In the PAYDAY series, a Payday is the term used to refer to the results screen of each successful heist. It is where all mission info are collected and displayed, such as total mission time, the amount of kills made per player, downs, civilian deaths, and so on.
PAYDAY: The Heist[]
In PAYDAY: The Heist, the payday screen is rather minimalistic and simple, with listings of statistics such as combat stats per player (kills, headshots, downs, etc...), mission time, completion of challenges and so on.
A completion rate is also listed, where a 100% completion rate usually means the heist was succesfully played through from start to finish, and less means either failure, or that a given player joined in during play. The latter case is only visible on their own stats screen.
PAYDAY 2[]
The payday screen in the second game is more complex, showing how XP and cash collected during the heist are calculated and distributed to the crew, along with bonuses if applicable. Notifications of the player ranking up, their completion of any Gage Mod Courier assignment and earned stealth bonuses are also displayed on this screen.
A random card out of 3 is picked at the end of a Payday which will award players with one of many kinds of items unobtainable elsewhere (See below).
Cash Payout[]
All the cash obtained during the length of a heist are summed up and then divided at the successful end of the heist:
- First calculation: Contract Pay + Day Rate (always $0) + Bag Items + Loose Items = X
- Multiplier: X * Crew Alive Bonus (110% if all three make it to the escape)
Finally, the money is divided 80% to your Offshore Account and 20% into your spending cash.
Loose item cash does not factor into this calculation.
Spending Cash is used for:
- Buying/Customizing weapons, mods, masks
- Assets
- Cleaner costs for killing civilians
Offshore Account is used for:
- Contracts
- Offshore Payday
- The first 1-5 infamy levels (200 million per level)
Experience Points[]
The following XP values are calculated in the order as follows:
- Heist experience (see Heist experience reward)
- Potential experience penalty (as listed in Level Limit)
- Pro bonus (20% of above)
- Risk bonus, which is a multiplication of the total of above values;
- Normal = 0x (no bonus, heist XP remains at base value)
- Hard = 2x
- Very Hard = 5x
- Overkill = 10x
- Mayhem = 11.5x
- Death Wish = 13x
- Death Sentence = 14x
- -30% XP penalty if heist ends with player in custody.
The above total is used in the following bonuses which are applied additively:
- Skill bonus: 45% from having the Blending In perk active (Tier 4 of all Perk Decks). Additional bonuses from Team Boosts also go here;
- Infamy bonus: 5-205% depending on Infamy unlocks;
- Crew Alive bonus: 10% per escaping heister (excluding the player itself), up to 30%;
- Limited Bonus (e.g. 100% during Spring Break)
- Gage Mod Packages Bonus (5% if all packages are found)
The following XP modifiers are multiplicative with the above and with each other:
- Any stealth bonus (0-25%) from a previous heist will be applied to the entire value;
- Experience Penalty/Boost
Cards and Offshore account[]
After a successful heist, the player has an opportunity to pick one of three cards on the screen. There are several types of cards, each serves a different purpose. All players must select a card in order to proceed back to the lobby screen. Failure to choose a card will result in the game starting a 30-second timer after a short amount of time, at the end of which a random card will be chosen for the player automatically.
The Offshore Payday (accessible from the Crime.net map) allows players to receive cards without having to complete heists by betting Offshore money. The cost of betting varies depending on the card type, the number of cards out of the three that are guaranteed to be the selected card type ("safe cards"), and the chance of getting an infamous card, all of which are customization options the player can set before placing their bet.- Mask component cards add either a mask, material, pattern, or color to your inventory. Each component type has its respective card and any of them may yield an infamous-quality item.
- Cash bonus cards provide between $20,000 and $100,000.
- Experience cards give you additional experience.
- Weapon mod cards add a weapon mod to your inventory; see below for details.
- Boost Cards will yield random stat-boosting upgrades that can be equipped on select weapon(s).
