Looking for something new to try? Not sure how to get the most out of that new weapon? Hit up your local RipperDoc, reset your talent points, and give one of these a shot.
Build: Zerkwire
A purely melee build, these talent choices will help you get into the fight easily, and stay in the fight for long enough to quickly mop up the threat. With talents from Cool, the monowire will crit frequently for devastating numbers.
Operating System:
Zetatech Berserk MK.5
Slots:
Beast Mode
Devastating Berserk
Sharpened Berserk
Important Cyberware:
Frontal Cortex Heal on Kill
Ocular System Trajectory Analysis, Threat Detector, Weak Spot Detection
Circulatory System Blood Pump, Biomonitor, Bioconductor
Immune System Shock-n-awe, Cataresist
Skeleton Microrotors, Synaptic Signal Optimizer
Arms Monowire with High Capacity Battery. Damage and Share of the user’s choice, though I recommend Crit Damage for the shard
Legs Reinforced Tendons. Double jump will activate your heavy landing from Berserk, with no cooldown. You can bunny hop in place if you so choose, though the damage is quite low and has a janky animation. It does knock down enemies, though.
Attribute Points: The most important allocation for this build is Body and Cool, and should be maxed to 20. The remaining points are flexible, and could be allocated where the player sees fit.
Body: 20
Reflex: 20
Cool: 20
Tech: 6
Intelligence 5
Perk Points:
Tree Name Points Spent
Athletics Regeneration 1
Athletics Pack Mule 1
Athletics Invincible 3
Athletics Steel and Chrome 2
Athletics Cardio Cure 1
Athletics Steel Shell 1
Athletics Epimorphosis 3
Athletics Wolverine 2
Athletics Dog of War 2
Athletics True Grit 3
Athletics The Rock 1
Athletics Hard ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1
Athletics Indestructible 1
This tree will increase survivability and mobility.
Through my playthrough, I never found use in the stamina reduction talents,
nor did I find use in the talents involving grappling or carrying a body. This is subjective
though and could be picked up.
Note that Hard ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cannot be spec’d into, nor can any of the bottom talents be
used until their respective tree is level 20. (in this case Athletics) At the time of writing this,
I am level 50 with 50 street cred, though my Athletics is only 9 and has never slowed down from
being capped. Looking at the talent, though, only 1 point should be necessary when the day comes
as the value quickly drops off with further points. (I feel this way about all perk-lvl-20-talents)
Street Brawler Crushing Blows 3
Street Brawler Flurry 3
Street Brawler Opportune Strike 1
Street Brawler Thrash 1
Street Brawler Frenzy 1
Street Brawler Rush 2
Street Brawler Unshakable 3
Street Brawler Efficient Blows 2
Street Brawler Dazed 2
Street Brawler Payback 3
Street Brawler Reinvigorate 3
Street Brawler Relentless 2
After originally playing this build with Gorilla Arms, I found the monowire to be a superior blunt-weapon
arm attachment for numerous reasons. The hit box is far more forgiving, where as I feel that you need
to be much closer for the arms to connect. Monowire still has a chance to cause bleeding, where you would
need the legendary “Animals Knuckles” slotted in the gorilla arms to achieve the same effect.
This is subjective, though, and this build works equally well if you prefer the aesthetic of the knuckles
This perk point distribution focuses on increasing the blunt damage of your monowire. Though my playthrough,
I have never found myself stamina-starved, thus I skip over the plethora of stamina-returning or saving talents. I
just don’t find them to be worth it. Most charged openers from stealth will one-shot your target, followed by you running
around with high attack speed while inflicting bleeds and knockdowns on your targets.
If and when you get Guerilla, the first point is definitely worth it, though I wouldn’t invest any further points. Your crit chance
will surely be capped.
Stealth Assassin 1
Stealth Strike From the Shadows 1
Stealth Crouching Tiger 1
Stealth Leg Up 1
Stealth From the Shadows 1
Stealth Ghost 2
Stealth Hasty Retreat 1
Stealth Restorative Shadows 1
Stealth Cheat Death 1
Stealth Ninjutsu 1
Stealth Stunning Blows 1
Because we are unable to use quick hacks, approaching your enemy is crucial. Points in Stealth will help you get to
melee range easily without sounding the alarm. With Ghost you can basically spit in a person’s face without being noticed,
though it is still wise to carry a silenced pistol around for cameras, or find their control room ASAP.
