Cyberpunk 2077 Stealth Build: Knives and Mantis Blades Guide

A complete Cyberpunk 2077 Stealth Build, showing you how to make a silent mercenary that is most effective at close to mid-range. Your main tools are throwing knives and the Mantis Blades.

Introduction to the Stealth Build

Your overall approach is to be stealthy at the start of each encounter, picking off enemies with your silent mid-range weapons, including a couple of throwing knives, Mantis Blades, and a silenced pistol for good measure.

Once the survivors begin to notice all of the bodies piling up around them, you’ll take off your veil of Optical Camo, engage Sandevistan, and gouge out the remaining enemies with your Mantis Blades.

From a skill tree perspective, you’ll be getting many of the perks in Cool and invest in specific branches in Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Body. Your objective with these perks is to improve your proficiency with throwable weapons, stealth, precise headshots, blades, Cyberware, and survivability.

Despite the build being less prepackaged by the devs since it pulls from so many different trees, your capabilities are diverse enough that you can respond with extreme prejudice to anything those Arasaka gonks send your way.

You can defeat practically every enemy in 1-2 hits with this build and hold your own against the hordes of Barghest outside the Black Sapphire and Stadium in Dogtown. However, not every piece of the build performs equally well against every enemy, and you can get yourself killed if you don’t react quickly and respond decisively to the most dangerous enemies.

Weapons

This section will cover the weapons I recommend using for this build and where to find them. Aside from the Arms Cyberware, I recommend Iconic versions of 2 knives, a silenced power pistol, and a silenced power sniper rifle if you only want 1 knife. Since they often require you to complete specific missions, you can just use a generic version of the weapon until you progress far enough in the game to get the Iconic.

Knives

Knives are melee weapons that feature fast attack speed and very short range, though you’re not meant to swing them. The primary reason to use a knife instead of something like a katana or chainsword is because they are throwable, and this build is all about throwing knives.

You’ll be buffing knives and other throwables with perks from the right branch of the Cool tree. These perks enable your knives to apply multiple debilitating and sometimes damaging effects, enable powerful finishers, reduce the return time after being thrown, and deal more damage in specific situations.

With all these perks, knives are consistently strong enough to take out enemies in a single throw, but they have a return time unless you defeat an enemy with a throwable weapon in a somewhat special way. You can walk over to a knife, which will cause you to pick it up immediately, but that’s rarely worthwhile.

I recommend equipping 2 knives with this build, though you can get away with 1 if you want to assassinate targets from far away.

Iconic Recommendation: Headhunter

You can purchase it from the Melee Weapon Vendor at West Wind Estates in Pacifica once you have enough Street Cred.

Iconic Recommendation: Stinger

You are given the Stinger by Mitch at the end of the I’ll Fly Away side quest out in the Badlands, which unlocks after completing the Riders of the Storm main quest as part of Panam and the Aldecaldo’s story arc.

Silenced Pistol

For your third slot, I recommend equipping a silenced pistol. When fully buffed, they can deal significantly more damage than your knife throws, but that damage is almost always beyond excessive, and it’s considerably weaker outside of those ideal situations.

Knife throws are far more consistent at actually defeating the target with a single hit (or will trigger a fast finisher), don’t cost any bullets, or have a proper reload time.

More broadly, you don’t need more than 2 knives, and you don’t need a sword because you have the Mantis Blades. A silenced gun helps cover for their weaknessess.

The entire left branch of the Cool tree is dedicated to buffing pistols (along with other gun types). It buffs these weapons by making headshots more powerful and easier to land when your stamina is high. Thanks to the Killer Instinct perk, you’ll also deal more damage with silenced guns (and throwable knives) if you aren’t actively engaged in combat.

If you’re already in combat, your stamina is low, or you can’t reasonably guarantee a headshot, you’re gonna need to shoot the enemy 3-4 times before it keels over and would have been better off throwing knives.

I only recommend using the silenced pistol when it’s at its strongest or when your knives are unavailable.

Iconic Recommendation: Her Majesty

Knife Alternative: Silenced Sniper Rifle

If you don’t find yourself needing a second knife, you might want to consider using a silenced sniper rifle instead to expand your capabilities.

A second knife gives you another chance if you miss with your first throw and makes weapon swapping a bit less cumbersome.

A silenced power sniper rifle enables you to quietly take out enemies that are much farther away than you could hope to (reliably) hit with your knife or pistol without those around them freaking out.

I personally prefer using a second knife because I think knife throwing is the most fun part of this build, and you can still deal full damage with the other weapons if you can manage to hit an enemy that’s super far away, so the sniper rifle really only makes things easier.

While we have enough perk points to buff the damage dealt by both the pistol and the sniper rifle (same perks), we don’t have enough points to get the reductions to reload time as well.

The increased reload time and smaller clip make the sniper rifle more painful to use. Reloading the sniper rifle so frequently and having to pull the bolt after every single shot while time is slowed by Sandevistan is also just a tad agonizing.

