There’s no two ways about it, Cyberpunk 2077 is a major time sink, and one that some gamers might not be willing to commit to, especially if they already sunk hundreds of hours into the older versions of the game. With patch 2.0 paving the way for the Phantom Liberty DLC, gameplay changes abound to the point where old builds are redundant. Returning players will find themselves having to get used to weapons and cyberware with altered functionality and a completely revamped perk and skill systems, and even if you familiarize yourself with the new gameplay mechanics in patch 2.0, other pitfalls - like a save corruption glitch (PlayStation 5) - encourages you to find another option besides booting up an old save. Fortunately CDProjekt have done the small mercy of allow you to start right from the beginning of Phantom Liberty, bypassing an otherwise lengthy requirement to complete the main questline up until the end of the quest Transmission, which is when Phantom Liberty will otherwise become available (check out the page How to Start Phantom Liberty for more details). If you choose to skip ahead to Phantom Liberty, you’ll be given a pre-generated character with which to jump right into the new DLC, and since many players may be keen to get right into the new story DLC without having to play through half the main questline again, we’ll discuss said pre-generated character’s starting stats and equipment, and suggest several builds for a Phantom Liberty playthrough.

Phantom Liberty Starting Stats and Equipment¶

To skip ahead to Phantom Liberty, just opt to start a new game in the main menu and pick the aptly named “Skip Ahead to Phantom Liberty” option. Huh. If you do, you’ll have to go through several steps to actually get in the game:

• Select difficulty level (this can be changed at any time)
• V’s Lifepath (pick your origin - Nomad, Streetkid or Corpo)
• Body Type (you’ll be able to fine-tune this immediate after the selection)

Once you confirm you’ll go right into the game, where you’ll be brought up to speed one the one and only (thankfully there’s only one) Johnny Silverhand, after which you’ll appear outside the Chapel (near the fast travel station of the same name) in Pacifica, Coastview. This is right where you’d be after completing the main quest Transmission, the prerequisite to start Phantom Liberty, and sure enough, Songbird will dutifully give you a call and start the first quest in Phantom Liberty, Dog Eat Dog. Say whatever you want to get the phone call out of your way, after which you’ll be free to continue with Phantom Liberty (head to the walkthrough page linked above) or take care of any open world business you might want to, but more importantly, you can now open up the menu and check your inventory and stats.

Phantom Liberty Starting Level¶

Despite the main progress you’ve been granted to reach the start of Phantom Liberty, your pre-made V will start out at the rather low level of 15, granting 14 attribute points and perks from levels in addition to the starting 22 attribute points for a total of 36 attribute points, all but one of which are spent by default (see below). In addition you’ll have 14 perks, 13 of which are spent by default, but you can refund them for free at any time, so you need not fuss over this too much. At Lv15 you’ll be solidly in the Tier 2 category of drops, and fittingly your equipment and cyberware are all Tier 2 (green). All in all, while your level is low and none of your gear is exceptional, it’s all profoundly adequate and you’ve got plenty of room to grow.

Starting Attributes¶

The pre-made V you’re provided for Phantom Liberty is something of an all-rounder, by default having the following attributes:

In addition, you have one attribute point left over, which you can invest however you wish. As you can see, V’s attributes align with the new perk tiers, giving them access to all Rookie-tier perks as well as Pro-tier perks in the Reflexes, Technical Ability and Intelligence trees. This is actually a pretty solid all-rounder build that gives you access to most of the basics without locking you into anything too niche, unless you absolutely hate quickhacking, in which case the Intelligence tree might be a bit overdeveloped.

In addition to the one starting attribute point, you can expect to level around 10~ times playing through Phantom Liberty, and you’ll unlock Phenom-tier perks if you get an attribute to 15+ and Legend-tier perks if you reach 20. Optimistically, then, you’ll gain enough attribute points to increase two attribute tiers, either one tier twice, or two tiers once. There are bound to be some attribute checks you encounter that you can’t pass no matter what you do, so your focus should be set on reaching higher perk tiers.

