PAYDAY 3 Gold & Sharke Walkthrough: Rob This Ridiculous Money Fortress
Gold & Sharke is much easier once you understand what the bank is actually asking you to do. For stealth, you need to identify the correct employee office, steal the red keycard, reach the upper floor, breach the vault lobby security, disable the lasers, activate the vault and steal the server plus 9 of the 13 money bags. Loud replaces most of this elegance with a hostage iris scan, hacking, helicopter-delivered drill components and a 200-second drill, because subtlety has left the building through a window.
The good news is that Normal, Hard and Very Hard use essentially the same objective route. Higher difficulties mostly add guards, cameras, wider switch locations and nastier police pressure rather than changing the robbery completely.
And there are several shortcuts that make Gold & Sharke dramatically easier, including one gloriously simple Micro Cam trick that turns the laser puzzle from cardio into organised crime.
Planning another robbery after emptying Gold & Sharke? PAYDAY 3 Heists Ranked tells you which jobs are actually worth putting the mask back on for, and which deserve to remain somebody else's insurance problem.
Gold & Sharke Stealth Quick Route
For experienced players who mainly need the route:
Enter bank
Find QR code
HR computer
identify Branch Manager / Loan Officer / Bank Assistant office
find red keycard
upper floor
vault lobby
server room
hack computer
IT room clearance
enter random four-digit code
vault
access control box
disable lasers using four colour-coded switches
bank manager's office
hack computer
blue keycard/vault access
steal server + 9/13 money bags
escape.
The red keycard gets you upstairs. The blue keycard is required for the later bank manager/vault progression.
If you're using the Elevator Access favor, throw all the bags you want to steal into the elevator before going down yourself.
Do not jump down the elevator shaft expecting a sophisticated shortcut. The drop causes damage. Apparently gravity has been appointed head of bank security.
Step 1: Get Into HR and Find the Correct Office
Enter the bank and remain unmasked.
Your first major job is reaching HR, which requires a QR code. Hack the HR computer and it will give you the clue needed to identify which office you need:
Branch Manager
Loan Officer
Bank Assistant
Find the correct office and search it for the red keycard. During our run, the card was hidden underneath files, so actually search the desk rather than standing in the doorway waiting for the enormous floating video-game key to announce itself.
You'll also need another QR code for the relevant office access.
Once you have the red keycard, you can access the upper floor.
Shortcut: you may be able to skip HR
Experienced players can potentially identify the correct red-keycard office without using the HR computer at all. Community routing has long used the office occupants and visibility into certain offices to identify the correct location.
For a normal first run, use HR. It teaches you what the bank is doing.
Once you know the possible offices, HR starts looking increasingly like mandatory corporate onboarding for a burglary.
Step 2: Access the Vault Lobby
Use the red keycard to reach the upper floor and work toward the vault lobby.
This is where Gold & Sharke starts becoming much more security-heavy. Cameras and guards matter increasingly as difficulty rises, so remaining unmasked for as much of the setup as possible gives you considerably more freedom.
Get inside the Server Room and hack the computer.
You'll then need to obtain clearance through the IT room and enter the generated four-digit code.
The code is random, so there is no universal combination to memorise. Anyone promising you "THE GOLD & SHARKE VAULT CODE" has discovered an exciting new branch of fiction.
Step 3: Disable the Vault Lasers
Once you've progressed through the server/IT security, head for the vault.
The vault is protected by lasers. Access the control system and you'll be given the colour information needed to disable them.
You need to flip the correct colour-coded switches four times.
On Normal, the relevant boxes are relatively straightforward to locate. On Hard and Very Hard, the possible switch locations expand into the lobby area, which makes the process more dangerous because you're travelling farther through guarded space.
The Micro Cam trick is magnificent
Bring a Micro Cam and place it so that it faces the colour-code control panel.
You can now remotely check which colour the system wants instead of physically returning to the panel after every switch.
That turns the process from:
check panel → find switch → return → check panel → find switch → return
into:
look at camera → flip switch.
Whoever first figured this out deserves a tiny bronze statue outside the bank. Gold & Sharke has built an elaborate multi-stage security system involving lasers, colour-coded electrical controls, restricted areas and armed guards, and you've defeated part of it by pointing a webcam at the instructions.
Crime occasionally rewards simplicity.
Step 4: Activate and Open the Vault
You'll eventually need access to the Bank Manager's office, where another computer hack handles part of the vault-opening sequence.
The blue keycard is involved in this later progression and vault access. Complete the computer/keycard sequence and turn the vault wheel.
The enormous Gold & Sharke vault finally opens.
This used to be more troublesome in older versions of PAYDAY 3 because guards could react to an open large vault door. That behaviour has since been changed, so don't waste resources solving a problem belonging to an older version of the heist.
Now comes the important bit.
Money.
Step 5: Steal the Server and Money
Inside the vault, locate and steal the server.
You also need to secure at least 9 of the 13 money bags for the objective.
That means four bags sit beyond the minimum requirement. Whether they're irresistible additional profit or four fabric rectangles specifically designed to discover how badly you want to restart the heist is between you and your accountant.
For solo stealth especially, moving the loot can become more troublesome than opening the bloody vault.
This is where your favor choice matters.
