yeah what’re the beat points for silent and sneaky

This chapter was a labour of love, heists are hard. Big thanks to u/eruwenn for helping tidy up this bag of snakes.
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“Ranjaz K’Lua, you thieving scumbag!” the Kah’Ree in the purple suit exclaimed loudly as he spotted them across the busy room. “As I live and skral, I never thought you would have the Jolos show your face here again!”
Two J’Rami in suits detached themselves from the lobby wall, walking towards the Kittran and his friends. “Alfor, my old friend!” Ranjaz smiled broadly. “No need for the welcoming party, I’ve got your credits” —he gestured to Cygna— “and a sweetener, for all the trouble I caused last time.”
Alfor paused, lecherous eyes assessing the Fae’Dan. “You know I have a thing for purple.” He chuckled at his own joke and waved the guards back to their posts. “How about we have a drink, and discuss your forgiveness.” He pointed to Thor and Eruwenn. “Brought your own security, or are these Gal. Fed. goons? Everyone knows about your probation.”
The Kittran gave a broad grin. “I got a Tulseria-damned pardon, a new ship and a very lucrative opportunity.”
The Kah’Ree smiled. “How’d a thieving cat like you get a pardon?” He gave Ranjaz an appraising look up and down. “Oh? Now, let me guess, you need something from me and my brother?”
Ranjaz fired his finger guns. “You were always the smart one Alfor, that’s why you run the casino floor.” The Kittran stepped in close. “The item, do you still have it?”
Alfor tilted his head back and away from Ranjaz. “Your little guarantee?” He looked back down at Ranjaz. “We have it somewhere safe. Had some unusual people come by after you got caught. Asked a lot of questions. Made a lot of threats.” His face contorted in anger. “We got audited thanks to you.”
The Kittran smiled. “If only they knew you better, they could have simply paid you for the information.”
“We give nothing for free.” The Kah’Ree gave a sinister smile. “House rule.”
Ranjaz walked forward to put his his arm on Alfor’s back. “Let’s go see your brother. Have a few drinks, maybe gamble a little, and discuss our future riches.”

Ripley stood in the shadows of the staff shuttle bay, watching as the numerous employees of assorted races came and went. Loud laughter caught her attention, and a very strangely dressed Niham broke away from a small group and walked towards her. Ripley tried to maintain her low profile as the scantily clad female strutted towards her in long black boots with pointed heels that clacked loudly with every step.
Deliberately avoiding eye contact the Awakened tried to will herself into the wall but it was too late and a voice called out to her. “Hey Darling! You must be the one I’m looking for.”
Ripley shook her head. The Kittran had said the contact was an Ashi pirate captain, a master gambler and expert in procuring the unusual. “I don’t-”
“Listen cutie,” she interrupted, “you’re the one lurking in dark corners drawing attention to yourself. I’ve got your security card. You tell that fluffy little stud he owes me. And more than a bottle of Fae’Dan wine and a good time, if you know what I mean.” She held up the card between her fingers, just a little out of Ripley’s reach.
The Awakened considered the phrase ‘fluffy little stud’ and decided that, despite her hopes, this was probably her contact. “You’re Captain Whiplash?”
The Ashi laughed genuinely, the jiggling of tightly squeezed breasts bursting at shiny black restraints making Ripley nervous. “Oh, Darling! Only my little pets call me that! You may call me Sho’Na.”
Ripley was momentarily confused. “So, you aren’t a pirate captain?”
“I’m anything they pay me to be.” She smiled at the silver-haired woman's naivety. “You really are new to this.”
Ripley, caught off guard, simply nodded, then replied, “I’m a quick learner.”
“Good for you, Darling.” Sho’Na handed over the card. “Just make sure you get paid up front, and don’t use your real name with clients. Ruins the mystique.”
Ripley was unsure of what was being said. Turning the card over in her hands she saw that the holo-image on the front was of a male Arkellian. “This isn’t me?”
“Honey, I was given half a cycle to get you a level three security card. Just be glad it’s a biped.” Sho’Na looked Ripley up and down. “Our mutual acquaintance told me you were some sort of master of disguise who could even trick Selva Blaster.”
Ripley paused, then smiled. Her appearance had become such an integral part of her identity she had forgotten that it was entirely optional. “It won’t be a problem.” She looked at the card again. “Unless the owner comes looking for it.”
Sho’Na gave another bosom-trembling laugh that threatened to spill out at any moment. “Oh, don’t worry, he’s tied up at the moment.”
The Awakened considered the risk. “Hmmm, but for how long?”
The few strips of shiny black material that comprised Sho’Na’s revealing outfit strained under her amusement. “Don’t you worry, Darling. He paid for the whole night.”

Eruwenn had reassessed her opinion of Ranjaz many times since meeting him. The criminal. The loyal friend. The lazy trouble-maker. All were true, but now she was seeing something new. He sat opposite Toran, the brother of Alfor, in a game of dalcho she wished she could have taken part in, but was equally glad she did not.
At first she had thought the Kittran was outmatched, a few reckless mistakes costing him dearly as the Kah’Ree deftly selected his tiles. Toran was clearly a seasoned gambler, using a blend of the Remee Le’Bow Gambit and the Kowals’Kee Analysis she hadn’t seen before. It seemed to be dismantling Ranjaz’s tiles before he could even prepare his cards. A few fortunate dice rolls and he had taken a strong lead from the outset. The Kittran appeared desperate, playing any tile available to try and slow the defeat.
It had all been a ruse, she saw it; Ranjaz had saved his best tiles and carefully thrown hands to manipulate the cards. In just a few rounds he would be able to dominate the board and raise the stakes, recouping his losses and changing the course of the game entirely. She had encountered few players who could manipulate the game so deftly, using memory and layers of strategy to corner their opponent. It was magnificent.
Eruwenn couldn’t tear her eyes from the board as she stood beside Thor. The Awakened had shown no interest in the game, studiously watching the opposite door as Toran’s staff came in and out. When a waiter entered and began preparing drinks at the small private bar in the executive gambling room, Thor coughed. It was a strange thing for an Awakened to do, and Eruwenn finally looked up from the table. “Are you ok?”
Thor nodded. By the time he had looked towards her, she had returned her attention completely to the game. “You don’t seem concerned about your friend?” he asked.
The Anatidae watched as Ranjaz used a blind double feint, and the sheer audacity of such a move made her swallow hard. She didn’t look back to Thor, but mumbled a response. “I’m very confident in her abilities.”
The waiter was methodically placing drinks by each of the players, but when they stood behind Ranjaz the Kittran surged to his feet, shouting, “Hey! No cheating Toran! Getting your waiter to look over my shoulder? That’s a dirty move I’d expect from your brother!”
Thor had reacted faster than Eruwenn, pinning the arms of the Arkellian waiter in a vice-like bear hug. Toran slowly stood. He was big, heavily muscled, and the veins on his neck bulged as his anger rose. “Don’t accuse me in my own place.” He cracked his knuckles and glowered down at Ranjaz. “I run a straight game.”
Fearlessly the Kittran walked right up to the Kah’Ree and stared up into his face from waist height. “Don’t try and intimidate me, you son of a Vogel.” Ranjaz puffed out his chest and began pushing the burly casino owner. “Nobody cheats me!”
The blow caught Ranjaz across the cheek and sent him sprawling across the room. Eruwenn winced at the impact, but maintained her composure. Toran laughed. “Watch your tongue or I’ll add it to my collection.” He walked round the table and kicked Ranjaz in the stomach, glaring at Thor and Eruwenn, daring them to act. “Know your place trash. You’re at this table because you put credits up front. You are a dishonest thief, begging for scraps, and cosying up to me any my brother to get your little trinket back.” He returned to his seat. “Why would I need to cheat against the likes of you?”
Ranjaz stood, brushing himself off. “Fine, fine.” He waved a hand and Thor dropped the Arkellian. Ranjaz tapped him on the chest. “My mistake.” He sat down and picked up his cards once more. “You’re right Toran, you run a clean game. I’m just a sore loser.” He shuffled the order of the tiles that were still face down on the table. “To show my sincerity, how about we double the buy for the rest of the game?”
Toran snorted. “Double?” He looked at the Kittran, scrutinising his opponent. The game was already over; he had control of the board and his tiles occupied the three prime positions. Was the thief trying to buy his favour, he wondered? How much was the trinket he wanted truly worth? He decided it was worth testing. “Triple, and I’ll forget you dared touch me.”
The Kittran swallowed hard, his ears flat to his head. Toran momentarily worried he’d pushed for too much but a decision seemed to be reached. “Fine. Triple.” The look of defeat was delicious to the Kah’Ree.

Cygna had done her part and lured Alfor to a private room away from his security. She had danced, skipped and side-stepped his groping hands so far, maintaining a playfulness that ensured he complied. This sort of thing was not new to her; she had spent time undercover in the past. Fortunately, there had been little call for it since she had joined forces with Eruwenn.
Alfor’s eyes scanned her body once more. “The Kittran has very good taste.” He licked his lips, a small amount of drool escaping and running down his chin. He wiped it on his sleeve. “Now, I brought you somewhere quiet. How about you show me how sweet you can be?”
The Fae’Dan smiled coyly and continued her dancing just out of reach, glancing to the doorway where Alfor’s two guards stood watching her. “With an audience?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly.
With a sly grin he waved the guards out of the room. “Now come here and let me satisfy you like only a Kah’Ree can.” His eyes wandered over her body once more.
Cygna smiled, her own eyes moving from the Kah’Ree’s hands to his shoulders, then up towards his neck. An interesting fact about the Kah’Ree was the thick blood vessels on the side of their neck. They often bulged when a Kah’Ree was angry or excited, like Alfor’s were as he leered at her. She danced closer. Another interesting fact was that their brains were not as efficient as those of other species, hence the requirement for additional blood flow; more oxygen per limited thought.
He leaned forward, his eyes locked to her swaying hips. Cygna turned slowly, and his head tilted to appreciate her assets. The third, lesser known, fact about the Kah’Ree was that an interruption to the blood flow while they were in this excited state caused them to lose consciousness rapidly as their brain burned through the available oxygen. “My eyes are up here.” She smiled as he looked up at her with his head still tilted.
He sneered. “Who ca-”
The Fae’Dan struck the side of his neck with the edge of her hand, targeting the throbbing blood vessel with a powerful blow. The interruption to his brain's oxygen supply worked perfectly and he fell face forward onto the ground at her feet. She let out a sigh of relief and looked down at his unconscious body. “Thank you, that was particularly satisfying.”
She walked over to the door and peeked out, finding the guards standing either side. “He said to order us some drinks.” One of the guards nodded and immediately put his hand to his lapel communicator.
Back inside the room, Cygna used her foot to roll Alfor to his back and began searching his pockets. She came up empty. Her eyes caught a glimmer from his collar and she found a heavy gold chain, at the end of which was his security key. She removed it just as a knock came at the door. A deep voice from the other side called out. “Your drinks, boss.”
The Fae’Dan quickly messed up her hair. Using the back of her hand she smeared her lipstick sideways, and then pulled the strap of her dress down off her shoulder. She opened the door and, to her surprise, was faced with an Arkellian waiter. The bodyguards noted her dishevelled appearance and shared a smirk, and she said, “Oh, I wasn’t expec-”
The waiter pushed the trolley into the room. “Don’t keep the boss waiting, lady.” Before Cygna could reply they were inside and the door closed. “Relax, it’s me.”
Ripley’s voice sounded bizarre coming from the male Arkellian form, and Cygna’s eyes went wide in shock. Her sharp mind quickly adjusted to this new information. Of course the Awakened could change their physical appearance; she had just never seen it. They all seemed quite attached to their chosen human forms. “Neat trick.” She held out Alfor’s key. “Did you get the other one?”
Ripley nodded. “The Kittran played his part well. I didn’t see him take it, and didn’t feel it when he placed it in my pocket. Now that was a neat trick.”
The Fae’Dan smiled. “I think I’ll pass on that dalcho game.”
The Arkellian Ripley smiled. “Probably wise.” Turning, she slipped the key into her pocket and headed back out of the door.

Ripley entered the elevator to the owner's private offices on the top floor. Thanks to the distractions downstairs, the two large desks in the centre of the room were empty. She walked straight past them to the large leokas painting on the wall and swung it forward. Behind it was a Fae’Dan safe; she took out the two keys and a small homemade device the Kittran had given her.
Attaching the device to the bio-lock and standing before the safe, she elongated her arms to reach both key positions at once. There was more than one reason she was the one chosen for this task. The device beeped twice and small lights above each lock lit up. She simultaneously turned both keys, and there was a satisfying clunk.
She raised an eyebrow. The device had worked. The heavy safe door swung open and she began her search. Ranjaz had been very specific: while there was one item she had to get, she was to grab as much as possible to obscure their true target.
Quickly grabbing as much as she could she retrieved the keys and ran back across the room towards the elevator.

Cygna hauled Alfor back onto the seat, putting him in a more natural position and messing up his hair. She looked away as she began unbuttoning his clothes, pulling his trousers around his ankles and opening his shirt up to bare his chest. From a secret pocket inside her dress she pulled out a lace thong, setting it on his head like a bandana. She also had a small box which she opened, inside of which was a replica mouth with lipstick that matched her own.
Cygna carefully applied kiss marks all over his exposed skin before popping the fake lips back into the secret pocket. She took the Fae’Dan wine and partially filled two glasses, making sure to take a long drink from one and leave more lipstick marks. The rest of the wine was poured into the ice bucket.
She heard the sound of voices outside the door. The guards were arguing with someone, refusing them entry, but when the name Toran was mentioned it was Ripley who entered, still in uniform but now looking much like her usual self. She smirked at the Kah’Ree in his derobed state. “I can see you had fun.”
The Fae’Dan chuckled. “That’s the idea.” She looked at the Awakened in her true form. “You look… better.”
Ripley cocked her head. “It would be strange if the waiter came back to deliver a message.” She tossed the necklace key to Cygna, who replaced it on Alfor’s neck.
Reclining on the sofa and picking up her glass, Cygna took another long drink. “Get the other one back to Ranjaz quickly. This one won’t be napping much longer.”
The Awakened gave an almost Ranjaz-like grin. “You could always hit him again.” Before the Fae’Dan could reply she had ducked back out of the door. She caught the eye of one of the bodyguards and gave a head tilt back towards the room. “The boss is really enjoying himself!”
As the suited pair chuckled, the larger of the two got a message in his ear piece. “Hey, silver hair.” He grunted. “Boss has an important guest. Meet them in the foyer and bring them to the dalcho room.”
Ripley was relieved – she needed a reason to get into that room. “On my way.”

