Payday 3 Stealth Build: Best Loadout & Skills

Perfect your skill selection, weapons, and attachments with the best Payday 3 stealth build today!

Vigilantly tip-toeing through one of America's most highly protected banks whilst stashing millions and silently taking care of hostages is what stealth Payday 3 players do best. Whether they're stealing from banks, exchanges, or highly protected transport vehicles, the Payday 3 community has no problem sneaking their way through. Somehow, taking the silent approach within Payday 3 has always felt more riveting. Who would think hiding like a rat would be more thrilling than blowing through vaults, mass shootouts, and getaway helicopters?

Update on 22 November 2023: We've updated this article with the latest, best Payday 3 stealth build, including all the skills required to be a sneaky heister.

Silently robbing banks isn't a light task. Players have to come equipped with contingency plans like you wouldn't believe: suppressed weapons, extensive knowledge of the building, keycard locations, and most importantly, the correct skills. Despite well-experienced players making stealth robberies look effortless, they are quite the contrary. However, players can ease their stealth experience by selecting the appropriate Payday 3 Stealth loadout. 

Payday 3 Best Stealth Build Loadout: Weapons & Attachments

Players engaging in Stealth missions and playthroughs need to understand the crucial details of careful loadout selection. Choosing any weapon with random attachments will lead to early detection, especially if being forced to mask up in missions such as "Touch the Sky," giving players little choice to not use their weapons. Players want to ensure that if they are forced to use their weapons, whether to take out a security guard or witness, they have the appropriate weaponry to follow through with this task and continue to avoid detection. 

Due to the extensive weaponry Payday provides, there are several options to choose from:

Loadout One 

• Primary Weapon: SA A144 
• Torque Silencer (Level one)
• Quick-Pull Magazine (Level twelve)
• Iron Sights
• Secondary Weapon: Signature 40
• Obelisk Silencer (Level one)
• LED Red Dot Sight (Level four)
• Hardwood Grip (Level two)

Loadout One provides a heavy-hitting yet agile approach to robbing within Payday 3. The rifle we have chosen, the SA A144, provides a singular shot kill to anyone unfortunate enough not to come to the bank wearing a Kevlar. The reason we choose this hard-hitting rifle is to ensure our targets die immediately instead of sponging bullets and screaming, alerting security and passers-by to hear any disturbances. The Signature 40 pistol allows players to walk around private locations and have a more agile and mobile approach to killing threats.

It goes without saying that if you're looking for a stealth weapon, use a silencer. Despite looking strange on a shotgun, the suppressor ensures minimal to no detection, stopping detection. Not being the most iconic weapon selection in bank robbing history, the silenced shotgun packs more than a punch and ensures (just like the SA A144) your target doesn't live to see tomorrow. 

Loadout Two

• Primary Weapon: Reinfeild 880 
• 12G Obelisk Silencer (Level 2)
• Classic Red Dot Sight (Level 1)
• Biofit Fore-end Grip (Level 15)
• Secondary Weapon: SP M11 "Hard Cough" 
• Slate Red Dot Sight (pre-attached)
• Snub Silencer (pre-attached)

The Reinfeild 880 doesn't seem particularly exciting until whipping it out, unloading shells, and screaming, "Get some!" as you steal millions of dollars. However, the stealth approach doesn't allow this alternative, so we're using the shotgun for its practical purpose: decimation. The shotgun is cheap, reliable, and ensures minimal detection when used correctly. The SP M11 is a preset pistol purchasable from the weapons store. It's tight and compact, perfect for the job.

Loadout Three

• Primary Weapon: Ziv Commando "Kick-Murder"
• Obelisk Silencer (pre-attached)
• Compact Magazine (pre-attached)
• Iron sights (pre-attached)
• Secondary Weapon: Signature 40
• Obelisk Silencer (Level one)
• LED Red Dot Sight (Level four)
• Hardwood Grip (Level two)

The Ziv Commando is the Uzi equivalent in Payday 3, being a rather interesting weapon to see within a stealth guide. However, there have been plenty of situations where two NPCs have detected me, and my shotgun or DMR has been slightly too slow to deal with the threats. Since changing to the Ziv Commando, two threats quickly become zero after unloading a magazine into the heads of the threats in less than a second. The Signature 40 balances the loadout, allowing the player to confidently and accurately take out cameras and targets from a distance. 

Payday 3 Best Skills for Stealth Build

Payday players encompass the vital requirements for robbing millions without being detected, dedication, patience, education, and a tad bit of luck. Unfortunately, those attributes only get you so far within the gaming world. To launch further, players need to progress through their skills tree. Within Payday 3, players need to unlock and equip several different skill points to ensure an easy stealth playthrough, especially when those skill points contribute to remaining concealed. 

These are the best skills in Payday 3 to help guide you through those close situations:

• Quick Fingers - As long as you have "Rush," a successful lockpick jiggle will immediately pick the lock
• Slide Tackle - If you have grit and slide into one or more non-special enemies, you consume grit and stagger those enemies
• Battering Ram - You can sprint through locked doors to breach them, but it is only effective on doors with locks that can be picked or shot broken.
• Bagger - As long as you have a rush, you bag loot 50% faster 
• Glitch Protocol - You can hack a guard's radio to cause a disturbance, stopping and distracting them and pausing any action they are doing. 
• Grifter - If you are within 1 meter of a civilian or employee, you gain rush
• Overbearing - your shout range for intimidating civilians is increased by 20%
• Walk the Walk - As long as you're unmasked and have a rush, cameras can't detect you trespassing in private areas unless you are performing an illegal action - killing someone.
• Manipulator - you can tie up and trade hostages 50% faster 

Collaborating alongside the mentioned weapon loadouts, these skills will provide the most effective stealth loadout for your Payday 3 playthrough. It's important to mention that these skill descriptions are all the basic versions of the skills. When using them, they upgrade and you gain more advantages for each skill. For example, with the manipulator skill, after upgrading to "ACED" status, you are able to tie up hostages 75% faster than without having the skill. 

How to upgrade skills within Payday 3

Upgrading your skills will help incredibly with your stealth playthrough. However, it's quite a simple leveling system with your Payday 3 skills. You simply just have them equipped and complete missions whilst having them active. This will gain your skills XP and level them up. This will lead to the skills tree completionist skill for each category, seen at the end of each skill category tree.

Looking for more Payday 3 content? We've got you covered with a range of helpful guides below.