I’m back for another round of the Doomsday Heist Act 2. Not too long ago, I talked about all the prep missions that I had to do in order to get ready for the setup missions and ultimately the final mission of Act 2.

I had to steal a heavily armored van that contained key cards to get inside a specific hangar at the Los Santos Airport, take out drug dealers to get key information on the whereabouts of a detained IAA agent, cause a riot in order to steal a heavily armored riot truck, steal 4 Strombergs, and finally taking ECUs to divert torpedoes in a future mission.

Now with all those prep missions out of the way, I’m finally ready to start the setup missions which are the ones in which I will need other players to help me with. The first setup mission doesn’t actually turn out to be that bad as we only had to restart the mission once. I wish I could the same for the others though as they became quite challenging. Well without further ado, here is my experience with the setup missions of Act 2.

Setup Mission 1: Stealing An Avenger

As the title above suggests, I have to steal the very large Avenger plane in this setup mission. Once I get to the setup screen for the mission and choose everything that I want, I have to wait for players to join. Fortunately I do not have to wait too long as I do have 3 other players to join me.

The outfits that we have are similar to some of the past ones I had to do where we sported night vision helmets as well as very dark clothing. I’m a little surprised at this since we’re just going to the airport to retrieve this plane. It should be a piece of cake right?

Once we start the mission, we all have to drive to Los Santos Airport. I think most of us have our own separate vehicles, but I notice one of the players does not keep up with us and is way behind. I suddenly hear an explosion and the player that is left behind must’ve done something crazy, because a message pops up saying that he committed suicide. So now we no longer have a life to give and will fail the mission if anyone else gets killed.

After a bit of driving, I make it to the airport as well as 2 of the other players, but we have to wait for the 3rd one so that we can continue on. He takes his time getting there so the rest of just mess around, driving each others vehicles and trying to do stunts.

Finally, after a few minutes, our 3rd player has arrived and we can all enter the hangar and continue our mission. Once we’re in, we see the avenger and all looks good. No hint of anyone around so we all head towards the massive plane when suddenly everything goes completely dark.

Lester immediately informs us that the power has been cut and we’re now being swarmed with Merryweather guards. We now have to switch to night vision and defend ourselves as well as make our way to the upper part of the hangar in order to restore power.

The firefight with multiple guards gets pretty intense and I take a number of hits that quickly depletes my health, but I manage to take cover to keep from getting killed. As I’m returning fire, everything goes dark again and the screen changes to a message saying that one of the players has been killed and that we failed the mission. Does it seem like this is going to be repeat of the many failures I had to endure with the setup missions from Act 1?

Well the good news is, this will actually be our only mission failure for this particular setup mission. We all quickly decide to restart and luckily, we don’t have to drive all the way back to the airport as we start back over inside the hangar. Once we all move towards the Avenger, everything goes dark again and we quickly switch to night vision and start firing our guns at the Merryweather guards.

We actually take out nearly all of them in the lower part of the hangar and we are able to start making our way upstairs. Of course once we start ascending up the higher levels, there are more guards waiting for us. Even though there were some close calls with getting killed, we managed to take them all out and get to where needed to go to restore the power.

It actually feels good to switch off of night vision. We all quickly head back down stairs and we are now able to get into the Avenger and start the journey to the drop off point. There is one player flying the plane while the rest of us head into the back and start controlling the gun turrets that are available on the Avenger. Once we’re in the air, there are a few enemy helicopters that come after us, but with the HUGE guns on this massive plane, the helicopters do not stand a chance at all and we were able to easily make it to the drop off point and complete the mission. Now it’s time for Setup Mission number 2.

Setup Mission 2: Rescuing A Captured Agent

You’ll probably remember a prep mission I had to do where I had to take on drug dealers to find out the location of an agent who had been kidnapped by foreign agents. Well in this setup mission, I have to go and free this agent and bring him back to headquarters.

