San Andreas Tricky Missions Guide - David Damerell

This document is based on a 100% completion run, with suggestions for
completing missions I personally found difficult, or that other FAQs
identify as difficult, along with some observations made along the
way.  I'm a PC user, so it doesn't reflect the extra difficulty of
aiming on console ports, and suggests some PC-only tools - sorry. The
order of it is roughly based on ChiTownBluesFan's 100% walkthrough on
Gamefaqs, which is the most useful walkthrough I've found.

Let's start with those tools. I'm listing suitable googling terms for
each one.  

I use the "San Andreas Camera Hack", which adds a speedometer, a
damage meter, and suppresses the motion blur and FOV changes at high
speed. It also adds some fixed-to-car cameras which might help with
the horrible chase camera, but in practice on any rough road I find
they're a one-way trip to motion sickness junction.  The game's
built-in bumper camera is OK for those moments where you really
honestly want to see where you're going. These days there are CLEO
mods to do the same thing; CLEO is a general format for modding SA in
a way that means savegames work whether or not a CLEO mod is turned
on.

For those collectibles - horseshoes, oysters, gang tags, and photos -
I use "Pillager", by Demarest. This replaces the main.scm data file
with one that adds an option, whenever you load a saved game, to have
all the collectibles of one type marked on the map. The bad news is,
Pillager crashes the game in some missions; the good news is, it also
is compatible with savegames from the unmodded game - so you should
use it only when chasing collectibles, and put the unmodded main.scm
back when you're not. There are versions for v1 and v2 of SA - make
sure you use the right one, or this won't work - the easiest way to
check is to start a new unmodded game, save once, put Pillager in, and
see if you can load that savegame.

Less alarming is "SAMA", which analyses a savegame and shows which
actions needed for 100% completion haven't been done - or a map of
uncollected collectibles, or undone unique jumps. It's a big help with
the unique jumps, showing takeoff and landing areas - far more than
the maps on Gamefaqs or the text guides referring to the maps in the
Brady guide you didn't buy because, after all, Gamefaqs exists. With
SAMA alone you could stop keeping track of what you need to do for
100%, knowing that you aren't going to get to 99% with no idea of
what's left to do.

Also, we're going for 100% completion, not much more. If something
optional is fun or useful, it's in here. If not, I'd suggest
forgetting it. That rules out three things:
1) All girlfriends to 100%. Heck, any girlfriend to 100%. It's pure
grind. Arguably, only Katie and Barbara give a bonus worth having at
all; but if you're willing to fly a helicopter over to Helena's house
at 1400 every day for two weeks, you might as well be playing World of
Walking.
2) All golds on any vehicle school except the Flying School. The
latter gets you ready access to the Hunter, which is useful; the
others just mean an endless dose of keyboard-snapping frustration.
3) Trying to max out all weapon skills, swimming skill, etc. If you're
using a weapon, the skill will come naturally. If not, why try to
grind out the skill?

Armour and weapons come first. There's a body armour in the storm
drain by the first safehouse, and a micro-SMG; and your first task in
each city should be to collect all the tags/photos/horseshoes to get
weapons at home. It's obvious, but armouring up before any combat
mission should be part of the routine.

http://en.wikigta.org/ has a complete set of maps of things like body
armour, health, weapons, etc. Use them; they're generated from the
game itself, so are essentially always right.

Now, onto the walkthrough proper.


Courier: I wouldn't normally say anything about this, but it's early
enough. More haste, less speed; sidle right up to the corona in the
side view and throw from there, rather than risk having to circle
around and pick up the package again.


Gang Tags: I second the recommendation of using bicycles where
possible. It lets you clear up the BMX challenge early, and makes the
Chiliad Challenge easier, and you won't often be using bicycles
voluntarily later to get the skill up.


BMX Challenge: The corona on the half-pipe by itself is a royal pain;
I ride up to it as fast as I can at an angle, hoping the bike lands on
the platform.


Paramedic: If you've been playing since GTA III, you might have a
sneaky suspicion that the ambulance missions got a lot easier in Vice
City, maybe because so many of the patients are on the nice flat
beach.

