Post

Payday 2 Game Reference

Posted Updated
By Ricardo Sendes 21 min read

Introduction

This post was made due to the mods of my installation becoming very complex. This acts as my personal reference for mod options as well as a guide for newer players for one of the possible paths to approach this game with a focus on modding.

Adressing Payday 3

Despite the successor of Payday 2 being released, to this date I still prefer and recommend this installment. This has several reasons, mainly that the gameplay loop of Payday 3 is currently less fun. This and the amount of Content in the third part is, as of the writing of this post, WAY less than the second.

Bugs and Reworks are released often, which makes the game seem like a Beta still.

The good parts that I currently see in Payday 3 are:

  • Better Graphics
  • Better Stealth

The game is still in development despite the new devteam working on Payday 2 again, so lets see how Payday 3 will be in the future. Until then, I will refuse to be an unpaid beta tester and wait until the public view of the game changes.

Do you ‘need’ DLC?

My opinion on DLC’s

This game has a TON of DLC and can get very expensive. If you own only the base game, go ahead install and play it. You will see for yourself if you like this game or not.

Once you decided that you do like this game and want to go deeper, the Legacy Edition is what I would recommend. It might go on Discount, check SteamDB’s price history to anticipate the next sale and save some money. With this edition you get all you need to play meta. While not unlocking the full game, you will get the most important DLC and everything to make you DSOD-Ready.

The Infamous Collection contains all DLC that are still purchaseable. Not necessary, if you are unsure yet, don’t buy that. You will know when its time.

My opinion on the Subscription Model

Late 2025 they revived Payday2 with a new subscription model. This, in my opinion, is a huge scam. Pay forever until you don’t, then you own nothing. ONLY get this if you know you will only play for a short while and then never want to touch this game again. Otherwise I would simply recommend that you buy the game normally and then treat it as if it was a subscription by buying a DLC every month or every second month. This costs a slight bit more upfront, but you keep that content forever (as long as steam supplies the files).

Don’t buy subscriptions to singular games, we don’t need even more subscriptions that creep in our lives and slowly drain us of our money without giving us anything in ownership in return.

In-Game Options

Here are the In-Game Options that are most important to newer players.

  1. Texture Quality (Options -> Video)

    This game, due to its age, has many quirks. The most important one is that the game tends to crash. A lot. Since there are several memory leaks in this game and the game being a 32-bit client, running max textures will have your game crash faster. It is recommended to have your Texture Quality on Medium or lower. Also Uncheck USE HQ WEAPONS for the same reason.

  2. FPS and Streaming Chunk (Options -> Video)

    Set your MAX FPS to whatever your PC can handle. Streaming Chunk should be on 4096 (highest value) always. All other settings will increase loading times for no good reason.

  3. FOV

    The default FOV of this game is the definition of old-school-console-gaming. Go into any heist and change this slider to your liking, you will immediately feel relieved and likely put it at max.

  4. Ammo Outline, Throwable outline. (Options -> Gameplay)

    This Setting enables you to see dropped ammo from enemies through walls. This is crucial to keep your ammo in-stock. Same with Throwable outline.

  5. Motion Dot / Crosshair (Options -> Accessibility)

    This option enables a pseudo-crosshair. It was originally intended as a way to reduce motion sickness, but most people use it as a crosshair-dot. I recommend enabling this, or getting a crosshair mod (modding is shown later in this post).

  6. Flashbang Color (Options -> Accessibility)

    This used to require a mod but is now in the base game (yay). This setting changes the color of your screen when you are flashed. Simply saves your eyes and prevents headaches. Right now I have this setting on dark-grey, but I might change it to black in the future.

  7. Skip Intro Launch Option

    While not a setting, this is one that I use. If you want to skip the intro video that plays after starting the game automatically, ad this to your game options in steam Payday 2 -> Right Click -> Properties -> Launch Options: skip_intro.

Approaches (Loud/Stealth)

In Payday 2 there are two main ways of playing the game, Loud and Stealth.

