Payday 3 Touch the Sky heist guide

Touch the Sky is one of the last heists in Payday 3, if you go in order. If successful, you’ll leave with bag after bag of stolen loot.

While I prefer a stealth option for this heist, going loud is always a blast—and Touch the Sky delivers on multiple fronts. You’ll get to fight in narrow corridors in a multi-leveled penthouse. Enemies will rappel from the top of the tower all in an effort to stop you from stealing the SSD. But you’re going to get out of the unscathed.

Touch the Sky Guide in Payday 3

Infiltrate the Penthouse

Firstly, you’ll start off in the lobby staring at a relaxed security guard by the front door. I turned right into the stairwell before the front door and went up to the very top floor.

This is where you’ll see a vent that you can open and squeeze into. This will require you to mask up and to get crawling. Go to the very end of the vent shaft and open the duct. As you exit the vents you’ll fall onto a couch inside an office space. This is the best place to start as you can get your bearings before shooting up the place.

Find and access the Master Bedroom

There are three exits. You can go to the right of the giant head statue, the door to the left of it, or the double door that opens into the hallway. I went to the right of the statue because it gives you plenty of room to see the Master Bedroom to your right once you’re out of the room.

The head of security and multiple guards will be wandering around the top floor. If you’d like to go guns-blazing, you can now. Otherwise, wait until you’ve killed the security guard and begun the hacking process for the Master Bedroom door.

This is because as soon as the police arrive, things get sticky. You’ll end up fighting difficult opponents and might miss out on some valuable loot in the process.

You’ll need to hack the head of security’s phone anyway; that’s why I waited until he was upstairs before I began shooting.

There’s a red keycard required to access some of the main doors that’s either upstairs, or downstairs and down the hall. In my playthrough, it was upstairs and next to the elevator. Open the door with the QR code acquired from the head of security and check the filing cabinets inside.

The Master Bedroom door is to the right as soon as you walk out of the room you landed in. Hack the device on the wall outside, and then stand in the rings to build the green bar.

Now you can get spotted. Getting spotted now will make running from circle to circle significantly faster. Don’t forget to collect some hostages too. They will be sitting downstairs, in the lounge room near the courtyard.

Find the switch for the vault

Once you’ve hacked the wifi to allow you into the Master Bedroom, you can now look for the vault. Go to the TV unit on the wall opposite the bed, and start moving books. The switch will be hidden somewhere on the TV unit, and the vault, in my playthrough, opened thanks to a secret book.

The switch will unlock the door hiding the vault behind the bed. Open the panels and look at the keypad that unlocks the vault.

Get up close so your UV light can see which numbers have been pressed, and remember them. You will get a selection of four codes to choose from, so knowing which one is correct straight away is significantly easier.

Access Mason Laurent’s Office

Run to the other side of the penthouse, but remain on the upper floor. Odds are you’ll be fighting off the police as you get from one side to the other.

Open the door with the red keycard found in the filing room, and go inside. There’ll be a panic button on the desk in the middle of the office. Press that to open the door.

Now you’ll have to put the Drill on the vault door. This will take 180 seconds, so you’ll have to survive until it’s broken through the vault door.

Once it’s done, disassemble the drill and open the vault door. There will be codes on the whiteboard in the vault room. Pick the one that corresponds best to the numbers you hopefully wrote down.

Head back to the Master Bedroom and put the code into the keypad by the vault door. Once you’ve done that, the door will open revealing a safe to crack.

Decrypt the SSD 

Crack the safe in the back of the room and collect as many bits of jewelry as you can. You’ll now have to go back to the Office and plug the SSD into the computer there. Don’t forget to interact with the PC to get the process started. Once the decrypting is complete, take it off the desk, and head to the courtyard.

Signal the Getaway and escape

Once you’re in the courtyard, you’ll be able to signal the helicopter to pick you up. It will land in the courtyard outside but will take a minute or two to arrive. This is the perfect time to collect all the items you want to steal from the heist. I dropped items from the Master Bedroom window into the courtyard to make it easier to transfer to the helicopter once it arrived. It’s also a great place to survive against the cops.

Once the helicopter arrives, place all the items and stand in the rectangle to escape.