Toran was seething as he watched as the Kittran flipped his final tile. Why would he have waited so long to play the Wings of Tulseria tile? His stomach sank, and he couldn’t hold back his anger any longer. “Damn you!”
Ranjaz gave a full-fanged grin. “Looks like my luck turned at just the right moment.”
“Luck!” Toran’s tile snapped between his fingers. Why had he let the damned cat goad him into constantly increasing their bet? The cycle had started with him owing the brothers a million credits plus interest, and now the infuritating Kittran had won nearly forty times that. “Nobody is that lucky.”
“Woah!” Ranjaz held up his hands. “I would never cheat, well... certainly not a second time. After you caught me, I’d be a fool to try.”
“Hmm.” Toran looked at the two behind the Kittran. The big one would be a problem, but the Anatidae looked to be nothing special. “How about I give you back your little trinket and we call it even?”
“My trinket?” Ranjaz shook his head. “I had to convince you it was worth the million I owed. Why would you think I’d trade it for thirty eight million credits? I’ll pay what I owe, take my trinket and my winnings and leave.”
Toran folded his arms and looked across the dalcho board at Ranjaz. “And why would I let you do that?” The atmosphere in the room changed as the two security guards changed their stance. “Transfer the credits back to the house.”
Ranjaz dropped the grin, replacing it with a defiant glare. “What happened to you running a straight game?”
“The game was straight. You won, didn’t you?” He leaned forward, his eyes cold and hard. “You’re just in no position to collect.”
The Kittran was about to argue when the door behind Toran opened. He looked up as Ripley entered, and his eyes widened in shock. She wasn’t alone. “Toran, you bastard! You sold me out!”
“For ten million credits.” Toran stared hard at Ranjaz. “Care to make a better offer?”
Eruwenn’s eyes blazed with anger as the grey-suited Niham pulled up a seat and sat down beside Toran. “Now, now, you lied to me about having the item before. Don’t double cross me.” Sentinel Krast placed his hands together on the table, interlacing his fingers. “I’m not somebody who forgives easily.” He looked directly at Eruwenn. “Isn’t that right, former Councillor? A little far from your new Ambassador position, aren’t you?”
Ripley stood back against the wall. She had no idea who the newcomer was, but this most definitely was not the plan. The golden green Anatidae walked forward to stand behind Ranjaz. “Oh, I had a little vacation time saved up, and decided to spend it with my good friend here.” She placed a hand on the Kittrans shoulder. “And what brings a Sentinel here?”
Krast’s lips curled in what might approximate a smile. “I’m also acquainted with Mr K’Lua. In fact, we go back a very long way.” He turned to look directly at Ranjaz. “Now, return what is mine.”
Toran looked from Ranjaz to Krast. “Yours? You don’t look like the tiara wearing type.”
The Sentinel didn’t turn his head. “Ah, so you hid the data chip inside some shiny bauble. As inventive as ever, Mr K’Lua.” The Niham finally acknowledged Toran by looking at him. “Bring. It. Here.”
The Kah’Ree sucked air through his teeth. “Well, seems like we have something mighty important, and two very interested parties.” He stood and walked to his two security officers, who drew their weapons in unison. “Now then, I believe you” —he nodded to Krast— “offered ten million. How about it Ranjaz, old friend? What’s your counter offer?”
The Kittran had been sitting, silently seething at his double cross being double crossed. He looked at Krast. “Were you the one?”
Toran was surprised at being ignored, but before he could reply Krast answered, “The one?”
Ranjaz’s eyes narrowed, his ears alert, his tail swishing aggressively. “The one who took my friend!” he snarled as he felt Eruwenn’s hand holding him back gently.
Krast’s eyes glittered as he saw the impotent rage in his opponent’s eyes. “Ah, the poor deceased human?” He smiled his mannequin-esque smile. “And if I was?”
Toran snatched a pistol from one of his men and fired a blast at the ceiling. “Your quarrel can wait. Let’s settle our business first and you can kill each other after I’m paid.” He paused, then added, “but, not in my casino. Body disposal costs extra.”
Eruwenn’s hand gripped Ranjaz’s shoulder harder, and he braced himself. In one smooth move she both threw him backwards and to the right, and kicked the dalcho table up and forward into Krast's face. The Sentinel fell backwards as a blast from Toran struck the table, but Eruwenn was already on the move, sidestepping left and ducking forward into a cartwheel. Toran's gun had been following Ranjaz, but as her leg swept down it knocked the weapon from his grip.
Once she stabilized, her fist, already primed with momentum from the cartwheel, struck Toran below the ribs and knocked the wind from him. The guard, whose gun the Kah'Ree had been holding, lunged forward to grab Eruwenn but she simply deflected his hand, pairing his forward momentum with her rising elbow to swiftly render him unconscious.
The second guard had just begun to raise his weapon when a huge fist struck him in his chest, sending him careening backwards into the wall. Thor loomed over him, shaking his head as he retrieved the energy pistol. “Too slow.”
Ripley helped Ranjaz to his feet as Krast pushed the table off his chest. Toran was coughing and struggling to breathe as Ranjaz pressed the retrieved energy pistol to his forehead. “Double cross me?” He dragged the Kah’Ree forward. “I want to see the item, then I’ll pay what I owe.” The two of them awkwardly made their way back towards Krast, so Ranjaz could point the gun in his face. “Then we can talk about your body disposal fee.”
Krast stood, and his phony smile was gone. “You can’t kill me. The Sentinels will tear this place apart, hunt you down and kill you. You think I came alone? My ship is in orbit and waiting for my orders!”
Ranjaz grabbed him by the jacket, pulling him down to his level, and struck him in the face with the butt of the pistol. Thor cooly kept his stolen pistol pointed at Toran and the one conscious guard. By the third blow Krast’s face was bloody, his nose broken and he began to struggle against Ranjaz’s assault.
A muted boom caused everyone present to stop in their tracks. Alarms began to sound and Toran swore loudly. He pulled out his communicator, ignoring Thor’s pistol. “What the hell was that!” He held the device close as he listened. “My office?” He patted his pocket. Finding his key in place, he looked to Ranjaz and then Krast. “Seal the casino! And where is my brother?”
Ripley suddenly understood why the Kittran had told her to leave his device on the safe door. After a brief further moment of shock, which she kept from showing on her face, she realized that she had been carrying an explosive without being told. If they survived, Ranjaz was going to need to explain himself. Thoroughly.
Eruwenn, Thor and Ranjaz had backed away to the opposite side of the room, standing by the door. Krast stood alone, holding his profusely bleeding nose. The opposite door soon opened to reveal scrambling casino security, with Toran and his guard standing nearby.
The unconscious guard was carried out without comment, and the Kah’Ree turned to Ripley. “Why are you still here?” She nodded and slipped out of the door, leaving one less concern for the remaining three. “Alright, which one of your skrolg-licking bastards broke into my private safe?”
Krast spat blood onto the floor, pointing at Ranjaz. “He’s the thief. You and I had a deal.”
The Kittran smirked. “I’m a better thief than blowing up a Tulseria-damned safe. If I wanted to steal it, I would have done just that. I would not have announced my arrival and sat down to a game of dalcho.”
Toran looked between the two of them. “He’s got a point.” One of his men handed him a pistol, and he continued to talk a little distractedly into his communicator. “Well, check everywhere!”
Ranjaz stirred the pot. “He’s the bastard who double crossed me, why would he honour your deal?”
Eruwenn nodded. “A government agent can’t be seen working with criminals.”
Krast's face contorted in rage. “Don’t be a damned fool, Toran!” He pointed at Ranjaz. “This is clearly some convoluted distraction.”
Toran shook his head. “They had the upper hand. You were the one getting your face ruined.”

Cygna watched nervously as Alfor began to stir. Things were taking a lot longer than expected. Finally, her signal came; it was not as subtle as she had been led to believe. As soon as the explosion went off the two bodyguards quickly came into the room, glancing from Alfor’s sleeping body to her. She staggered forward, wine bottle in hand. “We need more drinkshh!”
The guard ignored her as he saw the condition of his boss. “Not again,” he groaned. “Toran will kill us for letting him get like this.”
The second guard stepped out into the corridor. “I’m not dressing him! Last time he tried to kiss me!”
Cygna paused, not having expected it to go this way. The first bodyguard walked out as well. “He pissed on my new shoes the time before that. I’m not moving him.”
Their communicators went off and their faces became more serious. Bodyguard two spoke first. “Damn it. Toran wants him.”
The first turned to look at the increasingly bewildered Cygna. “You!” He smiled. “You got him undressed. You can dress him.”
Cygna spotted Ripley running down the corridor towards them, causing her confusion to grow further. The Awakened shouted one word. “Sentinels!”
The Fae’Dan’s mind raced. The plan was clearly blown, and they had to get out. Fast. As the guards were now facing Ripley, she took the opportunity to kick one in the back of the knee. He fell forward, and as the second turned he was met with the upward swing of a wine bottle. The first guard discovered first-hand the shocking truth of how hard the knee of an Awakened could be, and both were unconscious by the time they hit the ground.
Cygna smiled at Ripley. "Thanks."
The Awakened gave a swift nod of acknowledgement. “A Sentinel turned up, so Ranjaz set off the diversion he promised. The other brother is busy trying to figure out whether it’s us or the Sentinels robbing him.”
Cygna took on board the new information quickly, knowing she needed to help the others. “I have an idea. Lie over there and look dead.” She ran back into the room, where Alfor was groaning and starting to move. She slipped the chain from his neck and dropped it into the ice bucket, where it sank out of sight below the dark Fae’Dan wine. She began to slowly shake him.
“Huh,” he grumbled, and slowly opened his eyes. “Wha.. what happened?”
Cygna clung to him tightly. “Oh thank goodness! I thought they killed you!”
“Killed?” Alfor’s head was pounding, his memory blurry. “Who-” He caught sight of his downed guards in the open doorway. “What the hell happened?” He began pulling at his clothes, and swiftly checked that his trousers were dry.
“While we were.. You know…” He nodded; he was buttoning up his clothes. He didn’t remember, but he knew. “Some scary men burst into the room and shot you! I was so scared.” She hugged him tight, pressing herself against him.
He put his arm around her. “What men? Be brave, and tell me what happened.”
She looked up at him, trying to make her eyes as big as possible, adding a lip tremble to really sell it. “I don’t know! They wore grey suits. And one of them took your necklace!”
“My necklace.” He clutched at his chest where it should have been. “Damn Sentinels! I told Toran we couldn't trust them!”
He stepped into the corridor, where Ripley lay on the ground with a terrible energy weapon burn on the side of her face. He pulled out his communicator. “Toran.” He instantly got hold of his brother. “I didn’t answer because I was knocked out. Damn Sentinels took my key, killed some of our guys.” He looked around. “Nobody important, just some waiter.” He finally pulled the underwear from his head. “I’ll go to the security room and look at the video.”
He ended the call and turned back to Cygna. “You stay here.”
She smiled. “Sorry, we can’t let you check the security footage.”
“Wha-”
Ripley struck him from behind and he crumpled to the ground, her fake burn melting from her face. The Awakened looked around, rechecking that all was clear. “I think that’s all we can do; we should get out of here. Come with me, my shuttle is in the staff bay.”

Toran closed his communicator and motioned to a guard. “Search him.”
Eruwenn wished she had some way to capture the look on Krast’s face when the remote detonator was pulled from his pocket. She'd have to hug the light-fingered Kittran later.
The Sentinel grit his teeth. “That’s not mine.”
“Sure, sure,” Toran agreed, while simultaneously shaking his head at the Sentinel. “Looks like you really didn’t come alone.”
Krast was furious, yelling, “I’m telling you-” He broke off when Ranjaz shot him in the leg, falling to the floor.
The Kah’Ree pointed his pistol at the Kittran. “Can’t let you kill a Sentinel in my casino, even if they did just rob me.”
Ranjaz was surprised the Kah’Ree had believed them so easily. “What about us?”
Toran sighed, lowering his weapon. “Take your winnings and get out. If you stole the thing once, I’m sure you can steal it again.”
Eruwenn and Thor both made to leave. Ranjaz paused, knowing he might not get another chance. “And him?”
The Kah’Ree looked at the Sentinel holding his wounded leg. “We’ll send him back to his ship. As much as I hate it, the Sentinels are untouchable.”
Ranjaz raised his pistol. “He took my friend.”
“And we’ll get him back,” Eruwenn said softly. “Then we’ll all deal with him, and the rest of the Sentinels.”
Krast sneered and spat blood once more. “Your human is dead.”
Ranjaz fired.
Krast screamed and grabbed his other leg. “You bastard!”
Toran and his men raised their weapons as the Kah’Ree yelled, “Get the hell out of here!”
Ranjaz turned and followed the others out of the door, but just as it was about to close he poked his head back in. “Oh, one last thing.”
Toran could be seen looking up just as the Kittran fired again, but he ducked out of sight before the true outcome of his shot could be seen. The shrieks of agony, however, followed the trio down the corridor as they broke into a run. Eruwenn spared a glance down at Ranjaz during their retreat. “What did you do?”
The full-fanged grin had never been larger. “Made sure we’ll see him again.”
On the floor of the dalcho room Krast was screaming in agony. He turned over to stare at the closed door. “I’ll kill you! I will hunt you down and kill every last one of you!”
Toran spoke into his communicator. “Tell the Sentinel ship to come get their man. And, bring a doctor. A really good doctor.” He nudged one of his guards and finally let out a chuckle. After all, the Sentinels had just robbed him. “You double-crossing scum always get what you deserve.”
The J’Rami guard raised an eyebrow. “Not sure anyone deserves getting shot in the balls.”