Starting Perks¶

Your perk distribution is fairly spread out, again, indicating a generalist build. Even in the various perk trees, most perk picks are things that will be useful for every character, like Painkiller (health regen in combat) in the Body tree, Killer Instinct (+25% damage with knives, axes and silenced guns when not in combat) in the Cool tree. Specific weapon skills are typically ignored, with the sole exception being the Hack Queue perk in the Intelligence tree, which expands your quickhacking capabilities. This is kind of a waste if you’re keen to move onto a Berserk or Sandevistan OS at some point, and while you can refund the perk points, that 9 Intelligence won’t serve you well unless you quickhack or use smart weapons, not something every build is guaranteed to do.

You have one free perk to spend at the start of the game, with thirteen of your fourteen points earned from leveling up spent, but these can be refunded and assigned elsewhere as you wish. You’ll earn another perk point each level, and you’ll gain another any time one of your skills reaches rank 15 - it’s quite possible all five skill trees will hit rank 15 during the course of Phantom Liberty, netting you another five perk points. You should, then, expect to gain around 15 perk points by the end of Phantom Liberty, which is more than enough to specialize with several weapons or gameplay modes.

Below you’ll find a list of perks purchased at the start of Phantom Liberty:

All in all, these perks will give you health regeneration in combat, allow you to dash, increase your pool of healing items and their recharge rate, improve the potency of your cyberware, boost your sneak attack damage and give you access to basic quickhacking abilities. Not a bad start, and something most players should be happy enough to build upon.

Starting Skills¶

Skills have undergone a significant overhaul in patch 2.0, with the dozen skills from previous versions being condensed down to a mere five, which has the added benefit of making them all individually easier to level. This is a good thing, since all your skills will start out at rank 10, and you’re incentivized to reach rank 15 in them all, as this will get you +1 perk point for each skill that hits rank 10. There are more bonuses if you progress further in each skill, with rank 25, 30 and 35 bonuses generally being quite good, but raising these skills to this level will require you to commit to gameplay styles that provide specific skill EXP, so anything beyond the first five skill levels should reflect your playstyle, not necessarily be something you grind for.

Starting Cyberware¶

As far as starting cyberware goes, you’re in a pretty good spot. Arm and leg cyberware doesn’t become available until a few levels earlier, so to have Tier 2 variants of it by Lv15 is pretty good. All of the pre-generated V’s cyberware is Tier 2 quality and you’re packing 70/71 Cyberware Capacity, so there’s not much room for fussing about. You gain about 3 points of Cyberware Capacity per level up, ignoring any perks or Cyberware Capacity shards that increase Cyberware Capacity, so you’ll be able to add a new piece or two of cybeware over the course of Phantom Liberty, if you wish. Honestly, your starting suite of cyberware is pretty good for most scenarios, and the €$20,000 you start out with ensures you’ll be able to swap out any current cyberware for more attractive variants should you feel the need (say, a Projectile Launcher instead of Mantis Blades in the arms slot). You’ll also want to keep in mind that rare cyberware should start appearing around Lv20, and at the very least you’ll want to upgrade your OS to a better variant.

Below you’ll find a table listing all the cyberware you start Phantom Liberty with:

As you can see from the list above, the pregenerated V starts out with a useful, generous and generalist array of cyberware. Depending on your playstyle you might want to ditch some things - if you don’t care about stealth or quickhacking, there’s no reason to keep Optical Camo or Biotech Mk. 1 OS, but this is a fine starting setup for a jack-of-all-trades.

Phantom Liberty Starter Build - The Jack of All Trades¶

The jack-of-all-trades is often a term of derision in RPGs, shortly followed by “master of none”. It’s fair, most of the time, and applies to some degree in Cyberpunk 2077, as well, but just because you might not be able to do something the best doesn’t mean you can’t do it well, and different challenges often call for different approaches. The generalist playstyle, then, doesn’t inhibit you from excelling in a particular field as much as it allows you to respond to more scenarios.

With the build provided below you’ll be able to equip more cyberware and get greater effects from it, run and gun with the best of them by using charged tech pistols, adequately pick off enemies sneakily with silenced pistols, and use quickhacks to open up explorations options, disable security and debuff, debilitate and damage enemies in combat.

