Payday 2 Hints and Tips

[Ratfire]

GENERAL TIPS

• When you're getting tased, try to spot the taser and highlight him so your crew can kill him quickly. If you're not sure where he is, spin around and mash your highlight button - your character will spot him even if you don't see him. You can also discharge your weapon at him to try and interrupt.
  
• If someone is being tased, their HUD icon will have an electric symbol and their red character outline (if they?re out of visual range) will show them rigid and convulsing. Try to get to them right away, if the taser goes full length, they?ll be immediately downed.
  
• Call out special units, often times when they come into the game players will miss the announcement or not immediately notice the extra danger. Knowing when and where to focus attention on Tasers, Shields, Cloakers, and Bulldozers makes a huge difference.
  
• When introducing a friend to the game, resist the urge to bring them into advanced missions for quick cash and xp, especially stealth-oriented ones like Ukrainian Job and Framing Frame. With none of the skills and experience required to meaningfully contribute, they'll end up either sitting and watching, or get constantly stomped which kills the fun.
  
• Eliminating Cameras - Shooting cameras will ping a trigger for a random guard to divert his pathing to go straight to that cam, this is a viable tactic to lure guards to a spot where you want to kill them. NOTE: once the camera is destroyed, any other random patrolling guards that see it will raise an alarm.
• When using Tripmines as a motion sensor, in 1 path you can place 1 tripmine, in another path you can place 2 side by side. This will distinguish which path a guard just walked from as path 2 will ping twice.
• Basic ECMs last 20 seconds and if chaining, you should start the 2nd up at about 15 seconds in. fully upgraded you can start placing any additional at about 30 seconds.
  
• Loud Missions ? Only use a medkit if you are black and white (downed 3 times or 4 with the 9 lives perk) This extends the use of your teams medkits by 3X as it also resets your down times as well as your health. The exception to this is if you?re getting ready to escape, make sure you?re at full health before you get out of cover.
  
• Take hostages and protect them. They increase response time and make the cops a bit softer. Also in the first assault wave try kill as little amount of cops as possible without getting over run. This will increase the time between the assault waves which helps you stop getting overrun.
  
• Don?t kill civilians unless absolutely necessary. This instantly detracts cash from your spending reserve, increases the force of the police assault against you, has a chance to spawn additional special units and gives you a trade penalty bonus if you get arrested. It can however, be critical at times to maintaining stealth.
  
• Dodging - The game takes a brief moment after being out of cover before it realizes the cops can see you. Then they take a second to adjust their aim to you. So, if you're fast, you can get across entire rooms without cops ever even firing a bullet in your direction, let alone hitting you, if you keep popping into cover.
  
• You can move cash faster by throwing bags, if you have Fast Hands [Ace] and Transporter [Ace] (get transporter ace you shit). Aim 45 degrees up, throw, sprint, pick the bag up off the floor, throw, repeat. You can move at like, 95% of sprint speed this way, rather than being confined to walking speed. This doesn't work with other types of bags- Coke, paintings, and meth you can sprint with, guns, servers, engines, and gold are too heavy to throw well- this only works with cash.
  
• Stay away from boarded windows, cops can shoot through these in a matter of seconds, but they will only do so if you are using them as cover/ standing in front of them. By staying clear of boarded windows you ensure no one will be climbing through any time soon. Boarding windows near objectives gives you protection against snipers as well, so very handy to keep them intact.
  
• Daisy chain bags, you can catch loot bags that are thrown in the air by pressing the interact key while looking at it. This can be difficult to get a hang of so practicing with a friend during a stealth mission is a good idea. You grab it instantly instead of having to hold the button down, so you can form a line and toss a bag from one person to another. You're bound to mess up from time to time, but even with a 50% success rate, you're going to be moving things a hell of a lot faster. If you have transporter aced (which you should), you can throw most loot bags across the most dangerous gaps (such as streets) to a crew member who is waiting near the van.
  
• Treat armor like health. If your armor gets hit but not your health, you're much better off staying behind cover and letting it recover.
  
• Reloading - If you find yourself reloading while being rushed by SWAT, either sprint or melee and you will cancel the animation and timer. This is insanely useful if you have rounds in your magazine still but were just reloading because you could.
  
• Staying Together ? In most cases it is much better to stay together. At higher difficulties, this becomes a near imperative. If you do get downed away from your team, judge the situation. Can your teammates get to you in time? Can they handle what took you down in the first place? Warn them of what downed you and it?s too hot, tell them to leave you. The XP deficit is definitely a lot sweeter than next to no XP at all.
  
• Ladders can be a little quirky. When going down any ladder in the game, make sure you?re facing the ladder before you go over the hole. When coming off of roofs, go slow and try to line up, then turn before you back down the ladder. Remember that Cat-Burglar does not protect from a full height ladder fall.
  
• Security Cameras ? Security cameras take a couple seconds to identify you in full gear, but they recognize suspicious activity right away. If you?re faced with both a guard/civilian and a camera at the same time, always take down the camera first.
  