If the slowness and clunkiness don’t bother you or you’re less enamored with knife slinging, actually using the sniper rifle and having the ability to pick off every single enemy with a single shot, completely regardless of range, is ridiculously satisfying. If you can see an enemy, they die. Period.

If you use a sniper rifle, I recommend equipping your weapons in a specific order, starting with the longest range in the top slot and the shortest range in the bottom slot so that you can cycle through them naturally as your enemies get closer and closer to you.

Iconic Recommendation: Overwatch

What About Axes?

There is a second type of throwable weapon, the axe. I don’t personally recommend one for this build because you’re basically only experiencing the downsides that are meant to counterbalance the benefits they offer.

Axes deal more damage than knives, but they cost more stamina, have shorter range, and can have longer recovery times. With this build, knives already deal enough damage on their own to one-shot almost everything, and you have dedicated finishers for anything that has the audacity to live with a knife sticking out of their skull.

Axes are better suited for builds that have weapon throwing as a secondary component. However, if you really want to use one, it doesn’t make that big of a difference.

Core Attributes and Perk Points

This section will cover the attributes and perk points allocations required to make the this build function.

Attributes

This build requires you to invest heavily in multiple attributes to access the top perks in specific branches, though you won’t be investing any points into Intelligence, and you won’t have close to all of the perks in any given tree.

You are pretty starved for points, so I think this build is better suited for players that have Phantom Liberty, but you can still make it work by just cutting off one of the branches.

I recommend giving up the investment in Body. You won’t be able to get all the health regeneration upgrades, so you’ll have to be a bit more stealthy, but you should be able to manage just fine. I suggest being more careful about using the Mantis Blades without Sandevistan though.

Cool

Cool has a ton of essentials since its perks focus on buffing your main combat capabilities including knife throwing (right branch), silenced weapons (left branch), and stealth (middle branch).

The perks in the right branch make your thrown knives gain a lot of effects including:

• Apply poison damage that can detonate if they get hit by another melee attack
• Blind and cripple the enemy so they can’t see or sprint
• Increase the critical and headshot damage dealt
• Increase the damage dealt while out of combat (this one also applies to silenced weapons)

You’ll also get access to a finisher that will heal you for a decent chunk of health if your knife doesn’t kill the target outright. I do not recommend taking the legendary perk that combines stealth sprinting and knife throwing while parkouring to make those throws automatically crit. The effect is strong, but Kerenzikov doesn’t activate while throwing a knife, so benefitting from the effect is hard to pull off and not really worth the effort.

The perks in the middle branch enhance your stealth capabilities and make your visibility scale with your mitigation chance, giving you an incentive to increase your mitigation chance (and subsequently mitigation strength) because it now improves your stealth in addition to survivability.

The perks in the left branch enhance your capabilities with pistols and revolvers as well as sniper and precision rifles. Since knife throwing is the core of the branch, I only recommend taking the perks that increase your damage dealt and make it easier to aim. Guns don’t make up enough of the damage in this build to justify taking all the perks that improve reload speed.

The perks that are less necessary but still valuable just enhance your silenced pistol such that you can chain together multiple hits while in Focus mode.

Reflexes

Within Reflexes, your main focus is getting the Perks that upgrade blades so that your Mantis Blade can be useful in combat, but doing so requires that you unlock the ability to Dash

The Blade branch on the right of the Reflexes tree enables you to deflect incoming projectiles while blocking, gives access to a powerful finisher that you can use very reliably, and the ability to leap at your enemies. That last perk is super strong and seems to synergize with the Relic perk for the Mantis Blades.

The remaining perks should be saved for the late game because they’re a bit niche. A couple of them upgrade your Dash, which you technically don’t need, but they’re really nice to have. I draw the line at adding the Air Dash because we aren’t taking anything that buffs jumping or is usable in the air.

Others allow you to aim the projectiles you deflect while blocking with your Mantis Blades such that they travel in the direction you’re aiming as if you fired the shot yourself.

Technical Ability

Within Technical Ability, you’ll be focusing on getting perks related to expanding your Cyberware capacity as well as enhancing your Cyberware and the power of your healing item.

In the beginning, I recommend focusing on getting perks in the middle branch that expand your Cyberware capacity or directly enhance the Cyberware you have. If you want to do vehicle combat, the one for Technical Ability is probably your best bet since your weapons are so useless.

Hold off on getting the perks in the left branch for as long as you can. All of them focus on improving the effectiveness of your health item, but as soon as you start getting killed more often, it’s time to start investing in those perks. Once you have all your Cyberware, you can also start getting the perks that depend on the amount of Cyberware you have.

If you want to go even deeper, I have a detailed breakdown and explanation of the Technical Ability Attribute and Perk Trees. Find out how to take the most out of it and what synergies the perks have with other items in the game.