Stealth

In Stealth, you are sneaking through the mission and stealing whatever it is without getting caught. These are all the important factors to keep in Mind when playing Stealth:

  • Silenced Weapons (or Melee)
  • 4 Pagers (Guard Kills)
  • Detection Risk (5 or below is perfect)

Quick Note, your Footsteps are silent. Don’t worry about sprinting or jumping right behind a guard, they only have a cone of vision. Also, going below 5% Detection Risk has no benefit, it is only visual. Detection always starts at 5%.

Loud

This is my preferred way of playing the game. I like the sheer variety this mode offers with different guns, skillsets and perk decks. While there is a single perfect stealth setup that offers all necessary tools, in Loud many playstyles and builds are viable on the highest difficulty.

In Loud, these are the important factors to keep in mind:

  • Armor (your defense)
  • Guns in conjunction with Skills (how you deal damage)
  • Perk Deck (the mantra of how you play your build)
  • Crew Management / Bots (super strong)
How Armor Works:

In the base variant with no skills etc, armor is the only regenerative shield you have. It is the white circle that surrounds your Health-Bar. Once it is depleted, you have to move into cover for some time until it recovers. Push only when armor is up, hide when its down.

In Payday 2, your Bots deal more damage than you in a lot of cases. Their loadout is super important for dealing damage while you focus on the objective. These are the best guns for them to choose (no weapon mods needed, the bots only take the base variant)

  • Brenner LMG (for close range)
  • Queen’s Wraith Rifle (all-purpose)
  • Akhron LMG (currently bugged, it does 10x the intended damage. Might get patched in the future. Abuse if you want.)
On the topic of Meta:

While there is a “meta” and it is the most powerful way to go, you really don’t have to and I would go as far as recommending to not go “meta”. In this game, almost everything can be used to play on the highest difficulty. So choose the guns and perk decks as you like and see how far you can go before you use the internet for inspirations for your build.

I used to play “meta only” decks for most of my Payday-career and am now suffering because of it. I used to only be able to play with builds I stole from other people. This is technically all fun and fine, however, I recently switched to doing my own research and testing (therefore also created this post as notes), and I rediscovered a lot of joy playing this game even 900+ hours in.

Skills

This is a simple one, read through all of them eventually, at your own pace. No need to do that at the beginning, but you should definitely have this on your todo list.

Perk Decks

Here are my key takeaways for each perk deck as far as I experienced them. My Interpretation might be completely wrong and is definitely biased to my personal opinion, so take this with a massive grain of salt.

For a slightly more objective sort, here is a Perk-Deck Tierlist provided by KevKild. Perk Deck Tierlist by KevKild

Loud or Stealth?

The following list with explanations is for Loud mostly. There are stealth-specific perk decks, but my explanations will only focus on the loud aspects. For Stealth (mainly beginner-stealth), I recommend Burglar because of the Pager-Speed. Eventually you will use Copycat or Hacker in stealth, but they utilize too new mechanics. I recommend Burglar for learning the base game and eventually branching off.

Beginner Perk-Decks

I will start out with some beginner perk decks. This means that you get really good benefits from the early stages of the deck, usually the first card. Some of those perk decks start to decline in power on higher difficulties, but by then you will have enough points to unlock other perk decks.

Gambler

Easiest starter deck, according to my research. I played a sniper build on Death Wish, while it worked fine i saw some drawbacks. ´ou gain health as you pick up ammo from enemies. Therefore using a gun that shoots a lot of bullets is advised, like an smg, lmg or rifle. Not a sniper. I used the Combined Vest as armor.

In my opinion, Grinder is a strictly better alternative, maybe its boost in the beginning is lower.

Biker

Middle-ground as a starter deck, regenerates armor and health over time after damaging enemies. Its fine, it falls off fast and Anarchist will become a lot better, but it needs more deck progress.

Ex-President

Hardest of the starter decks, it gives you another health bar to manage. I personally don’t like it at all.

Grinder

Deal Damage, earn Health over time. While this is not a beginner deck according to my research, I would still recommend this deck over the others in terms of viability. It does change the way health works and you need to do damage in order for this deck to work, but you should be damaging enemies anyways.

