Cyberpunk 2077 Netrunner Build Guide

A complete Cyberpunk 2077 Netrunner Build Guide. Designed to help you create a stealthy, long-range mercenary that can bring even Adam Smasher to his metallic knees. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about making a Netrunner throughout your 2.3+ playthrough!

Introduction to Netrunner 2.1

As a Netrunner, you’ll hack into security cameras and infect those on the network with an extensive arsenal of Quickhacks to neutralize your targets, many of which are conveniently non-lethal. Then, you’ll actually enter the building and finish off those stragglers with your Smart weapons and Monowire.

If you want to go a more lethal (and noisy) route, you will also be able to hack a ton of devices and queue up specific Quickhacks together to create huge explosions.

Sometimes, these vulnerable devices aren’t stored safely and are positioned in such a way that detonating one will trigger a chain reaction that results in most or all of the devices in the room exploding on their own, one quickly after another.

Major Changes to Netrunners with Update 2.0

The Intelligence attribute has received a pretty extensive rework with Update 2.0, even beyond the Cyberware changes, far more than what a lot of the other attributes got. I’ll be going into greater detail throughout the guide, but here are the major points:

• A new branch of the Intelligence tree gives you access to a queue that can be upgraded to allow up to 4 Quickhacks to be queued up at a time against a single target.
• In order to facilitate queueing, Quickhacks no longer have cooldowns, but RAM costs have been rebalanced and raised across the board.
• Passive effects on Legendary Quickhacks aren’t really a thing anymore, they’ve largely been replaced by queue combo effects. However, you can obtain Iconic Quickhacks in Phantom Liberty that offer a small-ish improvement over the regular Tier 5 version.
• There is a new branch dedicated to a special mode called Overclock that buffs your Quickhacks and turns your whole health bar into additional RAM.
• The Intelligence attribute now has direct synergies with the Monowire and Smart Weapons.
• Breach Protocol is no longer a Quickhack, and it doesn’t interact with combat at all. You’ll only be playing the little hex code minigame when you want to hack into Access Points for Quickhack crafting materials, schematics, and money.

For a full overview, read our in-depth overview and breakdown of all changes and new features in Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0.

All About Quickhacks

Quickhacks are your primary method of attacking. This section will tell you everything you need to know about how Quickhacks work and which you should use with this build.

Using and Queueing Up Quickhacks

Each Quickhack costs some significant amount of RAM that is proportional to the hack’s utility and lethality. They are akin to spells that cost some amount of mana, and they don’t have cooldowns.

You don’t really have to worry about the equivalent of casting or channel time since time is slowed dramatically while you have your Scanner out. The Quickhacks you’ll be using most often apply instantly (or one after another if queued). However, each Quickhack has a different upload time. Quickacks don’t actually produce symptoms until they are fully uploaded, and while your Scanner is out, the upload time is slowed as much as the rest of the world.

Eventually, you’ll be able to queue up to 4 Quickhacks on the same target, and your enemies won’t notice they are under the effect of a Quickhack unless or until they experience physical symptoms from the first upload. Some effects, like Reboot Optics and Sonic Shock, are treated as benign glitches in the hardware rather than hostile actions by a bad actor.

When you combine these factors together, you end up with a mindset that’s focused on pre-casting, combos, and spatial analysis. You want to upload as many Quickhacks as possible before enemies notice and start coming after you, at least within a given camera feed or room.

The perks you’ll be taking to upgrade your queue will incentivize you to think most about upload order and the location of enemies in relation to each other. As a Netrunner, you don’t really need to think about RAM cost unless the hack is significantly more expensive or there are only a couple of enemies such that you don’t need to activate Overclock.

Obtaining Quickhacks

I’ll be focusing on the Legendary rarity in the guide, but most Quickhacks exist as all 4 rarities, so you can just use the rarest version you have access to. You can obtain Quickhacks and their crafting schematics from Netrunner vendors and by breaching Access Points scattered throughout Night City.

Access Points also give you some eddies and the Quickhack components, which are a completely separate series of materials. They work just like the Item Components you use for crafting everything else, but there are 4 tiers instead of 5 (no tier 1 white). The separation was likely done so that you don’t have to worry about having fewer components to spend on other upgrades.

