With the arrival of Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.0 and the separate Phantom Liberty expansion, CD Projekt’s beefy RPG has effectively relaunched, introducing significant additions to the base game for all players to enjoy, as well as an entirely new area with its own storyline, gear and side jobs.
It’s a lot to take in, so whether you’re a first-time player who’s been waiting for an excuse to check the game out, or a returning cyberpunk, we’ve put together some tips to make sure you get the most out of your holiday in Night City.
Register for ‘My Rewards’
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
Before you even start your misadventure you should get on the right foot by quickly logging into My Rewards to access a whole bunch of digital goodies. All Cyberpunk 2077 players can nab the Wolf School jacket and t-shirt, Galaxy t-shirt, Black Unicorn katana and Shupe the Troll plushie. The clothing can be found in your apartment wardrobe, the weapon in your stash, and Shupe will be chilling out on the sofa.
Five more items are also available if you own Phantom Liberty, as well as Gwent or The Witcher 3. All Phantom Liberty players can get the Rarog vest, and if you’ve played Gwent you can also get a Gwent t-shirt and the very handy Scorch pistol. If you own The Witcher 3, you’ll also get the Gwynbleidd sword and a Wild Hunt jacket.
Start planning your build early
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 completely overhauls the progression systems, letting you create builds that are a lot more unique and specific, so it pays to start thinking about what kind of character you want to play as straight away. Phantom Liberty increases the level cap to 60, giving you a bit more flexibility and letting you max out several trees. As detailed in our Cyberpunk respeccing guide, you can refund perk points at any time, but attribute points can only be reset once.
If you want to play as a chromed-up heavy hitter, blasting things with shotguns, LMGs and blunt weapons, invest in Body and Tech. If you prefer to go in quiet, hacking your way through missions and killing stealthily, Intelligence and Cool are the trees for you.
There’s also a secondary skills system that rewards you for playing in specific ways. Using tech weapons, for instance, is one way to level up your Engineer skill, which will in turn make you more effective when using tech weapons. If you’re tanky, meanwhile, you’ll increase your Solo skill, giving you boosts to health and carrying capacity, among other things. These skill lines also reward you with extra perk points, which are extremely handy.
Get chromed up
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
Soon after you complete the prologue based on your character’s background, you’ll be free to roam Night City’s Watson district, and BFF Jackie will take you to Vik’s, a friendly ripper doc. He’ll give you a new eye and hand augment right off the bat, the former of which is especially handy, as it lets you zoom in and scan both objects and NPCs. Then, if you’ve got some cash, you should do some chrome shopping, because Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 has dramatically improved the cybernetic side of things.
First of all, every ripper doc now has a full inventory, so you don’t need to visit every single one of them to get what you need. There’s also a huge variety of cybernetics, and fewer limitations. Now, you’re mostly just limited by the capacity cost of each cybernetic, and that limit is determined by your perks. If you invest in the Tech tree, you’ll start bumping this up quickly, letting you equip a lot more (and more advanced) cybernetics.
Soon you’ll be dashing around, leaping like the Hulk, shooting rockets out of your arms and murdering chooms with smart guns.
Hunt down the rogue AI taxis
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
After the prologue you’ll be reunited with your car. It’ll be waiting for you in the parking garage of the megabuilding you live in. If you don’t know where that is, there should be a quest in your log leading you to it. But the moment you start the engine, an automated taxi will ram into you. This begins a chain of quests for Delamain, a luxury fleet of driverless cabs. Hunting them all down might, at first glance, seem like busywork. They’re spread all over the map, including out in the Badlands.
But every one is interesting and fun, and finding them all unlocks one final quest where V is forced to make a tough decision. It might not seem like it at first, but this builds to become one of the best quests in the game.
Steal a sweet new ride
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
Cyberpunk 2077 lets you steal most NPCs’ cars, and you’ll get your own ride for free, but if you want something flashier you usually have to spend some cash. Or, you can luck out and find a sweet ride abandoned out in the sticks—in fact, you’ll likely stumble upon it while doing one of the Delamain quests mentioned above. The car in question is the badass Type-66 “Hoon” and was just added in 2.0. And conveniently you can nab it early on.
All you need to do is head to Northside in Watson, with the closest fast travel points being Offshore St and Longshore North. The building you are looking for is in the north east, and is shaped like an “L” on the map. Inside you’ll find the car, though it is locked. Not a problem: the keys are nearby, in the same building. Once you’ve grabbed them, the car is yours!
Like other Quadra Type-66s, this is a nippy little thing, and as an added bonus it’s already got some weapons. So you’ll not only be speeding through Night City in style, you’ll also be able to fire up its machine guns if the traffic starts doing your head in.
It’s always worth investigating crimes-in-progress
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
Look, I’m never going to tell you that you should help the cops—especially not when you’re meant to be a cyberpunk. And the NCPD are particularly horrible. But! It is still always worth keeping an eye open for crimes happening in Night City. These are separate from gigs and jobs and will appear as you explore the city, marked on the map with an NCPD icon. Heading towards them you’ll usually be faced with some gang members assaulting civilians or trying to nick some stuff. Don’t stop them to help the cops; stop them to get some sweet loot and street cred.
