In Cyberpunk 2077, your class are your perks. There is no fixed archetype you have to follow, so you will be the one to choose how to distribute your Attribute Points and Perk Points and what Skills to focus on leveling. While the system is open, it’s still important to do some planning since your choices will significantly affect your experience with the game. This guide will focus on the Character Perks in Cyberpunk 2077, how you earn additional points, what Perks you can invest them into, and what enhancements some Perks provide over overs.
The Cyberpunk 2077 character perks come under 5 attribute trees:
Body Perks
Reflexes Perks
Intelligence Perks
Technical Ability Perks
Cool Perks
This guide has been updated for Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty DLC.
Going down the Body path will get you significant Stamina reductions and massive Health boosts and prepare you for heavy blunt weapons and high-recoil guns. One of the most notable features of the Body tree is the Adrenaline Rush perk that can then be upgraded by others nested nearby: entering Adrenaline Rush gives you an additional health pool that decays over time, and can be upgraded to improve your movement speed and the damage you inflict.
Die! Die! Die! — Max Level: 2 — [Only affects Shotguns, LMGs and HMGs] — Requires: Body (9)
Level 1: -15% recoil at low Stamina.
Level 2: Increased fire rate as Stamina decreases (max. +25% at 0 Stamina).
Level 2: +20% Health Regen bonus to all Health Regen effects from all sources.
Level 3: Unlocks Adrenaline Rush mode.
In addition to their base effects, Blood Pump cyberware and health items now also give Adrenaline equal to 30% Max Health. (up to a max of 50% Max Health). Adrenaline is indicated by a yellow bar and acts like extra health by absorbing damage. It also decays over time. Adrenaline Rush remains active as long as you have Adrenaline available.
+100% damage for the next Quick Melee Attack after shooting an enemy with a Shotgun. +100% damage for the next Shotgun shot after hitting an enemy with a Quick Melee Attack.
Reflexes focus on your Assault Rifles & SMGs, as well as your Blade mastery. Going the Ranged Weapon route means improving your aim, damage, weapon control, and reload speed, and developing powerful consecutive shots. Meanwhile, Blades will get you extreme attack speed and ability to deflect bullets all while blazing around the battlefield. Dodging and dashing is its own dedicated branch, which will let you unlock the ability to dash in midair.
Unlocks preem new ways to exit vehicles: Jump out – double-tap [F] Slide out – hold [F] while at high speed You can also draw and fire weapons during these stunts.
While driving: No bullet spread penalty from movement -50% bullet spread overall
When your stamina is above 33% blocking projectiles will Deflect them to wherever your reticle is aimed. Well-timed blocking just before being hit increases the damage you deal with deflected bullets.
When performing Strong Attacks, you now automatically leap to enemies within range. These Leap Attacks can be also performed from midair and deal additional damage that scales with the distance of the leap (max +50%).
Level 3: each successful shot grants a stack of Sharpshooter, +7% stamina regeneration for 2 sec. per stack. Stacks 7 times. New stacks reset duration. All stacks are removed when the duration ends.
All attacks, counterattacks and deflected bullets apply Bleeding, which increases dismemberment chance. Bleeding cannot kill enemies, but does make them more susceptible to Finishers. +25 stamina from dismemberments.
Intelligence Perks
If you are interested in inflicting damage by Quickhacking into your opponents and practically frying up their brains, that’s probably the most notable feature of the Intelligence tree. Even some of the basic perks that expand your cyberdeck’s capacity and damage make a world of difference if you want to make use of this system.
You can supplement your hacking damage with Monowire strikes, also boosted by some of the perks found here. This tree also upgrades your Smart Weapons, if they happen to be your favorite — you will get a lot of mileage out of upgrading your targetting system in this tree.
Eye in the Sky — Max Level: 1 — Requires: Intelligence (4)
Automatically highlights nearby Access Points and cameras.
When uploaded through camera, Control quickhacks, Covert quickhacks and the Distract Enemies quickhack have: -1 RAM cost, +50% duration.
+100% duration for Control quickhacks used on full-health enemies.
Carhacker — Max Level: 1 — Requires: Intelligence (4)
Unlocks Vehicle quickhacks, allowing you to remotely take control, set off alarms or even blow them up. The availability of a given quickhack depends on the Tier of your installed cyberdeck.
Level 2: unlocks quickhacks queues, allowing 2 quickhacks on a single enemy. Queued quickhacks automatically upload in the order they are added, +30% upload speed for the second quickhack in a queue.
When you’re the target of an enemy netrunner, you are now able to counter quickhack them through walls and obstacles. -1 RAM cost for such counter quickhacks.
+2 RAM after neutralizing an enemy with a Smart weapon. If the enemy is affected by quickhacks, restores additional RAM equal to 50% of their total RAM cost.
Unlocks a Monowire Finisher. Press [F] when an enemy’s Health is low. The more quickhacks you have queued on an enemy, the more susceptible they are. Restores 15% Health and 5 RAM.