If you have Phantom Liberty, starting at level 51, you’ll start seeing Iconic versions of Tier 5 Quickhacks dropping in place of regular Tier 5 versions. The Iconic versions typically double the stat of a single component of the Quickhack’s effect.

Equipping and Ordering Quickhacks

You can only equip Quickhacks that have an equal or lower tier of your Cyberdeck. For example, if you have a tier 2 blue Cyberdeck, the highest tier Quickhack you could equip is tier 2 blue; it couldn’t equip tier 3 purple Quickhacks.

It’s tricky to equip Quickhacks and make them show up in your Scanner list in the order you want because the Quickhack slots you see do not map to static slots on the back end. The list of available Quickhacks seems to be stored as a stack (AKA last in, first out queue).

Think of each Quickhack in the Scanner as a building block that you will be stacking up into a tower that is the list of Quickhacks. Whichever one you equip first is gonna be at the bottom, and then the second one is gonna get stacked on the list on top of that first one, and then the third one is gonna get stacked on top of the second one, and so on.

In other words, you probably read the list from the top down, but you’re gonna add the Quickhacks to your Cyberdeck starting from the bottom up. If you do it correctly, the final Quickhack you equip should be the one you want to show up at the top of the list.

This list changes dynamically, so anytime you add or remove a Quickhack, it gets put at the top of the list, and everything else gets shifted down by 1. If you want them to stay in a specific order, you need to take them all out and put them all back in whenever you want to change one out.

Recommended QoL Netrunner Game Mods

I strongly recommend using 2 game mods as a Netrunner. Neither mod consequentially affects gameplay, but both offer massive quality-of-life (QoL) improvements to anyone using a Cyberdeck.

In order to use these mods, you will also need to install Redscript and RED4ext, and you will be prompted to install them when you download the mods I recommend from NexusMods. If you want some more general-use QoL improvements, check out my list of Update 2.0 Recommended Game Mods.

Quickhacks Sort by Slot

This mod maps the Quickhack slots on your Cyberdeck to specific, constant positions in the Scanner list. You won’t have to think nearly as hard about the equip order and can swap them out individually without needing to unequip all of them.

Download Quickhacks Sort by Slot

Quickhacks Memory Counter

This mod displays your current available RAM as a number next to the meter, just like you have for your health.

Download Quickhacks Memory Counter

Recommended Quickhacks

These are the Tier 5 Quickhacks I recommend equipping to your Cyberdeck because they synergize with each other and numerous perks from the Intelligence tree. Use them, and you’ll be able to defeat all foes with Quickhacks alone, non-lethally, if you want.

Many of these Quickhacks, namely the Combat category, are different from the ones you’d be more likely to use with other builds because they actually deal damage instead of rebuffing or autokilling their target.

Unfortunately, the Damage Dealt, Upload Time, and Duration stats listed on each tooltip description are completely inaccurate for almost all Combat Quickhacks. This issue goes beyond simply not factoring in the boosts from your Cyberware, Perks, and Stats. You just can’t compare those numbers on one Quickhack to the numbers on another.

It’s frustrating, but it has less of an impact on gameplay than you might expect. The other elements of the description, namely RAM cost, damage type, effect descriptions, and Perks are typically accurate. You will still have a cohesive and mostly logical gameplay experience; just don’t focus on exact numbers.

I’ll also be covering the improvement offered by the Iconic version of each Quickhack, but if you want to see the full information about each Iconic Quickhack, check out our Iconic Items Catalog for Phantom Liberty.

Ping

Cyberware Malfunction

Short Circuit

Contagion

Overheat

Synapse Burnout

Reboot Optics

System Collapse

I consider Reboot Optics and System Collapse to be the least important parts of this build. If you don’t care about making extra eddies for completing a mission stealthily, they aren’t super useful. If you have your eye on another Quickhack, feel free to swap one of those out for the one you want.