Next

Please, whenever possible, link this post to help out your fellow players.
This is best with 2 players, if possible, to maximize profits.
You'll need an Arcade, here's a list of all of them.
I prefer the Eight Bit Arcade because of its location and accessibility to the Garage, as well as the fact that it makes most preps spawn in the same locations for easier completion of preps.

Here's a list if guides that'll help with getting started with the Diamond Casino Heist:

Scoping Out

Scope Out Guide [Skip to 4:36]
All Access Points
All Points Of Interest / POI

Tip 1:

While doing Casino Heist preps, you can make Lester shut up and show the mission objective faster by giving one of your contacts (Mechanic, Assistant, hell even Brucie) a call, as long as you know the contact you call will pick up the phone and not just leave you ringing.

Tip 2:

[Make sure to call Simeon or Martin and request a job before you start a prep, as you cannot request a job while doing Casino Preps]
In some missions you are unable to call Lester and call the cops off of you. During these missions, you can get the cops off of you for free by calling Simeon or Martin and request a job. Once you get the job, join it.
AS SOON AS YOU JOIN THE JOB, LEAVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. If you don't quit, you run the risk of the Host starting the job and therefore cancelling the heist prep.
Once you leave the job, you'll be back in Freemode with no cops on you, and you'll still have your heist prep equipment.

Note:

There are two Access Points that are required for the way I run the heist, in Aggressive and The Big Con (Gruupe Sechs), being the sewer entrance on the right side wall in the first opening, and the tunnel entrance leading into the center of the track.

Scope out the Casino

Look for Artwork and Gold, as they are the best (unless Diamonds are available in the vault. In that case, Diamonds are the best)

Changing vault contents

If you've completed all three approaches (Silent & Sneaky, Aggressive & The Big Con), you'll have unlocked the ability to cancel the Casino Heist by calling Lester. You can use this to cancel the heist if you get Cash, or any Vault Content item you don't want.
If you find the Vault contents and get something you don't want, like Cash, you can call Lester while still in the Casino and cancel the heist. Go back to the Arcade and pay the 25k to start the heist again, and you should have a different item for your Vault Contents.
This will essentially allow you to get a second Vault Content item by trading 25k to start the heist a second time with about 8 minutes of finding and hacking / killing the Casino Security guy and going to the Casino.
If, once again, you get a Vault Content item you don't want, exit the arcade, call Lester & cancel the heist, enter your Arcade, rinse and repeat.

Personally, I cycle between Aggressive and The Big Con (Gruupe Sechs).

Now, because I prefer doing the heist through the Aggressive and The Big Con (Gruupe Sechs) approaches, I have little to no experience doing the Silent & Sneaky approach, and thus will be basing this post off of my personal experience in the other two approaches.
Note I'm not going to go into every single prep mission, mandatory or optional as that would take too much time for me. You can look up the rest of the preps on YouTube or Google. I'm only going over my preferred Gunman, Driver, Hacker, the preps that I prefer to do / prefer not to complete, and how I complete the heist.

Aggressive

Gunman: I prefer Patrick MacReary, 8%. I can't remember the other weapon available, but I know he allows you to choose an LMG with 100 round mags. I prefer to use the LMG. You can unlock by finding him in the back of a police van. Take the van to the objective area by following the yellow marker and you'll unlock him.
Driver: I prefer Karim Denz, 5%, which has decent vehicles. I prefer the Sentinel Classic.
Hacker: I prefer Paige Harris, 9%, which you can unlock by owning a Terrorbyte (which you can unlock by owning a Nightclub).

The preps I prefer to do are:

Unmarked Weapons, Getaway Vehicles, Hacking Device, Thermal Charges, Vault Explosives (I prefer to use a Stromberg while doing this mission), Reinforced Armor, Vault Keycards, Patrol Routes, Duggan Shipments, Security Intel (unlock by owning a penthouse and completing the penthouse missions), and Security Pass.
For the Reinforced Armor, I only do this if I have Gold or Diamonds as it slows you down. I also only do this if I am a low level or if I have low level teammates, because low level = low health. If I have Artwork or Cash I don't do this.
As for the Boring Machine prep, you don't need to have the Boring Machine to access the sewer. All you need to do is have took a picture of it and sent it to Lester during the Scope Out prep.

The Big Con

Gunman: I prefer Karl Abolaji, 5%. He has access to the Mini Uzi (I forget the in-game name) and the double barrel shotgun. I prefer the Mini Uzi. *You're going to be mostly going up to people and meleeing them / knocking them out instead of shooting them, unless you get caught, then you'll be shooting them.
Driver: I prefer Karim Denz, 5%, which has decent vehicles. I prefer the Sentinel Classic.
Hacker: I prefer Paige Harris, 9%, which you can unlock by owning a Terrorbyte (which you can unlock by owning a Nightclub).

The preps I prefer to do are:

Unmarked Weapons, Getaway vehicles, Hacking Device, Entry Disguises (2 preps), Vault Drills, Exit Disguise, Vault Keycards, Patrol Routes, Security Intel, and Security Pass.
I don't do Duggan Shipments as usually use my weapon to melee / knock out the security guards at the Casino, and since a melee is a one hit one kill, regardless of level of armor they're wearing, I don't usually do this mission.
Completing the Yung Ancestor missions allow you to have the Grotti Furia, a supercar, as an extra getaway vehicle, although it spawns in the parking lot which is surrounded by cops. I would not recommend doing this.
Again, 2 players are recommended. Start the Heist, get to the Vault. One of you work on the first main room with the big circle table in the centre while the other one will start hacking whichever doors lead to 2 or 3 Artwork or Gold / Diamond / Cash tables. Always go for the rooms that have more than one cart.
Tip: With Gold / Diamonds, you cannot sprint / run, you can however trot. If you go into First Person and tap / press and hold whatever your sprint / run button is, you'll see your character's weapon / screen shake, indicating that you're trotting. Doing this in First Person is actually faster than Third Person.

There are two was I like to lose the cops

1, through the sewer, and 2, by helicopter (Helicopter Route)
[Disclaimer: This strategy is not recommended if you're trying to get the Elite Challenge, as this will most likely take more than 15 minutes, or however long the given time is.]
Once you are out of the Casino, make it to the road. Drive to the sewer opening by the Casino, and if you don't have a car, just run to said sewer opening.

Note:

If you go back the way you came, or anywhere close to the Casino after you lose the cops, you will gain a wanted level again.
Proceed through the tunnel. You'll find a metal gate that you have to pass under, a small vent on the right side, and another vent on the left.
You'll come across 2 paths. Go up the metal ramp on the left. Proceed all the way down the tunnel and down the escalators and ramp downwards. Cross diagonally over the 2 train tracks into the next tunnel with a dirt floor.
You'll find 2 tunnels, left and right. Take either one. You'll find construction, go straight. After this, you'll see a big room. Go straight, take the immediate right and go up the ramps leading to the opening to the highway. If you dont have a car, get one or two and drive to the Buyer.

Links to my other posts, which consist of guides, and other useful things I've found & posted.

"OK, so we're breaking in an ancient old mansion that has 4 lethal threats within it... how do you usually break in?"
"Simple! I fly in, break through the library, and steal as much as I can before they chase me down, ze?"
"Are you stupid? It's almost like they're letting you do it. Hold on, I have something that should take care of them."
It was sleeping gas, the same gas that was supposed to be used for a contract I had to rob the Golden Grin. The original function of this gas was to put the camera room guards to sleep, and my crew would sneak down to the vault, grab The Dentist's loot, and the money.
"What else do they have?"
"Fairies, devils, and goblins. Ze, I think that's what they have in there..."
"Are they immune to gas?"
"No..?"
"Great, what else, you said there was a time stopping, knife throwing maid, two vampires, and a Chinese lady. That's what the sleeping gas is for, an odorless, colorless agent to make everyone in that mansion go nighty-night for at least 10 minutes. I'm still doubting if it'll work on vampires though..."
Breaking into giant mansions and robbing vampires wasn't my gig, like at all. Smashing banks, casinos, and other various compounds were. Assuming Marisa's intelligence was right, I would need to bring sleeping gas to put 2/4 of the lethal threats to sleep. Along with nearly everyone else. To deal with the vampires... I was hesitant to put my brass knuckles on lethal mode or actually hurt someone as I've done it too much during my criminal career. I had my specialized handguns, but it was only a last resort. I also brought gas masks, blowtorch, C4, flashbangs, smoke bombs, and weak incendiaries as an emergency tool.
Marisa wouldn't be the first woman that I can mentor into being a highly skilled burglar. So I taught her everything I knew. Bribing the right people, casing the place, getting favors done by insiders, intimidating civilians, knocking out guards, avoiding cameras, destroying evidence, stealing as much as possible, and escaping without having the cops on our ass.
After hours of planning our burglary, a plan was finally executed. I would preemptively find a blind spot in the mansion and the drone would automatically fly, highlight anyone, and in general, keep tabs on everyone in it. I never used this drone before for my stealth jobs, but judging by contracts like Murky Station and Breakin' Feds, there should be a guard pattern.
Of course, the chance for Plan B always exists, so if the vampires caught us, incendiaries and an implanted water cannon in my suit should do the trick, if the maid caught us, flashbangs and gas should be able to disable her, along with cable ties. If not, then maybe threatening to burn down the mansion would. Marisa told me the maid is still human. If the librarian caught us, I would exploit her asthma and use weakened pepper spray to trigger her asthma.
All of those were dirty underhanded tactics to survive, but I've done much worse things in the past. Just ask the people that I cheated out of their life savings in Golden Grin, or the jewels I) stole), or the banks that) I had robbed.
Under the cover of night, with my drone inside the mansion highlighting everything, me and Marisa were on the roof, grappling onto the mansion and finding our entry point into the library. I waited to see if my drone marked anyone asleep after releasing the gas, and there it was, the maid fell asleep, the librarian, the Chinese lady, and the fairies and other useless security guards.
"Ahh bollocks! The vampires aren't fucking sleeping. Bloody hell."
"What do we do now? Ze?"
"You have your mask?"
"Ze."
After getting on top of the library's tower, I found a skylight leading down to what seems to be a library. I tried lockpicking, but for whatever reason, I just couldn't get through. Using the blowtorch, I loosened the lock enough to be able to lockpick, but I had to be careful, if that thing fell onto the floor, Plan A will turn into B faster than my trigger finger when I found The Rat.
Opening the skylight barrier, and having information from an insider that there are devils inside there, I prepared smoke bombs to cover our location. I padded my smoke bombs to reduce the bouncing sound that would inevitably be heard when I threw them down.
Marisa was going to fly in with her broom, like all witches, but I was going to parachute down with the equipment. I wasn't going to risk adding extra weight until we successfully robbed the library, because I can't fly.
Jumping in, masks on, nobody has woken up yet. Good, but I feel like that sleeping gas wasn't going to last for more than 10 minutes. So we were going to work with 7 minutes stealing books, and 3 minutes to GTFO. Dropping smoke bombs in strategic locations, me and Marisa were down in the library, next to the sleeping librarian.
"Librarian's pretty hot. If I've gotta say. Hate robbing her. But I would rob her."
"I rob her daily, ze!"
I took out a timer and the loot bags and Marisa started shoving all the books she wanted into them. 1 minute, 40 seconds elapsed after we last set down the gas. 5:20 left to go, or so I originally thought... noticing movement from the maid, going over to our general location, I warned Marisa that we had only 30 seconds to go before Plan B arrived. This song played in my head and it gave me flashbacks to the Shacklethorne Auction.
"Marisa... hurry up with those books, I sense movement to our location!"
"That's all I need today! Let's do this tomorrow!" she shouted.
OK, there was no way in Hell the maid or the vampires could not of heard that. Unless they were deaf or completely stupid, someone was fated to check that sound.
"Patchouli... is everything alright in there?"
Marisa, doing her best impression, tried lying, "Yes Sakuya. Everything is fine and dandy."
"You sound weird, what's wrong?"
"Oh goddammit!" I yelled, "I'm shutting down this operation!"
"Wait, what operation?!!"
Grabbing Marisa by the arm and the loot bags, I placed her on the broom, sat on it with the loot intact, burnt the parachute, threw smoke grenades at the voice's location, and we flew out of there as fast of possible. Granted we were probably going to get caught regardless, but leaving behind weak evidence of our burglary was much better than having to silence a witness, or two.
Flying at high speed, I saw a bunch of knives getting thrown. I managed to catch and deflect a few of them, but Marisa was hit and lost control of her broom temporarily, I still held the loot, but experienced flying fast upside down. Now I feel like those poor bastards who are peer-pressured by their friends to try those giant roller coasters at some overpriced amusement park.
Paying attention to the speed and direction of the knives being thrown, I returned fire with 2 flashbangs and used my brass knuckles to summon lightning and chain it through the knives, in hope of stunning the maid, or at catching her off guard.
Flying over Marisa's house. I threw her the loot bags and made way to Alice's house. Told her that she's going to need way more practice to be a burglar that can terrorize an entire country. Truth be told, she was much better than Clover when I first taught her my skills, but unlike Clover, Marisa lacked discipline and deceptiveness.
Punching my way throughout the Forest of Magic and snapping the neck of plants, I encountered the maid. She probably didn't know that there was a 2nd one, so she asked, "Excuse me Mister. Mister? Have you seen a witch flying quickly throughout the sky. I need to have a few words with her."
Acting surprised and giving a false impression of shock. I replied, "No," and she let me go after that. I walked back to Alice's place without any more problems and saw that Alice was opening a portal to Makai.
Hox, we'll see Mom again, won't we?
Ali... I hope so...

