Cyberpunk 2077 DOs and DONTs Guide: Beginners Tips (2024)

A great collection of tips for beginner players. Learn the DOs and DONTs for Cyberpunk 2077’s early game and get a headstart with this guide!

This guide is up-to-date for Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.12

This guide is actually a collection of numerous spoiler-free* tips for your early hours in Cyberpunk 2077. The DOs and DONTs suggestions and ideas I will share with you below will give you an edge when you start the game and allow you to have a smooth beginning without the worry that you are doing something wrong, wasting your time or missing an opportunity!

To make this guide as thorough and useful as possible I make some references to events in-game and mention some missions or characters by name. This is to help you get a better idea of when and where in the story and in the city you should do something specific. There are NO major story spoilers below. I would consider this read safe.

Earning money in Cyberpunk 2077 is a relatively easy task. Here the currency is called Eurodollars, but everyone in the game and in the Cyberpunk universe calls them Eddies.

In the early game, it is best to stick to the main missions until you gain some experience and levels behind your back to start exploring Night City’s Districts. Not that you can’t do that from level 2, but it’s best to do a few of the main story missions because they reward you well.

The very first few missions actually do not give you rewards or not good ones. CD Projekt Red goes for realism and if you don’t get paid in the process of the mission, you don’t really earn anything for completing it. The story of the mission is tied to the reward. A completed mission in Cyberpunk 2077 does not automatically equal a reward tab.

One of the very first missions in Night City you will get is called “The Gig”. It’s a quick and simple one and rewards you very nicely. All you have to do is wait for the lockdown in Watson district to be lifted up. How you do that? Simply play the game and engage in any other activities until you receive a notification on your phone about the lockdown being over.

Go to Wakako Okada to finish “The Gig” mission as soon as possible. It doesn’t involve combat of any sort of trouble. Wakako’s location is on Jig-Jig Street.

Wakako will give you some three thousand Eddies and send you to a ripperdoc called Cassius Ryder. He will give you a free cyberware item in the form of a tattoo called “Tattoo: Tyger Claws Dermal Imprint. This is an implant for your Hand and will allow you to use Smart Guns.

Check out my How gear works in Cyberpunk 2077 guide to learn more about Cyberware and Smart Guns.

Another early mission is called Paid in Full. This one requires you to pay your friend Viktor (a ripperdoc) the Eddies you owe him from a previous mission during which he installs your very first Cyberware Upgrades after you start the game.

You owe Viktor a hefty sum of 21 000 Eddies. This amount of money is not easy to collect, but it is worth it. Once you pay him off this will unlock Viktor as a ripperdoc vendor and allow you to browse his store. Some of the implants he offers are worth it. Not that you will never have a chance to get similar ones elsewhere. There are plenty of ripperdocs all around in the city and even a few outside the city, in the Badlands.

I suggest you pick up the Kerenzikov, it goes into the Nervous System slot. This one will allow you to slow down time when you slide, dash, or dodge and these movements are key gameplay mechanics that will save your life many times, especially in tougher boss fights like the fight against Sasquatch. Later, as you level up and develop, you can consider other options if you like.

Another fantastic and incredibly useful Cyberware implant is the Reinforced Tendons. It allows you to perform double jumps.

This cyberware is costly, but it is so very worth it. Farm the money and get it as soon as possible. Several ripperdocs offer it, but Viktor is the most convenient one, provided you paid what you owed him, of course.

This one is for all of you, who purchase the game via GOG.com or GOG Galaxy – CD Projekt Red’s own gaming platform. As soon as you arrive in your apartment in Night City, you should browse the wardrobe and your stash and pick up the Digital in-game goodies you receive as a free gift.

Check out the guide on how to get your Free Gear Digital Goodies in-game for more detailed information.

When you explore the map of Night City you will discover Fast Travel points. These serve the exact same purpose as the Sign Posts from The Witcher 3. They allow you to teleport quickly from your current location to any other quick travel location.

These look like hologram maps displayed out of a mailbox of some sort and they are marked with dark blue colored icons on your map. You can only Fast Travel by interacting with these objects.

They are conveniently located in popular places that you would want to go to anyway – be it for a mission or because there are vendors or other useful and interesting things nearby.

It may seem controversial, but I would advise you NOT to use these too much in your early game. Exploring Night City will open up an incredible amount of additional content you can do and get well rewarded for it.

When you click on an objective in your Journal, on the right side of the screen you get quick links to related lore objects and text files you have discovered related to the mission.

The interesting part is that sometimes these may lead to the exact locations you need to visit. Click on an objective of the selected mission and then click on the thumbnail on to see the exact location and recommended path to it.

If you know Night City well enough, you may prefer to use your memory and check places you think are related, like the example in the image below, but for a new player, this feature is incredibly helpful.

Each time you level up, you gain Attribute Points and Perks Points. Each of the Attributes can be upgraded up to twenty times.

Body is all about raw strength to overpower your foes from melee range. Reflexes provide you with ways to maneuver better and evade attacks. Technical ability provides perks boosting your skills with explosives, tech weapons and cyberware. Intelligence is for the netrunners and Cool is for when you want to really be cool. No, really. Actually, it enhances your pistol skills and stealth capabilities.