If you have a cyberdeck installed, press [E] to activate. In this mode, you can use quickhacks even with insufficient RAM, but each RAM unit over your max costs 1 Health instead. Duration: 14 sec. Cooldown: 30 sec.
Increased projectile velocity and lock-on range for 10 sec. after neutralizing an enemy with smart weapon. Stacks 3 times. New stacks reset duration. All stacks are removed when duration ends.
+1 quickhack queue size. The last quickhack to fill a queue has -50% RAM cost and locks the queue until all quickhacks have uploaded., +15% damage against enemies with a locked queue.
When Overlock is active, smart weapons gain instant target lock, and +25% damage if the enemy is affected by a quickhack.
Technical Ability Perks
Technical Ability is part Tech weapons, part Grenades, part Health items, and a chunk of Cyberware upgrades. Grenades and Health items synergize together to let you wreak explosive havoc while regenerating your supplies on the go, while the Tech items branch offers some potent charges: both in terms of recharging speed and charged shots. Cyberware branch is worthy of note all on its own: it boosts cyberware stat modifiers across all types and unlocks more slots for you to play around with.
Glutton for War — Max Level: 1 — Requires: Technical Ability (4)
5% instant recharge of Health items and grenades after neutralizing an enemy.
Level 1: +8% recharge speed for health items and grenades.
Level 2: +10% explosion radius for grenades and the Projectile Launch System.
Level 3: +5% movement speed and +10% explosion damage for 12 sec. After hitting an enemy with an explosion in combat. If you take damage from the explosion, the effect adds 2 stacks instead of 1. Effect and duration can stack 5 times.
When you accumulate 5 stacks of Pyromania, they will be consumed to instantly replenish a grenade charge, but all bonuses from those stacks will remain active for 6 sec.
Projectile Launch System cyberware receives: +1 max charges, +20% recharge speed, +25% additional recharge speed when you have no charges available, +200% additional recharge speed outside of combat, +5% instant recharge after neutralizing an enemy.
It also receives the same bonus as grenades from Burn This City Perk.
Unlocks Cellular Adapter cyberware for the Integumentary System. It can be purchased and installed at ripperdoc clinics. This Perk is required to use it properly.
Level 2: +15% damage for charged shots with tech weapons.
Level 3: Unlocks Bolt shots. To fire a Bolt, release the trigger for a charged shot right before it fully charges: counts as a fully charged shot, +30% damage, -50% penalty for penetrating cover.
Full-auto Tech weapons fire Bolts in a short burst. To continue firing Bolts in full-auto, press and hold the trigger again after firing the initial burst.
Charges powerful EMP that hits nearby enemies after 3 sec. whenever you activate Operating System cyberware (Berserk, Sandevistan) or Overlock. Applies Stun and deal damage proportionate to the quantity and tier of cyberware implants you have installed, -50% incoming damage while charging EMP.
Allows you to exceed your cyberware capacity by up to 50 points, but at the cost of -0.5% max health per point over capacity. When you neutralize an enemy during combat, there is a 0.1% chance for each point you are over capacity that you you will break into a Fury. In this state, you gain: +10% damage, +30% critical chance, +50% critical damage. Duration: 12 sec.
Cool no longer benefits from Cold Blood, but instead comes with a strong focus on Stealth, Throwable Weapons, as well as your Pistols, Revolvers, Precision rifles, and Sniper rifles (as a group). Going with ranged weapons will let you exploit headshot and weak spot damage, while the Stealth branch will offer a lot of mitigation and other bonuses from crouching. Finally, your Throwable Weapons will result in a variety of stacking damages, which can be further combined with the mitigation branch for powerful crit damage.
Allows you to use Sandevistan to slow time while driving. Allows Kerenzikov to be activated when aiming and handbraking simultaneously. +25% weapon damage when your vehicle is drifting or airborne.
When crouched: +15% Movement Speed, +15 Mitigation Chance. Mitigation grants a chance to reduce incoming damage by current Mitigation Strength (default 50%).
+10% movement speed after neutralizing an enemy while undetected. Duration: 30 sec or until detected. Stacks 2 times. New stacks reset duration. All stacks are removed when duration ends.
Landing an attack on an enemy right after they detect you will delay detection from other nearby enemies.
Focus — Max Level: 2 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Cool (9)
Level 1: +10% headshot and weak spot damage.
Level 2: Unlocks Focus mode. This mode automatically activates when you aim while at full Stamina. When active: No Stamina cost for shooting, allowing for more accurate shots. When it ends: -40 Stamina Duration: 2.5 sec.
No Sweat — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Focus (2)
-50% stamina cast from Focus for each enemy neutralized while it was active.
Rinse and Reload — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Focus (2)
+10 reload speed for your next reload after neutralizing and enemy while aiming. Stacks 2 times. The stack resets to 0 whenever you start aiming.
