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Extracting the Game's Files

This guide will go over how to extract the game’s assets. If you simply want to install mods, this guide is not for you! If you want to make some, you’re in the right place.

Prerequisites

To begin, you’ll need all of these. You don’t need to do anything with them yet, just make sure you have them all:

  • Diesel Bundle Modder - This allows us to extract the game’s files.

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 - Required for the Bundle Modder to function.

  • PAYDAY 2 Hashlist - Contains file paths and filenames of the game’s assets, necessary for extracting.

  • Around 40 GB of space on your hard drive. Extracting the files is almost the equivalent of having another copy of PAYDAY 2 installed.

Installation and Prep

Got everything? Let’s get started.

  1. First, go ahead and run the installer for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. This should be fairly straight forward.

  2. Once that’s done, go ahead and open up the .zip for the Bundle Modder that you got. You should see this:

Extract all of the files to a folder of your choosing. I’d recommend putting it in a folder called “Payday Bundle Modder”, to keep it organized:

  1. Next, you’ll want to open the PAYDAY 2 Hashlist zip. Extract the file inside to your Bundle Modder directory, as shown:

Once you've done this, you're ready to start with the Bundle Modder.

Using the Bundle Modder for extraction

Now that all of the prep work is out of the way, we can get started with the Bundle Modder. Despite the name, the Bundle Modder can be used to extract the game’s files. It used to be the only way to install mods in the past, but became outdated as modding tools improved. It’s still the preferred way to extract files however.

The UI is unfortunately a bit clunky and unintuitive, but this guide walk you through it:

  1. In the folder where you extracted the Bundle Modder files, run “PDBundleModPatcher.exe”. This should pop up if it’s your first time using it:

Ignore the scary warning and hit OK.

  1. You should see this screen now with a bunch of options:

Luckily, you can ignore most of it. The only part we care about is where it says “Game Asset Folder” on the top:

Hit “Browse” and locate PAYDAY 2’s “assets” folder. By default, this is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\PAYDAY 2\assets

Not there, or forgot where you installed it? Click here for a guide on finding your install location.

Once you’ve found it, hit OK.

  1. After you’ve done that, the following message will pop up:

Ignore it and hit OK.

Click on the “Game File Extraction” tab:

  1. You can specify a Custom Extract Folder if you wish, but all you have to do is hit “Start” in the bottom right to start the extraction process:

If you did not specify a custom extract folder, this will pop up:

Hit “Yes” to proceed, or “No” if you want to go back and specify one.

  1. Wait until it’s done. This depends on the speed of your hard drive, so find something else to do in the meantime.

  2. When it’s done, this message will pop up:

The extracted files should be in the directory you specified, or

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\PAYDAY 2\assets\extract

by default.

Congrats! You’ve successfully extracted the game’s files. Now you can get to work on a mod.

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