I’ve had to do this particular setup mission numerous times as I had different players get killed repeatedly, suddenly quit, and even some that didn’t care about getting the mission completed and decided to just drive around instead. Not sure why someone would do that in a mission when you can do that yourself in free roam mode, but that’s ok. I eventually got a group of players who were serious and we were eventually able to complete it.

First off, we had to go to a particular warehouse that the agent was being held at, but we were warned that there are a lot of enemy foreign agents there that are very heavily armed as well as armored. As I said earlier, when I did this mission with other players, we all kept getting at some point trying to rescue the agent from this warehouse.

After multiple retrys, we were finally able to get to the upper part of the warehouse and retrieve the agent. Next order of business was getting him out of there and then driving him to a secure drop off point. Fortunately, we had a heavily armored vehicle to transport him in as well a large gun turret on top. Trust me, we were going to need it as the foreign agents weren’t going to give up without a fight.

We had to get out of the city and into the countryside since the drop off point is in Blaine County. We were being heavily pursued, but thankfully one of the players was using the heavy machine gun on top to take out enemies both behind and in front of us. There were a few times we got stopped and some of the players got out and fired their weapons at the enemy agents. It was certainly risky as we didn’t have anymore lives to spare and one more player death would’ve resulted in mission failure.

Thankfully we no of us ended up getting killed as we took out a helicopter that was chasing us and were able to get to the drop off point even though it took awhile. Once the agent was dropped off, mission was completed and I was ready to actually go into the next setup mission. The next one took awhile to complete, but there weren’t as many mission failures as the last one.

Setup Mission 3: Saving Hard drives

The title pretty much says it all, we have to save hard drives before they’re burned up in vans. This mission believe it or not requires the use of riot control van that I took in one of the prep missions. There are 2 water cannons on top which is perfect because we’ll have to put out fires on burning vans so that we can retrieve the hard drives.

There’s more than one location that we have to go to in order to complete this mission and the RCV is not exactly known for speed. Every location has enemy agents so not only do we have to put the fires to retrieve those drives, we have to take out these enemies too and it can sometimes get intense.

Our first location is not too far from our headquarters as it is at the Stoner Cement Works. Once we arrive, we have to take out some of the agents at the front of the property and then make our way around to where one of the burning vans is at. Two of the players get out of the RCV and take out any other agents that remain and we’re able to get the fire out on the first van. One of those two players retrieves the hard drive and then I drive around to the other side so we can get the other burning van.

There are more enemies on this side and we are starting to take some fire from them, but the two players come around and start firing on them. The other player inside the RCV is also firing the second water cannon so we can quickly put the fires out.

With that now taken care of and the second hard drive retrieved, Lester informs us that we have to head to Los Santos to a second burn location to retrieve even more hard drives before they’re burned up. It’s at an area called La Mesa which is almost like a train depot place that is right by a major freeway in the game. On our way there, we get chased by enemies, but not much we can do since our RCV is only armed with water cannons. Fortunately it’s very heavily armored so they aren’t too much of a threat.

We finally arrive and I quickly start shooting water on the first van while the other part of my team starts taking out the foreign agents. Once we take care of the first van, I have to navigate to the other side for the next burning van. I see a heavily armed agent firing at me so I point my water cannon at him and of course it does nothing so I decide to get out and start shooting my own gun at him while at the same time the other 2 players come around and help me out. After about a minute or two, we’re able to complete that one and move on.

The next place we have to go to is called Cypress Flats and this one will actually prove to be a bit more challenging. Cypress Flats is another industrial area, but this time we’ll have to put out 4 van fires and there are A LOT of enemy agents at this one. There’s so many of them that I have to get out and help pick them off as there’s some on top of nearby rooftops.

I’m taking a lot of hits and I eventually get killed. At the time I’m killed though there was one life we could spare so the mission didn’t end up in failure and I was able to respawn. Sadly though, shortly after I respawned, 2 of the other players were killed and the mission ended up a failure anyway. We were not going to let that stop us especially since we’ve come so far.

