Payday 3: Under The Surphaze Stealth Guide

“Under the Surphaze” is one of the longest and most difficult stealth heists to complete in Payday 3. You are going to find a good challenge even if you decide to do Under the Surphaze in Loud.

The job involves stealing paintings from the Surphaze Art Gallery while an exhibition is being hosted by crooked rich kids.

On top of being a multi-layered level, there are guards and cameras everywhere and each exhibition room can only be unlocked using a unique QR code.

Additionally, the deposit location is far from the heist building, meaning you need to take multiple trips each time you grab the items.

To successfully execute the art heist in Payday 3 right under the security’s noses, you need proper strategy and planning to ensure that you aren’t looping around the same corners of this huge Museum.

How to complete Under the Surphaze in Stealth for Payday 3

The first thing that we recommend is gearing up using our best stealth build. This will give you the best skills as well as the best weapons to complete Under the Surphaze easily in Stealth for Payday 3.

Another thing we recommend is purchasing the zipline before starting the heist because the escape vehicle is parked pretty far away. Unless you are willing to spend an extra 30 minutes just moving the loot on top of a pretty time-consuming heist, the zipline is a better choice.

The last thing we would recommend is taking all the loot before making your escape in Under the Surphaze heist. There are three display cases in each Exhibition Room with additional loot in a secret safe as well as a secret painting to steal.

Enter the Surphaze Museum

The Surphaze Art Museum has multiple entry points. We found that the quickest and most convenient way is to jump up the boxes at the riverfront and climb up the stairs.

On your way there, you can grab the zipline bag if you bought it in the menu, on your right near the bushes but mind the guards patrolling the area.

Using the glass cutter, open the window of the first floor that leads you directly to the Server Room. Wait for the guard to leave before you enter and mind the camera right next to it as well so you don’t get caught.

Once you are inside the next step to make the whole heist a lot easier for you is to disable the cameras.

Disable the security cameras (optional)

The Surphaze Museum is littered with cameras which will make your movements restricted and make things harder especially in Stealth for Under the Surface in Payday 3.

Though it is an optional step, we highly recommend doing so which will require locating the Security Room and costs a pager for taking out the guard inside.

The Security Room will always be on the top floor but since the locations of rooms can interchange with each other, you will need to look around a bit to find it.

After you have found the room, you will need to take out the guard watching the cameras and then disable them using the computer.

Disable the security bars

Before you can even begin the heisting part, you will have to get rid of some security parameters around the paintings set by the Museum. If you try to access them otherwise, the Security Bars will rise, blocking you from taking the paintings.

To disable the Security bars, especially for Stealth in Under the Surphaze in Payday 3, you will need to be vigilant and quick since the security checks will be all over the place.

There are two security checks in total, one on each floor which are not skippable so you need to grab both.

The monitor for disabling Security Bars on the top floor can be found between the E4 and E5 Exhibition rooms, mounted on the wall in the hallway next to an Advertisement board. The security check for the ground floor is also a monitor mounted on the wall and is next to the employees’ bathrooms on the red brick wall.

Once you activate the check, it is pretty much the same process you have already done for Touch the Sky and Gold & Shark heist while hacking the Wi-Fi systems.

A few white circles on the ground will pop up and you need to stand in to complete the check. It may sound simple enough but in order to not break Stealth, you will have your work cut out for you.

A few tips we can give you are to mark the guards so you can keep track of their movement. A personal one is to, abandon the circle if you need to and then come back to it later to complete it since risking the whole run is not worth doing it a few seconds quicker.

Now that you can grab the loot, it is time to find and grab the paintings that are also locked behind closed doors.

Get the QR codes to access the exhibition area

All the Exhibition Rooms in Under the Surphaze in Payday 3 are locked using QR scanners and require you to obtain QR codes.

These QR codes can only be found after searching through phones, located in different rooms in the Museum. We have listed all the places where we found these QR codes, but you will need only 5 to complete the heist.

Note that these phones will randomly spawn and you may sometimes find two in the same room if you are lucky so it’s best to check all the potential locations to not miss out.

Ground Floor:

• Bar: on the shelf behind the bar
• Restrooms (both): next to the sinks
• Employees Only: on the table, on the open shelves in the back, and inside one of the lockers in the left cabinet, also at the back.

Top Floor:

• Server Room: on the table and the shelf behind the door
• Break Room: next to the sink and on the storage shelf near the door
• Manager’s Office: next to the computer

Get the USB flash drive from the secret safe

The secret safe containing the USB flash drive to get the last painting in Under the Surphaze is in the Manager’s Office upstairs.

Like the camera room, the Manager’s Office will also have a random location since all the rooms on the top floor switch places to keep the runs interesting.

The Manager will sometimes pass through his office so make sure you are prepared to take him as a hostage and tie him up in the room in order to not break Stealth during Under the Surphaze in Payday 3.

Behind the desk, you will see a small hatch between the two shelves which you need to move to reveal the hidden safe.

After you crack the safe, you will find some loot and the USB Flash Drive inside, which will allow you to access Uma Ladette’s painting, one of the main objectives required to complete the heist.

Another important thing you need to do is to hack into the computer on the Manager’s desk to reveal the location of all the paintings.

