As you’d expect from a large, open world RPG, there’s a lot going on in Cyberpunk 2077, and given the breadth of activities available, there’s every chance that you will, either consciously or otherwise, end up not engaging with parts of the game nearly as much as you should. In this feature, we’ll be talking about ten such things that you might be tempted to ignore, but will be better served dabbling in. Without further ado, let’s get started.
DELAMAIN
You’ll encounter the AI named Delamain in the first act of Cyberpunk 2077, at which point he’ll have a semi-major role to play in the story, but following that, he will come back as a side character with an optional questline. The second leg of this questline will see him tasking you with hunting down seven cars scattered throughout Night City, and while you might groan at that objective, given how it seems on paper like a generic open world collectathon quest, we’d recommend going through with it. A little while after you complete all seven of these, you will unlock Delamain’s third and final quest, which is one of the better side quests in the game with a great ending, so it’s definitely worth the wait.
WEAPON VARIETY
Like with any shooter (and Cyberpunk 2077 definitely plays the part of a shooter very well, in spite of its core RPG innards), Cyberpunk has a lot of different weapons and weapon types for players to choose from. Once you get the feel for a weapon you like, you might want to stick with it, or at least with weapons that are similar to it- but you’d be better off experimenting pretty much every chance you get. There’s a vast variety of weapons in the game, many of which are excellent in combat, and limiting yourself to only a chosen few will turn out pretty poorly for you in the long run. There’s SMGs, LMGs, sniper rifles, assault rifles, precision rifles, shotguns, handguns, a plethora of melee weapons- try your hand at any and all that you chance upon and see which ones are the best.
VEHICLES ON SALE
Cyberpunk 2077 bombards players with in-game text messages almost constantly. From updates from characters to gigs to notifications about vehicles currently on sale, you’ll be receiving messages with a frequency that might turn many players off. Naturally, your response might be to ignore the messages, especially when it comes to vehicles that goes on sale (given how frequently those messages pop up), but those notifications can actually be pretty handy. Early on in the game, the vehicles that go up for sale are nothing to write home about, and you’re actually better off ignoring those and saving your money, but once you’re a couple dozen hours into your playthrough, fixers will start telling you about some really cool rides that you can buy. So keep an eye out for those.
MESSAGES
It’s not just the messages telling you about vehicles on sale you shouldn’t be ignoring. You’ll often get messages from characters before, during, or after missions where you will have the option to respond to them. Some of these conversations are necessary to proceed forward in the mission, while others count towards building your relationship with the character in question. Both, of course, are quite important. So our suggestion is to keep checking in on your phone every now and then to ensure that there aren’t any texts you may have missed.
GIGS
Gigs are sort of like Witcher contracts from The Witcher 3, in that though they are an important aspect of the game’s side content and optional missions, they don’t contribute to the story in any real way. Given that, you may at one point decide to let all your Gigs rot away in your quest log, but we’d recommend doing any and all that you can. For starters, these are bite-sized missions, so finishing them never really takes too long. Doing gigs is also one of the best ways to improve your street cred and earn decent amounts of cash (which is surprisingly hard to come by, especially early on in the game).
BOUNTIES
Similar to gigs, bounties are side activities that feel more procedural than the story-focused side missions, and again, owing to their very nature, it’s entirely possible that you’d think they don’t have much value. But they do, and in a lot of the same ways as gigs. They’re not too long and they offer up a decent amount of cash upon completion. They do get a little repetitive, sure, so maybe pace yourself and don’t do too many of them at the same time- but don’t ignore them entirely either.
JUNK
Pretty much every location and environment you visit in Cyberpunk 2077 is teeming with loot to pick up and parse through- a lot of this loot, though, is junk (quite literally). Given its sheer volume and its seemingly useless nature, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s best left ignored (especially since it eats away at your carry capacity), but picking up all the junk you can find is actually something you should be doing, as tedious as that sounds. If you’re into crafting, disassembling junk is a great way to ensure you never run short on components, while if it’s cash you’re more worried about, you can also just sell all your junk for decent amounts of eddies.
ACCESS POINTS
As you’d expect, hacking is big in Cyberpunk 2077. Throughout its world, you’ll find access points scattered everywhere, and if your playstyle doesn’t veer towards the hacking side of things too much, you might not be bothered to do anything with those access points. But you should be hacking every single one of those you see. Why? Well, because hacking them (and doing so successfully) can net you with respectable quantities of eddies, components, and quickhacks. Hack enough of those access points, and soon you’ll have a solid stockpile of all of those things.
MELEE COMBAT
Where gunplay in Cyberpunk 2077 is tight and frantic, melee combat is far from amazing. Especially when you’re using nothing but your fists, things can feel too sluggish and wonky (and the spotty hit detection surely doesn’t help). Once you’ve progressed enough in the game though, the melee combat does get better, and we’d recommend keeping an eye on what melee weapons you have in your inventory. Cyberware like mantis blades and monowire, for instance, are a lot of fun to use, and not only are they rather powerful, they also improve the melee combat considerably. Of course, your playstyle might vary, and you might never feel the need to get up close to anyone- but if you do, remember that better weapons usually lead to better melee combat.
RIPPERDOCS
This one should really go without sayin, but we feel like it needs to be brought up anyway. There’s several ripperdocs scattered throughout Night City, each offering various cyberware upgrades that you can deck out your bodies with. Initially, they don’t have a lot of interesting stuff on sale, but later on in the game, they get some really cool upgrades, from the ability to double jump and do boost jumps to getting mantis blades embedded into your arm. While early on in the game you might not have much incentive to engage with the ripperdocs so much, we’d recommend that you keep going back to them to see what kinds of new upgrades they have in stock, and whether you can afford to purchase any of them.