Average Perk Decks

These perk-decks are either “mid-tier” perk decks, or decks i barely ever use. In the last section are the truly god-tier decks.

Maniac

This Deck became one of my favourites for lower difficulties. It does not restrict your weapon and skill-choices at all. Use whatever you like and as long as you deal damage and sometimes use cover to recover armor, you’re golden.

Tag Team

This was a fun one. It replaces your throwable with a Tagging-Device. Press 3 while looking at a Teammate or a Covnert to Tag them. When you or your tagged mate make kills, you regenerate life. Really cool concept and fun to use

Hitman

A Deck that focuses on Akimbo guns. Oh boy, was it fun to pull out the interceptors again! This deck offers fast armor regeneration as well as guaranteed armor regen 1.5 seconds after it broke. However I really struggled on Death Wish with Bulldozers especially, skill issue i guess. The guaranteed armor after 1.5 seconds did come in handy plenty of times, but I see how other decks are strictly better, even with akimbos equipped.

Muscle

Straight up health regen, really nice perk deck in my opinion. However it does require the last card to be unlocked.

Sicario

You are not gonna get more dodge than here. Use a special throwable as a smoke grenade and dodge away. Dodge skills for even more dodge and stay on low detection risk. Not my style of gameplay, but it was super dodgy.

Sociopath

Not tested yet.

Crew Chief

Not tested yet.

Armorer

Not tested yet.

Rogue

Dodge focused perk deck, use with Suit or ballistic vests. Get dodge skills and Bot Boost. <25 Detection Risk required

Crook

Worse version of Rogue. However apparently the Heavy Balistic Vest is a better option here according to my research. Also use with dodge skills and bot boost. <25 Detection Risk required.

Infiltrator

This seems to be a meele focused perkdeck. I personally did not like it at all, and according to my research Sociopath is the better option for melee builds.

Burglar

Mainly a stealth perk deck, this one only offers some dodge. Suit up and get Bot-Dodge alongside dodge skills (<25 Detection Risk) to make this one work, but Rogue is strictly better.

Yakuza

Apparently the lowest rated Perk Deck on the Tierlist, however I had a great deal of fun with it until Mayhem. Deathwish might be doable too. It increases the effect of Berserker and also lowers armor recovery rate the lower your health is. To me, a good ICTV Build worked fine with any weapon.

God-Tier Decks

Here I will show the objectively best perk decks, as well as my personal favorites.

Leech

According to the Tierlist by KevKild, this is the best perk deck in the game. Not tested yet.

Hacker

My research says, that this is the most used high tier perk deck. Not tested yet.

Stoic

Not tested yet.

Kingpin

Not tested yet.

Copycat

This is a complicated one Not tested yet.

Anarchist

One of my personal favourites but never played proper Not tested yet.

Profiles / Skill Sets

This game offers you many profiles where you can save your build, so you can experiment with different playstyles while preserving your progress on a different profile.

Here are my recommendations:

  1. Have at least two profiles, one for loud, one for stealth.
  2. Rename your Profiles to describe the playstyle. (For example, “loud”, “stealth”, or more exact, “sniper anarchist”, “lmg stoic”…)
  3. Rename your skillsets to the exact same name as the corresponding profile
  4. never re-use one skillset for multiple profiles

Tips for DSOD

  • Know assault phases, push on fade to do objectives in control
  • Learn map spawn points
  • Learn Grace Period and visualize and utilize it in game
  • Bullseye Basic is a good skill to have
  • Use joker skills, more healthbars for the enemy to focus on
  • minimize line of sight to enemies, slowly peak corners and keep there instead of peaking wide
  • Use silenced weapons, they draw less aggro
  • Abuse Dozer AI, move around them and they stop shooting

Mods

Alright, here we go. Modding is a huge part of Payday and its Community. Here I will provide a quick guide on how to install Mods in 2026 and onward.