Certain paintings have duplicates or can be found in one of the two locations so it is better to keep them in mind for later.

We advise doing so since there are seven Exhibitions in total, and knowing where to look will save you the trouble of searching the heavily guarded Museum.

Now that you know the location of your target and with all preparations complete, it is time to get the paintings.

Steal the Greg Jud painting

The Greg Jud Painting will be in the E1 Exhibition Room on the ground floor which is the first one you will have to grab. You can also grab it before disabling the cameras while you are doing the security check to make things a bit more streamlined.

Enter the E1 room using the QR code, where the Greg Jud painting will be encased in a display case. You will have to either lockpick or use a glass cutter to open the case but never break the glass.

Even with the security bars disabled, breaking the glass will immediately trigger an alarm, instantly ending your Stealth run for Under the Surphaze in Payday 3.  

There will be two of them in there so grab both and the statue in the display case for the sake of getting all the loot in the area.

Since you can carry only one painting at a time, you will have to make multiple trips to the escape van.

The problem is that the van is parked miles away and making these long trips is just going to add more to the tiringly long mission. We recommend using your crewmates, yes even the AI ones if you are doing a solo heist to carry bags for you which will make securing loot faster.

Additionally, you can hide these duffle bags in the staircase area inside which also makes moving loot between floors easier. You can then take all bags later so you won’t have to sneak out and back in every time you grab something.

Steal the Pedro Vicario paintings

There are two Vicario paintings that you need to grab which can be found in two random Exhibition rooms, for us it was E3 and E6.

There will be multiple paintings in these rooms with a similar style so to identify the real ones, you need to use the UV light.

The Vicario paintings were made with paint mixed with blood so they will show the splatter pattern of blood once the UV shines on it.

These Exhibition rooms are guarded by motion sensor lasers which will break your Stealth in Under the Surphaze in Payday 3 since they trigger the alarm upon contact. You will need to navigate carefully to get to the switches in the back which will allow you to turn them off.

Additionally, you can bring the fake ones back as well for a bonus at the end so why not grab them while you are there?

Steal the Umba Ladette painting

The twist for the Umba Ladette painting is that the artist had two versions made, the original and the fake one.

To identify the original painting, you need the USB from the Manager’s office that we grabbed earlier, and a spectrophotometer found in the Server Room upstairs.

It will look like a camera strapped on a tripod which you will need to set up in front of the paintings to verify their identity.

The location of the Umba Ladette paintings will be in the Manager’s computer if you forgot, for us, they were in E4 and E7 rooms with E7 being the real one.

For the scan, simply open the display case, set up the device, place the USB drive inside, and wait for the machine to do its magic.

Once the scan is complete, the small screen will display “Authentic” or “Not Authentic”, after which you can take the True Umba Ladette Painting.

Steal the secret Shanda Latrell painting (very hard difficulty or above)

To get the True Connoisseur achievement in Under the Surphaze Stealth, you need to steal the Shanda Latrell secret painting in Payday 3.

Before you start, you will need three people for the job and start the heist in Very Hard or Overkill difficulty, without which you cannot get the achievement.

In the Manager’s Office on the top floor, you will find three small statues on his desk that represent bigger ones in the Surphaze Museum. They are unique in appearance, so remember what they look like but we recommend taking pictures or drawing them somewhere to not misremember.

These statues will change with each new run so you need to check every time or you can pause and restart the heist which counts as the same instance and the statues remain the same.

The statues will be in display cases in Exhibition Rooms so once you have located them, it is time for the true challenge of teamwork. Don’t pick the statue by yourself because you will not get the achievement, so to get True Connoisseur, all three statues need to be lifted at the same time.  

Note that, this can be only done after disabling the security bars of both floors to unlock the display cases.

After you have grabbed the statues, go back to the Manager’s Office where the paintings on the wall can be moved now. These paintings will reveal a red button behind it but don’t press it till other members are in position.

One person will be on the button, the second one will be on the cameras, and the last one needs to head downstairs to the open room between the E2 and E3 Exhibition Rooms.

There will be a painting on the wall, known as the Shanda Latrell painting but you cannot just grab it like normal paintings.  

To get the secret painting of Shanda Latrell, you need to grab the painting and press the red button at the same time to not trigger any alarms, especially if you are in Stealth.

As you pick it up, the lasers will activate, and the cameras in the room will light up the pathway that you can take to escape the room without triggering the lasers which is how you can get away with the secret painting in Payday 3.

As long as you secure the painting in the escape vehicle, you will get the True Connoisseur Achievement, without even completing the heist.

Escape

After you have collected all the loot, it is finally time to deal with the last obstacle in your path to claiming your rewards.

If you brought the zipline with you, it can be set up on the stairs, next to the Server Room window that you entered through. This will make movement significantly easy so we highly recommend bringing one with you for this heist specifically.

If you don’t have the zipline, bring all the loot bags out of the building by either carrying them out or throwing them down from the window you entered through as we did.

From there you can either use AI crewmates or carry the bags with your friends to the escape vehicle.

Be warned that there are many civilians and guards outside who can spot you pretty quickly. So in order to maintain Stealth during the Under the Surphaze in Payday 3 you will need to duck behind the benches and bushes to reach the escape vehicle.