Unlike other activities these are low-effort affairs where you’ll usually just fight a few gonks and poke around in their pockets, netting you some cash, skill shards and assorted junk. Make sure to pick up their dropped weapons to disassemble or sell later. Often you’ll also find a container that’s marked as evidence on the map, where you’ll find even better quality loot. It’s not always amazing stuff, but the rewards usually outweigh the effort.
Don’t sell all of your loot—dismantle some of it
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
You’re inevitably going to find your pockets full of guns picked off the gang members you kill in Night City. Selling these is an easy way to earn some cash, but don’t sell everything you pick up. Instead, head into the crafting menu and hold the Disassemble key to break down a weapon for its component scrap. On the left side of the menu you’ll see the Tier of component highlighted that the weapon belongs to and how many parts it’ll earn you. As you progress through the game you’ll need those higher Tier components to keep upgrading your favorite weapons.
Work with River Ward
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
At a certain point in the game you’ll get a new contact: an NCPD detective called River Ward. As soon as his missions become available, take them on. This is some of the best side content in the game, with V getting tangled up in a seriously dark, twisted series of events involving a notorious Night City serial killer. River is an interesting character too, as are some of the shady NCPD types you meet as you work through his quests.
Adopt a cat
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
There’s a stray cat, Nibbles, living in V’s megabuilding, and you can make her your own little mascot. Luckily she lives close to home. Head out of your apartment in Megabuilding H10, turn left, walk down the corridor, then turn right at the end. You’ll find a trash can with a datashard inside called “FEED TEH CAT”, which will tell you about a neighbourhood feline who has a particular taste for chicken.
In order to get Nibbles to appear, you’re going to need to get some cat food. You can buy this from food vendors throughout the city, or you can get it from a few guaranteed locations, such as the Arasaka Industrial Estate warehouse, or in Randy’s trailer in The Hunt gig with River Ward. Once you’ve got the food, head back to the trash can and put it in Nibble’s bowl. After a bit of time has passed, she’ll appear by the bowl, where you can pick her up and give her a good home.
Phantom Liberty tips
Head to Pacifica to kick off Phantom Liberty
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
(Image credit: CD Projekt)
Cyberpunk 2077 lifepaths
Cyberpunk 2077 romances
Cyberpunk 2077 endings
Cyberpunk 2077 mods
Cyberpunk 2077 cheats
If you’re starting Cyberpunk 2077 with a fresh save and not skipping right to Phantom Liberty from the new game menu, you’ll need to do a bit of work before you can hang out with Idris Elba in Dogtown. But not too much work. After you’ve completed the botched heist with Jackie, Night City opens up and you can start aiming your sights on Phantom Liberty.
One of the main quests sees you searching for your client, Evelyn, who’s ghosting you. This path has now been rebranded as part of Phantom Liberty in your journal, as following it will eventually take you to Pacifica, where Dogtown is located. There will be more quests to complete there as you search for the person who originally employed Evelyn, all of which existed in the vanilla game, but pretty soon you’ll be able to start playing the new stuff.
Thanks to the update 2.0 revamp, enemies now scale to your level, so if you really want to experience Phantom Liberty there is nothing stopping you from focusing on this path. Even if you’ve ignored the other parts of the main quest and not bothered with any of the side jobs and gigs, the difficulty will match your level—and after completing the first few Phantom Liberty quests, you’ll be free to leave Dogtown and continue with the main campaign.
Don’t stress about missing air drops or car theft missions…
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
Phantom Liberty adds two new types of small, repeatable objective: air drops and stealing cars for El Capitan. Air drops are small combat encounters surrounding smuggling deliveries into Dogtown. They occur at set points of the map as you pass by, and as far as I can tell, are infinitely repeatable.
Capitan’s grand theft auto joblets are similarly procedural, and make great use of the 2.0 update’s new car combat. With the airdrops especially, there’s a sense of urgency to the klaxons going off and guys swarming, and for a while I would just forget what I was doing to clear out a construction site full of guys or deliver a car halfway across Night City for El Capitan.
There’s no need for all that though. I found no shortage of these little objectives to complete during my time playing Phantom Liberty, and you should feel free to ignore them at your leisure.
…But air drops and car thefts do have consistently amazing rewards
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)
Okay, but if you’re ever short of eddies or crafting components, hoo boy, you best get on those little Radiant objectives, Samurai! In terms of the ratio of time and effort to reward, I don’t think anything else in the game is quite as lucrative as these two activities. While I was playing as a high-level character, I have to imagine that, even in the midgame, you’ll see something similar to the deluge of eddies, crafting components, and high-tier weapons I got for doing these missions.
On top of all that, there’s a sequence of pretty decent Iconic firearms to be earned from the first couple air drops you complete. Once you deplete that pool, you’ll just get generic high-tier weapons at each drop.
