The Rock the Cradle mission in Payday 3 can completed by yourself and without killing anyone. While stealth might not be how you dreamed of completing this heist, it’s how I’ve gone about it. I didn’t hurt a soul, a deviation from my usual Payday experience.
There are multiple parts to this heist, and if you’re not careful, you’ll be spotted and likely have to start again.
You won’t be masking up for the first portion of the heist, but you eventually will as you need to navigate catwalks and vents. Prepare to go back and forth a lot.
Cassandra Rifkin’s office and the VIP Room
When you enter the club, you immediately need to head to the VIP room at the back. They won’t let you in, but I found when I didn’t do that, later events wouldn’t work for some reason.
To find Rifkin’s office, you have to find a way upstairs. Go through the Staff Room entrance to the left of the bar, by the VIP door. This requires a lock-pick and the utmost discretion.
The bartender will spot you, so wait for him to shake up some martini’s as he moves toward the other side of the bar.
Head up the stairs and walk past the DJ to the door with an icon in front of it. Lock pick the office, and avoid the cameras.
Once you’re in, hack into Rifkin’s PC. This ultimately goes nowhere to start off with but prompts you to find the club’s accountant and follow her around as you hack her phone.
Hacking the Accountant
The accountant’s outline is white, so you can easily see her wandering around the club. I found her downstairs by the front door entrance. But she does move around pretty much everywhere.
Wait until she’s in a room alone, or when you’re not being observed, otherwise you’ll be caught. Make sure to stay within her circle to keep the hacking process going.
Once you hack her phone, head back to her office and open the cage to the right of her desk on the wall.
The next step is to get to the employee door, which is next to the VIP room door at the back of the club. You need to unlock the door with a lock pick, and the guards will be right next to you—so be careful.
If the employee door isn’t there on this occasion, you need to head to the storage rooms to find it there. You can also find the door on the second floor by the ledge that looks over the dance floor. You can get there by going up the stairs by the front door.
I had multiple occasions where the door had moved to a different location. So I checked the upstairs area first every time to see if it was there. This means you don’t have to risk lockpicking a door for no reason.
Watch out for the cameras.
Entering the VIP Room
Once you’ve used the laptop and device on the table, you now have a valid VIP card. You can freely enter the VIP room from now on. Grab it off the table and head to the VIP Room.
The next step is to go down the stairs and search for the IT room. But, to do this stealthily, you have to put that mask on and get crawling.
The vents are your best friend in this area, and the catwalk attached to the walls above everyone’s heads is your path. There is lots of back and forth, but you’ll be done in no time if you follow my instructions.
Go downstairs until you see your first balcony on the right, which is visible from the pole-dancing people in the middle of the room.
Climbing the catwalks
This is where you don your mask, as you have to jump and traverse along the catwalk on the side of the walls. Go along until you reach your first vent on the right side.
Here, you will find all the switches you need later in the heist. From there, go back outside onto the catwalk and continue on the path you were on originally.
Go into the room on the balcony shown above and find the keycard on the bookshelf on the right-hand side of the room. From here, open the door to the right of the bookshelf and go down the stairs to the vent on the left-hand side.
Open this vent, and you’ll drop into a different room. There is a guard in there, so be quiet and avoid any contact—unless you want the fuzz coming in hot.
Enter through the door on the left and turn right again once you exit. Follow the room until you reach a door that takes you out to the club again.
From there, you need take the first door on the right, which places you in the bathroom. There is a vent toward the back of the bathroom, which you need to open and climb through.
The Switch code and color
This is where you find your code and switch colors. Write down the combination and the color, then make your way back to the switch room once again. Your desired Crypto Wallet is also in this room, so keep the area in mind for later.
Go back the way you came, and you’ll be at the switch room in no time.
Once you’ve flipped the switch, you need to get back on that catwalk and strut your stuff. There is a PC monitor in the room where you first get the keycard, interact with it, and wait for it to do its thing.
As soon as it’s done you can go to the Storage Unit. This means going through the same vent as before to get to the bathroom downstairs.
Climb through the bathroom vent once more and go into the room where you found your code and color previously. In the back of the room, behind a black, mesh, gate, you’ll see the Crypto Wallet you’ve been looking for.
It’s all yours.
Stashing the loot and escaping
There are multiple ways to get to the escape area, but first, you have to drop off the goods. This means you have to get back out into the club.
I went the way I came from originally. This is because a guard stands right outside the door in the only other exit, and he doesn’t move for some reason—which was awesome.
Once you’ve made it back to the entrance to the lower part of the club, you can go along the hallway and open the door at the end. This requires the keycard you picked up previously.
Now, you can open the vent in the right corner of the room, which drops you toward the exact spot where you need to be. You can dump your goods here and get ready to escape.
Escaping is your next step. This is where simply avoiding any visibility will be your goal. Staying crouched and navigating the small alleyways or going through the various poker rooms with vents is a good way to get out.
Reach the floor where you entered the lower part of the club, and find the door at the end of the hallway. Therein lies your exit.
Simply going along the alley can be difficult, as people will be likely spooked by a gun-wielding clown. Instead you need to go through the vent in the nearby poker room and navigate the rooms it takes you through. This ultimately takes you back to the various rooms you’ve been in.
It’s a process, but gets you out safely.
There are multiple ways to approach this mission. You can go in guns blazing, or even follow different stealth methods to steal the loot and escape.