It's not that. The centre of mass of the ambulance in GTA III is 40cm
higher than the Vice City ambulance - and the San Andreas ambulance.
This means that from Vice City onwards it's a lot less prone to roll -
and more likely to land back on its wheels if it does; and it's
rolling the ambulance that generally lost you Paramedic in GTA III.

That said, the routine's much the same; keep the siren on to keep
traffic out the way (and remember that police cars don't respect it),
know where the police bribes are just in case, turn with the handbrake
coming almost to a stop (the slightest centrifugal force on the GTA
III ambulance and over it went onto its side), remember that most of
the time you have plenty to spare on the clock and don't need to drive
like a complete lunatic, and be grateful for the use of the map.

Some walkthroughs prefer you to do this in the country. I'm not so
sure; there are few bribes, and you end up slugging up dirt roads; and
because there are few patient spawn spots nearby, it gets pretty
dull. You want to do this early for the 150% max health.

One thing to look out for; in III and Vice City, the instant a
patient's hand touched the door handle, they were definitely going to
make it into the ambulance, and you could hit the gas with
impunity. That's not true in San Andreas; wait a moment for them
actually to start to get in before moving off.


Vigilante without the Hunter (or Rhino): The 150% max armour would be
nice, but this must be as close to impossible as anything gets. If I
were going to do it, I'd maintain a 2-star wanted level so there were
always replacement police vehicles nearby - and stuff all my garages
with replacements - and go for a police bribe when I got to 3
stars. But you can't very well do it on a motorbike, because some of
the criminal cars are packed with men with guns and they can hit you
not just your vehicle, shredding your health; but in anything else
you have the usual driveby problem of driving at high speeds without
actually seeing where you're going.

I did give it a try in the country, and got up to level 8 or so, and
to be fair it was quite fun. Remember fun? It's what GTA games were
before you started being Niko Bellic's social secretary.


8-Track: This is a tricky one because you have to drive a car which
fishtails madly any time you accelerate and corner... around a track
entirely made of corners. I know it's not entirely normal procedure in
GTA games, but you may have to release the accelerator sometimes.

Take it easy off the start; there's generally a massive tangle coming.
Your first few tries will just be learning the course, the flow of the
corners and where you can get the power on; then just aim to pick off
your opponents one at a time, avoiding collisions.


Gym: You want to do this early too for the obvious benefits of high
stamina.


High Stakes, Low Rider: As other walkthroughs note, you don't have to
do it in a Blade; other lowriders are not quite as cowlike in their
handling. I favour the Voodoo.


Burglar: Not many guides mention this, but netting a total $10,000 in
Burglary missions gives you infinite sprint. Because Burglary missions
pay an amount proportional to the square of the number of items
stolen, a full night's burgling is worth much more than a quick stab
at it; so be in the black Boxville at 20:00, and don't stop until an
hour or so before daylight. Also, if you get out of a house before the
ten-second cop timer is exhausted, you can go right back in and the
inhabitants are asleep again - so don't sneak out with objects from
the first room in a house, just run out the door, which you can easily
do in 10 seconds.

Infinite sprint is incredibly useful for obvious reasons, and in
particular makes the Beat The Cock triathlons easy. I'm told you can
even do Burglary before the plot opens it up - if so, and it doesn't
seem too cheap, it might be the first mission you do. Certainly, be
sure to take care of it before too long.


Robbing Uncle Sam: This is a nuisance because Ryder's idea of fun is
standing in front of a lot of angry men with guns and seeing if
anything bad happens. Rather than struggling desperately to get all
the crates loaded before he dies, stop any time he's taking damage and
mow down his opponents yourself.


OG Loc: Much of the traffic you encounter during the mission seems to
be scripted, so it's a lot easier on a second play. Also, you don't
have to stay that close to the victim, and it's a lot easier to follow
his turns if you hang back a little. The end of the chase is scripted,
so there's no point in closing the range and trying to mow the victim
down halfway there. A lot of vehicle chases are like that; if on a
first play you can't get ahead of the target no matter what you try,
it's probably impossible - so ease off a bit and concentrate on
staying on the road.


Wrong Side of the Tracks: As other walkthroughs note, experiment with
different positions relative to the train - riding on the right-hand
rail, or even pulling ahead of the targets.


Just Business: You can't do more to the car transporter than shoot out
its tyres, so don't try.