Body

The perks you want to take with Body enhance your health regeneration, but they differ depending on whether or not you are able to reach level 60. If you don’t have Phantom Liberty, you are capped at level 50, so you won’t have enough attribute points to be able to procure Adrenaline Rush.

If that’s the case, I recommend getting all of the health regeneration perks on the bottom row to enhance your survivability as much as you can, though these are less impactful with the build, in my opinion, so I don’t think they’re as important if you can get Adrenaline Rush.

If you have Phantom Liberty, you’ll have enough attribute points to afford Adrenaline Rush and its connected perks. It would be nice if we could get the top-level perk too, but we don’t have enough attribute points for that and all the other ones we need. If you have some spare perk points, feel free to take the remaining ones you have access to in the middle branch.

Relic

This build can utilize the Relic Skill tree to great effect because it uses an Arms Cyberware, Optical Camo, and has more than enough precision to hit Vulnerabilities completely at your discretion.

I recommend getting the perks for Arms Cyberware first, then Optical Camo, and Vulnerability last. Be careful about actually shooting Vulnerabilities, like you can do it whenever they appear, but they explode and will kill innocent NPCs if there are any nearby. Since you attack from stealth, the innocents are likely to still be standing nearby when you detonate one.

You have to find Militech Data Terminals in Dogtown to fully unlock and upgrade the Relic Skill Tree and we have all of their locations available in that guide.

Cyberware

In this section, I’ll be covering the Cyberware I recommend you use with this build.

General 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, 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. It should be what you prioritize equipping first before anything else. For this build, the essentials increase your damage output in ways that are unique to this build and provide all of your active ability Cyberware. Most of it is attuned to either Cool or Reflexes.

Icon	Cyberware Implant	Category
	Mechatronic Core	Frontal Cortex
	Toxic Mantis Blades	Arms
	Dense Marrow	Skeleton
	Stabber	Nervous System
	Optical Camo	Integumentary System
	Adrenaline Booster	Circulatory System
	Handle Wrap	Hands
	Kiroshi “Cockatrice” Optics OR Basic Kiroshi Optics	Face
	Militech “Apogee” Sandevistan OR Dynalar Sandevistan	Operating System

Secondary Cyberware Included

Secondary Cyberware is what I consider to be important to the build but not to the same degree as the Primary Cyberware. Most of it focuses on enhancing survivability or stealth, and thanks to the Blind Spot perk in the center branch of the Cool, the ones that increase Mitigation provide both.

Icon	Cyberware Implant	Category
	Axolotl OR Newton Module	Frontal Cortex
	Kinetic Frame	Skeleton
	Spring Joints	Skeleton
	Neofiber	Nervous System
	Countershell	Integumentary System
	Lynx Paws	Legs
	Heal-on-Kill	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.

Icon	Cyberware Implant	Category
	Self-Ice	Frontal Cortex
	Tyrosine Injector	Nervous System
	Subdermal Armor	Integumentary System
	Blood Pump	Circulatory System
	Shock Absorber	Hands

Active Ability Cyberware

This is Cyberware that you have to activate in order for it to provide any benefit in combat, so I’m going to explain how to use it in greater detail. With this build, there are 3 pieces of Cyberware that offer a distinct active effect, including the Sandevistan, Mantis Blades, and Optical Camo.

Sandevistan

The Sandevistan is one of the 3 types of Operating System implants. It gives gives you the active ability to temporarily and effectively slow time by significantly speeding up your movements and reaction speed, essentially turning you into the Flash for a moment. It is the focal piece of cyberware that David Martinez used in Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

Slowing time is beneficial whenever there are a lot of enemies that are actively attacking you, especially if they’re moving around a lot, so it’s best paired with Mantis Blades, but it’s extremely helpful regardless of the weapon you’re wielding. If you have Phantom Liberty, you’ll be able to have this active for the vast majority of combat once you get Axolotl to lower its cooldown.

Unlike your other abilities and items, you can turn it on or off at will, and the cooldown bar functions as your remaining duration if you were to activate it right then.

Mantis Blades

The Mantis Blades are your actual melee weapon. If you ever want to use a melee attack, you’ll be swinging your arms around, not your piddly little knives. They are considered Blades for the purpose of the perks in the Reflexes tree, unlike your knives.

You should use the Mantis Blades, ideally alongside Sandevistan, once you get seen or if there are a lot of enemies nearby such that it is impractical to throw a knife or shoot every single enemy one at a time.

Optical Camo

Optical Camo makes you mostly invisible, and the invisibility level increases as you upgrade it. Unfortunately, its cooldown is pretty long, and it can’t be turned off early, so you can really only use it once per engagement in the early game, though you are able to use it a lot more frequently as you approach max level.

You can make it behave a little more like Sandevistan if you take a perk called Vanishing Act in the middle branch of the Cool tree so that it turns on while crouch sprinting, but it doesn’t let you turn it on and off at will. Even with the perk to reduce its stamina cost in combat, crouch sprinting is ridiculously expensive.