There are some great talents in this tree for opening damage, as well as health regen talents that will compliment any
Street Brawler build.
Cheat Death is also just a superb talent that I believe belongs on any melee build.
I do not find Toxicology to be worth it in this build as we will not be applying poisons.
Cold Blood Cold Blood 3
Cold Blood Will to Survive 2
Cold Blood Critical Conditioning 2
Cold Blood Defensive Clotting 2
Cold Blood Rapid Bloodflow 2
Cold Blood Coldest Blood 1
Cold Blood Cold and Calculating 1
Cold Blood Predator 2
Cold Blood Blood Brawl 2
Cold Blood Pain is an Illusion 1
Cold Blood Unbreakable 1
Cold Blood Immunity 1
Cold Blood Bloodshell 1
Cold Blood Coolagulant 1
Cold Blood as an overall mechanic just compliments any melee build so well. The movement speed is nice, which eventually
stacks even higher and also offers resistances per stack of CB. (Which will be 5 stacks, thus 10% move speed,
110% attack speed, 100% armor, and 20% resistances.)
Not only that, but you will also be immune to Burn, Poison, Shock, and Bleeding.
It is important to keep your momentum with this build. Once you have opened, keep moving until the place is painted in blood.
You won’t want your CB stacks to drop and have to start all over again. The more enemies, the merrier.
Annihilation Dead Center 2
Annihilation Momentum Shift 3
Annihilation Speed Demon 1
Annihilation Skeet Shooter 1
Annihilation Manic 1
Annihilation Hit the Deck 2
More movement speed talents in here, and to top it off, Speed Demon increases damage based on your speed. Between these talents and
fully stacked Cold Blood, you’ll have 50% increased move speed.
The Hit the Deck talent will also be great, as you will be knocking people down frequently due to talents from Street Brawler.
Pros, Cons, Closing notes.
All melee builds are an adrenaline rush to play, and this one feels particularly dominating. Long range, high posts, cameras, and snipers will be your enemy, so it is always wise to bring along some kind
of ranged weapon. Because you already have so many points in body, a shotgun with a few points couldn’t hurt, but a pistol with a silencer should do the trick. Even with no points in pistols, points in Cold Blood
and stealth offer tremendous crits to take out the otherwise unreachable ranged enemies.
Avoid explosives, or take them out early. I’m at nearly at 800 health with this build, but a land mine or explosive barrel will still one-shot me from a stray bullet on Hard mode.
Depending on the size of the crowd, activate Berserk early and often. It will give you some resistances to help with survivability while Cold Blood stacks up. There is no reason to save it as it has a short cool down, and a long
duration.
Remember that these arm attachments are not upgradable, which is why I would say stay away from a tech build if you want to go this route. I believe these don’t count as “tech weapons”, nor can you pour crafting
materials into them to up the base stats.
Build: Warp Dancer
I love this build. It’s clean, calculated, overpowered. Simply carrying a sturdy knife, a finely-crafted blade, and an iconic, memorable pistol, you’ve left all the fluff, bells, and whistles at home for a simplistic yet rewarding spec.
Operating System:
Qiant “Warp Dancer” Sandevistan MK.5
Slots:
Rabid Bull
Prototype Chip
Neurotransmitters
Notes:
While active, defeating an enemy restores health.
Increases Crit Chance for duration
Increases Crit Damage for duration
This OS is going to be your bread and butter, and is incredibly fun to play with. Before installing this, with certain cyberware, there are moments where “time is slowed”, but those time-slows are not nearly as controllable as this one.
Though you have 0 RAM, once again, with an investment in Stealth, they’ll never see or hear you coming. This is the definition of a glass cannon build. I have forgone survivability for the most damage and mobility possible, though if you are
finding early game difficult, it wouldn’t hurt to throw some points in Body and respec later. However, like the above build, with a 0 RAM OS allocating points to Int or Tech is nearly pointless.