House Party: It's easy to fail this one when Sweet runs into your line
of fire to see if the back of his head is bulletproof. It's not. Try
and stay aware of where he is.


Chiliad Challenge: These seem like complete stinkers, but the answer
is largely just to learn the routes and not throw the bicycle off the
mountain. The other competitors aren't that good at staying on the
track, and if you are, you make up a lot of time. 


Oysters: Why bother until you can get all 50? Well, the answer is that
a later mission requires a modicum of swimming skill, and you aren't
going to get it except by collecting oysters, but equally well you're
hardly going to swim round to them all, so leave it until you have
access to San Fierro and its large collection of boats.


Trucker, Mission 3: Generally when I arrive at the destination I can't
get in the first time because of the police, so I make a lap of the
block.  Something in the way the police spawn seems to mean that
they're all behind me after that, and I can charge up to the delivery
point.


Against All Odds: Wasting satchel charges seems to increase the wanted
level, leading to the problem where you emerge into a circle of
policemen and can't jack anything Pay'n'Sprayable because every
civilian car is scared off by gunfire. Walk right up to whatever you
want to put a charge on before throwing it, so you don't use any
extras.


Are You Going To San Fierro?: Start burning weed at the other end of
the field to The Truth. It's too easy to burn him down with the
flamethrower otherwise.


NRG-500 Challenge: If there's a harder mission in the game, I don't
know what it is. Bear in mind that after a failed attempt, if you
didn't ditch the bike in the sea, you can take it right back to the
starting spot, dismount, remount, and try again. Alternatively, having
one attempt at the Challenge then going and doing unique jumps with
the bike keeps the frustration down; the bike for the Challenge has
extra damage capacity, so is useful for unique jumps.

Don't try to get clever. While I was failing this over and over again,
I'd keep getting short on time and trying to sweep directly from a
failed stab at a corona on one side of the dock up to the other side.
It doesn't help. A considered move that actually hits the target can
afford to take ten seconds.

Like most people, I start by going directly forwards, turning right
and going across the dock gates, then dropping down into the dock and
collecting all the easy ones there, finishing with the one halfway up
the wall at the gate end of the dock. I then ride the length of the
dock to get the one on the far end, come down the ramp collecting the
two there, and the annoyance begins - but at least with plenty of time
in hand.

I find the trick is to use the minimap. I reverse up one side of the
dock until the bike is at about 45 degrees to the vertical, then speed
forward and up the other, but I watch my position arrow and the marker
on the minimap, trying to send the arrow straight up the centre
marker.  If I get that right I come up out of the dock directly under
the target.


Dating Katie: I agree with the other guides that suggest getting her
now. Her bonus - retain weapons when wasted - is extremely useful, and
if you have worked up plenty of muscle, she likes you already.

The others will have to wait until you have 50 oysters.


Photo Ops: You can get every single photo without nipping into the
desert or Las Venturas (and getting the wanted level), usually from a
boat.  You can avoid the naval base as well, but in practice you
won't.  Never mind - now you're dating Katie, you can die with
impunity.


Blood Bowl: It's pretty much a crapshoot. Going into the centre is a
nightmare, so zoom around the edge at speed and hope to luck out with
marker locations.


T-Bone Mendez: The game really wants you to grab the packages and not
just, say, murder the motorcyclists or anything easy and practical
like that.


Supply Lines: I found aircraft/helicopter missions extremely
frustrating at first, trying to arrange the keyboard controls so they
made some kind of sense for both driving and flying. But... I have a
perfectly good joystick! That can be set up just for flying vehicles,
handling pitch and roll; then if WASD is configured for movement
(although I use arrow keys in-car) and QE to look around (on foot, I
use QE for next/previous weapon), my left hand controls throttle and
yaw, and as long as I don't forget if I'm in a plane or a chopper,
it's all good, especially if I stick to bumper-cam in flying vehicles,
which gives a much better sense of the direction the vehicle is
actually facing.

... however, you can't use bumper-cam on the RC Baron, and the
handling is twitchy as anything, so you're still in for a frustrating
day.


New Model Army: This is easy if you don't remove any obstacle that
will let Zero get in range of a tank, instead blowing up the tanks
earlier than the game demands it.