It is my first time composing a guide like this for GTA Online. So any criticism or suggestion is welcome! I really wish this can be helpful. There is a ton of wiki about it but I am just going to refine them into my own words.
Btw, this guide is not for people who is already a veteran. Casino heist is the easiest way to make a quick fortune so far because you can join a finale through your phone (although there is a cool down time between each). And you probably won't find any extreme method to maximize payout such as glitch. The main purpose of this article is help people have fun.
Scope Out
This is something you do once and for all. So there is no reason why you don't scope out all access points and P.O.I.. You can launch this mission every time when you are hosting the heist, but can only be done before selecting approach. There is plenty of Youtube videos about where to find them such as this.
Vault Content
Just to to the observatory and find 2 guys chatting. Sometimes they are at the front door but most of the time they are on the left side of building. One guy with a baseball cap and the other "bigger" guy with a cowboy hat. Start hacking through securoserv app while walk along with the guard while he takes a phone call. Don't run into or kill him cuz that will get cops on you. Hacking into security camera is easy so let's skip that (sometimes the Wi-Fi spot is in the restroom).
Casino Model & Door Security & Vault Door
All of them are complete waste of money. Casino model is purely decorative. If you want to practice hacking, just ask teammates or friends nicely to give you a shot in the vault or watch Youtube. And there is no need to practice drilling vault door because you are not on a time limit.
Before we jump into approaches, there is a prep mission called "Security Intel". It gives you all the camera vision without having to getting close to a camera. You will need to complete all Diamond Casino & Resort story missions as the host in order to unlock this mission. Once it's done, you don't have to do it again. The camera intel stays with you. JUST DO IT FOR VINCENT'S SAKE.
Prep Board
Next, I'm gonna tell you what each prep mission means and which optional missions are actually worth doing imo.

Silent & Sneaky

Gunner: Hire the cheapest guy because you are not supposed to exchange fire anyway. There are two loadouts to choose from and both works great.
Driver: Hire the cheapest guy because you don't need his help at all. This role is a fucking free rider and you will see why later. I always source Übermacht Sentinel Classic because it goes fast and handles the best. It matters in setup mission.
Hacker: Hire Paige because she gives you more time in the vault. It's worth the investment. If you have Avi unlocked you can try him to. He takes 1% more cut but gives you 5 seconds more time in the vault when exposed and 3 more seconds when undetected. It's up to you whether he is worth it. To unlock Avi as hacker, you need to destroy all 50 signal jammers around the map in free mode. Youtube video guide is here.
Patrol routes: It makes more enemies visible on mini map. I always do it but if you feel comfortable to skip it, I respect that.
Duggan shipments: MUST DO! Because you are supposed to get head shot and without Duggan shipments gone, guards will wear bullet proof helmet. You want to have some kind of flying vehicle because targets are all over the map.
Power drills: You wanna get it if you think there is enough time to hit deposit boxes AFTER grabbing all the main stuff.
Security pass: ALWAYS GET LEVEL 2 SECURITY PASS! This saves you a ton of time from hacking key pads. You can cycle through this option to a picture with a valet and a dealer.
Acquire masks: A complete waste of time.
EMP device and infiltrate suits: The former cuts power out and the latter gives you nigh vision in dark as well as the ability to rappel down the elevator well when entering casino if you choose some doors near helipad as entrance. If you want to sneaky in or out more easily, go ahead and do both. I think it's not worth it. Gun is your best friend.

Planning Board
I usually chose staff lobby or waste disposal as entrance. But you must choose staff lobby as exit and select high level buyer. Staff lobby door is close to both sewer and nearby police station, and high level buyer gives you most pay. And DO NOT ever buy decoy or clean vehicle. They are total waste of money.
Finale
The general rule is DO NOT kill guards if they are not in your way, or patrolling to a dead body. Also watch out for cameras. You can only shoot down 1 camera. So just stun them. It can be difficult if teammates are not on mic cuz you might need to take down some guards in pairs. What I usually do is typing "Can someone please aim with me? You aim at right guy and I aim at left guy, then I fire right after you." in chat box. I found it works well as long as teammates read English. Probably many of you already knew this but you can hit daily vault twice both on your way in and out. The gate control is in security room. Another important note is that the guards will be able to see you though glass on doors, but they will not be able to see you through bullet proof glass around security room. As far as after getting into the vault, just make sure get your ass outta there before times counts down to 0. And also, elevator is for suicide only. TAKE THE STAIRS.
Then it's much easier. At this time you have not alerted anyone yet so turn to your right after getting out of casino. Check out the map below where I drew a route to a safe spot to jack a ride from NPC. You just need to make sure to knock out the first NOOSE on the left side of van, and knock out the second one patrolling the Lost club house. Don't shoot because that will alert them. After jacking a ride now you have 2 option. First is to go down the sewer where I marked with black circle, or steal a chopper on the helipad of nearby police station where I marked with red H. You can practice both in free mode in terms of where to go in the sewer and how to get to the helipad, but please bear in mind that sometimes the helicopter doesn't spawn. And ALWAYS turn left onto the highway from sewer exit because turning right will take you near to casino and that will get heat back on you.
Escape Route

Big Con

From easy to hard: Gruppe Sechs, Bug Star, LS Water & Power, Young Ancestor.
Prep Board

Gunner: Hire the cheapest guy because you can't fire a bullet in casino. That will attract attention no matter where you are. The only way to kill anyone inside is knocking him out.
Driver: Hire the cheapest guy, period.
Hacker: Hire Paige or Avi.
Entry disguise: Gruppe Sechs gives you a clean run without alerting anyone until you get back to stair well. But I personally find other disguise more exciting. You just need to watch some Youtube videos before try them out. Young Ancestor takes longest time and most challenging imo.
Exit disguise: JUST DO IT. Without it, you will be hunted right after getting out of casino. Go get NOOSE or firefighter outfits. Firefighter mission is easier because you can call Lester to clear wanted level.
Patrol routes: I would say this is not necessary if you are playing Gruppe Sechs, but highly recommended if you are using other entry disguise because you are dealing with more enemies.
Duggan shipments: Not necessary at all! Since no shots will be fired, their protective gear doesn't do any use against knocking out.
Power drills: Same as other approaches.
Security passes: LEVEL 2!
Masks: Nobody cares.

Planning Board
This is the same as silent and sneaky approach.
Finale
There is nothing complicated about big con especially Gruppe Sechs. Just check your map for guards that are hostile. Guards and cameras marked in red circles are hostile while white color indicates "friendly". After making up to the ground level, you will want to circle to the back area and knock 1 guy out. Then make your way to laundry room and change your outfit. After that you can walk outta there like a boss.
Once you are out of casino, it's the same deal as silent & sneaky.

Aggressive

Unarguably the only approach to play with randoms lmao. But you do get less time in vault and will lose take from getting shot at.
Prep Board

Gunner: This can be flexible depending on your shooting skill. The cheapest guy already have automatic weapon so that's good enough for me. Go for better gunners if you enjoy shootout.
Driver: Do I need to say that again?
Hacker: Yeah one of those two.
Patrol routes: Nobody cares because it will be loud.
Duggan shipments: Let me say this, if you don't do it, it will take a full clip of mags with headshot to take down 1 guard. GET IT DONE!
Power drills: There is less time in vault so I usually skip this unless it's a crew of 4.
Security passes: If you don't get a level 2 pass then you are out of your mind.
Acquire masks: Literally no one cares.
Reinforced armor: It works like heavy heist suits in OG heists. It gives you more health but makes you run slower. If you have Duggan shipments wiped out then this is totally unnecessary. If there are rookie in your team then you might wanna get it.
Boring machine: This is a super effective prep mission as it allows you to enter vault level through sewer directly. But you have to have this particular access point scouted first.

Planning Board
To get in and out faster, you would still want to choose staff lobby. But entering through main entrance is more dramatic and funny. And for the last time I have to say, DON'T WASTE MONEY ON DECOY OR CLEAN VEHICLE!.
Finale
There is really no need to explain anything here. But some people do take a different route after getting out of casino, which is around the inside of race track. You can still stick the the route I provided earlier but you might encounter 2 or 3 more cops on your way to jacking an NPC ride.
Ok guys, go watch some Youtube videos and read some other guides if you have not done this before. I really wish you have fun out there and not waste other players' time by reading my beginner friendly guide. Casino heist is definitely worth playing because R* created this based on all the lessons learned from previous guides. It will be likely to be the template of next generation of GTA Online, which is just 20 years away!

I haven't seen a good comprehensive guide for this, despite it being the best money making method in the game, so I thought I'd write a guide about it.

What is the Casino Heist and why should I do it?

The Casino Heist is semi-challenging PvE content for 2-4 players. As of August 2020 it's the best paying grind in the game, paying out $1.5-$2 million split between heist members every hour and a half. If you're doing setups with one friend, you're both effectively earning ~$80k per setup mission.
If you have no friends who play GTA:O, try to find a buddy in game or on HeistTeams
It's possible to get even higher payouts, but discussing glitches is against the rules of this subreddit; go to gtaglitches for that stuff.

Getting Started

To do the Casino Heist you need an Arcade, preferably Eight-Bit (Vinewood) or Videogeddon (La Mesa) as they're the closest to the Casino and setup missions.
Not required, but strongly recommended as they'll make setup missions much easier:

A good gun, such as Special Carbine
A bulletproof car for gunfights, such as Armored Kuruma
An aircraft with homing missiles, such as Buzzard Attack Chopper or Oppressor Mk2

Scoping and Vault Contents

All Points of Interest
All Access Points
Cash has the worst payout (up to $2.1 mil). You will always get cash the first time you host the Casino Heist.
Art has middling payout (up to $2.3 mil) but is very fast to steal, which means you can get detected, or hit the vault with fewer players, and still get the maximum take.
Gold is like cash but gives much better payout (up to $2.6 mil), with the disadvantage of making you run slightly slower when you leave the vault.
Diamonds only appear during special events, but have the highest payout for vault contents (up to $3.6 mil).

Choosing Approaches

The Big Con is the best approach, since the security tunnel entrance + Gruppe Sechs disguise takes you straight to the vault. Always choose it when possible.
Silent & Sneaky is like The Big Con, but is more difficult and takes longer.
Aggressive is relatively fast, but gives less time in the vault, making it much harder to get the maximum take for any target except Art.
In general, you should choose Aggressive for Art, The Big Con for other targets, and Silent & Sneaky only as a last resort. You should also choose Hard mode whenever possible as it gives you a 25% higher take.

Support Crew

Your Hacker is the most important support crew member, as they determine how long you have in the vault, and therefore your maximum take. My go-to is Paige Harris, who you unlock by owning a Terrorbyte. Avi Schwartzman is equally good and can be unlocked by destroying all Signal Jammers. If you don't have either of them, Christian Feltz is a decent stopgap measure; just be aware you'll have a good chance of missing out on profits.
The Driver determines your getaway vehicles, and is largely irrelevant since most people ignore the getaway vehicles and jack a car or a helicopter for their escape. I always go with Karim Denz and source the Sentinel Classic. It's only worth getting a more expensive driver if you want to unlock a car's trade price.
The Gunman determines the weapons you'll be using in the run. Again, mostly irrelevant, since Karl Abolaji's weapon loadouts are good enough even for a Hard Aggressive approach. Only get a more expensive gunman if you're going Aggressive and aren't confident in your headshotting skills or those of your crew.

Optional Preps

I don't recommend paying to skip any of the preps, because it eats significantly into your profits, and unlike MC/bunker missions, you can't easily make back the cost by doing other missions in that time.

Security Passes

Mandatory for every approach. Remember to get level 2 security passes, not level 1. The mission is very easy and saves you from having to do lots of annoying hacking minigames during the final heist.

Duggan Shipments

This is mandatory for Aggressive and Silent and Sneaky, as destroying at least 3 shipments will remove the bulletproof helmets from guards and allow them to be headshotted. Most people also do this for Big Con just to be safe. Having at least one other player in your organization, as well as a Buzzard or Oppressor Mk2, makes this mission very easy.

Security Intel

Unlocked after completing all Casino Penthouse missions, this is a once-off mission that reveals security cameras on the radar on all future casino heists. Do it when you unlock it.

Patrol Routes

Reveals guards on your radar. Not required, but useful on every approach, especially Silent & Sneaky. Do this if you have time.

EMP (Silent & Sneaky only)

This mission is relatively easy and the EMP saves a lot of headaches in a Silent & Sneaky run. Not required, but worth taking the time to do.

Boring Machine (Aggressive only)

This unlocks the best entry route for the Aggressive approach where you tunnel straight to the vault. Not required (Staff Lobby is almost as fast) but it makes the approach to the vault very easy.

Power Drills

Don't bother with this mission, other than to play through it once or twice for fun. The money from the deposit boxes isn't worth your time.

Exit Disguise (Big Con only)

These missions are annoying and the disguises aren't that helpful. Collecting all playing cards gives you a permanent exit disguise you can use; I recommend doing that instead and never having to worry about this prep.

Infiltration Suits (Silent & Sneaky only)

This mission gives you night vision. Basically, it's only useful if you plan on using the EMP but don't know the casino floor layout. Do it the first time you do a Silent & Sneaky run; by the second time, you should be experienced enough that you don't need it.

Reinforced Armor (Aggressive only)

This unlocks new outfits that reduce the damage you take during the heist finale. Personally, I hate this prep, because a) the mission is annoying, b) the finale is easy enough without it, and c) the armored outfits are ugly. Do it if you aren't confident in your shooting skills, or if you plan to do the heist with only two players.

Finale Screen

Buyer: Always choose the High Level buyer for the best payout. The only difference is that you have to drive or fly a few more miles after you lose the cops -- more than worth the extra percentage of the cut.
Decoy: This makes the helicopter getaway slightly easier on the Aggressive approach, or if you screw up either of the other two approaches. I don't think it's worth the extra cost, but it could be worth it if you find yourself constantly having trouble getting to the helicopter.
Clean Vehicle: Completely useless. Don't bother.

The Big Con

Entrance: Security Tunnel
Exit: Staff Lobby

Go straight to the vault. Take your sweet time plundering it.
Take the stairs on the way up. You want to take the long corridor looping around the back, pass by the laundry room and pick up your exit disguises if they're there, then make a run for the staff lobby exit.
You will be busted if guards or cameras see you. The guards in the security office can't see you through the bulletproof glass, but you can be seen through the glass panels in the doors.
Melee kill the patrolling guards from behind and run through the cameras without staying in their cone of vision for too long.
Once you're out of the staff lobby exit, there will be a NOOSE van to your right. Head past it, melee killing the guards, and make your way to the main road. From there, you can run to your getaway vehicles or jack a random car off the road.