Quickhack Queue Combos

In this section, I’ll be covering the Quickhack Queue combos you can do with this build. Typically, as soon as you know you will be fighting a boss or more than 2 enemies, you want to activate Overclock, but I have included it in a couple of spots where timing is more important.

Poison Explosion

1. Contagion
2. Something with Fire

If an enemy is affected by tier 4 (purple) or higher Contagion and you set them on fire, the poison will combust, creating an explosion that defeats most enemies. Remember, the order doesn’t matter. You just need your target to be affected by both Contagion and burn at the same time.

Anything that applies the Burn status effect will work. The most accessible sources for you are:

• Prototype: Shingen MK.V (Smart SMG)
• Overheat
• Thermal Grenade
• Thermal Monowire

The Prototype: Shingen MK.V is by far my favorite way to pop enemies, especially when paired with the Raven Microcyber MK.3 so the Contagion applies to everything immediately.

Grunt Popper

1. Cyberware Malfunction
2. Short Circuit

Cyberware Malfunction makes enemies take more damage from all sources. Short Circuit deals more damage specifically to targets affected by Cyberware Malfunction. In addition, the Embedded Exploit perk that you get very early on makes you deal more damage to targets affected by a Control Quickhack, and Cyberware Malfunction happens to be one.

This simple combo is enough to defeat all but the strong enemies and can be spammed pretty safely while Overclock is active.

Overclocked Synapse Burnout

1. Overclock
2. Cyberware Malfunction
3. Synapse Burnout

Synapse Burnout deals more damage the less RAM you have. While Overclock is active, you deal double damage and will likely have little to no RAM if you’re spending HP. There’s typically no need to deal any other damage to an enemy if you plan to scorch their synapses.

I recommend always preempting Synapse Burnout with Cyberware Malfunction because you’ll have uploaded both hacks sooner than if you just uploaded Synapse Burnout alone while dealing more damage.

Blinded Headshot Spread

1. Reboot Optics
2. Land Headshots

Reboot Optics makes the target take more damage from headshots, and defeating an enemy affected by Reboot Optics with a headshot will spread the effect to someone else. Remember to aim (through the nonexistent sight) to force your Smart Weapons to target heads and weakspots.

Burn the Boss Down

1. Cyberware Malfunction
2. Cyberware Malfunction
3. Overheat
4. Overheat

Overheat becomes a lot more effective when it’s followed up by all sorts of other attacks, including a second Overheat. This will set you up to deal considerable damage with the following attacks, especially gunshots.

Do Not Use This!

1. Cyberware Malfunction x4
2. Cyberware Malfunction x4

Cyberware Malfunction’s effect can stack on a target. At 2 stacks, their Cyberware becomes permanently disabled. At 3 stacks, they receive a DoT that’s damage scales with the number of stacks. Permanently disabling Cyberware is helpful against bosses, but nothing else survives that long to where the permanence is relevant.

You can technically apply 2 whole queues of Cyberware Malfunction back-to-back in order to get all 8 stacks on for the maximum effect, but it will cost a ton of RAM and deal a very underwhelming amount of damage, so don’t use Cyberware Malfunction like that.

Instead, you’ll rack up damage from a bunch of stacks of Cyberware Malfunction by using it as your Monowire Quickhack.

Core Attributes and Perk Points

This section will cover which attributes and perks are required to let you play like a Netrunner!

Core Attributes

Your main objective is to max out Intelligence, followed by Technical Ability and then Body. Once you’ve invested 20 points in all 3 attributes, your decision will branch depending on whether you have Phantom Liberty.

If you don’t have Phantom Liberty, the level cap is 50, so you’ll only have a few points left over. I recommend putting at least 2 points in both Reflexes and Cool so you can access the base perks in both trees and perform some small Attribute checks, but it doesn’t really matter. Those points are likely meant to be a buffer for mistakes.

If you do have Phantom Liberty, I recommend spending 12 Points to reach Reflexes 15 so you can access the Phenom tier Perks for the gun branch to buff your SMGs and, if applicable, Assault Rifles. The remaining 3 points should be spent in Cool to increase the damage dealt by your critical hits (AKA all Quickhack damage).

