The Doomsday Heist: the complete guide to all three acts

The Doomsday Heist is GTA Online at its most ridiculous and its most ambitious: a three-act sci-fi trilogy from December 2017 that escalates from stolen intelligence to a hijacked nuclear submarine to a missile silo inside Mount Chiliad. It spent years off the money meta, and the July 2026 update dragged it back: every act now carries a boosted first-completion payout each week, repeat payouts were corrected to their intended values, and the setup missions pay more.

This guide is the full run: how to get set up, how every act actually plays start to finish, the verified Elite conditions to chase, and the bonus ladder that turns a disciplined crew into millionaires, with the money picture underneath.

Step 1: get set up

• Buy a Facility from Maze Bank Foreclosures. The cheapest, Paleto Forest at GTA$1,250,000, works identically to the dearest; pricier ones buy location, not function
• Get a second player. Every act needs a minimum of two and runs with up to four, and there is no way around it
• Know the fees before you host: GTA$65,000 for Act I, GTA$95,000 for Act II, GTA$120,000 for Act III, all Rockstar-listed figures
• First playthrough runs the acts in order; after that, host whichever act the week favours
• Each act follows the same shape: freemode prep jobs to source gear, setup missions from the Facility, then the finale, with Hard adding roughly 25% to the take

Step 2: run Act I, The Data Breaches

• Take the prep jobs in an invite-only session and source what the board asks
• Run the setups: lift the paramedic equipment, fly the signal intercepts from the seat of a weaponised Deluxo, and raid the server farm
• Launch the finale: push into the IAA facility, fight through to the intelligence, take it back and fight your way out
• Teach new crew members here. Act I is the trilogy at its most forgiving, and the later acts assume everyone already knows the rhythm
• Chasing the Elite? The current verified conditions: under 15 minutes, less than 10% vehicle damage, nobody loses a life, GTA$50,000

Step 3: run Act II, The Bogdan Problem

• Work the setups: steal the Avenger gunship, rescue the hacker ULP, salvage the hard drives, and scout the submarine
• Split the crew for the finale: one team boards the submarine and works through it compartment by compartment, the other holds the sky in the Avenger
• Talk constantly. Two teams, two jobs, one clock is the whole design, and silence is how it fails
• Get everyone off the sub before the end, because the exit is as cinematic as the entry
• The verified Elite: under 15 minutes, the Avenger below 5% damage, nobody dies, GTA$50,000, and the Avenger condition is the one that ends most attempts

Step 4: run Act III, The Doomsday Scenario

• Clear the setup slate, which gates the trilogy maddest machinery: rescuing Agent 14, acquiring the Barrage, taking the Khanjali stealth tank and knocking out the air defences
• Pick your finale vehicle as host and budget for it: GTA$100,000 for the Barrage or GTA$50,000 for the Khanjali, and the Khanjali is both cheaper and better for most crews
• Breach the mountain in the Khanjali and fight through the tunnels into the silo
• Push to the core, hold while the hacks run, and stop the launch with the fate of San Andreas on the clock
• Take the jetpacks out through the silo shaft for one of the best endings Rockstar has ever shipped
• The take, tested post-hotfix: GTA$1,620,000 on Normal and GTA$2,025,000 on Hard repeat runs before cuts, more on the first run of the week, plus an Act III Elite at GTA$50,000 verified as under 30 minutes, 150 headshots, nobody wasted

Step 5: farm the ladder

Doomsday is the discipline heist, and the bonuses are where disciplined crews get paid. Plan whole evenings around these, in this order of ambition:

• All In Order: complete the three acts in sequence for GTA$500,000
• Every Elite in the heist adds a further GTA$100,000 on top of the per-act GTA$50,000s
• Loyalty: every mission in order with the same team, from GTA$75,000 as a duo up to GTA$375,000 with the same four throughout
• Criminal Mastermind II: all missions in order, same two players, Hard, nobody dies, GTA$750,000
• Criminal Mastermind III: the same as a three, GTA$1,750,000
• Criminal Mastermind IV: the same as a four, GTA$3,750,000, the single biggest challenge bonus in GTA Online. If any player dies, the challenge fails and starts over, so treat every setup like the finale

The reference layer: the 2026 money picture

Three July changes are why this trilogy is back on the rota. Each act first completion every week pays a boosted rate, resetting Thursdays, and the boost applies per act, so a crew can take all three in one strong weekend. Rockstar corrected repeated-completion payouts for all three finales to their intended values, closing a long-standing short-change. And the setup missions pay more, so the road to each finale is no longer dead time. The full current repeat table, tested against the post-July build: Act I pays GTA$877,500 on Normal and GTA$1,096,875 on Hard, Act II GTA$1,282,500 and GTA$1,603,125, and Act III GTA$1,620,000 and GTA$2,025,000, all before cuts. Running the acts also unlocks trade prices on the hardware you used, the Thruster jetpack and the Khanjali among them.

Finding a crew

Doomsday will not even launch without a second player, and the Criminal Mastermind ladder demands the same people showing up night after night. GTA Online has no crossplay, so that crew shares your platform, and the SixCentral Heist Finder lists all three acts separately for exactly this: one tap to join, gamertags straight to the host, Xbox and PS5 kept apart. It runs in our Discord, which opens from your account page, and the online desk lives at sixcentral.co.uk/online.

Pick the act the week favours, bring people who talk, keep everyone alive, and the end of the world pays better in 2026 than it has in years.