Silent & Sneaky

Entrance: Staff Lobby
Exit: Staff Lobby

Take your time and have one person go ahead at a time. You want to make sure that you're headshotting guards with your silenced machine pistol, and using the stun gun on all cameras you pass by. If there are two guards next to each other, shoot them both in quick succession.
You will be busted if guards or cameras see you. The guards in the security office can't see you through the bulletproof glass, but you can be seen through the glass panels in the doors.
The daily take is worth getting if you have time.
You can use the Nano Drone in your inventory to shoot a tranquilizer dart. This is most useful on the guard patrolling the stairwell. Have your teammate wedge the door open, then fly the drone through the gap and down the stairs to knock the guard out.
If you got the EMP, you can use the SecuroServ app on your phone to activate it. This gives you 1 minute to book it and run past all guards, security doors, and cameras on a floor.
Once you're out of the staff lobby exit, there will be a NOOSE van to your right. Head past it, killing the guards, and make your way to the main road. From there, you can run to your getaway vehicles or jack a random car off the road.

Aggressive

Entrance: Sewer or Staff Lobby
Exit: Staff Lobby

This is a straightforward gunfight. Just move from cover to cover and shoot everything that moves.
As always, use headshots to get instant kills. Even if you did all Duggan shipments and got an expensive gunman, the guards can take a ridiculous number of bullets to center of mass, so it's faster to aim for the head and take them out instantly.
The guards respawn continually, so it isn't possible to completely clear a floor out. Just keep moving.
The daily take is worth getting if you have time.
When exiting through the staff lobby, don't go straight through the security office or you'll be shot to pieces. Take the long way around instead.
Once you're out of the staff lobby exit, jump the fence to the racetrack and run straight across. If there are any cars in the parking lot to your left, jack them and drive out. Otherwise, keep going and jump the fence to the main road. From there, you can run to your getaway vehicles or jack a random car off the road.

The Getaway

No matter which approach you take, you'll eventually end up outside the casino, on the main road, with a 5 star wanted level. There are two main strategies people use here.

Sewer Tunnel: Directly south of the racetrack, in the storm drain, is the entrance of the sewer tunnel that Michael and Franklin escape through in story mode. If you drive in here and keep going, you'll eventually start losing your wanted level. Get out of the car and wait in the sewer until you're all clean. From there, it's an easy drive to the buyer -- just don't drive near the casino or you'll be wanted by the cops again. This is a safe but slow getaway.
Police Station Helicopter: Over the overpass to the west, directly across the highway from the casino, is the Vinewood Hills police station. It's possible to drive to the back of the building and climb from the grass patch up to the roof. There, you can climb the roof fixtures to get to the helipad, where a police helicopter usually spawns. Once everyone is in the helicopter, you can use it to evade the cops. This is a quick but more risky getaway, since the helicopter occasionally doesn't spawn, and you can get shot during the drive or fall off the roof if you're unlucky.

Bugs

Permanent Wanted Level

Bug: You're in a getaway vehicle far from any cops, but your wanted level won't go away. This happens because one of your heist teammates has high ping and the game is having trouble syncing your wanted levels.
Fix: Have everyone get out of the vehicle and wait until the bug goes away. If you're in a helicopter with no safe place to land, the offending teammate(s) may have to parachute out.

Guards Spawning Late

Bug: On Silent & Sneaky, guards take a few moments to spawn in after you disable the metal detector.
Fix: Don't go through the metal detector or shoot anyone until the guards finish spawning in.

Frozen Guard Patrols / Bugged Camera Movement

Bug: The guards in the casino aren't moving, and the cameras have weird movement patterns or are facing towards walls.
Fix: Just keep going; this bug actually makes Silent & Sneaky / Big Con easier most of the time. If there's a frozen guard you can't get past, use the Nano Drone.

Disappearing Vision Cones During Getaway

Bug: You're getting away from the casino undetected when the vision cones suddenly disappear from your radar. Despite this, the police aren't coming after you.
Fix: This is a visual glitch and you haven't actually been discovered. Just keep going.

Spectator Leaving

Bug: Someone joins as a spectator, then leaves. You screw up the heist and have to restart. Then you fail the heist because "Your heist team quit."
Fix: Suck it up and reset.

Silent & Sneaky Body Found

Bug: You're suddenly busted because a body was found... even if you haven't killed anyone yet.
Fix: Suck it up and reset.

Uncollectable Heist Prep Equipment

Bug: You're doing heist prep mission with a friend, and you can't pick up the equipment because "you can't steal heist prep while on a heist prep mission."
Fix: Suck it up and reset.

Heist Prep Vehicle Not Registering

Bug: You collect a heist prep vehicle and drive to your arcade, but it doesn't trigger the end of the mission.
Fix: Suck it up and reset.
---
Hope someone out there finds this guide helpful. Comments and suggestions appreciated.

[QUICK MOD NOTE] This post was originally posted by Lenlfc on GTAforums, original post here. ALL CREDIT GOES TO HIM FOR ALLOWING ME TO DO THIS. It's extremely detailed and extensive, but it also gives a full look at previous leaks and speculation about GTA V, RDR 2, and the upcoming GTA VI. It's well worth your read if you're at all interested in speculation and leaks for GTA VI, considering it has a lot of information about how Rockstar has done things in the past, and how they may do things with GTA VI. It also has all of the confirmed information we have for GTA VI, like everyone has been asking for. Enjoy!
LENLFC will also be updating his original GTAForum's post often when new, reliable information comes out that is worth adding to his timeline.
TL:DR: This is very long. Please don't be mean if you think I went too far. I just wanted to be as detailed as possible, and compile as much evidence and proof as possible, so we can work out the most accurate and likely scenario. I've never done anything like this before. So please be kind.
Hi. So, Red Dead Redemption 2 has come and gone. Feels like forever we waited for it. Hard to believe it released almost 4 months ago. It's that time when many of us will start looking forward to the next Rockstar game. I have been on this site since the first leaks for GTA V popped up online. In that time, I have watched fairly quietly, barely getting involved. I've read a lot, and enjoyed it all, but never actively helped out. I want to warn you all that this post will be pretty lengthy, and as I'm not a regular poster, my formating or writing may not be the best. But I'm a big fan of Rockstar Games, and have a weird fascination with remembering small things. So I wanted to try my best to compile everything we know about how Rockstar go about making their games, what they have done in the past and do some crazy conspiracy theory like deducing to try to predict when, where and how we can find clues to GTA VI, and when they may announce or release it.
Firstly, I'd like to credit and thank Dan Dawkins. Many of you may not know who he is, but long story short, he's a journalist, and back in July 2011 he wrote an article in the magazine PSM3. In the article he predicted many things about GTA V (some correct, some incorrect) he researched all the available data and pooled it together, and used that to speculate about GTA V. That was a massive influence on me growing up, on how to speculate responsibly and use common sense to work out where a game or series may go next. So thank you, Dan!

FACTS

Now, onto the main topic. What do we know about GTA VI? Not a lot. Dan Houser recently said that they're thankful they're not releasing GTA VI while Trump is in office. While he's never actually quoted as saying they won't release it while Trump is in office, I think journalists used that for a catchy headline. But the point remains. GTA is heavily based on British satire of USA. The current political climate makes it very difficult for them to do this. If we take it literally, GTA VI won't release until 2021 or 2025, depending on how long he is in office. Unless I have my dates wrong. I'd be willing to bet they had 2021 in mind. However, my personal take on this was that Dan simply meant "thank god we're not releasing GTA VI in 2018" And knowing it'l take them years to even release their next game, Trump will no longer be President.
We also know Rockstar Games will make another GTA. And that is about it. If there is anything else concrete, that we know, that I have missed please let me know.

THE PAST

GTA V TIMELINE
Here's where we start digging and look to the past, what Rockstar has done before and try our best to work out their timelines and how they go about things. Now, in order to do this, I'd like to begin with GTA V, as that is when Rockstar Games transitioned into the one big game every 5 years, as opposed to the game every year studio.
April 20th 2009 the first ever build for GTA V was created. I'm not sure if this is when development officially began, or just the date of the first build. Either way, I doubt there is much difference. They were busy working on TBoGT at that point, having just released TLaD 2 months prior. This was discovered from the Build Log. I will go into detail on this later. However this wasn't discovered until 2014, I just thought it was worth putting here to stamp the timeline.
The earliest rumors for GTA V began on July 26th 2010, with reports of Rockstar researching locations in and around Hollywood. Rockstar declined to comment on this, saying they don't comment on "rumors and speculation". To this day we still don't know if this was legit, or otherwise. However the game did end up being set in Los Santos. So it was either true or coincidentally correct.
Next came the domain name leaks on February 25th 2011. That date might be off by a couple of days, but the original GTA V Leak Topic has it dated to the 25th. (Fun fact, this is the leak and topic where I signed up to GTAForums!) Very GTA sounding website names. After GTA IV introduced the internet to us, it was no surprise to think GTA V would expand on that, and the domain names registered sounded right out of a GTA game. This was proven true, as the websites did appear in game.
On March 8th 2011 more fuel was added to the GTA V fire, when the codenamed "Rush" casting call was leaked online. Like the website, they sounded like something out of a GTA game.
This was further expanded on the 29th of March when Take Two put out a private casting call, further hinting at development on GTA V being well underway.
October 5th 2011 In an Asked & Answered article, 2 users asked about the next GTA, with Rockstar replying with the following

“When are we going to see a new GTA????? #bestgameever” - received via Twitter“When's the new grand theft auto coming out?” - received via Twitter
Big, big shout to all Grand Theft Auto fans worldwide who we know are anxious to hear about what’s next for the franchise but we don’t have any news at this time.All we can say is, right now, we’re focused on our next upcoming releases which are Max Payne 3 as well as L.A. Noire for PC, Red Dead Redemption Game of the Year Edition and Max Payne for mobile devices. When and if we have anything to report regarding the Grand Theft Auto franchise, you know that we’ll do so here at the Newswire or on our Twitter or Facebook.

And then it happened. GTA V was officially announced on October 25th 2011 at 12pm BST, linked below.
https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/128788090969001984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E128788090969001984&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgtaforums.com%2Findex.php%3Fapp%3Dcore%26module%3Dsystem%26controller%3Dembed%26url%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FRockstarGames%2Fstatus%2F128788090969001984%3Fs%3D20
This announcement came only 20 days after saying the above on October 5th 2011
This goes to show that Rockstar can say one thing, then surprise us weeks later.
The first trailer then debuted on November 2nd 2011
Everything past this point, until release I feel is not relevant to this discussion. It is more to do with post announce schedules and marketing, and when to expect news or updates or trailers for an already announced major game. If this topic does well, I could add it, or put it in a spoiler box so it's optional detail. Otherwise the next points worth talking about come into play upon release, and where Rockstar go after this.
September 17th 2013 GTA V finally releases. We rejoice.
October 1st 2013, two weeks after the launch of GTA V GTA Online launches.
This is where it gets interesting and complicated. We know now that their next game was Red Dead Redemption 2. However, Rockstar weren't finished with GTA V. Many people claim that Rockstar stopped caring about their fans and gamers, citing images like these
You can actually pinpoint the year Rockstar discovered microtransactions.
Now, I bring these up, as it is important to understand just how Rockstar now operate. Love it or hate it, but GTA Online has allowed Rockstar to not release games as often. Allowing them to work on one game as Rockstar Studios, where they all work together, instead of separate teams, like Rockstar North (GTA) and Rockstar San Diego (RDR) for example. The income from GTA Online has seemingly allowed them to spend 5 years working on Red Dead Redemption 2, perfecting a masterpiece. Allowing them to make the game they wanted, and allowing them to take all the time necessary to innovate and make a living breathing world even more so than GTA V did.
Some time in January 2014 the GTA V Build Log was found. Apparently it was on the game disc, and dedicated fans dug into the files and found it. I bring this up, as it reveals some key interesting details. such as the date of the first GTA V build/when GTA V development began. This is important as we can use this information later to try to work out when they may start their next project.
Throughout 2014 Rockstar were hard at work developing the PC, PS4 & Xbox One versions of the game. I don't know how much work that would be, but they weren't simple upres versions of the game. They included new features and plenty of big enhancements. The PC version was delayed into 2015 for added polish. And leslie Benzies took a sabbatical on September 1st, for 17 months.
The next key detail to note is from January 2016, I think. Leslie Benzies leaves Rockstar North. I feel this is important to note, as it could have delayed a lot of Rockstars plans, as a lot of staff left with him, Rockstar would go on to deal with a lawsuit which could only be an unnecessary distraction. There was a topic here on GTAForums discussing it. Needless to say the whole situation was pretty shady and the details don't really matter too much.
Rockstar had also planned single player DLC for GTA V, multiple datamines suggested 3 packs, as well as Ash735 on Neogaf confirming this. We can take this with a grain of salt, but if it were made up, then it's a pretty dull and uninteresting thing to make up.
They had also promised Heists for GTA Online, which was quickly becoming very popular. I personally believe (And this is where speculation begins) that the SP DLC was the unfortunate victim in all of this. They HAD to get the next gen versions out, as if you're launching an online game, you can't rely on players sticking with old consoles when the next gen consoles launch only 2 months after GTA Online launches. They had to get Heists out, which were promised before the entire game even released. More so than the SP DLC, which was just a closing line on a Newswire article, albeit multiple times. And development on their next game ramping up, going into full production, combined with the restructuring of Rockstar North due to Leslie Benzies leaving... SP DLC may have been an unfortunate victim.
Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
GTA V launches on PS4 & Xbox One on November 18th 2014
PC version launched on April 14th 2015
Rockstar Games are now done with development on GTA V, now solely focusing on GTA Online updates, in terms of Grand Theft Auto
April 3rd 2014 Thanks to @EVOLUT7ON for bringing this to my attention. In a Q&A with DJ Whoo on BallerStatus, he allegedly reveals he will be in the next GTA, which will be in Liberty City again. BallerStatus. And thanks to iNero for his topic.

RDR2 TIMELINE

August 2013 Roger Clark's first day on set, for Red Dead Redemption 2

Roger Clark: "My first day on the project was in August of 2013. With the context of this particular installment, I was the first to come on, apart from Rob and Ben who worked on the previous chapter."