Intelligence

Early in the game, you’ll want to dump practically all of your Perk points into the Intelligence tree. Focus on getting all the perks that improve your RAM recovery first, except for the Monowire ones, because that thing is kind of garbage until you unlock the Relic tree. RAM recovery is the focus of the center branch, but there are a few points on the sides too.

While you’re waiting for the ability to access more RAM recovery tools, climb up the queue branch on the left. Each of the final points on the main line in that branch will increase the maximum depth of your queue by 1. Upgrade the queue as you get a feel for it, but in the beginning, you won’t be able to afford to queue up too many Quickhacks in a row, so there’s no need to rush.

Once you’ve picked up a Smart weapon you’re happy with, you should also spend a few points to upgrade the first tier of the Smart weapon branch. It’s the right branch that’s located above the perk that gives you access to vehicle hacking. Initially, your only goal is to gain access to the perk in between the two branches that gives you 2 RAM when you finish something off with a Smart weapon.

After you’ve gotten the Relic upgrades for the Monowire, you can buy the two perks to upgrade it into a RAM recovery tool and finisher, but you can hold off on upgrading the Smart weapon stuff until after you’ve gotten all you need from Technical Ability. The Smart weapon perks will probably some of the last ones you purchase if you aren’t getting Phantom Liberty.

I have a detailed breakdown and explanation of the Intelligence Attribute and Perks Tree. Check it out for more information on how each perk works and how they synergize with other items in the game.

Technical Ability

After you have the essentials in the Intelligence tree, you can start investing in the center tree in Technical Ability, which boosts your Cyberware and increases your capacity, allowing you to equip more. You want to increase your capacity because there’s a lot of Cyberware that will help, so you want to be able to equip as much of it as possible.

After you’ve gotten the core stuff from Body, or you can actually utilize the buff provided by the perk, feel free to start obtaining those little side perks. The ones in the early row will be more useful to you sooner than the ones in the middle row.

As soon as you begin to run into survivability issues or unlock Overclock, you gotta start investing in Perks and Cyberware that improve your survivability, particularly in the form of health regeneration.

To learn even more, read my in-depth guide and breakdown of the Technical Ability Attribute and its perks.

Body

Since Overclock lets you spend your HP as RAM, it’s essential to buff your HP as much as you can. The Body stat and its cyberware attunement typically increase your HP, while the center branch for Body focuses on regenerating HP in combat and improving your health item.

The third point spent on the main perk in the middle row gives you access to Adrenaline Rush, which allows your health to exceed its maximum after using a health item. The other perks surrounding it offer some sort of other buff during Adrenaline Rush. You can’t spend Adrenaline as RAM, but it will help you stay alive and eventually reduce the cooldown of your health items.

All of the stuff you take in Body is either important or useless, so I don’t differentiate between essentials and extras. By the time you’re obtaining these perks, you’ll be mostly done with the key stuff in the others anyway.

Reflexes

Given that at least 2 of your (Smart) Weapons will be SMGs, it makes sense to buff their damage output with your remaining Attribute and Perk Points, and Reflexes has a branch dedicated to buffing SMGs and assault rifles.

Most of the Perks in this branch focus on improving stats you don’t have to care about with Smart Weapons, like stamina regeneration and bullet spread, but as of 2.1, several of the stats directly boost the damage output of your guns, and those are worth taking.

Reflexes also offers a branch that enhances your mobility, greatly improving your dodge by upgrading it into a dash. It doesn’t seem like much, but since you have stamina galore, you can spam Dash to cover to buy yourself a few crucial seconds of survivability while you’re waiting for Quickhacks to finish uploading and can heal off of the kills.

In my opinion, the Dash capability is more important to invest in if you aren’t getting Phantom Liberty, and the upgrades to your guns should be the last thing you do since they are ultimately secondary to your Quickhacks.

Cyberware

The Cyberdeck is a type of Operating System that allows you to equip and use Quickhacks, so I will be discussing those on their own before I get into the rest of my Cyberware recommendations.

Cyberdecks

Upgrading the Cyberdeck expands the number of Quickhack slots, base RAM, and provides and improves effects that are unique to that line. Each Cyberdeck provides a few, mostly minor, effects that can influence your approach to some fights but don’t do enough to completely change the game.

