Payday 3: Diving To The Heists Of Update 2
Hello, Everyone Let's have ourselves a chat. I'm John from Rusty Chains, and today our chat is about the newest heists introduced in Payday 3's second update. Before we really dig into that, though, let's do a little bit of housekeeping here. First is our usual disclaimer. As Starbur partners, we were given access over the weekend to play these heists in advance and prepare some content.
However, we were not paid to do this. Also. I know there's a skill tree in this patch, but the test servers were a little wonky over the weekend, so I wasn't able to fully level it, so I'm focusing on that now, and the patch is out, so I'm going to do a proper article on that later in the week. Got it yes, good.
Onto the heists. These are in the new Legacy tab on the heist select menu. There's no cutcenes or a huge connection to the overarching narratives with these heists. The only story connection is the Assassins that went after the payday gang before payday 3. He also got locked up, but he also survived and went into hiding until he saw the gang was active again.
He reached out with some new jobs for them but concluded he's not conditioned to be the operator anymore and left it up to shade. But with all this in mind, these heists can fit anywhere in the payday 3 timeline after no rest for the wicked. So let's begin by talking about Cookoff. Canonically, this is a new meth lab in Upstate New York and not the condemned house we used twice in Payday 2.
However, this one is also on the police's radar. When you start the heist, the police are already inside, arresting the meth cooks. Those are your hostages to start the heist, and they are the only ones you get unless you have somebody on your team that can cuff a police officer. You can get a special favor for additional hostages, which places three additional civilians in the garage at the start of the heist for you to tie up.
Still, those are also only there at the beginning of the heist, so make sure you've got somebody to take police hostages if you want to make those trades for resources while you hunker down here. Now let's talk about the heist layout. The first-floor interior is the same. The second floor design is the same, but the wall separating the two rooms is opened up, which means you have less cover.
The basement, however, is greatly expanded. It now boasts a third POS possible meth lab spawn location, as well as larger windows that police can slide through. At the back is a rear entrance to a new underground garage. The pickup truck that was outside behind the house in Payday 2 has moved into this garage as well.
Behind the truck is a first-aid kit mounted on the wall. Take note of this since you'll be here a while and with limited resources. The two exterior sheds from Payday 2 are in the same locations with the same interiors, though they now also have the first two stations, for a total of three on the map when you spawn in them.
The rear of the house is undergoing renovations, with a scaffold that wraps around from the side of the house up to the second floor for exterior access. This also grants access to the roof of the rear shed. The zip line has been adjusted. Landing you outside the 3 Second Story windows on the front of the house rather than going all the way up to the top roof Unfortunately, some favors you bring, like medicine or ammo bags, will spawn out in the street, making them so dangerous to reach during assaults that they're almost pointless.
I like these layout changes aside from the favorite locations, as there's more ways in or out of the house as well as around from one side to the other through the underground section. However, I find the basement lab to actually be pretty brutal. You only have two points to leave, but cops can come in through all the windows, giving them a total of five points.
Entry: It's very easy to get overwhelmed down there if you're not careful. Now that you're acclimated to the map, it's time to cook some meat. To start, there are seven sets of ingredients on the map; these can spawn in the exterior sheds under the scaffolding, in the garage, and on all three floors of the house.
The initial cooking process is the same as in the Payday 2 version of this heist, with Shade reading out instructions and occasionally making mistakes that need to be corrected. Wait for Shade to confirm the ingredients, and check in with your teammates before you cook. I won't spoil her voice lines for you, but Shay's cooking lines are pretty funny, with some neat references to previous meth jobs.
The in-game chat also tells you when you've picked up and used ingredients, so you can easily track what's been used in the current batch. An additional hiccup to the cooking in Payday 3 is that the cops can kill the power as they did in Payday 2, this time around though it also completely halts meth cooking, so you'll want to get that power back on as soon as possible so you can continue progressing with the heist.
Collecting the finished product is a little different as well. Once the method is done, it'll have this white color to it. You can bag it right away to spawn a normal loot bag designated as meth. This has some monetary value to it, but not as much as if you let it sit. Wait on the meth for a short amount of time, and it'll turn blue and start sparkling.
Grab it now for a bag of pure meth. This has the highest value, and the green X symbols on the bag, like Degeneration X or the clean jewelry from Dirty Ice. However, if you let the meth sit for too long after it becomes pure, it gets burned and turns a brownish-red color. This is the least valuable and has a red smoking bag similar to the dead money on No Rest for the Wicked.
An escape driver will come by every few minutes to collect what you have on hand and offer an escape similar to Payday 2. Once you complete six of the seven method sets on the map, you can drop a flare for a supply drop from Bile. This drop has four more sets of meth; you can get three of these supply drops for a total of 19 bags on this heist.
Now that we've established the ground rules of this heist, how does it actually play? Well, I think it's probably the most difficult loud heist in Payday 3. The starb has repeatedly said that the design allowed the heist in Payday 3 to be Death by a Thousand Cuts. You're supposed to get in, get out, and get as much as you can.
Their idea of the robber fantasy is that every additional minute you spend in the heist after the alarm rings is detrimental to you. I'm not here to argue whether that's good or bad for the game; that's your preference, but Cook Off shines a spotlight on those design decisions like nothing else in this game has yet done.
