How Crafting works in Cyberpunk 2077: a complete guide

A beginner’s guide to how Crafting works in Cyberpunk 2077. What you need to craft or upgrade an item, how to get resources and is it worth it.

This guide is up-to-date for Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.3

The article includes an overview of the Crafting and Upgrading panels, an explanation of how crafting and upgrading gear works in the game, how to gather blueprints and crafting materials, which are the best items to craft first and regularly and why!

This guide does NOT contain any story spoilers from Cyberpunk 2077. The Crafting system in the game is a separate tool that you can focus on at any time and in any place, regardless of what you were doing a moment ago and how far into the story you have progressed.

What items can you craft in Cyberpunk 2077

The Crafting system in Cyberpunk 2077 is very robust and works perfectly in supporting your gameplay and needs for better quality gear as you focus on the narrative in the game and the fantastic stories CD Projekt Red have created.

In Cyberpunk 2077 you can craft nearly everything. Here is a quick list of the categories of items you can make for yourself instead of paying to vendors for them:

Ranged Weapons
Melee Weapons
Consumables
Grenades (as of 2.0 they are on cooldown, not consumables)
Attachments and Mods
Quickhacks

How to access the Crafting Screen

You can craft at a vendor or on your own. The system allows you to craft anything anywhere at any time. To access the Crafting / Upgrades menu, open your Inventory and click on the Crafting Tab at the bottom right.

Alternatively, you can open the main pause menu and open the Crafting button that appears when you hover over Inventory:

Crafting Screen UI Explained

In the top left corner, you have buttons for filtering items by category. In the late game you will have a lot of schematics of items you can craft and filtering to find the one you are looking for will be useful.

In the left half of the screen, you see all of the craftable items schematics you know. They are all color-coded to match the rarity of the items.

On the right half of the screen, you see the item you are about to craft with its level, stats, and perks. Below it are the required crafting components.

Here are the steps to craft an item:

Open your Crafting Screen.
Find an item you want to Craft from the list on the left side.
Make sure you have the required crafting components.
Press and hold the Craft button.
Find the new item in your Inventory immediately.

Upgrading Screen UI Explained

After Update 2.0 you can only update the highest tier of weapons through crafting – the Iconic.

Crafted items usually have better stats than the equivalents you can buy from vendors. This is intended to create an incentive for you to want to craft your own gear.

The Crafting system used to have its dedicated Skill Tree, where you can spend Perks. In Update 2.0 crafting is accessible to every build as it is no longer tied to a Skill Tree and there is only one single Perk that enhances your crafting experience: Lucky Day.

Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 Crafting Perk Lucky Day

The items you can upgrade are displayed on the left half of the screen. Here you will only see items you have in your inventory and items that you have placed in your gear slots.

There are small light-blue corners marking the items that you have currently equipped to help you get a better understanding of what items are sitting in your inventory and what items are currently being used in your gear.

Here are the steps to upgrade an Iconic item:

Open your Upgrades Screen.
Find an item you want to Upgrade from the list on the left side.
Make sure you have the required crafting components.
Press and hold the Upgrade button.
Find the upgraded item in your Inventory immediately.

Crafted weapons can now have up to two mod slots on them. This change was made with the release of Update 2.1. Crafted weapons before this patch, will not be altered.

Another interesting improvement is that crafted Iconic weapons will not be properly displayed when put in the stash.

How to get Blueprints and Schematics

Blueprints, also known as Specs or Schematics in jargon, can be obtained by one of the following methods:

Gaining Skill Levels to unlock higher qualities of existing schematics.
Looting schematics from the world. Some of the best items schematics are often hidden in plain sight around you – in a container or on a corpse of an enemy you just defeated.
Purchasing schematics from vendors and stores available all over Night City.

How to get Crafting Components

Depending on what item you want to craft or upgrade, you will have to provide the required crafting materials, called Crafting Components.

You can get Crafting Components by one of the following methods: Loot them from the open world or Disassemble items in your inventory.

The best way to get a lot of Crafting Components in the early game that will help you craft items and increase your Crafting Level quickly is to simply deconstruct the items you loot as you play the game.

Most of the lowest quality items you loot are not worth much to sell to a vendor for Eddies, but they will give you priceless Crafting Components and in great quantities too.

With the redesigned economy in Update 2.0, your best resource of Crafting Components are items you loot. Disassemble them, don’t sell them to vendors. Crafting Components are often more valuable to you than Eddies.

Crafting and Upgrading Iconic Gear

Sometimes you will stumble upon an Iconic piece of gear. Iconic items are usually found during main missions and as a reward for special side missions. These are the only items in the game you can upgrade (as of Update 2.0).

Check out the Cyberpunk 2077 Legendary and Iconic Gear Locations guide if you want to be better prepared of what Iconic items are available and when and how you can get them.

Upgrading an Iconic Weapon in Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0

Is Crafting items worth your time in Cyberpunk 2077

Crafting items in Cyberpunk 2077 is not a time waste for sure. Crafted items would often have better stats and damage boosts compared to the identical items purchased from vendors or found as loot.

If you plan to invest into Crafting more seriously, and you should, I highly recommend you to get theLucky Day Perk early on. It is located at the bottom of the Technical Ability Skill Tree.

Crafting is a supplementary system in Cyberpunk 2077, but it is designed well and does not get in the way of your story experience. Exactly the opposite!

Example: If you play on harder difficulties or have trouble getting used to the first-person shooting and gameplay mechanics CD Projekt Red designed for the game, you might need to heal more frequently.

It’s best to craft your own Grenades, Health Packs and Ammo instead of buying them. If you loot everything around you, you will usually have plenty of these.

This is it for now. I hope you now have a better understanding of how crafting works in Cyberpunk 2077 and how valuable it is if you approach it early on to improve your combat performance. Check out more of the Cyberpunk 2077 Guides here on VULKK.com as well!