Want another bank without quite so much biometric bureaucracy and industrial drilling equipment? No Rest for the Wicked Walkthrough has the full stealth and loud routes, shortcuts and difficulty changes for PAYDAY 3's original bank job.
Best Gold & Sharke Stealth Favor: Elevator Access
If you have Elevator Access, use it.
The shortcut makes moving bags out of the vault area considerably easier, particularly when playing solo.
There is one crucial procedure:
Throw ALL the bags you intend to steal into the elevator before you go down yourself.
Don't enthusiastically descend after bag number three and then discover the remaining fortune is upstairs looking down at you.
And don't substitute jumping down the elevator shaft as your grand criminal innovation. We confirmed that the fall causes damage.
You've successfully bypassed cameras, guards, keycard systems, IT security and a laser-protected bank vault only to be defeated by approximately one storey of Newtonian physics.
Hard and Very Hard: What Changes?
You do not need to relearn Gold & Sharke when increasing the difficulty.
Hard
The stealth objective sequence remains essentially unchanged.
The important differences we encountered were:
an additional guard in the vault room
colour-coded switch boxes can appear farther into the lobby area
consequently, disabling the lasers exposes you to more patrol risk
That extra vault guard matters because the final stages now have another moving problem occupying exactly the part of the bank you'd prefer to treat as your private warehouse.
Very Hard
Again, the objective sequence remains basically identical.
Very Hard increases the security pressure with additional guards and cameras, while retaining the broader colour-switch placement seen on Hard.
The puzzle isn't substantially harder.
Everything surrounding the person attempting the puzzle is.
Gold & Sharke Loud Walkthrough
If stealth collapses, Gold & Sharke becomes a very different robbery.
The basic loud route is:
Enter bank
access upper floor
identify correct employee
escort employee to iris scanner
force security gate
hack devices
receive drill parts
assemble and bolt down drill
survive 200-second drilling sequence
refill oxygen
dismantle drill
steal server + 9/13 money
light roof flare
escape.
Step 1: Reach the Upper Floor
You can access the upper floor using the keycard route or drill through the gate.
The HR investigation still identifies whether you need the Branch Manager, Loan Officer or Bank Assistant.
Except you're no longer politely visiting their office.
Escort the required employee to the security gate and use them for the iris scan.
Nothing says cutting-edge biometric security quite like a system that apparently cannot distinguish between "authorised employee arriving for work" and "authorised employee being marched toward the scanner during an armed bank robbery."
Biometrics have successfully eliminated the terrible security weakness known as forgetting your password.
Kidnapping remains in beta.
Force Open the Security Gate
Use the control panel and hack the required devices to force the security gate.
Then wait for the helicopter.
It delivers three drill components.
Collect all three, assemble the drill in three stages, bolt the thing down and start it.
And then Gold & Sharke unveils the cornerstone of sophisticated modern bank robbery technology:
Wait 200 seconds.
You have infiltrated one of New York's major banks, defeated biometric security, forced a reinforced gate and received specialist drilling equipment by helicopter.
The drill needs three minutes and twenty seconds.
So now everybody stands around shooting police while an industrial appliance completes its little task.
Keep the Drill Supplied With Oxygen
The drill requires an oxygen refill, which sends you toward the janitor area to retrieve what you need.
This becomes nastier on higher difficulties.
During our Hard run, the oxygen was noticeably farther away. Hard also brought larger assault waves, while Very Hard increased the police pressure again.
The objective hasn't changed. Your working conditions have.
Once drilling finishes, disassemble the equipment and enter the vault.
Take the server and at least 9 of the 13 money bags.
Then head for the roof and light the flare to trigger the helicopter escape.
Solo loud warning: the helicopter escape can misbehave
During our solo testing, AI teammates often became stuck during the helicopter extraction.
That doesn't establish that every solo helicopter escape will break, but it is worth knowing before entrusting your magnificent criminal retirement plan to three bots whose immediate ambition may suddenly become staring at architecture.
If you're playing solo, pay particular attention to your AI during the final extraction.
Gold & Sharke is only one room in this increasingly expensive criminal mansion. Head to the PAYDAY Crime Hub for CRIMENET's walkthroughs, builds, rankings and everything else required for a professionally disappointing relationship with law enforcement.
Stealth or Loud: Which Route Is Easier?
Stealth is the more complicated route to learn, but once you understand the keycards, security sequence and switch locations, Gold & Sharke becomes remarkably systematic.
The Micro Cam trick removes much of the irritation from the colour-switch stage, and Elevator Access can transform the final bag-moving operation.
Loud is mechanically simpler but turns the bank into a prolonged defensive operation built around the 200-second drill, oxygen run and increasingly heavy assault waves.
Gold & Sharke is therefore one of those PAYDAY heists where knowledge is worth considerably more than mechanical heroics.
The first time through, the bank appears to contain seventeen different security systems designed by seventeen different committees who communicated exclusively by fax.
Then you learn where everything fits.
Red gets you upstairs. Blue gets you deeper. HR tells you where to search. IT gets you clearance. The Micro Cam watches the colour panel. The elevator handles the bags.
And suddenly this intimidating fortress of American finance becomes what every bank eventually becomes in PAYDAY:
a building containing your money.
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