Understanding Payday 3 skills and the skill tree is integral to becoming a master criminal, as by using it you'll be able to unlock fresh abilities and powers that can give you (and your squad) a huge advantage in your latest caper. Furthermore, if you understand how to apply and respec these skills to adapt to the next heist on your list, then you can handle your business in exactly the way you want and give your team the best chance of a clean getaway.
Having played through the game myself for a while, I'll take you through the basics of the Payday 3 skill system, along with an explanation of how you can get more points, how you research skills, and how you can generally make a hired goon of the highest order.
How do Payday 3 skills and skill points work?
The Payday 3 skill system works as follows:
- Players select what skills they want to "research" from the skill tree, found in the loadout menu.
- Experience gained in heists is then converted into "research."
- When fully researched, the skill can now be selected by putting a skill point into it.
- You can also deselect a skill at any time and put that point into something else, allowing you to respec.
- You gain more skill points as you gain more Infamy, done by completing the challenges displayed in the main menu.
This is a slightly more complex system than it probably needs to be, but the upshot is that you should pick all the skills you're most interested in straight away and start researching those (if you don't pick any, it just works down the list in the order they're displayed).
You're much more likely to be limited by skill points than the amount of researched skills you can have. Even when you max out your infamy, you only get 21 skill points, so you'll never have a full range of skills or anything close to it. Instead, you'll need to carefully pick and choose - go for stealth and hacking skills if you're interested in going quiet, or go for armor and weapon skills if you intend to go in guns a-blazing.
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