PAYDAY 3 Dirty Ice Walkthrough: Stealth, Loud, Codes, QR Phones & All Loot
Dirty Ice is one of PAYDAY 3's cleanest little robberies: case the Ashton Fine jewelry store, find a way into the restricted areas, steal enough jewelry and get out. Stealth turns the place into a compact puzzle involving QR phones, a changing basement code, keycards, cameras, the manager and an optional vault. Loud dispenses with much of the etiquette and introduces the revolutionary burglary technique known as smashing the fucking glass.
For the best payout, however, you want more than the minimum loot. Dirty Ice contains 13 standard jewelry bags plus the Rare Stone in the vault, for 14 bags total. Eight standard bags are in the main showroom and five are in the VIP showroom. Standard jewelry can also be cleaned in the workshop to substantially increase its value.
So yes, you can rob the shop quickly. Dirty Ice simply keeps finding increasingly elaborate ways to ask whether you'd like to become greedier.
Want another PAYDAY robbery where stealth survives right up until somebody makes one catastrophically stupid decision? Our No Rest for the Wicked walkthrough has the routes, RNG and shortcuts before the bank acquires several new ventilation holes.
Dirty Ice stealth route
Start by casing the jewelry store before masking up. Your main problems are behind the public showroom: the VIP area, manager's office, basement security and workshop.
The basement passcode changes between runs, and so does the place where you discover it. Check the possible sources rather than treating a code from somebody else's run as holy scripture:
the Employee of the Month ID in the front area
the whiteboard in the break/lunch room
the VIP area, where the code can appear on top of a cabinet
For example, one of our runs used employee ID 8833. That does not make 8833 a universal code. The employee apparently has a more sophisticated security clearance than most NATO installations, but at least PAYDAY remembers to change the number.
You will also need QR access. QR phones can appear around the map, with their exact locations varying between runs. Grab one when you find it because QR access opens routes you'll need later.
The manager's office PC can tell you which code source is active. That makes it worth checking early rather than touring every employee noticeboard in New York looking for four digits like the world's most heavily armed HR inspector.
Get into the VIP showroom
The VIP showroom is where Dirty Ice starts dangling the expensive stuff directly in front of your criminal nose.
Use QR access to get inside. Five of the standard jewelry bags are here, so even a relatively restrained stealth robbery benefits enormously from opening it. There are also documents tied to disabling the display-case alarm, which gives you another reason to thoroughly rummage through a room explicitly designed to keep people like you out.
If you're planning to clean jewelry, you'll eventually need the manager because the workshop uses retinal access. This creates one of Dirty Ice's better stealth wrinkles. The manager is simultaneously a person, a security credential and an extremely unwilling piece of burglary equipment.
Get her where you need her, maintain control of the civilians and use her to gain workshop access.
Once the workshop is available, stolen jewelry can be processed before you secure it. That takes extra time and creates extra work, but the cleaned bags are substantially more valuable. Dirty Ice therefore manages to turn armed robbery into artisanal jewelry processing.
You came here to steal diamonds. Twenty minutes later you're running quality control.
How to disable the display-case alarm
Disabling the alarm is optional, but useful if you're trying to strip the store without immediately turning Manhattan into a police convention.
The alarm controls are in the basement, while the required information is connected to documents found in the VIP area. Once you've dealt with that security chain, the showroom cases become much safer to empty.
The basement is also where you'll find the security room, making it one of the most important areas during a stealth run. Cameras, codes, keycards, alarms: Ashton Fine has put half the robbery underneath the floorboards.
Security is taken very seriously here, except for the part where employees keep the basement password written on a whiteboard.
Dirty Ice is one robbery. The important question is where it sits among PAYDAY 3’s finest criminal catastrophes. We ranked the heists from absolutely worth casing to Road Rage.
How to open the Dirty Ice vault and steal the Rare Stone
The vault contains the Rare Stone, the fourteenth and most valuable piece of the all-loot puzzle.
You need the Red Keycard and an employee from the office area to open it. The vault requires someone on the button in the manager's office while the Red Keycard is used at the vault. Solo players can do this by taking an employee as a human shield and positioning them on the button.
The Red Keycard can be found around the secured basement area, although on higher difficulties it can also be carried by a basement guard. The Blue Keycard is carried by a guard, with the Lead Guard becoming particularly relevant when that modifier is active.
This is wonderfully PAYDAY. The store has spent a fortune on a vault that requires separate human and electronic authentication, only to discover that criminals are capable of picking humans up and moving them.
Biometrics meet hostage logistics.
Technology loses again.
How much jewelry do you need?
You do not need all 14 bags to finish Dirty Ice.
In our current Normal stealth runs, clearing the VIP showroom plus another three standard bags was enough to reach the required loot, while taking the Rare Stone reduced the remaining requirement. Hard and Very Hard demanded more jewelry in the tested routes, with the core objective chain otherwise remaining familiar.
The exact security situation becomes nastier as difficulty rises. Very Hard can bring the Lead Guard plus additional guards, while higher difficulties and active modifiers make the restricted areas considerably less forgiving. QR, code and keycard locations also contain enough randomness that memorising one perfect YouTube route is an excellent way to eventually find yourself staring at an empty table where your entire plan was supposed to be.
Learn the logic of the store instead.
Find the active code source. Get QR access. Control the security systems. Open VIP. Decide whether the workshop and Rare Stone are worth the additional exposure. Then take what you need.
That knowledge survives RNG.
Dirty Ice loud route
If stealth collapses, Dirty Ice doesn't become complicated. It becomes a jewelry robbery.
Steal and secure the required jewelry, deal with the store lockdown if necessary and enter the workshop if you still intend to clean loot. Once you've taken enough, signal the getaway and survive until it arrives.
The VIP showroom locks down during loud play, with its power switch located in the safe room. That makes disabling the lockdown worthwhile if you're planning to continue harvesting the store rather than grabbing the nearest diamonds and fleeing before somebody arrives with a helicopter and several hundred rounds of disagreement.
Once signalled, the getaway helicopter needs time to arrive. You then have to defend the escape while moving your loot. If the helicopter takes too much fire, it can leave and return at another location, turning what should have been the final thirty seconds of the robbery into an unscheduled luggage-transfer service conducted under automatic gunfire.
Securing every bag remains optional. Escaping does not.
Prefer doing your organised crime without three strangers testing the structural integrity of every door? Head into our best PAYDAY 3 heists for solo players and become your own deeply understaffed criminal organisation.
How to get all loot in Dirty Ice
A complete Dirty Ice robbery means securing:
13 standard jewelry bags + the Rare Stone = 14 total bags.
Eight standard bags come from the main showroom and five from the VIP showroom. The Rare Stone comes from the vault.
If you're going for maximum value rather than merely the all-loot count, clean the standard jewelry through the workshop before securing it. Cleaning substantially increases its worth, but every bag you process is another reason to remain inside a building that the police are becoming increasingly interested in.
That is Dirty Ice at its best.
The basic robbery can be brutally simple. Get in, take jewelry, leave. Every optional system then whispers the same poisonous little question: yes, but have you considered stealing more?
And that is how a perfectly sensible smash-and-grab ends with retinal scanners, hostage-operated vault buttons, diamond laundering and a helicopter being shot away from the curb.
Crime has paperwork now.
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