How to research in Payday 3

Unlocking skills and applying them to your loadout is important in Payday 3. They make your loadout better and enhance your play style. Leveling up your Infamy to earn more skills is fairly easy to do, you just need to complete objectives or play on a harder difficulty. However, earning new skill lines to get more skills seems to be a straightforward route, but for one reason or another, the game doesn’t explain it well. You earn skill lines as you play which unlocks more skills. To have more skill lines available to you, you have to research whichever line you want. This guide will show how to research in Payday 3, otherwise, you might have a boring time playing.

Payday 3: How to Research

By researching you can open up whole new ways to play. Knowing how to level up fast can make researching more fluid and consistent. When you go into the skills page in Payday 3, you can see an assortment of options. The first few will be unlocked already, but as you play you get more options. In the same skill screen, navigate to a locked skill line and press R over it. This will start the research countdown. You can only research 1 skill line at a time, so note that with what type of build you’re making. For example, if you’re running a stealth build look for the skill lines that benefit that. Once you unlock the line, you can spend skill points on skills that are on that line. If you don’t pick a skill line, the game will automatically pick one for you, and it might not be the one you want. So keep on manually doing it.

Screenshot: PC Invasion

How to fill up the research bar

This part is a tad bit confusing. When I was playing, I thought it was whenever I did an objective or played a heist. However, it seems to be a mixture of both. If you consistently play the game, you can unlock all the lines in no time and spend your skill points on whichever line you pick. In other words, do everything in the game and complete the heist to quickly fill up the bar. This seems like a great way to get players to keep on playing because it helps them unlock more skill lines as they progress. 

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Payday 3 is available now via Steam.