Beginner guide: your first hour

San Diego Border Roleplay is a checkpoint simulator with two sides. You either cross the border — legally or with something you shouldn't have — or you run the checkpoint and decide who gets through. This guide gets you from spawn to your first badge.

The short version

Spawn a vehicle, drive to the checkpoint, get inspected or approved.
Pick Civilian if you want the money loop; Border Patrol if you want to run the line.
Crossing legally earns a badge that 61.9% of accounts have — it is the intended first step.
There are no codes. Here's why we're sure.

Step 1: pick a side

Three teams are reported free*: Civilian, Border Patrol and Police. Civilian is the one most people start with, and the badge data agrees — 61.9% of accounts have crossed the border legally at least once, which is by some distance the most common thing anyone does in this game after joining.

If you would rather be on the other side of the booth, Border Patrol has the best-value rare badge in the game: Chief of the Line, held by 0.216% of accounts, needs nothing but sustained checkpoint work.

Step 2: the legal crossing

Spawn a vehicle and drive to the checkpoint. A Border Patrol player — or the game, if nobody is staffing the booth — will either wave you through or send you to secondary inspection. Do this once cleanly and you have the Legal Border Crossing badge.

This is worth doing before anything else, because it teaches you the geography of the checkpoint from the safe side. You will want to know where the inspection bays are before you have a reason to avoid them.

Step 3: your first money

The mainstream earning loop is smuggling: acquire contraband, carry it (there is a cap — the Full Bag badge exists for hitting it), cross, sell to a buyer on the far side, then launder the briefcase. 51.9% of accounts have made a first sale, and 36.8% have laundered a briefcase, so this is the path the game is built around.

For a passive alternative, see the money printer guide.

Step 4: what not to do yet

Equipping a weapon near a federal agent makes you wanted — 25.3% of accounts have done this, and a good share of those did it by accident. The wanted system runs to five stars; 2.7% of accounts have hit the top. Getting away from a pursuit is its own badge (8.8%), so it is survivable, but it is not where you want to spend your first hour.

Not verified. We have not measured payouts for any job or method, so this guide does not give per-hour rates. Anyone who does publish them without showing their working is guessing.

Common mistakes

Searching for codes and wasting an evening on it — there are none. Buying a gamepass before understanding what it unlocks, when the gamepass details are community-reported rather than confirmed. And grinding a federal team for Federal Career: it needs Tier III on every federal team, which is why only 340 accounts have it.