Learn how to perfect your Teardown heisting with our tips and tricks for completing missions more easily. For those that don’t know what Teardown is, it’s a physics game that revolves around planning heists in a highly destructive environment. Anything from stealing safes and paintings to destroying cars by launching them into the ocean.
Tip 1 – How to Plan Heist Routes
The first few missions in Teardown may not be too complicated, but the difficulty quickly ramps up. This is when you might start thinking to use your spray can and take advantage of the map on the Tab button by default. What makes Teardown so difficult is that most objectives have some sort of timed alarm attached.
This is why it’s important to plan your routes for each mission so you can escape more easily. Using the spray can is a great way to draw a path along the floor so you don’t need to think when the time is ticking. If you’re looking for a way to disable alarms or change the amount of time, use our guide here.
Tip 2 – How to Get New Tools
If you’ve watched a video or a stream of Teardown and you’re wondering how to get a bunch of fancy tools, here’s how. Keep playing the game and completing missions to earn points toward your score. Over time, you’ll get promoted to new ranks that often come up with new tools. While you don’t need to complete a bunch of bonus objectives to get promoted, it’ll certainly help you unlock new tools quicker.
If you’re not sure where your score is located, you can see it at your main base in-between missions. Take a look at the top left corner to see how many points you have and what your rank is. Whenever you get a new tool on ranking up, you’ll get a message saying so.
Tip 3 – Quick Save Often in Teardown
It’s important to quick save often while playing, just in case you make a mistake. You can easily do this by pressing Escape and clicking the Quick Save button. Whenever you want to return back to that moment, just click Quick Load on the same menu screen.
There’s nothing worse than accidentally triggering an alarm and losing all your progress in that mission. This is why it doesn’t hurt to do a Quick Save every so often, especially in later missions that are longer.
Tip 4 – Experiment With Silly Ideas
Seguing from our previous tip about quick saving often, you should also experiment with silly ideas. Treating Teardown like a sandbox helps you learn more about different strategies and ways of completing missions.
Sometimes you just have to ram a vehicle through a building or a boat through a bridge to see what happens. Maybe you’ll learn about a new trick or way to complete an objective quicker. Plus, taking advantage of all the destruction that Teardown has is also enjoyable.
Tip 5 – Transport Safes Using Vehicles
You may have already seen this trick in a Teardown trailer, but it’s still important to mention. Many of the objectives you need to complete require transporting heavy locked safes. While you can drag smaller ones, the heavier safes aren’t quite as simple. This is where vehicles are especially useful in transporting safes.
Always take a look around your environment in each mission for little clues to take advantage of. This could be a dump truck with plenty of space for a safe or a crane to lift a safe or even car. Dropping a safe from a second story building into a vehicle is a great way to move things along.
Tip 6 – Search For Valuable Items
Teardown’s story immediately hits you with a struggling company and a mother that needs money. If you plan on getting that money, you’ll need to search for valuable items during each mission. While you don’t need to do this for your company to succeed, it helps a heck of a lot with our next tip on upgrading tools.
For now, be sure to bash through walls every so often with your sledgehammer in search of items. Or opening fridges and cabinets that may have items lurking inside. Any item that you can grab for money with shimmer white showing that it’s valuable. Common areas to search include inside walls, under stairways, and inside attics.
Tip 7 – How to Upgrade Tools
Teardown never tells you how to upgrade your tools or even that it’s possible. But, you’re likely wondering what money is for and this is exactly the answer to that. In order to upgrade your tools, simply go to the computer at your base for missions and click the “Tools” tab at the top. This reveals an area where you can spend money on certain tools to upgrade them. For example, you can purchase more fuel for the Blowtorch or more ammo for the Shotgun. As of right now, the Sledge, Spray Can, and Fire Extinguisher tools don’t have any upgrades.
If you’re wondering how to unlock every weapon and tool in Teardown, we have a guide here showing what rank you need to be for each. And if you’re looking to get infinite money for all your upgrades, check out how here.
Tip 8 – Tips For Using Planks
You may not realize the potential the Plank tool has when you first unlock it. They’re great for creating ramps along walls or simply creating paths up to other floors. This works well for creating parkour paths between buildings when you’re racing against the clock.
Plus, you can even attach a plank to an object and a vehicle to grab it with the vehicle. Also, later on when you find safes with water sensor alarms, you can use planks as a roof above them.
Tip 9 – Return to Missions With New Tools
As you get further into Teardown, you’ll start to unlock all sorts of useful tools to make each mission easier. This is why you should return to missions to grab bonus objectives you may not have been able to before. While you don’t have to, this can certainly help with raising your score and unlocking even more tools. Who doesn’t love having more ways to destroy buildings in Teardown?
Tip 10 – How to Get Inside the Vault/Safe
If you’ve stumbled across a vault/safe on Hollowrock Island that you can’t quite figure out how to get into, here’s exactly how. First, make sure you have some Planks and a Blowtorch with fuel before deciding to do this. Then, follow the steps below and if you need a video, you can click here.
- Find the cave tunnel underneath the building where the safe/vault is.
- Then, search for the ceiling vent in this screenshot below. It’s in the tunnel near the outside exit as shown.
- Now, attach a plank vertically to the vent above.
- Make mini plank steps to get into the vent.
- Once you’re inside the vent, continue jumping and placing planks under you.
- Now, crouch into the vent at the top.
- Use a Blowtorch to destroy the metal bars into the safe/vault.
- Grab the $400 cash and $2,500 gold.
I hope this Teardown guide full of tips and tricks helps you in your heists. If you have any specific questions or need help with a mission, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll try to help. For more Teardown guides, head over to a guide hub here.
Teardown launched on PC via Steam Early Access on October 29, 2020.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.