5 Payday 3 Tips For Beginners

Intro

with payday 3 just releasing I feel like now is the best time as any to go over some tips for heisting, whether you're a returning criminal virgin bank robber or your friends told you to buy this game because it's your group's new game of the week until something else comes out and the rest of your check is spent on more games to fill up your hard drive.

Payday 3 has some new and returning mechanics to help you become the perfect bank robber you want to be.

Overview

First, let's go over the overall goal of payday. Payday 3 is a four-player co-op heisting game based around the payday gang, which returning fans will know and adore. Up to three friends get to participate in a variety of heists, including but not limited to robberies of banks, shops, and armored cars.

Now, obviously, if you're like me and have no friends to play with, you'll feel like you're at a slight disadvantage. Luckily for us, the game replaces your should-be friends with AI members of the payday gang. The AI in this game is surprisingly helpful, always helping you cover an objective, saving you if you get downed in a timely manner, and calling out any guards or cameras you may not have seen on your first walkthrough.

The part you may struggle with is attempting a level stealthily, as the AI keeps themselves outside so as not to walk around and get you caught. Stealth as a group is definitely more efficient and can make things go much faster, but it's nice knowing that you don't have to worry about buggy AI messing up your run and making you throw your monitor at the wall.

Tips

Now that we've covered that, let's get on to some tips I have for you all. However, with the insane amount of loot bags you'll find on your journey, it can feel pretty intimidating to move all these by yourself. But wait, you have three other AI teammates by your side. If you're running solo, simply carry a loop bag on your back, walk up to an ally, and hit the drop button.

Sometimes they like to move at the last second. Miss up on this trick, or you can completely miss it because you forgot your contacts this morning, but they can actually carry loot for you. Each character acts like a player and can hold one bag at a time. One small thing I've noticed, though, is that the AI doesn't always seem to be affected by the weight of items and can move at almost 100 movement speeds compared to a player.

Once you fill up all your friends with that sweet, sweet loot, just walk back up to them and fit your interact key, which should be F by default. They should just hand the bag back to you to throw into whatever Escape vehicle you're using at this time. This tip may seem a little obvious, but I didn't realize how important it was when I started out on Payday 3.

Maybe I can't aim, or maybe the enemies tank way more bullets this time around, but by the end of just the first wave of police. I'm stuck using my secondary and crawling around the floor looking for leftover ammo from the fight. Luckily, in your Loadout section, you're given the option to take an extra ammo box health kit, center gun, or armor box.

I highly recommend taking the ammo box to use whenever you may need it, as the AI will always drop the others for you halfway through your heist. If you want to take this a step further, you can use some of those nifty little skill points to bring in two ammo boxes with you, so you really don't have to worry about your bullet count and more about how you're going to run your loot bags across the map without going down six times.

The next tip I have is to change your loadouts in your presets. While this may seem a little useless to some people, I promise you it will save you so much time between heists. Some heists are locked into being stealthy or loud only, and different weapons, armors, and skill trees are better for these situations. Luckily, the developers gave us class presets.

Class presets

While this may not be viable unless you've made some decent money in the game so you can afford different weapons, it doesn't hurt to learn about it now. Making yourself weapons that will help you in stealth missions while also having weapons that can absolutely tear through armored units is a must.

No one wants to be the guy holding up the party so he can find the perfect gun skills and masks for the occasion. Just make a preset and click through. I promise you will not regret it. This is for all of my stealth lovers out there. At the time of recording this, two days before the official launch of the game, I made a really interesting discovery by running around the game.

Now this could be a potential bug that will be patched soon, so please take this with a grain of salt. I mean, I can literally stand in the manager's office and watch the manager NPC walk in and just not care that I broke in and I'm stealing information off of a laptop.

Maps

Only having to worry about cameras and patrolling guards helps my little chipmunk brain get around much easier. Over and over, they are not always going to be the same.

The overall layout is pretty similar; however, in order to keep the game interesting, the maps will slightly alter small details with each new run. This can change from files being in different rooms to different guards having different key cards and key codes being a different number, and even switches and vault entrances being in completely different areas.

Obviously, there are only so many combinations that the maps can do in such a limited amount of space, but it's always worth checking the area to see what may have changed from the last time you were here, and for my final tip, please, for the love of God, just have fun. The payday games are meant to be a little goofy and somewhat of an arcade shooter with friends, while some missions may feel more rewarding if you do them silently and without a trace.

It isn't worth getting upset with your friends for getting caught for the 16th time in a row, forcing you guys to restart again, run around shoot guards, get absolutely overrun by the SWAT team, and cloakers, making your blood pressure rise and fall off buildings. Throw grenades at each other and teabag each other's bodies when they go down.

Instead of reviving them, you'll level up and unlock the cool stuff, regardless of how you go about it. Just make sure you're not the bad apple in the bunch, and that's it. Six quick tips that I feel are important to know in Payday 3.