I think there are 3 Cyberdecks that are worth your consideration, each with different strengths and weaknesses.

Netwatch Netdriver MK.1

Militech Paraline MK.4

Raven Microcyber MK.3

I want to note that I don’t recommend using the Militech Canto MK.6 with this build. I don’t personally enjoy using it, but in more practical terms, the build requirements and synergies are just too different.

Cyberware Recommendations

The amount of Cyberware you can equip is too variable to offer a one-size-fits-all solution. The Cyberware you’ll be able to equip depends on your exact street cred, level, current Perks, chosen Cyberdeck, and how many Cyberware capacity shards you’ve managed to find. As a result, I’ve divided up my Cyberware recommendations into 3 categories based on their importance to the build.

Primary Cyberware Only

Primary Cyberware is what I consider to be essential to the build. Most of it is Intelligence-attuned and affects RAM regeneration or Quickhack damage directly. It should be what you prioritize equipping first before anything else.

Icon	Cyberware Implant	Slot
	Netwatch Netdriver MK.1 OR Militech Paraline MK.4 OR Raven Microcyber MK.3	Operating System
	RAM Upgrade OR RAM Reallocator	Frontal Cortex
	EX-Disk OR Axolotl	Frontal Cortex
	Bioconductor OR COX-2 Cybersomatic Optimizer	Frontal Cortex
	RAM Recoup	Skeleton
	Feen-X	Skeleton
	Cogito Lattice	Integumentary System
	Smart Link	Hands
	Basic Kiroshi Optics OR Kiroshi “Sentry” Optics	Face
	Heal-On-Kill	Circulatory System
	Biomonitor	Circulatory System

Secondary Cyberware Included

Secondary Cyberware is what I consider to be important to the build but may be more generically useful. A lot of it is survivability stuff and is attuned to either Body or Technical Ability.

Icon	Cyberware Implant	Slot
	Monowire + Cyberware Malfunction (Phantom Liberty Required)	Arms
	Epimorphic Skeleton	Skeleton
	Cellular Adapter	Integumentary System
	Pain Editor OR Chitin	Integumentary System
	Fortified Ankles	Legs
	Blood Pump	Circulatory System

Tertiary Cyberware Included

Tertiary Cyberware is what I consider to be valuable to the build but not essential. The attunements are variable, and they’re really just nice to have if you have some spare Cyberware capacity that can’t be used on a Primary or Secondary. You could absolutely give up or change any of these if you prefer something else.

In this image, I have also switched over to including all of the Iconic Cyberware I recommend instead of what you can only get in the base game.

Icon	Cyberware Implant	Slot
	Atomic Sensors	Nervous System
	Adrenaline Converter	Nervous System
	Tyrosine Injector	Nervous System
	Ballistic Coprocessor OR Microgenerator	Hands

These options may seem arbitrary, but they are all in service of getting that 15% Cyberware cooldown reduction Perk in the Technical Ability Tree.

Thermal Monowire with Relic Skill Tree

The Monowire has 2 Perks that make it synergize with the Netrunner build, both of which are structured around recovering RAM. The one in the queue branch gives you a finisher that heals you for 15% of your max HP and recovers 5 RAM. The one in the overclock branch makes Monowire attacks recover RAM upon dealing damage.

In addition, the Thermal Monowire has a chance to set the target on fire, allowing it to detonate Contagion, and the resulting explosion doesn’t hurt you at all! This approach works even better with the Raven Microcyber MK.3 Cyberdeck since it spreads Contagion (and other Quickhacks) to more targets, and instantaneously at that.

Unfortunately, the Monowire does a lot less damage compared to your combos, and it is harder to survive if there are a lot of enemies nearby. You can still use the Monowire if you want, but I think it’s more of an RP thing you can do to pick off the stragglers after you just hacked the rest of the enemies in the base into oblivion using their own security cameras against them.

