Watch Dogs 2 is an open world game set in the beautiful San Francisco Bay area letting players explore San Francisco, Oakland, Silicon Valley, and more. Just like in the first game, there is a ton that players can do, and, thanks to the improved customization in the sequel, there’s a ton you can buy as well. Of course, things cost money, and being a broke dude that just joined a hacker gang, you don’t exactly have a lot of money to start with.
Items you can buy in the game range from $5 all the way to $150,000+, meaning if you want everything you’re going to have to amass a small fortune well into the millions of dollars. Thankfully, with you being a hacker and there being quite a few criminal endeavors underway in the city, you have several means of getting money. We’ve put together the best ways for you to earn some extra cash quickly so you can live like royalty while hacking the world.
The People Are Your Bank
Just like in the original Watch Dogs, you can hack civilians and enemies for money in Watch Dogs 2. Unfortunately, not every single person is able to be siphoned for cash, only those with a dollar sign as one of their hacking options when holding down L1 or LB. Also, even when they do have cash, it’s rarely more than $70 (not much when you’re trying to reach millions). On top of that, you are unable to hack ATMs in Watch Dogs 2, something that made collecting tons of cash a breeze in the first game.
However, one of the first skills you can unlock under the Social Engineering Skills tree is Improved Profiler. This is a passive upgrade that will randomly highlight NPCs out in the world with a small blue box. That box means you can get a much larger amount of money from that person. It ranges from $400 to $1,000 from what we’ve seen, which can see you quickly fattening up your wallet. The fact that they pop up quite frequently helps out a ton, so make sure to make this upgrade one of your first.
Stealing
You already know that you can steal cars, as it’s one of the main ways to get around any modern open world game. But stealing cars can also lead to a bit of extra side cash. No, you can’t sell the vehicles you steal. When you hop into a car that doesn’t belong to you for the first time, you’ll always find something in the glove compartment. Those items can then be taken to a Pawn Shop (marked as a red wedding ring on your map), and sold.
After stealing a few cars (which takes no time at all), just fast travel to one these shops and interact with the shopkeeper (hold Triangle or Y). You’ll automatically sell all the junk you’ve collected and get a few grand for doing so. The more junk you have, the more cash you’ll get.
Money Bags
One of the collectibles scattered throughout Watch Dogs 2’s San Francisco is the money bag. There are a ton of these, and they’ll pop up on your map the moment you get near. They’ll appear as a blue diamond with a white “$” in the middle. All you have to do is walk up (or use your Jumper) to pick them up (Triangle or Y). They come in several sizes with small ones offering around $4,000 and large ones offering large sums of money in the ballpark of $20,000. Also, as a bit of a bonus, you’ll find sellable junk in the bags, as well.
Do note that the larger ones tend to be found in restricted (red) areas, meaning they’re guarded by people with guns. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re very hard to get, as it can be only one person, but always be alert. You can get a few hundred grand early on in the game by just focusing on these, which isn’t a bad deal at all. You can never have too much money when there’s so much cool stuff to buy.
Side Activities
The final way for you to earn a lot of money fast in Watch Dogs 2 is through side activities. These include races as well as doing favors for civilians with the Driver SF app on Marcus’ phone. The amount of cash you can get from these activities varies depending on the difficult of the challenge (it’s marked on the screen where you select the activity) as well as your placement in things like races.
Still, even if you aren’t in first place, you can earn a few thousand dollars to help out that yacht fund you’ve been building. You’ll have to unlock each type of activity as you progress, and you’ll definitely want some upgrades to help you boost through rankings. Make sure to pop into everything that Watch Dogs 2 has to offer players to make money.
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