Your opener will be sneaking up to a group with your pistol out. Thanks to Ghost, you will easily be able to sneak into where you need to be while taking out cameras and watchpoints with your pistol.
Save E for your “oh ♥♥♥♥ button”. Though detection time takes much longer, there may still be tight spots where you need to pop it for an escape.
Similarly, save E for melee weapons only. If you find a group of 5-8, you will easily be able to take them out with dagger shivs though the duration of Sandevistan. Using Sandevistan for pistol shots feels like kind of a waste, as the shooting is
still in real time. Revolvers are especially slow.
Everyone gets one shiv, and it doesn’t even need to be a strong attack. All knife attacks will apply poison. If the opener crit doesn’t kill them, the poison will.
I have forgone Bleeding damage with this build as the poison DOT will be more than enough to take them out.
Important Cyberware:
Frontal Cortex Heal on Kill
Ocular System Trajectory Analysis, Threat Detector, Weak Spot Detection
Circulatory System Blood Pump, Biomonitor, Bioconductor
Immune System Shock-n-awe, Cataresist
Skeleton Microrotors, Synaptic Signal Optimizer
Arms Doesn’t really matter; your melee and ranged damage is covered. Feel free to throw on whatever looks good
Legs Reinforced Tendons, because it’s fun. Either will help you get to higher points for observation or to snipe people with the pistol
Nervous System: Kerenzikov, Nanorelays. These are both very important for this OS, as it will increase the duration of both your time slows. Potential here for some good slide kills and clean escapes.
Attribute Points:
Body: 20
Reflex: 20
Cool: 20
Tech: 6
Intelligence 5
The most important allocation for this build is Reflexes and Cool, and should be maxed to 20. Since Int and Tech are somewhat useless, the survivability from maxed Body will be very valuable.
Perk Points:
Handguns High Noon 3
Handguns Gunslinger 3
Handguns Desperado 3
Handguns Rio Bravo 3
Handguns Long Shot Drop Pop 2
Handguns Attritional Fire 1
Handguns OK Corral* 1
Handguns Acrobat* 1
Handguns Steady Hand 1
Handguns Vanishing Point 1
Handguns Wild West 1
Handguns Brain Power 1
Handguns Fistful of Eurodollars 2
Handguns Snowball Effect 1
Handguns Grand Finale 1
There’s a couple talents here that are on the chopping block. Acrobat and Lead Sponge are worded nearly identically, and I’m not quite sure what the difference is.
Not only that, but by having using the Kerenzikov cyberware, you basically gain that perk anyway. Feel free to experiment or skip both when you have Kerenzikov.
Additionally, OK Corral seems unnecessary as most use of your pistols will be one-shots anway.
I have decided that because of how similar Steady Hand (Handguns 1pt, 30%) is to Icy Veins (Cold Blood, 2pts, 25%), just take Steady Hand. It’s only for handguns, but that will be the majority of your shooting anyway.
These talents combined with Stealth and Cold Blood points basically turn you handgun into a sniper rifle. In fact it hits harder.
My biggest in-game crits are from this build. With Grand Finale I intentionally empty a clip to one bullet, go into stealth, pop Sandivistan, and aim for the head.
Blades Roaring Waters
Blades Sting Like a Bee
Blades Slow and Steady
Blades Judge, Jury, and Executioner
Blades Blessed Blade
Blades Shifting Sands
Blades Float Like a Butterfly
Blades Deathbolt
It seems lite in the build, but you get what you need. I have passed over on bleed talets as in my opinion, they take a long time to apply and are inferior to poison damage. The dodge talent here is nice, but I have also passed on blocking talents and such as I find melee-exclusive NPCs to be rare, and you will easily kill them before they get to you anyway with a good dodge and a powerful attack or a bullet to the head.