Mountain Cloud Boys: Woozie loves to rush into the alleyway and get
shot, so move quickly, sacrificing some of your own health;
especially, gun down the guy with the sniper rifle once you turn the
corner.


The Da Nang Thang: Snakehead throws you a katana, but there's no rule
says you have to use it. I switched to the shotgun, because it does
knockback/knockdown, making it impossible for him to close the range
with his shiv. I also didn't mess around doing this as a stealth
mission once I had a gun.


Beat The Cock Triathlons: With infinite sprint from burglary, these
become quite easy; you'll be dropped a bit on the swimming stage, but
can easily make it up when cycling; the main difficulty I found was my
button-mashing finger got tired in the second (longer) event, and my
speed dropped off.


Driving School: Alley Oop seems to imply you're to make use of air
control for the car, and if you're like me, you said "we have air
control in cars?" - and nothing much I do seems to have much effect.
Fortunately, we're not going for gold, and just zooming up the ramp
repeatedly will eventually net a bronze.


Oysters again: Once you have access to the desert, note that there's a
Sea Sparrow helicopter parked south of the dam - the ideal tool for
collecting the rest of the oysters. You want to do this as soon as
possible, then date Barbara so you don't lose weapons while Busted.


Bike School: The one thing I found less than obvious was how you do a
stoppie, since normally it's a totally useless manuever. You've got to
be in the stoppie before you hit the coned section, and to do it,
press and hold J (pitch down), release the throttle, and tap the
brake. Release J to drop out of it in the destination area.


Interdiction: Don't blow up a helicopter immediately over yourself, or
it will explode on you, killing you. Don't ask how I figured that one
out.


Learning to Fly: You do want all-gold here so you can get the Hunter
and clear up Vigilante. As ever, flying vehicles are best controlled
from bumper-cam. The difficult ones are:

Circle Airstrip and Land: The knack here is to remember that putting
the gear down (presumably) also engages the flaps, and causes the
aircraft's speed to drop rapidly, so you can run through all the
coronas on full throttle to squeeze in under the 80-second limit.  Put
the gear down as soon as you pass the last corona, and dive to lose
some height; then straighten the aircraft out roughly, get the wings
level (preferably without too much weaving from side to side), use the
rudder to align the aircraft more precisely, and use the brake key to
get the aircraft down (remember that when landing a plane, the
throttle is the best way to control altitude), keeping the nose
pointing up as you land; then use the throttle, brake, and rudder to
taxi into the red circle. This is easier than trying to start braking
at exactly the right point to finish in the red circle.

Destroy Targets: If you're going to use rockets, bear in mind each
lorry can take quite a few. The key with rocket attacks, as on
Vigilante, is quantity. Frankly, I found it easier to zoom straight up
to the lorries and use the gun, since you start lined up with them.

Parachute Onto Target: The time limit is such that you should open the
chute later than it suggests, around the 24 second mark. I then held
Down until the target just appeared in view, and released Down, which
landed me almost precisely in the centre of the target.


Vigilante: You can easily do many more than 12 levels in the Hunter,
so if you need some money for buying properties, collect it here. The
earnings become astronomical.


N.O.E.: The advice given in the walkthrough - head North and fly
around the map over the sea - is spot on. Done like that, it's easy.
The best approach to the airfield when trying to stay low, I find, is
from the east; Las Venturas is pretty flat there.


Black Project: I can only assume the suggestion that you use stealth
rather than murdering everyone with the sniper rifle is made entirely
humorously.


Import/Export: You don't have to mess around with the crane. Any
reasonably sized vehicle can be driven right up the ramp onto the
ship.


Unique Jumps: There's a jump Eastwards out of the Emerald Isle car
park which is hard to do on an NRG-500 - the bike is so fast, it
collects itself on the top of the window you're going out. It's easier
with a sports car; low to the ground, and fast enough.

The one on the runway in Los Santos doesn't have a special trick to
it; it's just hard. You have to be going at absolutely top speed and
hit the ramp dead straight on.


Horseshoes: Get these once you've got the jetpack - it's the right
tool for the job.


Imports and Exports: suppose you don't want to check a vehicle
locations FAQ, but look for them yourself. It's worth noting that the
Patriot does not spawn randomly (which is odd because they're all over
the place in Liberty City), so don't go looking for one out on the
road.