The (Thermal) Monowire becomes a bit more usable when you gain access to the Relic Skill Tree at the start of Phantom Liberty because the Relic perks let you equip a Control Quickhack that then gets applied to any target hit by a fully charged Monowire attack. You charge up a Monowire attack by holding the attack button to charge until the reticle bars fill up. Once it’s full, you hear the Relic make a noise.

In my opinion, the Cyberware Malfunction Quickhack pairs best with the Monowire, but you have 4 options:

Cyberware Malfunction may seem worse than Cripple Movement at first glance, but it only takes 1-2 swings to match the same damage boost, and it applies to other types of attacks too. The damage over time helps to compensate for the weaker hits up front, and the disabling effect is more powerful than just turning off movement. If you prefer an alternative, feel free to use that one instead.

Weapons and Clothing

This section will cover the weapons and clothing I recommend you use with this build. Please note that there are still some minor stats attached to some pieces of clothing.

Weapons

Since there is a dedicated branch for them in the Intelligence tree with a couple of powerful synergies related to Overclock and RAM recovery, Smart weapons are the name of the game for Netrunners.

My favorites are a pair of iconic SMGs, the Prototype: Shingen Mark V and Yinglong. However, there is no strong contender for the third weapon slot, at least one that matches the capabilities and overall usefulness of the other two.

Prototype: Shingen Mark V

The Prototype: Shingen Mark V fires in 3 shot bursts and has a chance to set enemies on fire, which will cause enemies affected by Contagion to explode! You can loot it from a shipping container at the Arasaka Industrial Park (the one Takemura takes you to with the parade floats) in Arroyo, Santo Domingo.

The shipping container is OUTSIDE the warehouse, away from nearly all the other shipping containers in the complex.

Be careful. There’s a mine you need to deactivate or detonate that’s blocking the way to the box with the gun.

Yinglong

The Yinglong is your more general-purpose gun, as you aren’t stuck using the burstfire mode. You can just hold the trigger down and drain the whole clip, which happens to be 50% larger than that of the Prototype: Shingen Mark V. The Yinglong deals electrical damage and has a chance to cause an EMP, so it’s very flashy and fun to use while being effective against non-human enemies.

You can obtain the crafting schematic from an NCPD Organized Crime Alert that takes place in Wellsprings, Heywood.

Third Weapon Slot

There are no options for the final weapon slot that are truly competitive with the Prototype: Shingen MK.V and Yinglong, but I have a few suggestions I think you should try. Almost all of the weapons in this table are either an Iconic SMG or Smart Weapon, ideally both, so that they benefit from at least some of the Perks we’ve invested in.

Icon	Name	Type
	Ba Xing Chong	Smart Shotgun
	Genjiroh	Smart Pistol
	Crimestopper	Smart Pistol
	Erebus	Power SMG
	Pizdets	Smart SMG
	Hercules 3AX	Hybrid
	Divided We Stand	Smart Assault Rifle
	Agaou	Throwing Axe
	Ashura	Smart Sniper Rifle

You could also just leave this slot empty if you want so that you can swap your best weapons more efficiently.

Clothing

Almost all of the stats have been removed from clothing after Update 2.0. However, some Head and Upper Body pieces can still give you some bonuses. The Netrunner vendors in Night City will sell you gear that makes you more resilient to enemy Quickhacks and upload yours faster.

Each slot has a unique effect. All Netrunner gear of that and tier slot will provide the same bonus. Higher tiers offer stronger bonuses. Other Head and Upper Body pieces can offer bonuses as well, but those are less crucial.

I want to highlight that the +X% Quickhack Upload Time Reduction on the Face is pretty substantial, so you should go out of your way to at least make sure you have that equipped, but there’s no need to feel so tied down with the others.

This concludes my guide for the Netrunner Build for Cyberpunk 2077 after Update 2.0. If you want to try something different, check out my Blade Assassin Build Guide.

For more, browse through our Cyberpunk 2077 Guides Master List of the most important and interesting guides VULKK.com has produced for the game and its expansion, split into categories!

Netrunner Build Summary

This is a summary of the build with all of the core components listed for easier reference after you have read the entire guide. If this is your first visit, I highly recommend that you read each segment of the guide to fully understand how this build works and how to use it to its best potential.