Stealth Crouching Tiger
Stealth Strike from the Shadows
Stealth Silent and Deadly
Stealth Assassin
Stealth From the Shadows
Stealth Sniper
Stealth Leg Up
Stealth Ghost
Stealth Hasty Retreat
Stealth Neurotoxin
Stealth Venomous Fangs
Stealth Hasten the Inevitable
Stealth Rattlesnake
Stealth Cheat Death
Stealth Restorative Shadows
Stealth Ninjutsu
There’s just some great talents in here for both weapons being blades and pistols. Headshots, openers, move speed, poison, etc.
I have skipped over the throwing dagger talents as with a powerful pistol, there’s no reason you should have to throw it other than flair.
I skipped over Aggressive Antioxidants because of Immunity in Cold Blood
Cold Blood Cold Blood
Cold Blood Will to Survive
Cold Blood Critical Condition
Cold Blood Defensive Clotting
Cold Blood Cold and Calculating
Cold Blood Coldest Blood
Cold Blood Rapid Blood Flow
Cold Blood Coolagulant
Cold Blood Frozen Precision
Cold Blood Blood Brawl
Cold Blood Pain is an Illusion
Cold Blood Predator
Cold Blood Unbreakable
Cold Blood Immunity
Pretty self-explanatory and similar to the previous melee build. I would say that you should use one of your earliest Perk Points, if not the first, to get Cold BLood started.
The whole tree doesn’t start “leveling” until you have a point, and it will be important to level it throughout your entire playthrough.
Remember I have passed on Icy Veins here to save two points and go into Steady Hand instead.
Annihilation Momentum Shift
Annihilation Speed Demon
Annihilation Manic
Annihilation Dead Center
Annihilation Skeet Shooter
Some good talents that will compliment and add to your lightning movespeed. I have not confirmed if Speed Demon is affected by Sandevistan, that would be awesome though.
Pros, Cons, Closing notes.
Obviously you’re gonna be quite vulnerable with this build, but there aren’t too many situations where you don’t have the openers/upper hand. Once again in melee, explosives, cameras, and snipers will be your weakness. Take them out early or avoid.
Another fun thing to play with in this build is smart rifles with chance to poison. One I found is an Iconic called Divided We Stand. I’m not sure if the “poison chance” was random, but this is just easy-mode for applying poison at range. The bullets themselves hardly
do any damage with no actual points in rifles, but as long as just one bullet applies poison, the target will die.
Build: Poison Sprayer Pt. 1
Between base armor, epic clothing mod armor, Cold Blood stacks, and Berserk, your defense will be through the roof. Soon you will find mere bullets barely scrape you. However, explosives are still your enemy and are capable of one-shotting you.
Try to clear these out early in a fight by just shooting at them through the wall.
It’s best to be aggressive with this build. Start the fight at a sprint and keep the momentum going. The longer you spend crouched behind terrain, the chances of dropping either your Cold Blood buff or your poison debuffs grows.
Movement speed stacks quickly. Use this to your advantage and to synergize with “Speed Demon” – damage increases the faster you are moving.
Poison seems to stack (applied by both grenades, shotguns, and your melee weapon) and continue to ramp up as long as you keep the DoT applied – there also seems to be a window of forgiveness where if the DoT has fallen, you still have a couple
seconds to reapply and keep the DoT climbing. This is invaluable against high health targets as at a certain point your guns are doing a fraction of the damage, and are mainly used to simply apply the poison DoT.
Fully charged shotgun blasts are great, but don’t be afraid to just pop off a quick shot to knock people down. This build has tremendous potential to keep enemies locked in place, which your “Hit the Deck” perk will benefit from.
Poison will cause them to double over in sickness, quick melee attacks with the “Stunning Blows” perk will make them stagger, shotgun blasts at range will knock them over, and grenades can topple numerous people at once.Important Cyberware:
Frontal Cortex Mechatronic Core – exclusive to techies. Always nice to be able to do more damage to robots.
Ocular System Optics Mk.3 with the mod “Threat Detector” – Huge for being able to see enemies through walls, and being able to shoot them. This is necessary.
Circulatory System Feedback Circuit. Exclusive to techies. That’s what this build needed – self healing everytime we shoot a fully-charged shot… which is frequently. A must have.