4th September 2014 Rockstar San Diego start hiring for next gen consoles. They allegedly went on a hiring spree for an upcoming project. Which we would later find out to be Red Dead Redemption 2.
December 11th 2014 Actor Jorge Consejo posts a selfie on Instagram, wearing a typical mocap or performance capture suit. However it doesn't match the one used in GTA V
September 2015, [Original Source] Rockstar started hiring for more jobs. They seem to relate to a stealth based game, but so far they haven't released anything that would indicate what they were hired for.
Then the leaks start happening...
November 29th 2015 An ex Rockstar employee hints that RDR2 is their next project. The infamous “Really, Dumbass. Really? Two“ comment by Danny Ross, on Reddit. Archive of actual post
April 13th 2016 the map for RDR 2 leaks on NeoGaf. This was unprecedented. The map for a huge open world Rockstar Games game has never leaked online 6 month before the game was even announced. Link to the map.
October 18th 2016 Rockstar finally announce Red Dead Redemption 2, after teasing in the days leading up to the 18th.
July 27th 2017 Stuntman, Tim Neff's online resume leaks that he worked on RDR2 and GTA VI. He denied involvement in RDR2, but claimed he worked on GTA V, and that it was a mistake. He also had personal instagram photos from Rockstar San Diego, with captions strongly suggesting he was there for work. He denied it, saying it was just a photo taken outside that anyone could take. He quickly removed them. He was not credited in GTA V, but by RDR2's release he is indeed credited in RDR2.
Friday September 29th 2017 A reddit user posted a thread mentioning a recent leak which had been deleted. I do not know the date that it was originally posted. But it was over a year before the game released. And was entirely accurate. these leaks will serve a purpose later on.
December 25th 2017 GTAForums User @Jabalous brings to our Attention the actor Jorge Consejo, his previously mentioned Instagram selfie, and his CV/Resume. Which mentions min being in GTA 6, playing the role "The Mexican" (Featured).
CGI meaning motion capture work, etc.
In April of 2018, I'm not sure of the date, maybe the 18th? The article has since been removed. But I copied the article into a notepad file. Trustedreviews.com published an article based of a memo and some notes about the game. They claimed to have received this information in August 2017, but didn't post it due to fears it was fake. It wasn't until Rockstar released a screenshot that matched one that they had also received that they decided to publish this information, now believing it to be genuine. Here is an image of the text copy of the article (reddit formatting issues)
November 1st 2018 Rockstar sue TrustedReviews for £1M Essentially proving the leak to be true. Although the game itself proves it to be true, it's interesting that Rockstar sued for that much. Or sued at all.
January 6th 2019 Rockstar start hiring for next generation
Rockstar's career opening page - Credit to @el carlitos for that one!
-----------------------------------------------Unconfirmed Speculation-----------------------------------------------
January 30th (Specific date still debatable) Film Florida have guest Leah Sokolowsky on their podcast. She briefly mentions a recent change in her work

Recently as you're aware we've had a change in the types of productions that are coming to our state. So I've also been very fortunate to get a large client that has hired me to arrange basically site tours and visits. It's uh digital media company. And I've signed an NDA so I can't disclose who it is. But they've been exploring various areas of our state, and of other states in the south east. And I've been planning and arranging those visits for their personnel and that's been kind of a very interesting expansion of what I normally do, as well.

Here's the link to that quote.
It's suggested this is Take Two Interactive/Rockstar Games, as a reddit user claimed on October 6th 2019 scouts were looking around his area, and asked for permission to take photographs of the building. Which was later followed up by a photograph of an alledged document/contract as proof on October 8th 2019
-----------------------------------------------End of Unconfirmed Speculation-----------------------------------------------
February 13th 2019 VP of product development Jeronimo Barrera departs Rockstar Games after 20 years. This might not seem anything significant, but it's one of his quotes that I think it very important.
"If I had stayed at Rockstar it would have been more GTAs, more RDRs and less of this other stuff going on out there right now." While that is nothing concrete. It does indicate that Rockstar will be working on Red Dead and GTA for the foreseeable future. That won't surprise many of us, but it's just a little detail that gives us hope that GTA is next, and not another franchise like Bully, L.A. Noire or Max Payne, for example.
April 18th 2019 a former Rockstar India employee has mention of creating vehicles for GTA V and upcoming GTA 6 in his artstation resume Thanks to ApolloThunder's post.
Now those are the most important details I feel. Now I may have missed some other details people might find important. In August of 2017 the stunt actor Tim Neff was involved in a alleged leak for RDR2 & GTA 6. It was quickly 'debunked' Although many believed there were holes in the methods used to debunk it. And his removal of Instagram photos taken at Rockstar San Diego was suspicious to many users. ~~I do not believe it holds enough water to use it as any evidence. But we can use it to speculate.~~
July 9th 2019 Jorge Consejo likes and quotes a tweet about him being in GTA 6

Now We Use All This Information to Speculate

The first clues we should look for are reports of Rockstar scouting locations. We know from articles and or interviews that Rockstar take thousands of photographs when creating their worlds, so any reports of Rockstar Staff i researching locations should be a very good indication. However, they can be very secretive.
Same goes for Rockstar or Take Two registering domain names or sending out casting calls. So far we've heard nothing of the sort. again, we don't always hear these things. I don't recall hearing anything about casting for RDR2 at any point between 2012 & 2016.
Combined with the fact that Rockstar only just released RDR2 4 months ago. I think it's pretty safe to sat development on their next game hasn't fully begun yet, or will do very soon. If we look back to the build log for GTA V, they created the first build on April 20th 2009. pretty much one year after GTA IV released. By that logic the first build for GTA VI would have been created in September 2014, right? Well, considering they had to work on the next gen and PC versions for so long. I'd wager they started much, much later. We know that these days Rockstar operate as Rockstar Studios, all working together on one game at a time. But if the NeoGaf user is to be believed, pre production for GTA VI began in 2012, which is actually entirely believable. As Rockstar began work on RDR2 almost immediately after RDR1. "In early 2011, Dan began chatting with Rockstar San Diego about how Red Dead Redemption 2 would look and who the characters would be. Late that summer, he says, he had a “broad outline and rough flow of the game defined.” By fall 2012, his team had completed rough scripts for many of the game’s missions and started doing read-throughs on video conference calls with directors of game play, art design, and animation from Rockstar offices around the world. " Source
Now, unlike Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto is not a game about specific characters, like RDR is with John and Dutch's gang. So It's safe to say after GTA V, the Housers did not sit down and come up with scripts or ideas for GTA 6 revolving around those characters. But never say never. They could use this as an opportunity to bring back Michael Franklin & Trevor, working of some of the ideas for the Story DLC for GTA V, instead of scrapping it entirely. For the first time ever, GTA could be a direct sequel using the same protagonists. This however, I believe to be incredibly unlikely. But I thought it was worth mentioning.
So, they've finished RDR2. What Are Rockstar doing now? I believe they're hard at work on the PC version of the game. Many people don't believe it will release on PC, citing the fact that RDR1 never released on PC as evidence. I don't believe that is fair, as we know RDR1 was a mess, and was in such a bad state that they were lucky to release it at all. Rumours and alleged leaks stated the game was a coded mess, and they weren't willing to go through all the hassle of porting it to PC. We also know PC games typically have a high paracy rate, and Rockstar aren't fond of spending all that development time and cost on such an effort for little reward. Here's a clip of Lazlow talking about releasing their games on PC, and joking wanting to make their money back first. It's from 2010, right before RDR1 released. I think he was making a joke, but hiding the truth in there. Which leads me to believe that RDR2 could come to PC, but in order to make their money on that, also release it on PS5 & the Next Xbox, like they did for GTA V. Considering the gap between GTA V on PS3 & 360 and GTA V on PC (19 months) we could see a similar gap with RDR2 on PC. If that is the case, we could see a PC release in May 2020. At which point next gen consoles would likely have been announced, assuming Sony repeat their February reveal as they did with PS4. Or soon to be revealed at E3 a month later. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that they re release on Next gen with native 4K on PS5, higher frame rates, or other enhanced features. Next gen consoles will be backwards compatible, but if they want to keep RD Online going, a newer version with higher player counts could be a good option.
Speaking of next gen consoles, until specs are set in stone, I don't think Rockstar will announce anything. Dev Kits are allegedly being sent to some developers right now. Sony first party studios are already working on PS5 games. Guerilla, for example. I'd wager Sony's relationship with Rockstar is a good bet to think they have them, too. So, what does this mean?
Well, let's look at when Rockstar announced RDR2. 18th October 2016. 18 months after the PC release of GTA V, 3 years, 1 month after the initial release of GTA V. Lets assume they stick to a similar pattern, both GTA V & RDR2 were announced in October. It could be a good bet for what month to expect an announcement. However, GTA IV was announced in May 2006, with Peter Moore's infamous Tattoo. So...
Now let's look at when Rockstar started hiring for RDR2, which was September 2014. It took them 2 years to announce their next game. And they had the base map planned out within 19 months. We just don't know when the photo of the map was taken, just when it was leaked to the public (april 2016). But we do know Rockstar always start with the world. For GTA V, that discussion started as GTA IV was wrapping up – almost five years ago – although the latest game has been in full production for just three years.
“It comes from the idea first,” Benzies tells us in his office at the studio.
“Where is it going to be set is the first question. Then that defines the missions; you’re doing different things in LA than in New York or Miami. The map and story get worked up together, and the story is a basic flow of how it works out so you can layer the missions in. Source
I think we can safely say that Rockstar already know where the game will be set, and Aaron Garbut is already hard at work at creating a concept of a map. If he hasn't already.
Based of that information, I'd say Rockstar are hiring for their next game, which will be PS5 and Next Xbox exclusive, Likely to be GTA 6, and will need 2 - 3 years of development before they are able to reveal it with a trailer. Putting the game at a 2021 - 22 reveal, with a 2023 - 24 release. I do believe the upcoming generation, and Rockstars desire to outdo themselves every time will only slow them down. Their games take so long to develop, and I can't see them putting out GTA 6 in the same timeframe as GTA V, from GTA IV. More likely to be similar, if not longer than GTA V to RDR2.

The Leaks

Remember when I said the leaks would serve a purpose later on? I find it highly suspicious that Rockstar had leaks as substantial as they had for RDR2, when they never had anything to that level before. They are usually incredibly watertight. So let's speculate as to why...

The Benz.

Isn't it strange how such a long time influential figure at Rockstar North was fired, and then leaks start popping up for their next game? It's no secret that there was more to his firing that we initially thought. Things went really bad between The Benz and The Housers. I think when he left the company, and many of his staff left, too. A lot of disgruntled employees may has decided to spill the beans on their next game out of spite. The entire game map leaking 6 months before the game was even announced, Epilogue spoilers down to finite details such as building a house or birthing a foal? Way too specific, and that's never happened for a Rockstar game before. I just find that suspicious.
So, why is that relevant to GTA 6? Well, it may end up not being relevant at all. But then I remembered the leak from last year, that stated GTA 6 was set in Vice City. Back then, I didn't believe it at all, as it was way too detailed for a game that wasn't even announced, and wouldn't be announced for at least 2 more years. Likely double that. Plus why did they choose The Know? And an anonymous source is always suspicious. But hey, nobody would be dumb enough to give their actual identity if it were legit.
But then I started thinking a while ago, at how detailed the RDR2 leaks were, and maybe, just maybe the person who tipped off The Know was legit, and the info was based of what was in pre production from 2012 [Unofficial Source]. The more I thought about it, I realized that Vice City, with the concept of crossing the border to South America is a simple enough concept that could have been decided upon during pre production (the world is the first thing they decide, remember?)

Why Vice City

2 reasons why it's starting to feel like a likely location. Reason one, GTA Online. They introduced businesses and gunrunning into GTA Online, and a lot of people enjoy that stuff. Vice City would be a great location to create content around that concept. I don't believe Rockstar would pick a location based on what would make Online popular, but after GTA Online's huge popularity after GTA V, they'd be stupid to ignore it. Reason 2 was the quote Dan Houser gave about not releasing GTA 6 during Trumps presidency. Again, I believe it's taken a little out of context, but it's his words about satirising America is what caught my eye.
"Both intense liberal progression and intense conservatism are both very militant, and very angry. It is scary but it’s also strange, and yet both of them seem occasionally to veer towards the absurd," Houser said. "It’s hard to satirize for those reasons. Some of the stuff you see is straightforwardly beyond satire. It would be out of date within two minutes, everything is changing so fast." Source
Then there was this quote from Leslie Benzies, also covered in The Knows video:
IGN Source
Any chance that Vice City might return in a future GTA?
It is always a possibility. There are a few references to the city in our current-gen GTAs so it is part of that HD universe, and it is certainly somewhere we would love to revisit. However Vice City, perhaps more than any other GTA game, was as much about the era as the setting. Miami in the 1980’s is so iconic it would feel strange to revisit the city in a different time period.
exploring grand theft auto vice citys lasting impact on gamer culture with rockstars leslie benzies city cover. Of course at some point we would like to have one big world containing all our cities and let the player fly between them and revisit their favorite areas, and in that context reimagining Vice City would be very interesting.
So according to Rockstar, albeit someone who is no longer at Rockstar, it would be strange to go back to Vice City in a modern day setting. If you combine that with what Dan Houser said about parodying America today, and how difficult that would be, is it possible that the next game could be set in the past? Again, combining those quotes, with alleged leaks, and the possibility for fun and exciting gameplay and Online experiences... Vice City is an incredibly likely setting.
The only problem is GTA 6 going into pre production in 2012. If the location was decided upon then. It would either be a happy coincidence, or they may have changed the location. Or, it never was Vice City, and this speculation is clever, but ultimately wrong.
One key piece of information is the Neogaf user, who allegedly states that it WON'T be Vice City. Citing that production notes going around when he still worked there stated possible locations and concepts. And that it is likely one of the 4 options listed in the quoted thread.