After we’ve all restarted, we’re back at the La Mesa area, but we don’t have to do that area all over again. Instead, we just have to get into the RCV and head back over to Cypress Flats. We are definitely preparing ourselves since this is proving to be a very tough one to complete.

Once we’ve arrived back to Cypress Flats, we quickly go to work as I’m doing my best to put out the fires on the vans as quickly as possible while the other players are trying to take out as many of the enemies as possible. It is a very brutal fight and already one of the players has been killed. As soon as I put out the third fire, the mission ends in failure yet again as a player is killed.

Maybe the third time will be the charm. We end up making our back to Cypress Flats and this time we are very determined to get past this area. I get out and even help unload on the many enemy agents and even though one player has already been killed, we still keep pressing on and no one else gets killed in this part as we finally get all the hard drives and are ready to move on to what hopefully is the final area.

We have to go to Elysian Island which is actually by the cargo area and docks. There’s a lot of enemy agents here and more fires to put out, but we actually have less trouble here than when we were at Cypress Flats. Once most of the enemies have been taken out and hard drives have been retrieved, we are now ready to head to the drop off point. Once we arrive, Avon is happy we got all the hard drives and is ready to go to work on getting the information out of them. Finally, the mission is a success and now I’m ready to move on to the final Setup Mission for Act 2.

Setup Mission 4: Submarine Recon

Do you remember the Strombergs I had to steal in a prep mission? Well this is the one where they’re going to be used. We have to do some major recon on a Russian sub so that we can do the final mission of the Doomsday Heist Act 2.

This one is pretty straight forward as all the players have to do here is get into one of the 4 Strombergs that I took and drive to a location on the beach to where we’ll go under water and search for as well as scan the Russian sub. On the way there, Lester inquires about the weapons that the Strombergs are equipped with and that we’ll need to use them to take out a convoy of enemies.

On our way to the location on the beach, we end up spotting the convoy ahead of use which contains heavily armored vehicles as well as helicopters above. I switch to missiles on the Stromberg and eventually catch up to one of the other players who is ahead of me and we start taking out the convoy.

The other player has already taken out a large portion of it, but I’m able to catch up and start taking out some of the helicopters as well as a couple of the armored vehicles. Once that is done, we all have to follow the GPS to the location on the beach so that we can get into the water and start searching for the Russian sub. I do arrive at the location to get my Stromberg into the water, but for some reason the controls did not immediately allow me to change the car into underwater mode. My car was just basically floating in the water. I finally got it to work and Lester mentions that we had to take out mines near the sub.

Fortunately Lester has found a way to keep us masked from the sub otherwise we’d be blown to simtherines. I end up taking out a big chunk of the mines and the other players take out a few as well. With the mines out of the way now, we are clear to scan the sub. It is a very large submarine so we do have to scan different sections of it. After that’s all completed, we are good to go. Lester warns us though that the people on the sub have found a way to counter the false scans that Lester was providing so we have about 90 seconds to get away from the sub or we’re toast.

Trust me, we have no problems getting away from that sub quickly and once we get back on dry land we head to the drop off point in order to return the Strombergs. I do have to wait just a little bit for one of the other players as he was still out in the ocean for some reason, but he was able to make it back and we completed the final setup mission.

The Conclusion of the Doomsday Heist Act 2 is Coming

Now that all the setup missions are completed, it is time for the final mission of Act 2. I have no doubt that it is going to be crazy especially since we have to get on board that Russian sub. Lester mentions the importance of this because we have to stop World War III.

If you’re one of the few who does not have GTA V and you loved my description of how I completed the Setup missions and would like to try them yourself, there’s no reason to wait as it is selling for a good price over at Amazon. As I’ve mentioned many times before, this game is constantly being updated by Rockstar that keeps making the game worthwhile.

I’ve got a video posted below of one of the Setup missions which happens to be the one where I had to rescue the captured agent from foreign enemies. You’ll actually see the drive to the drop off point and not the actual gun battle inside the warehouse. You can also check out some of the other videos of the setup missions here. As always, make sure to check back on my latest updates of experiences with GTA V Online.