Hello from our PAYDAY 3 Secrets, Tips and Tricks guide. As any new game; there is a lot that has been discovered and even more yet to be seen. This guide will try to cover everything from map based tips and secrets to things that can be used on any heist.
This is the guide Chuck it was created by. You can find the author’s link at the end of the guide.
PAYDAY 3 Secrets, Tips and Tricks
Welcome to our PAYDAY 3 Secrets, Tips and Tricks guide. This guide will try to stay on top of any game breaking bugs that pop up and if there are any workarounds for said bugs. Here you will find things from small tips that can be useful to game breaking bugs that can be worked around. Everything is subject to change as some things in here will not be intended.
Game Breaking Bugs
So you are ready to learn those tips right? Not so fast, as we will explore the bad before we get to the good.
The first thing that will be covered is game breaking bugs. Why? It’s simple, no matter how much you plan, or know, or played before; None of that matters the moment you have a bug that can break your game
Some bugs may be small and some may be huge. In this guide we will only be discussing PC
When enough bugs are patched they will get there own section, but until then anything on here seen as this example will signify that it has been patched.
I will be reading comments to add, but if it hasn’t been added yet, it is likely because I am looking into it before I add it, but would appreciate any help I can get, I would love to make this The guide that you go to and a place where we can help each other learn.
Now enough ranting and let us begin!
Some of the less common bugs can be
- Crashes in Full Steam Lobbies: Attempting to join a full lobby via Steam may result in a crash.
- Preset Weapons Display Glitch: Preset weapons you can’t afford might appear as “owned” when you purchase a base weapon. A simple game restart will fix this.
- Duplicate Challenge Display: Some challenges may appear twice on the result screen.
- Connection Error After Idle Time: If the game is left idle for around 15 minutes, players may encounter a “connection error.” Simply press “Return to main menu” to resolve this.
- Audio Oddity with Retina Scanner: When using the retina scanner, both “Access denied” and “Access granted” audio play, even with the correct NPC.
- When solo matchmaking, the “Ready” button is greyed out and can’t be clicked to start the mission. Sometimes it resolves itself after 10-15 seconds, but sometimes you have to go “Back” and restart the lobby.
-It doesn’t resolve if you try selecting or deselecting any “favours”, or when changing loadouts.
As of right now I can only think of one MAJOR game breaking bug that is extremly common and chances are you have already or will come across it.
Did you ever play PD2? If so I am sure you played Nightclub at least once.
It was fun right? Well it makes a return in payday 3 except BIGGER! BADDER! AND MORE BEAUTIFUL
I mean just look at it!
Getting back on track though you might be wondering: “That’s fine and all but what is so bad that you call this bug game breaking?” Well let me tell you. Are you a fan of stealth? Wanna complete this heist without masking? Only one thing usually stands in your way and it is this guy!
So you have your vip pass and ready to go into the vip room but this guy just keeps asking you if you have your pass and not letting you through? It’s actually a really easy fix AS LONG AS YOU ARE CAREFUL about it.
Here are the steps you need to take
- Get in the spot in the picture below
- Making sure there are no other guards around that will see it: Throw a loot bag at your feet where you can quickly pick it up
- Make sure that single guard sees the bag (You can tell which one as they will have the blue keycard)
- Let the guard walk to where he is in the picture, too early and it won’t trigger correctly. He should almost be off of the red on the floor.
- Pick up the bag and let him return to his post, if all goes right the voice could be bugged but the door will usually open.
You will see the bag throw later. Look forward to it as it could both be patched and be extremly useful to help you out especially in Solo.
General Tips and Tricks (That can be used nywhere)
So here we are, we saw the bad side of Payday and now that hopefully you know how to deal with it you can get into heisting and be able to use some things you learn.
The next section will cover tips that can generally be used anywhere. Some heists will have tips that you can only use on that heist so we will exclude it from this section.
The first thing we will cover is skills. As of right now the skills are pretty straightforward so there aren’t too many things unknown about and since other guides are being and will continue to be made on skill loadouts and effects we won’t cover what each one does. Instead we will be focusing on the lesser known ones.
Skills
At level 16 you unlock a throwing knife. This throwable is well known as a silent killer but did you know that it creates sound when it doesn’t hit a guard? That’s right, throwing a knife near a guard will actually cause them to go check out the sound without alerting them.