Opinion on “Cheaty Mods”

First things first, on the topic of “Cheaty Mods”: There are mods that completely break the balance of this game and change it fundamentally. I personally don’t use those overhauls, but you do you. On the topic of HUD’s, for some reason some people think that HUD’s are cheaty. They do provide more information than the vanilla game in most cases, however chances are high (>95%) if you meet some player who has played for a while, they will have a HUD Mod.

Personally, there is only one Mod that I use that I consider slightly cheaty, which is an asset swap for Keycards. Quintessence, I see keycards through walls. Whether this is a crime or not is for you to decide.

On the Topic of DLC Unlocker Mods:

I used to be of the type never use those mods, just buy the DLC or don’t play the content, on missions only the host has to own the DLC anyways type of guy. This view has changed due to some recent updates. A lot of content is nowadays behind DLC-Walls that you literally can not purchase anymore. Due to this, unlocking those exact DLC is in my opinion fine. Apparently some people got the “Cheater-Tag” in Game due to this, this Tag does not mean that the player cheats, but that the user has pirated some DLC. Not all of the DLC Unlockers will give you that tag, but some do. Do your own research on how to prevent this, as I personally don’t like playing with people with a cheater tag. I own all the gameplay-related DLC, so this is a non-issue for me.

My Modlist

Here I will provide my complete Modlist as of the creation of this post. This may be changed or updated in the future. I broke them down into categories, as there are many nowadays.

Informational

  • VanillaHUD Plus
  • Extra Heist Info
  • VoidUI
  • Better Assault Indicator
  • CustomFOV_Fixed
  • Endscreen XP List
  • More Weapon Stats

Quality of Life Mods

  • Anticrash
  • Borderless Window Updated
  • CrimeNet Cleanup
  • Less Inaccurate Weapon Laser
  • Load Steam Inventory Once
  • Low Violence Mode
  • Music JukeBox Control
  • No Cloaker Camera Movement
  • No Screen Shake (only on Shooting)
  • Viewmodel Tweak
  • Bag Carrying Tilt Removal
  • Tast’s DayNight Changes Reborn (mainly for visibility)

Fun Mods

  • Radial Menu Vocalizer
  • RandomHeistButton

Assets (mod_overrides)

These Mods will increase your first loading screen after starting up the game, keep that in mind and wait it out.

  • Enemy Health and Info (included in VanillaHUD Plus)
  • Keycard Highlight
  • No Dirt Camera
  • The Particle Massacre
  • Silent Killer - Old model (No, this is not SilentAssassin)

Mods I have not installed, but find really interesting

  • Re-Texture Project
  • Any Day Any Heist
  • Realistic Sound Pack

How to Install Mods

  1. Open up your Payday Installation Folder (Steam, Rightclick Payday -> Properties -> Browse Local Files)
  2. Download the SuperBLT file from HERE
  3. Paste the WSOCK32.dll (SuperBLT) to the base folder of Payday2. (.../Steam/steamapps/common/PAYDAY2/WSOCK32.dll)
  4. create a mods folder inside PAYDAY2 (.../Steam/steamapps/common/PAYDAY2/mods/)
  5. create a Maps folder inside PAYDAY2 (.../Steam/steamapps/common/PAYDAY2/Maps/) (Yes, uppercase)
  6. create a mod_overrides folder inside the PAYDAY2/assets folder (.../Steam/steamapps/common/PAYDAY2/assets/mod_overrides/)
  7. Download BeardLib HERE
  8. Extract the folder and paste the folder inside your mods folder. (.../Steam/steamapps/common/PAYDAY2/mods/BeardLib/)
  9. Launch the Game and verify the installation by checking the Main Menu Mod Panel and update if necessary.
  10. Download any mods you like and check their install instructions, the base setup for modding is complete.
Mod Sources:

Here I will present a recommendation for newer players on how to approach modding and what mods to get first. This will have decisions in mind, so if you feel like you want to take it slow, there will be notes on what to skip out on at first, so you won’t get overwhelmed immediately.

Install them at your own pace, ideally one by one while playing heists inbetween. Check out their options under Options -> Mod Options.

