you can’t really go around shooting people without someone calling the cops, which is kind of a headache to deal with. There’s an easy fix for this: Shoot people within a Mission where there are no cops. Here’s how:

*Note: You must be at least Rank 6 to do the mission described below.

  1. From the Pause Menu, go to Online, then select Jobs.
  2. Select Play Job, then Rockstar Created, then scroll down and select Missions.
  3. There are a few different Missions that don’t have cops, but the lowest rank one is Deal Breaker, which requires rank 6. Select that.
  4. Choose a starting gun that has lots of ammo and is easy to aim with as your goal will be to shoot people specifically in the head.
  5. It could be fun to invite friends to join you, working together to shoot as many NPCs as possible. There will be no shortage of targets.
  6. Once you’ve started the Mission, head to the pier at Vespucci beach. That’s the waterfront area on the West side of Los Santos. There’s an amusement at the end of the pier, you can’t miss it.
  7. Park right on the land side of the pier and begin shooting. At the sound of gun shots, all the people all along the pier will run away from you, toward the end of the pier where they’ll encounter a dead end. This creates a bottleneck effect where there will be lots of people running back and forth for you to pick off one by one.
  8. Remember to aim for the head if at all possible as this will increase your skill much faster.
  9. Once there aren’t as many people running back and forth at the end of the pier, put your gun away, run back to where you started, and start the whole thing over again. This will also increase your stamina, which is a plus.

Depending on how good of a shot you are, this could be fairly quick or take a very long time. If you’re a really bad shot, since these are of course moving targets, you might be better off just practicing in a shooting range. We tested it and in about an hour of shooting at the range you'll likely gain about 10 skill points.

Bonus: Collect the cash from your victims for a bit of pocket change. That should at least pay for your ammo.

How to Max Out Strength Skill

Punching is the main way to increase your strength. If you have a friend, you could take turns punching each other. Just make sure you've got some snacks so you don't accidentally kill each other.

However, if you’re on your own, you’ll have to settle for punching NPCs. The only problem? Just like for shooting, punching NPCs will catch the attention of the cops. We’re going to solve this the same way we solved it for shooting: Punch the NPCs within a Mission where there are no cops. Here’s how:

*Note: You must be at least Rank 6 to do the mission described below.

  1. From the Pause Menu, go to Online, then select Jobs.
  2. Select Play Job, then Rockstar Created, then scroll down and select Missions.
  3. There are a few different Missions that don’t have cops, but the lowest rank one is Deal Breaker, which requires rank 6. Select that.
  4. It doesn’t really matter what the settings are since you’re just going to run around punching people with your fist.
  5. It could be fun to invite friends to join you, working together to beat up as many NPCs as possible. There will be no shortage of targets.
  6. Once you’ve started the Mission, head to Vespucci beach. That’s the waterfront area on the West side of Los Santos.
  7. During the day this beach is filled with unsuspecting NPCs for you to wail on. When night falls stick to the walkway and you’ll still find plenty of passersby. The best part: Nobody’s armed and nobody can call the police (though some say they will).
  8. When you punch someone, everyone nearby will start to run. These means eventually you’ll be running up and down the beach, chasing a flock of NPCs. There will always be more that haven’t seen the violence yet, or you can of course chase down the runners. (Pro tip: When you’re running after someone and hit the attack button within a certain range your character will spring up to them to throw a bunch.) A great bonus to this is you will be increasing your stamina skill at the same time.
  9. After spending about 25 minutes this way you should gain at least 20 Strength points. This means it’ll take about 2 hours to max out the stat. Our recommendation is to break it up into four or 5 30-minute punching sprees when you have nothing else going on, or when you feel the need to release some aggression.

Bonus: As with shooting, you can collect the cash from your victims. Every little bit helps!

How to Max Out Stealth Skill

This is one of the easier stats to max out because you can do so in a relatively passive way. In fact, you can accomplish it in 4 simple steps:

  1. Go somewhere out in the wilderness where you won’t be near busy roads or areas with lots of people.
  2. Go into Stealth mode.
  3. Find a rubber band or tape or something to prop on your controller so that the joystick is stuck to one direction and your character is walking continuously on their own.
  4. Wait about an hour. When you come back, your character will be a ninja.

How to Max Out Flying Skill

The best way to start increasing your flying skill is to attend the San Andreas Flight School. This is because not only will it increase your flying skill by a lot, it will also give you a lot of cash and RP. Simply find it in the locations list of the map, set a waypoint, and head over.