Jack of All Trades Build: Body¶

Okay, it’s called the “Jack of All Trades” build, but real talk, there’s not enough points to go around, so something ends up in the sad canoe. Adrenaline Rush is nice, but getting Body 15 would eat up all our attribute points and take us until the end of Phantom Liberty, so we’re gonna pass. Painkiller and Comeback Kid are both nice perks, so once those are ours, we’re done.

Jack of All Trades Build: Reflexes¶

We start with 9 Reflexes, and that’s where we’ll stay. This one is more difficult than Body, because Air Dash is awfully tempting (we really liked our mobility buffs), but there’s not enough points to justify it, unless you wanted to sacrifice planned investments into Technical Ability or Intelligence in order to also dip into blades. For our money, though, Reflexes 9 is sufficient for some decent blade skills, normal dashes will suffice for combat purposes, and assault rifles and SMGs aren’t powerful enough to get us to ditch tech pistols (see below). We keep the perk points spent in this tree and also pick up Can’t Touch This, which will reduce incoming damage while we dash.

Jack of All Trades Build: Technical Ability¶

To that end, this build aims to get the Technical Ability attribute up to 15, as this unlocks the License to Chrome perk and its subordinate perks as well as Bolt. The former will boost our cyberware stats and give us more armor and, if we spend perks on the Ambidextrous and Built Different perks, allow us to install more cyberware. This probably isn’t necessary, as we’ve already got more cyberware slots than we can fill, but picking general cyberware perks in the Technical Ability tree allows us to customize our playstyle as we see fit by giving us access to more cyberware, and making all the cyberware we equip better. As for the Bolt perk, this and its related perks improve tech weapons, which, as in previous versions of the game, are overpowered. Being able to hold down the aim + fire buttons to charge up a barrage of pain that penetrates cover is just stupidly powerful, and it gives any character the ability to run and gun with the best of them. Since you’re getting these abilities essentially for free alongside the cyberware buffs, it’s extra enticing. We divest points from Health Freak and Glutton for War, however - having more healing charges isn’t really something we’re keen to burn three perk points on.

Jack of All Trades Build: Cool¶

We personally love stealth, it’s just an extra challenge to get through encounters sneakily, if possible, or at least thin the herd. That being the case, we’d love to get Cool up to 15 to unlock Ninjutsu, or failing that, get up to Cool 9 so we can unlock Focus… but it’s just not in the cards. Not with the EXP we’ll gain by playing through Phantom Liberty with the game’s pre-generated character. That said, get a potent gun that you can attach a silencer to (the Nue is a fairly common option) and you’ll be able to pick off enemies just fine without much investment. We don’t boost Cool any, but we keep Killer Instinct and also buy Feline Footwork to make getting around faster while crouching, which will help perform takedowns. It’s not ideal, but without getting another ten levels, it’ll have to suffice.

Jack of All Trades Build: Intelligence¶

Intelligence is the second major component of this general build, alongside Technical Ability, and for a similar reason: cyberware can be customized to fit various playstyles, and quickhacking is just too useful to leave off the table. It allows you to interact with the environment, shut down security devices, distract enemies, debuff or debilitate targets, and deal direct damage. It can do this from stealth, or in the heat of combat. Something with so many potential use-cases is just a must-have for the jack-of-all-trades.

To facilitate this, we boost Intelligence to 15, which will allow us to access the Intelligence perk tree’s juicy Phenom-tier perks. The main goal in this tree is Overclock, which will give us various damage boosts and allow us to expend more RAM than our capacity at the expense of our health. Overload explosives to take out nearby enemies, blind enemies with Memory Wipe to sneak past or assassinate them, hit targets with Sonic Shock and Synapse Burnout to keep them from squealing, then deal massive damage, respectively. All this along with the odd bit of shutting down security cameras, turrets, plundering access points… it’s a good investment.

To improve the efficacy of this build, you’ll want to get a Tier 3 netrunner OS as soon as they become available - it’ll take a few level ups, so just check Ripperdocs every time your level increases. You might want to swap to a Tetratronic Rippler model (boosts damage against enemies affected by non-combat quickhacks - debuff then shoot!). Tier 3 OS’s have more max RAM and more slots you can equip quickhacks in, expanding your arsenal. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for cyberware like Memory Wipe, Synapse Burnout, Contagion and Sonic Shock.