  1. SuperBLT and BeardLib

    Required to start modding, part of the installation tutorial above

  2. VanillaHUD Plus (Skip this one if you want to take it slow, it will reappear later)

    This mod changes your whole UI, its a LOT to unpack and customize. Basic Settings are OK. This mod will give a ton of additional Information on screen.

  3. The Fixes

    This Mod simply adresses developer oversights and some bugs. It even might make you crash less, its a no-brainer to have installed. Check the mod page for an “Outdated”-Tag, if this ever appears, this mod is no longer necessary. Until then, get it.

  4. Anticrash

    Same as above, this mod catches situations where your game would have crashed and prevents the crash in many cases. Another no-brainer.

  5. CustomFOV_Fixed

    This mod is optional. If you find the FOV Setting to be too limiting, here you can go to crazy high numbers. Otherwise skip this.

  6. Less Inaccurate Weapon Laser

    This mod is from PD2Mods. Did you know the lasers you attach on guns are not accurate? Test it! This mod makes them more accurate.

  7. Better Assault Indicator

    This mod changes the Assault-Banner in your loud heists. It will give you more information about the current spawns and timers when assaults start and end. Crucial on higher difficulties.

  8. VanillaHud Plus (if you skipped this before, now is the time to get it)

    Notes from above

  9. More Weapon Stats

    This mod shows many hidden stats for all guns in the game. This saves you from going to the Wiki every time you buy guns. It also shows damage breakpoints, which is amazing.

  10. Low Violence Mode

    While I personally don’t like gore in games, this is not the only reason to have this mod. This mod immediately removes enemies upon death so the game looks less cluttered. This also improves performance(!) and reduces the tendency to crash.

  11. Music JokeBox Control

    Music is a huge part of Payday (for most people). This mod gives you full control over the songs in heists, you can change them mid-heist or disable them completely, including Allesso-Heist. It also has much more music from the Payday-Franchise than you would normally get in the vanilla game.

  12. No Dirt Camera

    This game features a filter that puts static dirt on your screen, visible when shot, or when looking at a light-source. Test this by starting Go-Bank and looking at the sky. This mod removes this. This Mod is installed by putting it into the mod_overrides folder under assets.

By now, you will have a decent understanding on what modding does and how it can significantly improve your gameplay. Feel free to get more mods from my Modlist above or from other sources.

Mod Settings

Here I will present the changes I made to the Settings of my mods, as well as showing where to make changes when something bugs me.

Hud Options

I am using VoidUI first, VanillaHUD Plus for all the tiny fixes and improvements only. In VanillaHUD Plus (only if not using VoidUI): Disabled special kill counter and headshot counter for both player and bots, so the view is simple. Hud Info Options -> Left List -> Disable Show Timers, Pagers, Cameraloop Disable Tabstats, so the ones from VoidUI are used General HUD Settings -> Vanilla Disable Custom Chat and Filter

If going to use VanillaHUD Plus with VoidUI: Disable everything in player panel and teammate panel Disable Killcounter

In VoidUI: Switch all values from percentage to real values, enable show armor for teammates in Chat: Show time as game time

In Extra Heist Info: Reduced Scale, Disabled Gage Trackers, Disabled Show Equipment Trackers, Disabled Show Difficulty Tracker, Disabled Show Pager Tracker, Disabled Show Hostage Count Tracker, Disabled Show Loot Tracker, Disabled Show Buffs (for now), Disabled Show Enemy Count Tracker, disabled show civilian count tracker, disabled show bodybag counter Also adjusted position to be in the top left (Y-Offset 50).

Notes on my setup

I am thinking about removing vanilla hud plus for my next setup, as i think void ui is cleaner and prettier. However for newer players I still recommend vanilla hud plus first, as it comes with plenty of tiny fixes and included mods that you would have to get if you are running voidUI only. (For example akimbo single shot fire fix, hold to interact, several UI stuff more)

If i ever re-do my setup, id try to do that. unfil that i am running both VoidUI and VanillaHUD Plus.

References

Payday2, Games
Reference Game Payday2 Modding Guide
This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.