For all Festive Surprise DLCs and events, see Festive Surprise (disambiguation).
Festive Surprise is a content update for Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, initially released on December 18th, 2014. It was the first update released for the Enhanced Edition of the game.
Description
Festive Surprise marks the second celebration of Christmas. It continues every year under the same name, succeeded by Festive Surprise 2015, another DLC with additional content, and Festive Surprise 2016 and 2017, events which re-released existing content from all previous years and released new content hidden in the game files of previous updates.
The update features all of the content from the Holiday Gifts update, along with new Christmas-themed content. Four new vehicles have been added, including the Vapid Slamvan, Rat-Truck, Massacro (Racecar), and Jester (Racecar). Over ninety new festive clothing options and two new weapons, the Homing Launcher and Proximity Mines, are available. These are free, but available for a limited time while vehicles and the new weapons remain permanently available for purchase. Christmas trees have been added to all apartments. Also, thirty new tattoos are purchasable at all Tattoo Parlors. Snow also returned the game for a limited time.
Special Crate Drops
Special crate drops will also be dropping unlimited copies of the past events each day. Each day a new unique item and after that 24 hour they will be unobtainable. This includes, beer hats and many limited edition T-Shirts. The GTA: Online servers run on a GMT timezone so it is important to know when the servers update to the next special item.
Crate Items
- The Base 5 T-Shirt can be found in crates as the clothing brand makes a return from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
- The Crocs Bar T-Shirt is a shirt that commemorates the Crocs Bar from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
- The Vivisection T-Shirt that displays the game board logo that could be found advertised in various places in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.
- The Emotion 98.3 T-Shirt was added to GTA Online, although glitches had unlocked it for some players previously, it is now officially available.
- The J-Lager beer hat was added as it was unobtainable during the Independence Day Update, but found by a select few that managed to glitch it.
Special Crate Drop Content by Date:
- December 18 - Statue of Happiness T-Shirt
- December 19 - Pißwasser Beer Hat & USA Boopers Hat
- December 20 - Base 5 T-Shirt
- December 21 - Bobo T-Shirt
- December 22 - Bitch'n' Dog Food T-Shirt
- December 23 - Crocs Bar T-Shirt
- December 24 - Vivisection T-Shirt
- December 25 - Supa Wet Beer Hat
- December 26 - Please Stop Me Mask
- December 27 - K-Rose T-Shirt
- December 28 - Flash FM T-Shirt
- December 29 - Emotion 98.3 T-Shirt
- December 30 - Fever 105 T-Shirt
- December 31 - Patriot & J-Lager Beer Hats
- January 01 - Victory Fist T-Shirt
- January 02 - K-DST T-Shirt
- January 03 - Benedict Beer Hat
- January 04 - Bounce FM T-Shirt
- January 05 - Homies Sharp T-Shirt
Rockstar's Extended Special Crate Drops:
(Due to the PSN and Xbox LIVE being hacked by the Lizard Squad, many players were left unable to obtain special crate drops. Rockstar extended crate drops for the days in which connection issues were numerous.)
- January 09 - Vivisection T-Shirt
- January 10 - Supa Wet & Blarney's Beer Hat
- January 11 - "Please Stop Me" Mask
Update Contents
Weapons
| Image | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
 |
Homing Launcher | A Rocket launcher based on the SA-7 Grail and the FIM-92 Stinger. |
 |
Proximity Mines | Thrown weapon that explodes when a person/vehicle approaches. |
 |
Snowballs | Special weapon available only during the season holiday. No longer available as of January 1, 2015. |
 |
Firework Launcher | Initially released with the Independence Day Special. Temporarily available again. Free on December 25, 2014 and January 1, 2015. |
Vehicles
| Image | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
 |
Vapid Slamvan | Pick-up version of the Slamvan from The Lost and Damned. |
 |
Bravado Rat-Truck | Clean variant of the Rat-Loader. |
 |
Dewbauchee Massacro (Racecar) | Racecar variant of the Massacro. |
 |
Dinka Jester (Racecar) | Racecar variant of the Jester. |
Character Customization
Main article: Festive Surprise/Character Customization
- 70 clothing items, 7 outfits, and 10 masks have been added.
Christmas Gifts
The patch notes indicated that logging in on Christmas Day will reward the player with an unspecified gift, while logging in on Christmas eve, New Years eve and New Years day will gift Firework Launchers and free ammo.
The Christmas Gift comprised of:
- Exclusive Stocking Mask.
- Body Armor
- 3 x Proximity Mines
- 3 x Molotovs
- Firework Launcher + 5 rockets
- Carbine Rifle + 200 rounds
Additional Features
- Players can now purchase a 3rd property.
- Firework Launcher was available from 24th December until the 5th January.
- Deadzone and Acceleration sliders have been added to control settings.
- Five new parachute bags were added.
- A Christmas tree is added to all apartments and Legion Square.
- Snowballs added whilst Snowy weather is active. These can be gathered and stored by pressing D-pad Left when a player is unarmed. Nine Snowballs can be stored at a time and will disappear when swapping sessions or starting Jobs.
- Issues with trees and foliage not moving with the wind on PS4 and Xbox One renditions are fixed.
- The issue where adding Turbo upgrades to a vehicle made it slower is now fixed, along with many other bugs.
Galleries
Features
Clothing Gallery
Video
Trivia
- The two newly added vehicles, the Vapid Slamvan and the Bravado Rat-Truck, which are vehicles from the 1930's-1950's, are a reference to Christmas specials It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, which take place in that era.
- It is the first update to add a thrown weapon into the game.
- There was an unfortunate bug introduced in this patch where sometimes when the player held the button down to activate the Interaction Menu, instead of getting the interaction menu, the game would lag severely until the player died or left the session. This made usual tasks such as ordering a personal vehicle, switching to passive mode and starting an impromptu race, difficult and even impossible. This bug was not fixed in the subsequent 1.20/1.06/1.22 patch released a week later.
See Also
- Festive Surprise 2015 - 2015 release.
- Holiday Gifts - 2013 release.