Hitman Freelancer: How to open Safes

In Hitman Freelancer, you’re turned loose into the various dense maps that make up Hitman’s World of Assassination - but you’ve scant resources, and the odds are stacked against you. One way to even the score, however, is to open safes to get extra tools of the trade.

While the targets and certain other elements of the levels within Hitman Freelancer are randomized as part of the roguelike style structure of the Freelancer mode, you’ll generally speaking find that there’s a safe on almost every mission map. It’s one of the aquamarine icons on the map - and visually is quite clearly an image of a safe lock.

Inside each safe you’ll find Mercers, the valuable currency that you can then use to purchase additional weapons and tools of assassination from the vendors also found within each level. There’s usually thousands of Mercers inside each safe, and over the course of a campaign going out of your way to unlock as many as you can will transform your campaign and give you a much greater chance of success.

Usually, the safe will be placed in an annoying area - surrounded by guards and lookouts. You’ll need great stealth, or a strong disguise, to get close to it. But merely reaching it isn’t enough - you’ll then need to open it. Allow us to explain how…

How to open Safes in Hitman Freelancer

The Freelancer Safes are unique - large, tall, and sturdy. It’s worth noting that several stages such as Miami and Bangkok also have safes that are part of the original level design from the campaign. While you can open these, they’re not what we’re after in this guide - we’re after those specific Freelancer safes that are marked on the map.

There’s two key methods to open the safe:

Find Clues to learn the Safe Code

The ‘natural’ way to open the safe is to get the code and input it - but doing that will require risk and exploration of the area around the safe.

First, use Agent 47’s ‘Hitman Vision’ that you use to see your targets and the like, and look for objects that glow yellow.

As you’ll know, anything you can interact with glows yellow including items you can pick up, distractions you can trigger, and hiding places. But in Freelancer, one more thing shows up: Safe Code Clues.

These safe code clues are typically things like laptops, tablets, and stacks of documents. You can't interact with them directly, however - you need to whip out 47’s Camera, which is always in your inventory, and aim the camera at the suspect items to scan them.

You’ll need to scan three clues with the camera to get the safe code, then you can interact and unlock the safe.

Keep in mind that while if you’re lucky the documents you need will all be in the same room as the safe, in some cases they may be in a room or two over. They are generally all in close vicinity to the safe itself, however - just not necessarily in the same room.

We’ve seen spawns where all three safe codes are in rooms adjacent to the safe, with none immediately near the safe, for instance. They will never be on the other side of the map, however. And there’s always three clues total.

Blow the Bloody Safe Doors Off

If you can’t find the safe clues, you do have one more option - and it’s quick and dirty - blow the door open.

This can be achieved with any fragmentation style explosive - so frag grenades, mines, semtex, etcetera. All you need to do is toss it in front of the safe and get a clear distance away - and then return to grab the Mercers from inside the ajar door.

Keep in mind that this makes a huge amount of noise and will alert everybody nearby. Expect guards!