• When killing a security guard, you only have the option to answer 4 pagers before the operator becomes suspicious and calls the police. If you?re stealthing, make sure to only take down 4 or less guards, or cover any additional takedowns with ECM jammers or pager juggling.
  
• Gangsters/Mobsters won?t use a pager if downed, but they are linked. In order to maintain stealth, you need to completely isolate a target or take down everyone around them all at once.
  
• Grenades explosions go straight through walls, make sure to account for your position, your teammates positions, any civs you're trying to avoid killing and any boarded windows you don't want to break, before you toss out a grenade.

INFAMY TIPS

• Spend your cash - When level up your infamy, you lose all of your spending cash. Before you level, make sure to spend all of your money on weapon and mask slots.
  
• Buy guns before you level - Because you're losing all your cash, you can store items to sell by filling up your Primary Inventory with AMR-16 rifles and your Secondary Inventory with Deagles. These weapons sell back for quite a bit and will give you some immediate cash to put back into leveling your skills after you go infamous.
  
• Respec your skills, before going infamous. Your skill tree will refund you a portion of the money it takes to buy skills whenever you respec. Right before you level your infamy, respec all your skills then use the cash to buy more weapons to sell once you've leveled.
  
• Have level 1 weapons - After you level your infamy, you're effectively set back to level 1. This means all level requirements for weapons will lock out most of the items in your inventory. Before you level your infamy make sure you have a no level requirement primary (Commando 553 / Eagle Heavy / or AK if you have no DLC) fully modded to use at level 1. For secondaries, take a Sig .40 or Greuber Kurz if you like pistols or Swedish K / Spec Ops if you like SMGs. For non-DLC players the Chimano 88 and Interceptor 45 are ok choices.

GENERAL MAP TIPS

• Bank jobs - Plank up the windows in the room that the vault is in, either the teller room, or the cubicles. And after planking them up resist the urge to use grenades, they will break your boards far quicker than cops.
  
• In all bank heists, you can check the manager's office in casing mode to see if he is carrying the keycard. If you don't see it on the desk then he has it on him. If the vault is in the back then you can drill it without alerting anyone in the front lobby by the tellers.
  
• Do not open doors in bank heists if you're going loud. Cops take much longer to do so themselves. Only open them if it?s the only way to get in or when you are done and willing to escape.

MAP SPECIFIC

• Park Escape - There will be one street that isn't blocked off by cop cars or SWAT vans - that's where your pickup will arrive. I'm not sure if this applies to any other escape missions.
  
• Watchdogs Day 1 Don't throw 4 bags in right away if you want to get them all. Gather the bags together by the dropoff and throw them in once they are all together - the pickup starts to come as soon as the fourth bag is in and, if you're still hauling bags over to the dropoff when it arrives, the pickup will be sitting there too long and the driver will get shot.
  
• Watchdogs Day 1Also, wait to throw your fourth bag in until the end of an assault wave. When that break in the action starts, throw the fourth one in along with the rest and head down to the area where the getaway arrives, it should be easy to get out unscathed. Maybe even split up, 2 men loading bags whilst the other two clear the getaway zone of any stragglers.
  
• Watchdogs Day 2 - Before picking up the first bag of coke at the start of the mission, have someone (preferably the one with the least armor) waiting at the warehouse. This is for whenever the first bag is picked up, the person can turn the lights on straight away and the boat will arrive a little faster.
  
• Framing Frame - Day 1 if stealthing, you can trigger the hand dryer in the bathroom by crouching under it, this will lure any nearby guard to walk all the way in the bathroom for a safe kill avoiding any detection.
  
• Framing Frame - Day 2 If you finished Day 1 without an assault you can finish this day without problem too, just be cognizant of the 3 civilians near the escape van, they will alert the police if you do not tie them quickly.
• Framing Frame - Day 2 If you're uncertain if you'll get the ambush, BUY THE SNIPER. When the train opens, throw your cash bags onto the sewer grate if you have the saw, or as close to the door if you don't. Wait inside the train. Listen for the sniper. There's one or two "ambush cops" that spawn in the sniper's line of sight, and he'll open fire on them, but that won't trigger the ambush event. So if you hear him fire, get ready to fight. If he's silent, sprint to the civvies. You need to be fast, or else they'll see the helicopter, but it's a big enough time window to listen for the sniper.
  
• Framing Frame - Day 3 if it goes loud don't camp the computer, camp the power boxes. There is literally no point in camping at the computer if the power boxes are not going to be shut off, it is just removing a player from the real objectives and if you go down it makes it that much more difficult to resurrect you.
  
• Rats - Day 1, when cooking double check with your teammates when Bain says Hydrochloric Acid or Caustic Soda, his dialogues are sometimes broken with those 2, Muriatic Acid is always good to go though when he says it.
  
• Rats - Day 2, if trading the Meth, don't sprint or shoot. This will trigger gangsters going loud.
  
• Big Oil - Day 1: the only decent pieces of intel to collect are the Keycard, and the Plane Keys. The Keycard isn't necessary if a teammate has ECM overdrive though.
  
• Big Oil - Day 1: Don?t break any cameras on day 1 as this will immediately alert police.
  