- Safe Cards provide a random, non-retired, and non-achievement safe. (No longer available as of Update 199.3)
- Drill Cards give you a random, non-retired, and non-achievement drill. (No longer available as of Update 199.3)
- Continental coin cards will yield 2 each. (Crime Spree only)
- Armor and weapon skins are dropped from cards with a paintbrush icon.
- Question-marked cards can yield anything that's not a safe, drill, coins, armor skins, or experience. (Crime Spree only)
Notes[]
- Weapon mod cards will only yield a certain attachment if the player has less than two of that mod in their inventory (i.e., not mounted on a weapon). A particular attachment will not drop from cards if one already has two copies of it in their possession (i.e. one having two unused See More Sights will not get a third one from drops), therefore if one has two of every weapon mod, no mod cards will appear.
- Experience cards cease to drop once Level 100 is reached, but will appear again after going Infamous. Post-Infamy XXV they will stop dropping entirely.
- Drill cards will no longer appear, due to the safe mechanic overhaul post-Update #100 effectively removing all drill-required safes.
- You can tell if you are getting a weapon skin by launching the game through Steam Big Picture ( or looking in the corner for an item notification ), using this knowledge, you are randomly assigned a choice, and that choice is fixed and different per Payday.
Farming[]
"Farming" card drops refers to repeatedly completing a quick heist in order to get many card drops over a short period of time. These heists are typically done at normal difficulty, since card drops do not vary by difficulty. Card farming yields minimal XP because the repeated-mission penalty reaches -30% after several runs.
Popular heists for this include:
- Art Gallery is relatively easy and fast, especially with a coordinated team. Players can deploy ECM jammers and rush to grab the paintings. Even if the heist does go loud, an Enforcer with the OVE9000 Saw can easily saw off the metal bars that block the paintings.
- Jewelry Store can be done solo with an ECM jammer or two in about 45 seconds, or faster with friends. At $20,000, it is also the least expensive job to purchase from the Contract Broker; one successful heist of Jewelry Store on normal difficulty will cover that cost.
- Ukrainian Job, as above, but with shaped charges for the safes (caveat: sometimes the tiara is in a Titan safe, making the mission take much longer, and the mission can also trigger an Escape).
- Four Stores can be done solo in under 2 minutes by looting an ATM with an ECM jammer.
- Mallcrasher is typically done with others in order to achieve $50,000 in damage within seconds. If the contract was bought, Enforcers/Ghosts can make up for it by targeting the ATMs and the jewelry store.
- Shadow Raid on Normal difficulty only requires 3 loot bags to be secured. The outdoor container field will typically house three or more money bags within the red containers. Players can place an ECM jammer and quickly rush to bag and secure the aforementioned items and leave.
The offshore account is what becomes of 80% of the player's income that, to maintain a low profile, is securely laundered, and deposited into untraceable accounts in nations that exercise banking anonymity and discretion. The total amount is visible on the screen shown in the safehouse vault. As for one's spendable cash, this is stacked in the form of physical US Federal Reserve bills in the vault itself.
Prior to Update #11, the split was 95/5.
Spending offshore money[]
The player cannot directly spend their offshore money or "withdraw" funds from the offshore account to use like spending cash. This money is used for purchasing contracts on Crime.net, partaking in offshore paydays, ascending the first five levels of Infamy ($200,000,000 each) and to unlock skill profiles.
- Unlocking skill profiles: The first two profiles are free, the third costs $1,000,000, the fourth $10,000,000, the fifth to ninth profile $25,000,000, the tenth to fourteenth $30,000,000 and the fifteenth $20,000,000 (and an achievement) since Update #124.
- Offshore payday: As of update 96, Offshore Payday has been made permanent to the game. The "Offshore Payday" icon appears on the left side of the Crime.net screen. This allows players to place a wager using offshore money to obtain certain Card rewards. The cost of the Offshore Payday depends on the type and the number of "secured" (100% certain) cards from which the final reward will be drawn. The number of "Secured" cards can be 0, which is the cheapest, up to a maximum of 3, which is the most expensive.