Dirt Track: If you have serious trouble doing this fairly, there's no
prohibition on murdering the other racers, although they have very
high hitpoints. There's a point on the circuit where most riders fall
off; wait there on lap 1, and as the pack comes by you, dismount and
mow them down with a big gun - the minigun is ideal.

However, that's not really necessary. You don't need to take a
specific line at the point riders fall off; just use the pitch
controls to land the motorcycle relatively level with the track, and
you won't come off; the other riders lose so much time there, if you
can just stay on the bike for all six laps, it's easy.


Freight Train: This isn't that hard, but you can squeeze out a few
more seconds by starting to accelerate the instant you're told "cargo
delivered".


Trucking, Mission 8: I didn't try going up the railway tracks, but
stuck to the road. This is undeniably hard, but on my third attempt, I
got a rig with the little container on the back which often seems to
be used for the fragile loads. This had a much better power/weight
ratio, accelerating easily up to 88mph, which made the mission
relatively straightforward.

It gets easier once you're in LV and have only little police cars to
deal with, rather than the country police SUVs trying to get stuck
under the trailer and detach it, but you should expect to have to
reattach the trailer at least once. Don't despair; there's no time
limit, so just reverse into it from directly ahead and set off
again.  Without a trailer attached, the cab is so powerful that police
vehicles can do little to stop you maneuvering it where you like.


Race Tournaments: It's not worth writing about every single one, but
most of the difficult ones go in a similar way; there's an enormous
tangle at the start, and if you can avoid getting caught up in that,
you just need to know the course and especially the places it's easy
to crash the vehicle, and you'll finish first. The sports car races
are worst; they're fragile, and your opponents don't seem to have as
much trouble keeping them intact as you do.

Resist the urge to look behind you to see where your opponents are.
The game loves to change the traffic in front of you when you can't
see it. The one exception is Into The Country; you have only three
opponents, and they often get turned over in the initial stages; if
all three of them lose it, you can drive round the rest slowly and
carefully - well, slightly less like a lunatic kamikaze than you
usually would, anyway.


Aircraft Courses at LV Airport: Well, thank God there's no time limit
on these, because it's very likely you'll end up going off-course; but
as long as you don't actually prang it, you can pick off the
checkpoints as slowly as you like... unless the fog rolls in, in which
case you have to gain altitude and wait it out.

I found the trickiest of these was Barnstormer; the aircraft is very
twitchy, and you can be at it for over ten minutes.


Free Fall: I found this intensely annoying, because you are put in a
stern chase with an aircraft travelling almost as fast as the one you
are in, and you aren't even allowed to take a faster plane at the
airport.  I eventually passed it by repeated attempts, just being sure
to make my 180 degree turn as quickly and smoothly as possible as I
passed the target aircraft, to tuck in closely behind it; have a bit
of altitude over the target as you pass it, so you can dive down on it
and enjoy extra speed.


Cut-Throat Business: Like too many of the chase missions, you're not
allowed to catch the target here, or shoot them, or anything you might
naturally be inclined to do. In particular, Loc speeds up every time
you get near him; so take it easy and just keep a moderate distance
away.


Grove 4 Life / Gang Wars: Not much to say about these, save that
Sweet's enthusiasm for running in front of your gunsights remains
undiminished. Defenders spawn at the edge of a zone, so try to fight
in the centre; and the sniper rifle is the weapon to use - long range,
high accuracy, and you don't have to mess about trying to get
headshots. If you've been dating Katie and Barbara for a while, you
should have a bushel of ammo for it, but worst-case you can always go
to Ammunation and buy as much as you need. Failing that, the M4 will
do, especially if you have plenty of space and can back up while in
the aiming stance. 

When provoking a gang war, what matters is the territory you
personally are standing in; you can use this to help with some tiny
territories by picking victims in a larger adjacent territory.


End of the Line:

Not much to say about this, except that I did not find the armour
pickups regenerated, and while only a fool fights in a burning house,
this house is full of fools - so try not to pick them all up on the
way up the stairs just to top off armour, because you'll want one on
the way down.

The chase is the usual exercise; you can't actually catch the target,
so don't push too hard trying. Just stay with them.