• Big Oil - Day 1: Check ash piles for plane keys, they don't burn (although they turn to ash)
  
• Big Oil - Day 2: If you don't know what you are doing don't touch the engines
  
• Big Oil - Day 2: There are 3 pieces of intel in the house most commonly all or most are in the lab, 2 are always in the form of a note on a clipboard, the number of hoses and the chemical. 1 is always on a computer, the PSI pressure. Sometimes the computer will be shot/shut off so watch your shooting.
  
• Firestarter Day 1, a 2X full upgraded sentry is very useful for day 1, plant 1 sentry at each car by the fences where swat comes from. Typically this will hold off all incoming swat with enough time to transport all weapons to the oily puddle by the stairs on the hill you spawn on. Even shields won't typically eat your sentries when placed there as their AI paths them to climb the fence before defending from the sentry.
  
• Bank Heist / Firestarter Day 3 - There are always 4 civilians on the street. All 4 will spawn in in the first 4 minutes. If you're killing and clearing civs, you can take them all out without being seen from the bank.
  - A civ in the car park does not count towards the 4 and is a bank civ.
  - If the side and back doors are closed, guards will path out the front of the bank and wander around the streets, potentially discovering body bags. If you're planning on stealthing, always open one of the doors, this will make the guard paths predictable.
  - Opening a door will cause the guards to adjust their pathing, this could then lead to them pathing out the back door allowing an easy domination/kill.
  Picking up the thermal drill then dropping it will stop Bain's prompts of 'Guys, the thermal drill, go get it'.
  
• Armored Transports, if speed running, over time you have a higher yield of money/experience/bonus missions if you run 2 C4 specialists and blow up 3 transports while 1 person saws them open.

ITEMIZATION AND SKILLS

• You should usually have these skills regardless of the mission or your class.
  - Endurance basic (ace if you want but not necessary)
  - Transporter Aced
  - Sprinter Aced
  - Fast Hands Aced
  - Shinobi Basic
  
• Weapon Choice - With loud, there is a general rule: The more damage-per-round efficiency, the better. You tend to do a lot of shooting and running out of ammo will almost always end disastrously. Weapons that have an equal kill-to-pickup ratio (meaning it takes the same number of bullets to get a headshot kill as you then pickup from that NPC's ammo drop) are much more efficient at keeping you in the fight.
  
• Always have a variety of weapons. If your whole team has shotguns then snipers are just going to pick you off instantly. If everyone has full auto, you?ll probably run out of ammunition. Look at your crew?s loadouts and adjust accordingly.
  
• Ammo bags work on a system of percentages. If you have still got quite a lot of ammo it will only give you what you need. If it doesn't have enough it will disappear and give you the rest.
  
• Medic Bags work on a basis of uses. If you use them when you've never been downed and have only lost a slither of health, you just wasted a chance of survival later on. You can only be downed 3 times normally, and since these things reset that counter, use it when you've been downed that many times. Using it after your second down is acceptable as once you're revived for the 3rd time you might get chased on the way to the medic bag and get jailed.
  
• ECM isn't the best thing to bring for a loud mission but if you have feedback then you can very easily stop a horde and pick off some dozers. If you?re doing a bank or a mall, they?ll also net you some quick extra cash from the ATMs.
  
• C4 is very useful when going loud, either for rushing doors that would have otherwise needed to be drilled or picked or setting traps for large enemies like dozers and shields.
  
• Saw tips
  - When using a saw for the deposit boxes. It takes 2 mouse clicks per box
  - For more advanced play, use berserker. If you spec points toward berserker instead of upgraded saws and force your health below 25% it takes 1 click per box, and is 2X as fast.
  - 1 normal saw blade can open 1 door.
  - When opening doors, aim for the doorknob.
  - ATMs need 2 taps on the box part and then 1 tap in each corner of the grate.
  - It is recommended to bring some fully stocked ammo bags as the saw is highly inefficient.
  
• The lowest possible detection rating is 3, the highest possible is 75. Even with minimum detection rating, if you run directly into a guard in casing mode he will sound the alarm.
  
• It?s sometimes better to deploy an ECM early. Doing so will temporarily halt all calls and alarms so you have a chance to secure the situation if you think you won?t be able to get to a bank teller or civilian right away.

USEFUL LINKS
Skill Planner - http://www.pd2skills.info/

Quick Basic Runthrough - http://www.gamesradar.com/payday-2-essentials-guide-walkthrough/

Beginner's Guide - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=169141899

Optimal Weapon Loadouts - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=251751235

In-Depth Stealth Mechanics - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=198446139

Hardcore Stealth Video Guides - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=232861394

Mastermind's (Class) Compendium [Slightly Outdated] - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=172362030

Enemies Overview - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=276008187

Solo Stealthing - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=169356747

 

[TheJollyRoger]

Dang, great stuff Ratfire!

 

[EternalGriever]

Pager juggling doesn't work, it triggers the alarm the moment first person lets go.

 

[Meowcenaries]

This is true. The pager only works with the first person, if he lets go, then it's over!