BE WARNED There is a skill called retriever, it is a nice skill that allows you to retrieve your knife if it hits the wall BUT if a guard sees your knife it alerts them. So yes that skill is helpful but you do not want to use it with this unless you are trying to lure a guard somewhere to eliminate them.
The other skill to talk about is Cover up which actually allows you to immediately answer a pager whenever you perform a takedown. Pretty cool right? Well what if it got cooler?
Have you played overkill yet? Well if you have then you know about this guy.
Nobody likes this guy when stealthing. Some ignore him, some hate him, but I doubt anyone wants to party with him. Why? Because taking him out loops his pager? You might be asking yourself “Well Chuck, what does that mean?” It means after taking him out after answering his pager, after some time it will go off again. Taking him out puts a timer on your head and limits how long you can stay in stealth.
Now that we covered that lets get back to Cover up. Whether intended or not, when the skill takes over from you performing a takedown on the lead guard, not only does it answer the pager, but it also disables it for the future. So if you absolutely can not play with a lead guard, just grab the skill and choke them out.
Lobbies retain the same seed
This is actually a pretty important one, moreso for you speedrunners out there. As of right now once a map loads it will stay the same no matter how many times you restart it until you completly leave the heist. Meaning guards will be posted in the same places with pathing, passwords are the same, and any items. You can use your first walkthrough checking out everything, and then restart for your speedrun to find it still the same way as your first time.
Remember the Vip Pass workaround with throwing a bag? It comes back in another useful form.
I HIGHLY EXPECT THIS TO BE PATCHED MAYBE???
So you found the camera room and you are wondering if you should use a pager to disable the cameras? Well there is actually a way to disable them without even touching the guard. There are actually 2 if you can get extra lucky. The thing about the camera guard right now is that if you can get their attention away from the camera it disables them, the thing is when they turn their attention back to it they will still be disabled. This means that if you can throw a bag in their line of sight long enough to catch their attention but pick it up quick enough before they actually try to investigate it, it will disable the cams when you pick it back up and they continue watching the screen.
Another trick but is a lot more rare to see is if you can find a security room that is in a private area rather than secure area the camera guard themself will escort you out if they see you. You can either Glitch protocol them and walk away or you can follow them out. Either way the cams will be disable that way too.
ASSETS ASSETS ASSETS
We loved them in Payday 2, they were helpful, but now it has changed. For one they are known as favors and right now you can buy 4 different favors. To do that you go to vendor like you buy any other gun and scroll down to the very bottom.
THIS WILL LIKELY GET ITS OWN SECTION.
There are 2 reasons for that, the first is that there are likely going to be a lot more favors added, the second being is that there are actually heist specific favors that you earn rather than buy. From my research it dont seem clear how to get the heist specific ones yet, but to the best guess, you get them randomly awarded from completing heists. And you can complete one heist and get it for a completly different heist, or you can not get one at all. Its not guaranteed.
Heist Specific Tips
No rest for the wicked
You can actually input the code in stealth without grabbing a manager. The manager only allows you to learn the code, not to use it.
Road Rage
The scaffolding where you throw the bags to the heli actually limits spawns when you are in there. The snipers are the only thing that will spawn behind you until you cross an invisible line. I will add pictures later.
Dirty Ice
The vault that takes 2 people to open, one button and one keycard, can actually be completed by throwing a worker at the button and you scanning the keycard in solo.
Rock the Cradle
You can run in the room to the left of the 2 guards in front of the vip section to draw them away on higher difficulties since it is secure and footsteps make noise. Your knife can do it too.
Under the Surphaze
The bag zipline favor is amazing for this if you put it on the dumpster near the van.
Entering from the roof will allow you to enter 4 of the 7 rooms without the need of scanning phones
Gold and Sharke
I know there is a zipline to the roof if you play loud so that favor would be helpful.
There may be more but off the top of my head I cant think of any as of this moment(will be updated)
99 boxes
Oopsies
I know of 3 major ones right now and they are on 99 boxes.
The security door is actually unlocked even without using the keycard, try it sometime.
There is a spot where the trailer touches the building that if you throw loot bags right there it will count as dropping it into the trailer itself. It does make it easy to drop loot without going all the way around, but will likely not stay around for long.
You get xp on skill progression and weapons each time you enter and leave the extraction zone before the timer hits 0. Meaning by repeatably entering and leaving you can increase a level 1 gun to max in one heist. (This will probably be one of the first things patched I would hope)