Small town gta - tight stories, scheduled characters, ridiculous levels of ambience, every home interior modelled. Every building enterable. More realism - if your wanted you are on the run for a while.
Vegas 1970s- CASINO?
Somewhere snowy - chicago/detroit
Mexico City

You have to consider that what they may have decided in 2012 changed, due to the popularity of GTA Online. They could have chosen a smaller, more detailed interactive world. But due to Online, decided they needed a larger world. Or the location wasn't right due to modern politics and ability to satarise, etc.
I do think GTA could return to the past eventually. Sam Houser has an incredible knowledge of pop culture, and is very intelligent. It would work well for them to go back to an older setting for a GTA game again. That isn't proof of that, or even a solid reason for them to do a prior setting. His knowledge can be used in any setting, past or present. But it's an interesting piece of information to think about.
Another possibility is Dan's words were as simple as GTA 6 won't release while Trump is in office, and therefore GTA 6 will be set in the present day, but by then the political climate may have settled down, or they think/hope things will be different by then, and what they choose to parody will be easier. i don't know.

How about Las Venturas?

For the past few months, I've been thinking about the possibility of GTA 6 being set in Las Venturas. It's one of the locations mentioned as a possibility by @Ash_735 It's also a location that would be quite large, although not hugely diverse. However creative freedoms could solve that. If they return to a past setting as theorised. Then Las Venturas in the 70's or 80's could be seen as a pretty cool option. Like a lot of people, I'm a fan of Joe Rogan. Recently he had a guest on his podcast, Bob lazar. Whether you believe him or not is irrelevant. But he tells some interesting stories about working near Area 51, and working on alien UFO's. that really got me thinking... Wouldn't that be a perfect location for Rockstar to have some fun with? GTA V and RDR2 both featured UFO easter Eggs. There was a lot of mysteries tied to Mt. Chiuliad and Fort Zancudo. Can you imagine Area 69 returning, and what Rockstar may do with that? Now I fully understand that saying they may do a certain location, based of nothing other than easter eggs is a bit silly, but what else do we have? However, it does tie in with the notes (Vegas 1970's Casino?). Before RDR2 we never believed Rockstar would create a game, and build of a previous games map. After RDR2, we now know it's possible. I'm still not convinced they'd do it with GTA, as the GTA series is always an island, whereas RDR1 was a landlocked location. However, it is possible, however unlikely that they could build of Southern San Andreas and go east to Las venturas.

SPOILERS for the entire Borderlands Franchise

Hey guys. I am here to request the Super Deluxe Edition for Borderlands 3 (or the Season Pass). I have been in love with the series since the launch of Borderlands 2 and after playing the 3rd installment I really want to experience more of the game. With the 2nd DLC coming out this month I am really excited to play it. Enough about these small details. Let's get onto the request.

Steam ID
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition for Steam on Green Man Gaming( $45 )
Also Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition is $35 on lG but I can't link it as third party websites seem to trigger a bot and the post doesn't show up on Fresh.

WHAT IS BORDERLANDS 3

Borderlands 3 is the latest installment in the Borderlands franchise. Borderlands is a game where you go around killing bandits and stealing their guns to kill more and more bandits while creating a lot of MAYHEM. Borderlands is a looter shooter with a bunch of RPG elements added over it like skill trees and points that are given to you through a leveling system.

The appeal of the game is the huge amount of guns that are all unique in their own rights (certain guns home on enemies while others are pistols that shoot like shotguns) and the weird combination between silly and dark humor that was present since the inception of the franchise.

A lot of people believe that Borderlands 2 was the peak of the series. The humor was amazing, the characters were better written, there was an actual story, the skills were more indepth and there were way more guns. While I don't disagree, I have to give a lot of points to Borderlands 1 as well for its amazing gunplay.

Now that leaves us with Borderlands 3. Where did the series go after the success of BL2? Well I would say it went in a better direction. The general gameplay loop is one of the best I have seen in a lot of games. The gunplay is so satisfying with each gun having their own sound and way of shooting, the action skills being better than ever (I still miss gunzerking though) but there is a but. The story. While I wouldn't say that it really is the worst, a lot of people really don't like it. A huge part of it being one of the new characters and the large amount of standing around listening to dialogue.

I truly love this new installment in a franchise that I have enjoyed for over 8 years or so and that is why I want to experience more of it.

How I found out about the Borderlands franchise

This happened around 9 years ago I believe. When I was still quite young and not that much into gaming I would sit around my father and watch him play video games from time to time. This is what made me start doing it some time later. Well one of the games that he found was Borderlands 1. I did watch him play for a while and played some of it myself but I didn't really enjoy the game much so I left it after my first playthrough.

That was until Borderlands 2 came out... Well a bit later after it came out. Again it was my father who found the game and started it and what can I say, it looked amazing and wanted to play it too. After I played through my first playthrough I was quite hooked on the whole Borderlands thing and continued to play my Gunzerker to around max level but unfortunately I had lost that save. After this I would follow pretty much everything that would be Borderlands related. I replayed Borderlands 1 and when I heard that the Pre-Sequel was coming out around 2014 I was so excited.

For Tales it is a bit fuzzy. I don't really remember when or how I found out about it. I believe it was after I had gotten into watching some of the older Telltale games and did some search around their games.

And now we arrived at Borderlands 3. Ah 7 years after 2 and 5 after the Pre-Sequel. A long wait that I never truly realized I was a part of. The idea of a 3rd Borderlands game never really dawned upon me until a video by Supmatto got me thinking. It was the one where he talked about the Gearbox demo where they actually showed the character model for Moze in a desert. I didn't pay much attention up until a few months before the reveal of the game, a point at which leaks was quite frequent and hard to miss if you spend a lot of time on Youtube. Then Borderlands 3 got revealed and my hype levels were so high that I think we could have gotten to the moon...

And now we are here. Almost 6 months after the release of the game with the 2nd DLC and Steam version right around the corner. What can I say. It has been a good couple months.

The story of Borderlands 3

Ah. So you want to hear another story eh? Oh! You want to know the whole story? Well then. Where shall I begin. Oh yea. I remember now.
The story of the first game is somewhat shallow. It follows the 4 original Vault Hunters after being contacted by Angel. Being told that they are supposed to do something great the characters embark on a mission to find the fabled Vault Key and open the mythical Vault.
This whole thing was planned by Jack, the new CEO of Hyperion, with Angel being his agent. Once the vault was open Eridium started errupting from the planet and Jack took advantage of this. The VHs of BL2 were tricked and almost killed by Jack as he tried to rid Pandora of the bandits that lived there. How was he planning to do this? Open a new vault and control the monster within. The new VHs met and teamed up with the ones from BL1 in order to stop Jack once and for all.
And now we arrive to Borderlands 3. Set around 7 years after the events of BL2 the games once again starts with 4 Vault Hunters getting off a bus. The VHs saw the adds for the Crimson Raiders and decided to join them in the fight against the new cult that started spreading across the Borderlands. You learn that the leaders of the cult, Tyreen and Troy Calypso, are both sirens and have similar powers. Throughout the game you are in a constant race against the Children of the Vault. The fate of the universe is decided by who will be the first to open the Great Vault and let out or stop the horrors that lie within. You will also see familiar and new faces as you visit the planets that the game offers.

The first DLC, Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, takes place on Handsome Jack's casino. I am unsure about the story of the DLC because what I have seen of it is not much. You will need to assemble a crew in order to steal the plans to the casino and get the revenge that Moxxi wants so much. A returning character is also here. Timothy Lawrence, former clone of Jack and also former vault hunter.
DLC nr.2 (Guns, Love, and Tentacles) will take place on a frozen planet and will have at it's center the marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock, a couple introduced in the Eden 6 part of the base game. It will also contain eldritch horror elements as there are cultists that worship a dead vault monster.
DLC 3 will most likely be wild west themed but instead of horses you have dinosaurs... Yea I bet it will be as good as it sounds.
Now for DLC 4. Here comes the juicy parts. Randy hinted at the story that might come with the DLC. We might go into the mind of Kreig. Kreig was a fan favorite character in BL2 and he didn't appear in BL3 so a lot of people are excited for this.

Gameplay mechanics and elements

Character Skills

On top of the 3 main skills from which you can choose from each character has 3 skill trees that focus on different aspects of said character. Amara has a tree that will allow her to be a melee machine while Moze has a tree that could make her not consume ammo and have unlimited of said ammo.
Each skill tree has these skills that are a bit more special and that can alter gameplay in more major ways. A set of these are the capstones at the end of each skill tree but these can be found through the skill tree too. Usually there are 2 or 3 special skills per tree and they take only 1 single point to be activated. There are special pieces of gear that can add more than one point to them and make then ever more powerful.

Vehicles

Borderlands 2 had 2 types of vehicles in the main game with 2 more added in the DLC. The only real differences between the base game ones were the fact that you could have 4 people instead of 2 and different weapons. The boosts might have been different too. In Borderlands 3 there are 3 kinds of vehicles. There is also the fact that you can fully customize your car. From the wheels to the engine. The way you get new parts is by stealing cars from the bandits running around in them. Now in Borderlands 3 you can go up to a car and press the needed button and if there is someone in said car you will throw then out and take the car for yourself.
There is also a quality of life improvement in the sense that now some things like cacti will be destroyed if you try to run them over. In Borderlands 2 those cacti were fully solid and you stop you if you would hit them with even 1 cm of your car's hitbox.

Sliding/Mantling

A new mechanic added to the game to make it more dynamic and also make the level design be more vertical at the same time. Sliding works like in a lot of other games. If you are running and use the crouch button you will enter the sliding animation. If you slide into an enemy, that enemy will be staggered or even go flying. This is a good technique to stop enemies from shooting or even taking their place in cover by staggering them.
Then there is mantling. This will allow a character to climb certain ledges that are usually shown with special textures onto the walls though it is not limited to just that. With Mantling you can be very creative with skipping certain parts of the game as you can sometime mantle things that the developers might not want you to.

Planets and the Hub

Le pièce de résistance. Borderlands 3, while not ditching Pandora completely, will have our band of misfits traveling from planet to planet through the galaxy in which Pandora resides. The game will start off and have it's first act on Pandora, but after repairing and taking off aboard the Sanctuary 3 ship you will go to the stars and beyond in order to stop the Calypsos. Sanctuary 3 will be your hub area from which you can travel to the different planets in the game. The game will have 5 planets with more coming in the future with DLC. Each planet is divided into multiple areas like how the maps in Borderlands 2 worked.

Gun Manufacturers

`Hyperion. The big-bad corporation from previous Borderlands titles, is back in Borderlands 3. Alongside accuracy that increases as you fire the weapon, Hyperion guns will now have a deployable shield mounted in the front that will be able to stop some of the damage that would be done to you. The shield does have a capacity and will need to recharge.

2) Maliwan. Maliwan has always been the manufacturer that focused on elemental guns and in Borderlands 3 it is no different. Like in Borderlands 2 all Maliwan guns will be elemental but this time they will have 2 elements that you can switch between at will. The only downside that is with these games is the fact that shots need to be charged before they can be shot.

3) Torgue. DO YOU LIKE BLOWING S*IT UP? DO YOU LOVE EXPLOSIONS? WELL THEN TORGUE IS THE MANUFACTURER FOR YOU! IT IS TIME TO KILL EVERY LIVING ORGANISM ON THIS PLANET WITH THE HELP OF THE HIGH DAMAGE GYRO-JET PROJECTILES THAT TRAVEL SOMEWHAT SLOWLY! THERE IS ALSO THE STICKY MODE WHERE YOU STICK THE BULLETS TO YOUR ENEMIES AND THEN YOU CAN DETONATE THEM FOR HIGH DAMAGE! EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4) Vladof. This focus on high fire rate means that its guns have ridiculously high fire rates. But as a result, they aren't going to be as accurate as other weapons, and you'll burn through your ammo pretty fast. Even so, Vladof's arsenal is excellent if you're looking for rapid, consistent damage. And its guns come with some special attachments as well, like under-barrel grenade launchers or rocket launchers.

5) Tediore. Guns with legs... What more do you want? Ok ok. The guns made by this manufacturer do not have a conventional magazine that you reload. Instead you throw the gun out into the battlefield and a new one digistructs into your hands. The thrown guns can have a multitude of effects like exploding and then spawning child grenades or sticking to a surface and becoming a turret.

6) Jakobs. Guns made by Jackobs do not only look like they are out of the wild west but also feel like it. These guns can shoot as fast as you can pull the trigger so the faster you are the more damage you do. They also have high damage output but you will need to be accurate. Accuracy and critical hits are rewarded with a chance that the bullet will ricochet off the enemy and hit others. Currently my favorite gun in the game is the Wedding Invitation that was added during the Valentine Day event. When scoring a critical hit the bullets will not only explode but they will also shoot towards other enemies but this time will do cryo damage.

7) Atlas. A manufacturer that was absent during the events of Borderlands 2 now returns lead by none other than Rhys, one of the 2 protagonists in Tales from the Borderlands. With guns made by Atlas you will be able to shoot out a tracker onto your enemies and then any round you shoot will follow said tracker and hit the enemy that is marked. The Q-System is one the best early game assault rifles.

8) Dahl. Dahl is a powerful militaristic corporation. And these roots have led to their firearms being tactical in nature. They offer a variety of different firing modes that the user can toggle between based on the various factors that influence gunfights. Because of their jack-of-all-trades nature means they inherently aren't specialized and thus, they aren't the best guns you can equip for specialized tasks.

9) Children of the Vault or COV. The guns made by COV are quite special. They do not have a magazine because you never have to reload. COV guns instead of having the usual magazine have a heating bar. If the bar gets filled then the weapon will jam and will need repairs. The repairs in a way are somewhat like reloads but if you manage the heat throughout your battles you will never need to reload the gun ever again. The animations that play are quite funny like the one where you use a water gun to cool down an overheated element on your gun.

Eridium's new use

I Borderlands 2 you could use Eridium in order to upgrade your ammo capacity or to give it to certain vendor like NPCs that would give you items in exchange. Now in Borderlands 3 the ammo upgrades are once again purchasable with normal cash so Eridium will gain a different use but will remain as currency.
On Sanctuary 3 Crazy Earl will have a shop that sells emotes and other cosmetic items like skins or heads. These can be bought with Eridium. Other than that you will have the ability to buy Annointed gear that will give you certain specialized bonuses depending on the character you are playing as.

