Whether silently or loudly, there are multiple ways to get through Payday 3’s eight heists. That trend continues for you in the game’s fifth “under the surface” heist, so here’s our Under the Surphaze guide for Payday 3.
Payday 3 Under the Surphaze Objectives
Under the Surphaze is Payday 3’s fifth heist, where you’ll go “under the surface” of the Surphaze art gallery to nab a few priceless paintings. As usual, you’ll be able to complete the heist either loudly or stealthly. Either way, you’ll have the same objectives:
- Access Exhibition Room E1.
- Look for smarphones.
- Optional: Find the manager’s office and search the emails.
- Find ground floor security panel.
- Disable downstairs security bars.
- Steal Greg Jud painting from E1.
- Signal the helicopter with a flare (if doing heist loudly).
- Steal the Vicario paintings.
- Disable top floor security bars.
- Steal the true Ladette painting.
- Find the flash drive.
- Find the spectrophotometer.
- Disable the painting’s security.
- Escape.
- Optional: Secure all loot.
Payday 3 Under the Surphaze Stealth Walkthrough
As always, remember that your experience running Payday 3 heists in stealth will vary depending on your playing difficulty. If you’re running a heist on Normal, playing it stealthy shouldn’t be as much of an issue. Playing through it on Overkill, however, can be a serious challenge. We’ll do our best to note where things change when possible.
Getting Into the Surphaze Art Gallery
As you might’ve expected, the first goal will be to get into the Surphaze Art Gallery. There are multiple ways around the building, but most methods require you to put your mask on and jump up to their required jumping puzzles. Because of this, we suggest using our favorite route of heading in through either the front gate or one of the nearby metal gates.
Once you’ve entered the gates, remember the guards patrolling the front courtyard. Usually, you’ll need to worry about two alongside the odd camera, but it’s very difficult for anyone to see you when heading through the front door. All other doors in the courtyard are locked from the other side, so you’re unfortunately stuck taking that path. Lockpick the door, then head inside.
Preparing the Gallery
Once you enter the main lobby, you’ll have an objective to get into the E1 Art Exhibit and find the Greg Jud painting. We actually advise against doing this so early since it’ll feature several cameras that can easily catch you grabbing the painting. There’s also the mandatory step of disabling the security bars surrounding each of the display cases in every Exhibit.
To start, we’ll want to get rid of the security bars. You can do this process for the first and second floors one after another, or handle the first floor and do the second floor later. How you go about this doesn’t matter, just as long as you handle both floors. No matter how you’re handling this, near the center of each floor will be a small black screen on a wall. Interact with this, and you’ll begin a mini-game.
For this mini-game, there will be several circles on the ground of whichever floor you’re on. You need to stand in these circles for some time to increase the progress bar located in the top left. Each time a circle is completed, a new one will spawn. This means you don’t have to complete every single one, so long as you hit enough to complete the progress, you’re good to go. Once that’s done, the bars around each display case in all Exhibits on that floor will drop.
Next, you should try to get at least five of the seven QR code phones spawned around the level. Each exhibit has a door that requires a QR code to be opened, so getting them early is better. These are found in various rooms across the Art Gallery, though I’ve included spawn locations in the above images and descriptions for each location below:
- In the Bar on the first floor.
- In a Bathroom on the first floor.
- In the Employee Only room on the first floor.
- In the Break Room on the second floor.
- Also in the Break Room on the second floor.
- In the Manager’s Office on the second floor.
- In the Server Room on the second floor.
Sometimes, the QR code phone will spawn in a different spot in the same room. Look around if it isn’t where the picture says it is.
Finally, we have the security cameras to deal with. On the second floor will be the security camera room. Lockpick the door, head inside, and kill the guard to disable all cameras in the Art Gallery. This is a massive help since some Art Gallery Exhibits have cameras to worry about.
Now that we have all of that figured out, it’s time to start looting the Exhibits.
Getting the Greg Jud Painting
The first painting we need is the Greg Jud painting, located within the E1 Art Exhibit. This Exhibit will always only have cameras, so as long as you handled them earlier, this should be a walk in the park. Once you find the correct painting (refer to our picture above if you’re having trouble), either use a Cutter to get through the glass or lockpick the display case to grab the painting. This is the easiest of the paintings, so be ready for the real challenge.
Getting Pedro Vicario’s Paintings
Next up are the Pedro Vicario paintings. These locations are found on the Manager’s computer, located in the Manager’s Office upstairs (more on that later). Within each room, you’ll likely find laser traps, a motion scanner, or floor lasers that must be avoided. These typically will only show one at a time, though you might find multiple traps in the same room on higher difficulties like Overkill. For example, on our run, we found both a motion detector and floor lasers in the same room. What a pain that was to deal with.
To deal with these traps, locate a power switch in the Art Exhibit and flip it. This will disable all traps and allow you to handle the task. As for Pedro Vicario’s paintings, they’ll look like paint splotches. However, the correct paintings will also have blood marks visible through the UV light on your gun. Grab both paintings, and that’ll be that step done.
Getting the Uma Ladette Painting
The final painting, Uma Ladette’s, is where things get a little tricky. The painting will be located within one of the two Art Galleries listed on the Manager’s Computer. One of them is a fake, so you’ll need to deduce which is correct. You’ll need a USB drive and a spectrophotometer to locate and acquire the correct one.
To get the USB drive, head to the Manager’s Office upstairs. This room contains a QR code phone and the computer we used earlier. Also in this room is a secret safe, located behind a wood panel behind the desk. Move this wood panel and crack the safe to get the USB drive.
As for the spectrophotometer, which is located in the Server Room, is also found upstairs. Once you’ve lockpicked the door and gone inside, you can pick it up like it’s a bag of money. In the Server Room, you’ll also find one of the QR code phones mentioned earlier. Grab that if you need it, and you’re ready to start checking paintings.
For this, you’ll be following similar steps to before. You’ll want to enter one of the Art Exhibits, disable the security, and then locate the painting. It should be painted as a strange room that’s meant to be a perspective trick. However, you don’t want to grab the painting after dealing with the display case. Instead, you want to throw the spectrophotometer onto the ground and let it scan the painting. If Shade says it’s good, then it’s the correct painting. If not, you’ll need to go to the other Exhibit. Once you have the correct painting, plug the USB into it and grab it.
Getting Your Loot to the Van
Once you have the required paintings along with any other loot you might want, you’ll want to make your way to the second-floor window with the fire escape. This is the easiest place to transfer the paintings to the van since you won’t have to worry about much in the way of guards. The main concern here is the civilians and the patrolling guard out back. If one of them spots you, there’s a very high chance that they’ll begin a domino effect, eventually becoming too overwhelming and resulting in you being caught. Pick your time to make your way to the van very carefully. We can’t stress that enough.
You’re free to escape once you have all the loot in the van.
Payday 3 Under the Surphaze Loud Walkthrough
If you decided to go the loud route for the Under the Surphaze heist in Payday 3, you’ll have all of the same objectives as if you were to do it stealthily. The big difference here is that you’ll need to signal the helicopter on the rooftop. This is where you’ll drop all your loot at in between your other objectives. And there will also be a lot of shooting. You’ll definitely want to shoot your way throughout the entire building.
And now that you’re out from under the surface of Payday 3’s Surphaze art gallery, look for help with another heist by checking out our Payday 3 Rock the Cradle stealth guide.
