How to Crack Open Safes in Payday 3

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How to Crack Open Safes in Payday 3

During your Payday 3 heists, you’ll occasionally find small safes you can open to find extra money. Often, opening these even appears as an optional objective. However, with these comes a dial rotation minigame that can prove challenging, especially if you’ve got a police assault on your hands. To learn more, continue reading to discover how to crack open safes and deposit boxes in Payday 3.

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Payday 3: How to Crack Open Safes and Deposit Boxes

To complete the dial rotation minigame and crack open a safe, rotate the dial toward the lit arrows until it starts shaking and turns green. Initially, it will shake slightly, intensifying the effect as you approach the correct number. Once it turns green, stop turning and let the dial sit there until the bottom circle lights up. Repeat this in the opposite direction until you open the safe.

Tips for Successfully Cracking Open Safes in Payday 3

Before turning the dials, turn it toward the white arrow rather than the grayed-out one. If you turn it the wrong way, you’ll fail the minigame and have to restart. The direction will switch with every successful rotation; make sure not to turn it the same way every time.

Alongside this, there are four levels to the dial to watch out for:

  • No movement
  • Slight shaking
  • Rapid shaking
  • The dial turns green

At first, you can turn the dial quickly to save yourself some time. However, slow down the rotation once it starts shaking until it turns green. Once this happens, stop turning the dial briefly until it clicks before changing directions and repeating the process.

Since this entire process can take anywhere from 15 seconds to a minute, depending on your speed and experience with this minigame, make sure you have someone around to keep the police at bay. Doing this is especially important during assaults, as you can easily get overwhelmed in the middle of the minigame.

Once you reach three successful rotations, you’ll open the safe and gain access to the goodies inside.

Payday 3 is available on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. To learn more, check out our Payday 3 Dirty Ice Stealth Guide, or click the game tag below to explore our growing content collection.

About the Author

Madison Benson

Madison was a staff writer at Prima Games who has played video games for over twenty years and written about them for over two years. Her love for video games started with turn-based strategy games like Heroes of Might and Magic and has since extended to casual farming sims, MMORPGs, and action-adventure RPGs.