Integumentary System Subdermal Armor. 200 armor is always nice.
Legs Double Jump. Always fun when you’re moving so fast.
Weapons:
DB-2 Satara The only tech shotgun in the game. You’ll be using a variety of this for a long, long time. Find any version (I had white for some time) and start using it. By putting points in Annihilation early, any shotgun will do, really, until you can find a Satara. Check gun vendors frequently until you find a crafting spec for a blue version, once you have the True Craftsman perk. As far as I know, there is no crafting spec in the game for an Epic version of this gun. However, out in the Badlands, there is a side mission/Cyberpsycho called “House on the Hill”. This cyberpsycho will drop the only epic version of the Satara that I know of in the game. The damage type is determined upon engaging him. Get as close as you can to the house and save the game. Kill him and hope that it procs poison chance. If not, reload the save and keep killing him until
poison chance drops. It will only be 6% chance, so use your 2 weapon mod slots to add 5% chance to apply status effect, bring it to a 16% chance to apply poison. This is for every pellet, which the Satara shoots 14 of.
Widow Maker An iconic Tech Precision Rifle dropped by Nash during Panam’s questline when she drives you into the tunnel. Always comes with a chance to apply poison. (33% on blue quality, up to 40% on legendary)
Keep this handy for picking off people at range that your shotgun will otherwise not reach. The low damage from lack of rifle talents doesn’t matter. As long as you can apply poison, they’ll die.
Don’t neglect upgrades/crafting better varieties of this weapon. Legendary has 4 mod slots that you can add chance to apply poison, or crit damage. That would be a 60% chance to apply poison, and that’s from all (2×5) projectile shots, like a shotgun.
Cottonmouth Found in Finger’s place. Always comes with a chance to apply poison. Just fun to whack people with or finish off with a blunt weapon if you need to avoid killing the target. Handy to have and looks funny.
Attribute Points:
Body: 20
Reflex: 8
Technical Ability: 20
Intelligence: 3
Cool: 20
Your priority attributes are Tech=Body>Cool. The first perk point I spent was in Cold Blood to get it to start leveling. However, you’re gonna hit level caps while trying to keep Tech and Body above all else.
This is fine – just try to put a point in Cool occasionally to keep Cold Blood exp moving whenever possible. Dumping your final points in Reflex will slightly benefit your otherwise-neglected rifle.
Annihilation Pump It, Louder! 2
Annihilation Dead Center 2
Annihilation Hail of Bullets 3
Annihilation Blood Rush 2
Annihilation In Your Face 2
Annihilation Bulldozer 1
Annihilation Momentum Shift 3
Annihilation Massacre 3
Annihilation Speed Demon 1
Annihilation Manic 1
Annihilation Heavy Lead 1
Annihilation Hit the Deck 2
Just a solid shotgun build. I skipped the dismember talents as these only seem to be for visuals. I don’t think they add anything other than flair.
The damage to moving targets isn’t really worth it. Since you’re mostly charging people, it will be rare that they are on the move.
Hit the Deck is a critical talent with so much CC available.
Movement speed talents are also great to synergize with Speed Demon.
Burn Baby Burn is not worth it unless you are going a burning grenade/chance to apply burn shotgun build. Not really worth it over all with this build.
Athletics Pack Mule 1
Athletics Epimorphosis 1
Athletics Regeneration 1
Athletics Invincible 3
Athletics Divided Attention 1
Athletics Cardio Cure 1
Athletics The Rock 1
Athletics Steel Shell 1
Athletics Indestructible 1
Athletics Multitasker 1
Don’t worry too much about the regen talents here. I only got 1/3 points in Epimorphosis because the 2 and 3 only add 15% more each. You’ll be swimming in
maxdocs anyway and there’s some great regen talents in Cool.
Skip all the stamina talents. You really won’t need them. Never found myself stamina starved.
Engineering Can’t Touch This
Engineering Up to 11
Engineering Gun Whisperer
Engineering ♥♥♥♥ all Walls
Engineering Superconductor
Engineering Lightning Bolt
Engineering Lickity Split
Engineering Tesla
Engineering Ubercharge
All about charging up that tech shotgun. “Gun Whisperer” is a game changer. So nice to be able to hold the shot until the right moment.
