Attributes are one of the three core aspects that determine your character’s competence and capabilities, alongside [Perks] and Skills. While attributes haven’t been overhauled as significantly as the other two, they still play a fundamental structural role in determining what your character can do via various open world checks and by gatekeeping which perks you have access to. This page will cover how attributes function in Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.0, and how they’ve changed from previous versions of the game.

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(1 of 3) Each point you spend in an attribute will give you some small bonus,

How Attributes Work in Cyberpunk Patch 2.0¶

Attributes have always been a somewhat odd convention in Cyberpunk 2077, serving in more of a gatekeeping role than something that directly gives benefits you’d want to invest in them for, and this hasn’t changed in patch 2.0, although the way they actually influence other - arguably more important - aspects of character development has changed.

Every time you level up you’ll gain an attribute point and a perk point, and there are five attributes: Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, Intelligence and Cool, with stat ranges from 3 to 20. You start out with 3 in each stat and have 7 points you can freely distribute on top of that for a starting attribute pool of 22. You’ll get another attribute point per level, up to the maximum level of 60, for another 59 attribute points, and a grand total of 81, which is almost enough to max four attributes. Increasing an attribute gives a minor bonus, as follows:

In addition to the bonuses listed above, some Cyberware is attuned to different attributes, giving other bonuses that increase per attribute point. For example, some Skeleton cyberware is “Body Attuned” and gives a +2 Health bonus per point of Body when installed. Certain activities may also require a minimum attribute score to perform - forcing doors open requires Body, picking locks requires Technical Ability, jacking into access points requires Intelligence, and there are many dialog choices that require some attribute or another to select. While beneficial, these are comparatively minor compared to each attribute’s influence over perk trees, where they effectively gatekeep your progression by segregating each perk tree into four tiers, as follows:

To purchase even a Rookie-tier perk, you need a corresponding attribute score of 4+, and to pick the Legend-tier perks you’ll need an attribute score of 20. This means that, regardless of what other incentives you have for investing in attributes, you’ll probably aim to get each attribute up to 4, 9, 15 or 20, entirely dependent on the perks each tier unlocks and your preferred playstyle.

How Are Attributes Different in Cyberpunk Patch 2.0¶

Arguably the biggest changes for attributes in Cyberpunk 2077 patch 2.0 is that they no longer gatekeep cyberware at all. In the earlier versions of the game, different types and rarities of cyberware had different attribute requirements, and while it was rare, some piece of legendary cyberware might just persuade you to invest a few points in an attribute you otherwise didn’t have an interest in… although realistically you’d balance perk prerequisites (see below) and attribute checks when making this decision. It also gave lower-tier cyberware a purpose; you might not want to dump 15+ points into an attribute to get access to a specific piece of cyberware when an epic (purple) variant gave you most of what you wanted without hogging all the attribute points. Now lower-tier cyberware is strictly obsolete.

Attributes also used to gatekeep skill tree progression. Check the linked page for more details on how the skill trees changed, but to stay focused on attributes, prior to patch 2.0 your rank in a skill could only go as high as the related attribute’s score. For example, the Body perk tree had three subtrees, Athletics, Annihilation and Street Brawler, all of which were also skill trees - if you had a Body score of 10, each of these skill trees would be capped at rank 10 until you improved your Body attribute. In patch 2.0, your skill tree progression and your attribute scores are in no way connected.

Finally, attribute scores used to determine which perks you could purchase… and they still do, but these perks are now organized into four tiers (see above), instead of their previous, haphazard arrangement. Access to perks remains the biggest draw of investing in an attribute (especially since cyberware no longer has attribute requirements), so you’ll probably default to one of these tier values when determining where you want to allocate your attribute points… with the possible exception of Intelligence, as hitting 16 for that +4 bonus to Max RAM is fair incentive to drop another point.