Pull! — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Focus (2)
When Focus is active, shooting grenades out of the air is easier and the blast is more powerful.
Head to Head — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Focus (2)
When Focus is active, neutralizing an enemy with a ranged attack resets its duration.
Deep Breath — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Head to Head
Time slows by 25% for you and enemies when Focus is active.
Level 3: unlocks Deadeye mode, which is active above 85% stamina. When active: +25% headshot damage, +25% weak spot damage, no bullet spread.
California Reaper — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Deadeye (3)
+30% stamina after neutralizing an enemy with a ranged attack via headshot or weak spot.
High Noon — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Deadeye (3)
When Deadeye is active: +35% reload speed for your next reload after neutralizing an enemy via headshot or weak spot. Effect available for 3 sec. Slows time by 50% during reload.
Long Shot — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Deadeye (3)
When Deadeye is active, your shots always deal full damage regardless of distance.
Quick Draw — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols, Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Deadeye (3)
+30% weapon swap speed when swapping to pistols, revolvers, sniper rifles and precision rifles, +30% Stamina when swapping during combat.
Level 3: Unlocks the ability to sprint while crouching. Press [LSHIFT] while crouching. Crouch-sprinting allows you to move more quickly while staying silent, but it consumes Stamina.
Allows you to perform Finishers from a greater distance if you’ve hit the enemy with a throwable weapon. Each successful throw also makes them more susceptible to Finishers. To perform a Finisher, press [F] when an enemy’s Health is low.
Nerves of Tungsten-Steel — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Revolvers, Precision Rifles and Sniper Rifles] — Requires: Cool (20), Deadeye (3)
When Deadeye is active: guaranteed critical hits for headshots and weak spots, increased damage as distance increases (max +25%).
Run ‘N’ Gun — Max Level: 1 — [Only affects Pistols] — Requires: Cool (20), Deadeye (3)
Hip-firing does not consume stamina. When Focus is active +25% movement speed.
Guaranteed Crit Hits with throwable weapons when crouch-sprinting, sliding, dodging or Dashing. No movement speed penalty when aiming a throwable weapon.
Only Available with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC
Relic tree is a little different from others: big nodes here will cost you 3 Relic Points to unlock, followed by supplementary nodes that will cost 1 Relic Point each. However, good news is that you are expected to unlock all of the options by the end of the game, so it’s more of a matter of priority. The three branches are split into Optical Camo ability, Arms Cyberware upgrades, and Vulnerability damage.
Optical Camo is an active ability that will help you escape combat or stealth in general, as long you have it equipped in your Combat Gadget quickslot. Jailbreak boosts the four types of Arms cyberware, and then lets you further upgrade each type with one more dedicated perk. FInally the Vulnerability path lets you see weak points in the enemy armor and cyberware and then target it for guaranteed crit damage.
You will unlock the Relic Tree and get your first Relic Points early into the first DLC mission.
Our dedicated Relic Perks guide goes in even more depth on tips and different paths, and how to get more Relic Points.
When crouched, being detected by an enemy will temporarily slow down. Dodge or Dash out of the enemy’s line of sight to immediately exit combat. Cooldown 120 sec.
Unlocks new abilities for Arm cyberware: Mantis Blades, Gorilla Arms, Projectile Launch System and Monowire. You can now overcharge the Projectile Launch System by holding Middle Mouse Button. This launches a burst of 5 projectiles that cover a larger area.
Attacking with Gorilla Arms now charges them up. When fully charged, a Strong Attack deals massive damage and creates a shockwave, staggering nearby enemies.
Neutralizing an enemy this way will send their body flying.
Dismembering an enemy or performing a Finisher with Mantis Blades will charge the next Leap Attack.
Hold Left Mouse Button and release to perform a long-range Leap Attack.
A charged Leap Attack with Mantis Blades has +30 m. longer reach and deals massive damage with a wide slash that hits the target and other nearby enemies.
Killing an enemy with this attack also dismembers them.
The Monowire now has a dedicated slot for Control quickhacks.
To use the installed quickhack, charge the Monowire by holding Left Mouse Button. When fully charged, release the attack to deal damage and upload the quickhack without paying its RAM cost.
When an enemy is affected by a Monowire-uploaded quickhack, normal Monowire attacks which hit that enemy and other enemies simultaneously will spread the quickhack to them.
We hope this guide lets you navigate the complex and interconnected Perk tree in Cyberpunk 2077! What are your favorite combinations and synergies between the Perks? Are there some less obvious choices and underestimated perks you happened to discover? Share with us in the comments below!
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Mila Grish
Dedicated contributor at EIP Gaming and a part-time collector of books she will never have time to actually read. Jumps on the newest releases just as quickly as on the uncovered dusty collections from the basement. For her, shiny graphics can never be an excuse to not have a polished player experience or an immersive story.
Body Perks
Reflexes Perks
Intelligence Perks
Technical Ability Perks
Cool Perks
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