Why do I want the version that includes the game pass

As I said before, I am a huge fan of this series and once Borderlands 3 was announced I was the most hyped I ever was about a game in my whole life. Not even Hollow Knight Silksong getting announced got me this hyped. The months leading up to the release I have played through Borderlands 1 with a friend and twice through Borderlands 2 (once modded) just because I couldn't stop thinking about the game. Even now I end up booting one of the older games because of the amazing gameplay.
The whole looter shooter genre that started with Borderlands 1 was an interesting concept that I didn't really click with until Borderlands 2. Once that came out and passed others tried to capitalize on the success of the genre but not the same way that Borderlands did. While the 2 Destiny games and the 2 Division games are fun in their own way I believe that the games as a ser1vice/MMOlite addition was unnecessary and kinda hindered the amount of fun you could have. Though I have to agree that what I have played of Destiny 2 and Division 2 was quite fun even though it was just at the start of the games.
Now that I have had fun with the base game of Borderlands 3 I really want to continue this fun within the DLCs. Moxxi's Heist is quite a throwback to the days of BL2 where loaders were everywhere and same with Jack. DLC2's atmosphere looks gorgeous. The trailer made the planet look so good and the new enemy designs are really good. I am also exited to use some of the new guns like the Ion Cannon that can almost 1 shot everything even on the highest difficulty.
There are also the last 2 DLCs that might be really good. I would like to ride a dinosaur while shooting my Maggie and yelling "YEHAW" in a western themed DLC or ride the shiniest meat bicycle in the mind of Kreig.

How long will I play it

I already have around 5 days put into the base game. I am unsure how this translates into hours... No not because I can't do math. It is because the game tells you the time in days rather than hours. Anyways. I have put a lot of time and do plan to put even more as I only have 1 character that I have gotten to maximum level and I don't even have the best gear for him yet. The season pass and the DLCs it will bring will allow me to break some of the monotony of the grind or of playing the story again and again while leveling up characters.

Why would YOU want to buy the game

So. You want to know why you would want/should buy this game for yourself? Well the first question is are you already a fan of the Borderlands series? If so then Borderlands 3 is a must play not only because of the new story that expands the already existing lore but also because of all the new planets you explore and the new quality of life improvements that the developers added. The game feels like it took what Borderlands 2 did mixed it with some Borderlands 1 and improved onto that... and it is NOT a bad thing like some people say.

But what if you have never played a Borderlands game? Then what are you doing here reading a request all about Borderlands? Heh I am joking. If you have no experience with the games but have played some of the looter shooters that came out prior to Borderlands 3 you should be able to enjoy the game. The co-op experience is timeless no matter which of the games you play. The only thing that will not be in the game is the MMO-lite/games as a service parts that most of the newer looter shooters contain.

If you haven't played any looter shooters in your entire life the game still has a lot of things to offer. From the varied environments scattered on the planets that you will explore to the amazing gun play that the game has you can find something to enjoy. You will not need to look at the stats of a gun to really know that it is better as now guns have gear scores that show how good they are in general so gear farming is a bit streamlined for any player to jump in and feel like they are getting better. There are also a gigantic amount of guns to choose from. Each Legendary and Unique weapons will have their own effect that no other gun will have and they vary from brain shaped turrets to burger canons.

There is also the fact that Gearbox does listen to us the players. One example of this is with a little event involving the endgame raid (Takedown). For a limited time the Takedown was scaled to the number of players in the party (before it was always scaled to 4). People really loved it and seeing this the developers decided to keep the feature in while adding a new switch for people who wanted to experience the true difficulty of the Takedown while going solo. There are other examples like the ability to toggle the guardian ranks or the introduction of cutscene skip. There are also free updates and events every so often so the game doesn't become too stale.

Why can't I buy the game

I honestly do not have any kind of sob story that I could shove in this part and I also do not like it when people would just fake one. I just am not able to spend this amount of money for a bunch of reasons. I had started my second year of university a while ago and so a bunch of expenses went towards uni stuff, clothes and just the tax itself. Whatever money is left I need to save up in case there is any kind of emergency or needed for uni.
Then there is also the fact that the conversion rate between dollar and ron (the currency used in Romania) is quite high. For us 1 dollar is around 4.3 ron which would mean that the price of the game goes up to almost or even above 200 ron which is quite a lot. There is also this entire situation with Covid-19 which is generally annoying for all of us. Being stuck inside for so long can get quite boring. I honestly would have gotten the game myself if I could but because of the circumstances I am asking you kind members of the Gift of Games community to help me enjoy all the things added by the DLCs because I am a huge fan of this series.

Final words

And here we are. The end of the request. I really hope you have enjoyed reading my request and what else could I say other than see ya later and I wish you all who read and got to this part good luck with your own current or future requests or giveaway entries.

-Exclaimer-
This post is based on my personal experience and what I think is important for the different approaches regarding the heist! Other players can have a diffenrent opinion so keep that in mind!
I have done the heist a couple of times and encountered numerous problems and obstacles I had to overcome in order to succeed. I have watched many videos for the different approaches so I could be as efficient as possible. I tried to find a post where all these things I had to look up were summed up, but unfortunately I couldn't find any (I mighty have overseen it, in this case I'm sorry that there is a post out there where all of this is already written down).
First things first. There are 3 different approaches for the diamond casino heist in order to get the job done:

Aggressive
Sneaky and Silent
Big Con

1. The aggressive approach
This method is a bit more difficult. I would suggest to not to do it with, in total, 2 players as you only have 2:20 minutes in the vault if I remember correctly. Also you loose money everytime you get shot, which will happen sooner or late, especially if you are new to the heist and have never done it before.
What I find is the easiest way to do this method is using the Sewers as entrence as you end up directly at the room in front of the man trap. You just need to take out the guards and walk right into the vault. As you exit I would not use the front door. For me it is way easier to get out of the casino on the back side as you just need to get past the horse racing track and you are almost good to go.
As for inside the vault: It really depends with how many people you are doing the heist. But when I did it with 1 friends only I noticed that you should always pick everything up first and then proceed to place the termal charges to open the doors as you cant pick anything up while they are opening the door. Also I would, especially if you have gold as loot, always start at the very back of the vault and work my way to the front because you walk slower once you pick up some loot. So leaving the loot carts that are nearest to the vault entrance to pick them up after all the others is better.
In this approach you can stand a couple of senconds in the gas as the alarm is already set off. Keep that in mind.
I would also recommend to get the combat MP weapon set (I believe that it is the medium gun man that takes **7%**of the cut) as it just makes the mission easier overall.
2. The Sneaky and Silence approach
This is in my opinion the most fun, but in the beginning also the most challenging one. Only problem here is that it could become really difficult doing it with randoms and not with friends, as you do need to have very good coordination to get it done.
For me, the best way to do it is if you take the staff entrance as your entry and exit point. You do need good timing, thats why it can become difficult doing it with randoms as you just can't communicate that good with them.
So far, all the doors on the inside were security level 2, so when you are doing the prep mission get the security level 2 card, as you don't need to hack the doors inside the casino. This can cost a lot of time if you need to do the difficult hack to get the doors open.
The main objective is to stay hidden all the time. You do not want to set off the alarm!
Remember that you can only shoot one camera down, the other ones you have to take out with your stun gun. Also, I would never take out more than 2 cameras at the same time with you stun gun as Lester keeps reminding you that the alarm will go off if too many cameras are down at the same time.
For the guard in the staircase. During the first runs (we were in total 4 people/friends) we always set off the alarm when we killed the guy in the staircase. I then killed him while stealth walking (ctrl) and it worked. So I think that you need to be stealth walking in order to kill him and stay hidden. But I am not sure if its true.
Now for your time insde the vault. With Paige as hacker (expert level) you get 3:30 minutes vault time. I would always have at least 1, if not 2 guys hacking the doors. This is not so easy when you are doing the hack for the first time but you eventually get used to it. I did this method a couple of times with 1 friend and we were able to get alle the gold carts and some loot boxes with doing it this way (about 2,5 million). He hacked all the doors and I started taking the loot since the beginning. I am not sure how many times you can fail while doing the hack but I believe it is something about 2 times. Keep that in mind too.
What is good to know is that you need about 20 seconds to loot an entire gold cart. With cash it is a bit more. For artwork, this is by far the fastes loot you pick up. You take about 13 seconds with all the animations etc.
I would start looting the carts at the back side too, just like I said in the aggressive approach. This applies for all approaches. What is important is that you need to get out of the vault before the gas comes. I would recommend to leave the vault with at least 20 seconds left. If you want to be on the safe side take the 30 seconds mark. Also, you need exactly 8 seconds from the centre of the middle room to get out of the vault.
I always use the EMP after we leave the vault. It is really easy to get out if everything is dark and you can just run to your exit point. You do need to kill one guard at the very end before leaving the casino though.
Once you leave the casino on the back side, you can stealth walk (ctrl) over the horse racing track to your escape vehicles. I think that the best way to escape the police is to get into the sewer tunnel and just wait at the very end of it.
3. The Big Con
The easiest one is by far the Big Con. If you do it right you can get the heist done in about 15-20 Minutes (I did that playing with 1 friend only. So it was a 2 player heist finished in a bit more than 15 minutes).
The fastest and easiest way is to use the Gruppe-Sechs (group six) uniforms as your entry strat. You can straight up walk past the guards to the vault. And yes you can run you don't need to "walk". For your exit point you use the staff entrance/exit. I recommend to get the NOOSE outfits as well.
Just like the Sneaky approach you do want to leave the vault without being detected by the gas so you don't set off the alarm. Once you are in the staircase they find out what you did and start looking for you.
You need to take out 1 guard with a pistol whip. Afterwards you stealth walk into the changing room so you can disguise yourself as NOOSE guards. Once you are outside the casino you don't want to get caught walking away from it. So keep that in mind while you are getting away. Otherwise they will start shooting at you and you will loose money eveytime they hit you.
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General information
For the "assistants" that you need to choose for the heist I recommend always to take the best Hacker (either Paige or Ari. The difference is that Paige takes 1% less cut) as you get with them a total vault time of 3:30 minutes (not in the aggressive approach!). You unlock Paige with buying the Terrorbyte and for Ari you need to collect all the signal jammers.
For the escape vehiles I always go with the worst one (5% cut) because in my opinion it is good enough if you use the racing cars and not the minis (you can select which cars you want to use and once you see them you will know which ones I mean).
For the weapons: If you are doing the Sneaky and Big Con approach you can go with the bad weapons too (5% cut). They are enough as you, if properly done, don't really use them a lot. For the agressive heist I recommend to get the combat MP (I suppose that they are called like that).
The heist itself doesn't take that much time to accomplish. The prep mission are what takes time to do. I mostly do all of them in 90-120 minutes if I do them alone. With a friend you can easily do them in just over an hour or so.
Another thing regarding the prep missions that is important is the Duncan mission. You wan't to get at least 8 of the 10 targets destoryed as it impacts the heist quite a lot in my opinion. And you can't restart it if you mess up.
For the vault loot: you can reset the heist if you don't get the loot you want. The best loot if you do the heist with 2 players only is artwork as you can take everything. Afterwards comes gold and lastly cash. Cash just takes too much time to empty a cart. To reset the mission you just call Lester. You will loose the 25K heist set up cost though.
A bug that my friend and I found out is that while doing the Sneaky mission with 2 Players you get kicked out of the session while entering the man trap after looting the vault. I don't know if it will get fixed but you do need to restart the heist final from 0. I am not 100% sure if you will get kicked out every time when you restart.
TL:DR
I highlighted all the important stuff so you can just overfly the text without having to read all of it.

SPOILERS for the entire Borderlands Franchise

Hey guys. I am here to request the Super Deluxe Edition for Borderlands 3 (or the Season Pass). I have been in love with the series since the launch of Borderlands 2 and after playing the 3rd installment I really want to experience more of the game. With the 2nd DLC coming out this month I am really excited to play it. Enough about these small details. Let's get onto the request.

Steam ID
The Super Deluxe edition is currently 42.55€ on a third party site (not the one that starts with G). Reason for not linking is because if I do my post doesn't show up in the new tab. We can talk about it in comments or DMs.
Borderlands 3 Season Pass for Epic Games on HumbleBundle

WHAT IS BORDERLANDS 3

How I found out about the Borderlands franchise

The story of Borderlands 3

Gameplay mechanics and elements

Character Skills

Vehicles

Sliding/Mantling

Planets and the Hub

Gun Manufacturers

`Hyperion. The big-bad corporation from previous Borderlands titles, is back in Borderlands 3. Alongside accuracy that increases as you fire the weapon, Hyperion guns will now have a deployable shield mounted in the front that will be able to stop some of the damage that would be done to you. The shield does have a capacity and will need to recharge.

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Unleashed pt. 47

Diamond Casino Heist Guide

Here's a list if guides that'll help with getting started with the Diamond Casino Heist:

Scoping Out

Tip 1:

Tip 2:

Note:

Scope out the Casino

Changing vault contents

Personally, I cycle between Aggressive and The Big Con (Gruupe Sechs).

Aggressive

The preps I prefer to do are:

The Big Con

The preps I prefer to do are:

There are two was I like to lose the cops

Note:

Back to Makai (Part 5)

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What is the Casino Heist and why should I do it?

Getting Started

Scoping and Vault Contents

Choosing Approaches

Support Crew

Optional Preps

Finale Screen

The Big Con

Silent & Sneaky

Aggressive

The Getaway

Bugs

[TIMELINE] Analyzing The Past to Predict the Future - Everything We Should Consider on the Road to GTA VI

FACTS

THE PAST

RDR2 TIMELINE

Now We Use All This Information to Speculate

The Leaks

The Benz.

Why Vice City

How about Las Venturas?

[REQUEST][Steam] Borderlands 3: Super Deluxe Edition - Guns with legs? We got you boo!

WHAT IS BORDERLANDS 3

How I found out about the Borderlands franchise

The story of Borderlands 3

Gameplay mechanics and elements

Why do I want the version that includes the game pass

How long will I play it

Why would YOU want to buy the game

Why can't I buy the game

Final words

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[REQUEST][Steam/Epic] Borderlands 3: Super Deluxe Edition (OR Season Pass ) - Guns with legs? We got you boo!

WHAT IS BORDERLANDS 3

How I found out about the Borderlands franchise

The story of Borderlands 3

Gameplay mechanics and elements

Why do I want the version that includes the game pass

How long will I play it

Why would YOU want to buy the game

Why can't I buy the game

Final words

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