The Flight School is made up of 10 lessons. When you pass a lesson you will be given a Bronze, Silver, or Gold medal depending on how well you did. If you can pass all 10 lessons with a Gold medal, your flying skill will reach maximum level.

That’s great and all, but some of those lessons are pretty tough for many people. So what if you can’t get a Gold medal on every level? We’ve got you covered.

The next best way to increase your flying skill is to fly a plane or helicopter. You will get extra points for doing tricks and flying under bridges. Also, the bigger the vehicle, the more points you will get, so if you can afford the $2,000,000 to get the Titan, go for it. Most likely you’re not quite that committed to increasing your flying skill. You don’t actually have to pay any money to own your very own flying vehicle. Just follow these steps:

  1. Pull out your cell phone and access the Internet.
  2. Go to the Elitas Travel website.
  3. If you have the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, scroll down until you see the Frogger helicopter. It’s free!
  4. If you don't have the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack, the cheapest aircraft you can buy is the Cuban 800, which is also on the Elitas Travel website and costs GTA$ 240,000.
  5. If you own a hangar, you’ll find your aircraft there. If you don't, the aircraft will be accessible as a Pegasus vehicle. To access it, take out your cell phone again and select Contacts.
  6. Scroll down your contacts list until you get to Pegasus.
  7. You’ll get the Pegasus Concierge and see an option to order your Helicopter or Airplane.

You could also, of course, steal a vehicle to practice flying with. Whatever you get and however you get it, all you have to do is fly around town in it for a while to increase your flying skill. As mentioned above, extra points are rewarded for successful tricks and flying under bridges. Taking off and landing successfully also gives extra points.

How to Max Out Driving Skill

This is probably the easiest skill to increase naturally, as you’ll be spending a lot of play time driving. You’ll increase this skill more quickly the more often you drive fast without hitting anything.

You can also increase your driving skill quite a bit by successfully pulling off Stunt Jumps. However, a successful Stunt Jump means not only making the car jump but also landing safely with all four wheels on the ground, which might be difficult for some people.

If you really want to devote some quality time just to increasing your driving skill, the best place to do that is in the Races. It will still take some time, especially if your character skills and your skills as a player are low. However, it can also be pretty chill, almost meditative. Here’s what we recommend:

  1. In the Start Menu, go to Online, then select Jobs.
  2. Select Play Job, Rockstar Created, Races.
  3. You can do any race you want, but Criminal Records is one of the easier options.
  4. When creating your race, select 99 laps, or less if you already have a fair amount of driving skill or don’t have time for a longer race. You can expect to take somewhere between 15-30 seconds per lap, so do the math to make your decision. You can always opt out once you max out your driving skill, although if you do this too often you will become a Bad Sport.
  5. Be sure that Traffic is turned off so you have less obstacles to run into.
  6. It will be easiest if you do a solo race, not inviting others, since this again makes less possibility for collisions.
  7. Choose a car with high Speed and high Traction. Acceleration and Braking aren’t really important for this.
  8. Now you’re ready to start. Put on your favorite tunes (or a podcast or whatever you’re into), light up, and get started.

You can expect to gain at least 30-40 driving skill points over the course of 99 laps even if you suck at driving. If you’re a great driver, meaning you can maintain a high speed without hitting anything most or all of the time, you may be able to max the skill out in much less laps than 99.

How to Max Out Lung Capacity Skill

This is the easiest stat to intentionally increase because you can do so without even actively playing the game. All you need is a scuba suit. (Note: If you have any intention of purchasing the Kosakta submarine in the somewhat near future, don't waste your money on a scuba suit. You'll get one free with your purchase!)

Scuba suits are sold at most clothing stores. Simply browse the Outfits: Scuba. The cheapest one is $155,500. Once you’re wearing it, just enter a body of water and press RB (on Xbox) to dive under. You won’t be able to leave it completely unattended as you will gradually float back to the top and/or get kicked out of the session. Just keep an eye on it and dive back down to the bottom every now and then.

It’ll take a little under an hour of sitting at the bottom of a lake, river, or ocean to max out this skill. However, if you’re in the mood for exploring, you can increase stamina at the same time by swimming around under water. There are some quite nice corals, seaweeds, and even fish to explore in the open ocean. You could even try finding the 10 daily hidden caches!

And there you have it. Follow the above instructions and put in some time and you'll be skilled to the max!