Can You Beat Payday 3 Without Killing Anyone
Rules
Let's start with the rules to challenge. Basically, I'm not allowed to hurt guards or civilians; this includes shouting at cops, hacking radios, or doing non-lethal damage. These rules do not apply to police, as they do not count as humans for the purposes of this challenge. I will be doing this challenge on Overkill except for road rage and [__] road rage.
Since this will be a solo challenge, road rage would be basically impossible with only AI and teammates.
No rest for the wicked
With the rules out of the way, I loaded into No Rest for the Wicked. The mission started off like normal. I lockpick my way into the employee-only area, get lucky that the power switch is downstairs, and allow myself to be caught by the guard so I can secure the red key card.
This was the point where I decided I wouldn't be allowed to hack guard radios. I figured the sound probably hurts their ears, so it counts as doing damage. Luckily, this particular escort didn't take too long, and soon I was sneaking my way onto the second floor. Accessing the power room was easy, and with a switch already flipped, all that was left was waiting for the hack to be done on my way out.
I was caught by a guard and had to resist the urge to hack his radio to save myself some time, no matter if I needed to go downstairs anyway. I realized as I was being escorted that I wouldn't be able to take the executive's hostage, meaning that to get into the vault, I needed to manually force the code.
Luckily, there are only 24 possible solutions, and no one has the fastest cooldown for getting a code wrong. Not long into my code-forcing, a curious employee came over to ask what I was up to. I informed him that I was legally accessing the vault and intended to steal all the money inside. He didn't seem to mind and decided to let me through it.
After going through about half the possible solutions, the vault finally opened. I tried to disable at least seven die packs, but it was a little too slow. I figured this wasn't much of a loss since I could just pass on off the blue bills as Canadian. I packed them up along with six good stacks and headed for the van.
No Rest was a pretty easy, clear course in the vault; it may have even been easier than doing the mission normally, if a little tedious. I'd figured that the first few missions wouldn't give me too much trouble, but I was already nervous about some of the later ones. In any case, it's time to move on to the road, rage.
Road rage
Since cops aren't humans, road rage is a mostly standard affair. The only difference between this and a regular flathead was that I'm not allowed to take hostages. The only problem this caused was when one of the workers immediately escaped and raised the alarm, but luckily, by that point, it had already deployed the EMP, so all it meant was that the cops arrived slightly sooner.
I'm going to speed through the rest of this because I'm sure we've all heard enough about road rage at this point. EMP went off, the steering device went on, and I popped coppers while the truck took its sweet time making its way to the ramp, drill, cut wires, pick locks, and bag goods. I didn't bother with anything more than the required five bags and made a sprint for the exit.
Road rage was another easy mission, but at least this time I got to fry some bacon while I passed The.
Dirty ice
Time dirty ice is up next, which is easy since it's a mission you can do totally unmasked. From this point on, I would be trying to get all my bags for the rest of the run, but this wasn't a hard and fast rule, just something I tried to do to make things more interesting.
I did have the wrong load-out equipped the entire time, but I resisted the urge to ever use a radio hack. If you don't believe me, just ask God, and he'll tell you. I won't go too far into detail on this mission either. I used one of the VIP bags to back up the camera operator, got caught by more guards, and I cared to admit it as I snuck around.
Then I went through the slow and arduous process of clearing out the entire front end and running all 13 bags all the way around the outside of the building. Since all my friends left me after I reached level 122, on payday 3, I won't be able to steal the egg, nor will I be able to get into the workshop. In any case, I finished up dirty ice, making this the third mission in a row that I completed on the first go.
Rock the cradle
Rock the Cradle is next. This mission is well known for being easy to stealth, so obviously it was the first mission that I finally failed an attempt on. Be clear: all of my failed runs were the result of my decision to play this mission as intended and get the VIP pass rather than just speedrun the way that I usually would.
I'm going to Quick-Fire the failed attempts here to avoid repetition. First off. I got a little overzealous in a secure area and ended the run before it really began, then I forgot to keep my grifter up and got paddled on by a civ, and then I made a pretty stupid mistake while trying to use the key card to open the VIP door.
At some point during these runs, I also remembered to change my loadouts, although it didn't really make much of a difference. Anyway, on to my first real attempt. I speared my way through the kitchen and storage areas, used Sprint Check to lead the guards away to get the VIP door open, then unlocked the stairway door to make my way upstairs.
Twice, I should have been caught but was saved by my plot armor, then I headed back downstairs towards the newly highlighted director. I almost managed to get behind her through the party room, but after some of the worst timing we've seen in this game. I ended up being forced to circle around, had another close call, we'll waai to hack the director's phone.
I'll Chu that one up the plot armor too, and got caught just feet away from the upstairs door and had to walk all the way back outside again. I took this time to drop off some of the paintings with the Bots since whatever they're holding count as secured at the end of a mission, then I made my way back to the director's office to pick up the blank VIP passes I got lucky in finding the authenticated device nearby and finally managed to get down to the VIP area downstairs was an easy ride I'd never actually tried calling the accountant before and expected to have to mask on to use that path I tried it anyways to see what happens and no he just opens the door for you and with grifter I can just take the very thing he was worried about having been stolen out from in front of him, and then spend the next few minutes securing all the remaining bags from around the map in the end as I escaped with all 21 bags I was left feeling they should have just speedran the mission so I could more quickly move onto the first real talent of the run under the surface.