“♥♥♥♥ all Walls” is also great for being able to get a quick stun off through a wall when you need someone to stay put.
The grenade talents are not worth it. Another video on my channel tests that. You will mostly be using Poison grenades and none of the 12 points
you can spend on grenades increase that damage. Even if you decide to use some frag grenades, just get “Jackpot” for the crits. I recommend
“Ozob’s Nose” – crafting spec for the only legendary grenade in the game after beating him in a boxing match. Still, poison grenades are more valuable with this build.
Poison Sprayer Pt. 2
Crafting Innovation 2
Crafting Mechanic 1
Crafting Workshop 3
Crafting Ex Nihilo 1
Crafting Waste Not Want Not 1
Crafting Let There Be Light 2
Crafting Grease Monkey 1
Crafting Efficient Upgrades 1
Crafting Cost Optimization 2
Crafting Edgerunner Artisan 1I didn’t get the “increases x of crafted x” talents here because we’re already gonna have a metric ♥♥♥♥ ton of armor, and we didn’t actually craft our epic shotgun.
Skip “Scrapper”. You’ll want to vendor junk items worth 750$.
This tree is just to make you a ton of money. Buy out drink vending machines that you pass. Disassemble all drinks. Buy the epic crafting spec of Maxdoc ASAP. use
common/uncommon components to craft epic maxdocs for cheap. Disassemble all maxdocs into common IC, uncommon IC, rare IC, rare UIC, epic IC, epic UIC. Vendor
raw components, make bank.
You will also always have a ton of item components on hand throughout the game to keep your weapons upgrading with your level.
Stealth Assassin 1
Stealth From the Shadows 2
Stealth Hasty Retreat 1
Stealth Neurotoxin 1
Stealth Stunning Blows 1
Stealth Hasten the Inevitable 1
Stealth Rattlesnake 1
Stealth Cheat Death 1
Pretty light in this tree, but this is where the poison goodness is. Plus a move speed bonus and the crucial “Stunning Blows” talent for more CC
Cheat Death is always nice for an in-your-face build, too.
Cold Blood Cold Blood 3
Cold Blood Will to Survive 2
Cold Blood Critical Condition 2
Cold Blood Icy Veins 2
Cold Blood Coldest Blood 1
Cold Blood Rapid Blood Flow 2
Cold Blood Coolagulant 1
Cold Blood Cold and Calculating 1
Cold Blood Pain is an Illusion 1
Cold Blood Unbreakable 1
Cold Blood Immunity 1
I still think Cold Blood is one of the strongest trees in the game. It just compliments and empowers everything.
The highest armor I saw at one point was about 7,400 with full stacks of Cold Blood running. Juggernaut mode.
Prioritize points in Crafting as you level Technical Ability and points in Annihilation/Athletics as you level Body. Cool points will come later, but get a point in Cold Blood early to get it leveling.
Try to find/craft legendary items with as many mod slots as possible. When you find a legendary item, first hover over the loot table and create a save slot BEFORE looting. If the legendary item only has a
single mod slot, try reloading the save to proc additional mod slots. I have seen chest pieces that can come with 1-4 mod slots, and I reloaded the save until I got a piece with 4 mod slots.
With these pieces, craft the armadillo mod. With the proper talents in Crafting, simply crafting numerous white-quality armadillo mods has the chance to craft green, blue, and purple quality ones for free.
Spam this until you have enough to fill your gear. Keep in mind that these will not scale with your level once in your gear. You will occasionally need to craft new mods to replace the old ones as you level.
Use weapon mods that increase the chance for you to apply its status-related effect.
More Guides:
- Cyberpunk 2077: All Status Effects List
- Cyberpunk 2077: Solutions to Sandevistan Not Working/Unresponsive
- Cyberpunk 2077: Recommended Modding List (V1.6)
- Cyberpunk 2077: Crafting Components & Dismantling Gear (V1.52)
- Cyberpunk 2077: All Cyberpunk Edgerunners Characters
