Cyberpunk 2077 Beginner's Guide

The release of Cyberpunk 2077 comes with tons to explore, big baddies to kill, and much more. Luckily, if you're looking for a way to tackle the neon lights of Night City, you've come to the right place. Here are our best tips for starting Cyberpunk 2077 in both video and written form!.

Don't Worry About V's Lifepath 

While the lifepath is important to your character and playthrough, it won't prohibit your actions and choices too much. 

Whether you're a Corpo, Nomad, or Street Kid, you will still be able to enjoy the majority of Cyberpunk 2077's story beats. It is worth thinking about what path you want to choose but don't let it stop you from starting. If you want to see some of the differences and a general overview, check out our guide later in the week. 

Do Cyberpunk 2077 Gigs Early

It's fair to say that the sheer volume of content available in Cyberpunk 2077 is a little daunting. This is why, when you finally get outside, the amount of dots on the map can be easy to ignore. Don't. 

The side quests are an important part of your progression throughout your time, and doing them too late could leave their rewards obsolete and the missions itself undoable. You can fail some missions, purely by waiting too long so make sure to get them done. 

Loot Everything in Cyberpunk 2077

CD Projekt Red have been very generous with the inventory space in Cyberpunk 2077. From the get-go, you will have the ability to carry far more than you ever really need for a simple loadout. It's designed for you to hoover up everything you possibly can. 

There's one key reason for this: cold, hard cash. Even if a weapon is far below your current loadout, it's worth picking up just to sell immediately. Added to this, pick up the Pack Mule perk under Athletics to increase your carrying capacity by 60. On top of that, snag the Scrapper perk under the Crafting ability tree to automatically salvage junk, and you'll have a well-oiled money-making machine/cyborg.

Explore Night City

There are a few central reasons why you might want to do this fairly quickly. The first is to get some gear and find some quests. Oftentimes, you will simply stumble upon random events that can lead you to some good gear. Ignoring it might impeded your development early on. 

The most important reason to get this done is to find all the fast travel locations—or at least as many as you can. Located around the city are dark blue dots. Finding a bunch of them will save you a lot of hassle later on, especially when you're mopping up the game's many side quests.

Do the Optional Objectives

Both the main story and side missions have tons of ways of solving them and even more ways of ending them. When something pops up as optional, you should always do it.

This can majorly affect certain parts of the story and it can also give you new gear, abilities and—most importantly—experience points. 

Don't Overlook Stealth

For a city lit up with the hue of neon, Night City is made much easier in the dark. Stealth is an absolute must if you want an easier time in combat. For both a nice source of EXP and income, you want to use it as much as you can. 

The key to stealth is enemies are very unperceptive. You can crouch practically right up to them and still not get caught if you move fast enough. As well as this, stealth takedowns take a manner of seconds and gives you the option to drag corpses to a nearby hiding spot. Methodically make your way through encounters and even the tougher firefights are made very easy. 

Don't Waste Your Money

when you have tens of thousands of Eurodollars in your account, it can be easy to be a bit reckless with it. Don't bother spending it on guns and armor till late game. 

The setup of progression in Cyberpunk 2077 is very fast. Within a 20-minute span, every single piece of equipment you have can be made obsolete. For this reason, you shouldn't be too quick to spend. Your money is best spent on Cars, quests, and implants. Cars get you around quickly, obviously enough, and all vehicles must be purchased to finish off the Autojock achievement. Implants are important to progression and likely won't become obsolete quickly. Although it is tempting to get a few nice guns early on, it is mostly a waste of your precious money. 

Get Some Implants

The implants or "Cyberware" are pieces of equipment that you slot into your own body. While they all serve a purpose, one specific one seems to be one of the best to get early game. 

At a whopping 14,000 Eurodollars, the Subdermal Armor implant in the Integumentary System adds a huge 200 points of Armor to your character. To put this into context, this tripled my armor rating at the time and made fights much easier. 

And that's just a handful of tips that should help you when you're starting out.