The empty icon in the bottom middle is for the Relic Tree. It was added with the Phantom Liberty Expansion and behaves slightly differently than the rest of the Attributes and Perk Trees. We have an in-depth guide to it.

Being able to enter and visit places through “shortcuts” like locked doors and having the ability to use more Quickhacks on opponents and devices will give you a nice edge in the early game. Later on, you can always pursue your favorite build and level up any of the Attributes you prefer.

Keep in mind that Attribute Points cannot be reset. In the entire game, including Phantom Liberty, you will be able to max out up to three Attributes and have 18 points left for something else.

You can swap Perks at any time and reevaluating your build will surely be useful if you decide to play on a higher difficulty. Tougher enemies or group encounters may require different approach each time and having just the right Perk to give you the most-desired advantage, is very nice!

While on the subject of Skill Trees, I highly recommend you pick up the Lucky Day perk from the Technical Ability Perks Tree as soon as possible. And be aware that disassembling items you get through loot will give you plenty of Item Components (for crafting), which are often more valuable than the Eddies you can get from selling these items to a vendor.

Don’t rush to spend your Attribute Points early. Play the game, pile up a few, when you know which aspect of your gameplay you want to develop – melee combat, stealth, hacking, crafting, or ranged combat – then commit points to these Attributes.

Spending Attribute points is not reversible. They are “for life” and the level cap in the original game Cyberpunk 2077 is 50 (goes up to 60 if you own Phantom Liberty).

My advice is to focus on two, maybe two and a half attributes and level them up. With the release of Update 2.0, CD Projekt RED redesigned the Perks system from the ground up. They introduced new abilities and the melee playstyle is way more attractive and useful than it has ever been.

Don’t waste your Eddies early on in the game on expensive gear from vendors. Some items may look awesome, but you level up pretty fast and these items will always be available at these vendors.

Making money in Cyberpunk 2077 is not hard, but it will drive you away from the main missions or if you do progress through the main missions to make money to buy items, you risk getting distracted from the fantastic narrative this game has!

Following on the advice to not spend money early on – don’t buy any of the cars that all kinds of fixers and vendors are calling you about and messaging you on your phone. You will have a car and a bike at your disposal pretty early on.

Speaking of cars, pick up yours as soon as you get the notification that it is fully repaired at Delamain. Just an extra tip about vehicles – bikes are cool, but cars are way more reliable and easier to drive. Or at least I think so.

Note that you cannot add stolen or “borrowed” vehicles to your collection. Any car or bike you assault the driver to take it, you will not be able to call/spawn later.

There are a number of cars and bikes you can get early on without paying Eurodollars for them. We have a great guide to all FREE Vehicles in Cyberpunk 2077!

At one point, early on in the story, you will be left without a personal car. While waiting for your car to be repaired, check your phone. Call Mama Welles. Depending on your choices at the end of “The Heist”, she may not pick up but instead leave you a few messages. In either case, at the end of this, you will get Jackie’s Bike. This will be of great help while waiting for your car to be fixed.

One of the best ways to earn money early on is to loot stuff. And stuff is literally all around you. Seriously, take a moment, scan the area around you and all of the icons for the different kinds of loot will pop up. Take another moment and pick up everything around as you go through missions and explore the city.

Most of the items you collect are trash, but trash means either Disassembling for Item Components or easy Eddies when sold to vendors. You won’t get rich quickly by selling Junk and gear you do not need, but it is a nice and easy method to keep fresh income constantly and get loads of Crafting Components.

Not scanning things left and right often may result in you missing out on something of a much higher quality than what you currently have equipped.

Many Iconic guns are also hidden in easy-to-miss, but not very secret locations. Often in containers and boxes around your main mission routes. These items have a unique perk that is custom crafted specifically for them and no other item in the game has it.

Most of the loot you get will be consumables. Remember Decoctions in The Witcher 3? There are consumable items that play a very similar role in Cyberpunk 2077.

Consumables may be a health boost or a stats boost. They vary in quality and duration as well and do not sell for very much generally, so it’s better to keep at least a few of them on you and use them before a tougher battle or just for fun.

Take a closer look at the ones with 1800 seconds duration. That’s 30 minutes of gameplay with a boost! The 450 seconds duration items are also cool and they can be of use, especially if you play on higher difficulties.

Consumables are awesome but don’t spend your hard-earned Eddies in the early game for Consumables and certainly not for ammo. If you ever find yourself low on ammo it could be one of two reasons: You are extremely bad at shooting (practice, you will get better soon!) or you are not picking up loot around you.

Consumables and Ammo boxes are all over the city. You cannot make more than five steps without stumbling on one of these two types of items.

Speaking of difficulties, on your very first playthrough you may want to dial back on the difficulty level a little bit. There are four available difficulties ranging from Easy, through Normal and Hard to Very Hard.

You can change the difficulty at any moment. You choose one at the start of the game, but you are not stuck with it, so play around, see which one is best for you.

If you are an experienced First-Person shooter and Role-playing Games veteran, the Easy and Normal might seem too simple and lacking the desired challenge for you. Keep in mind though, that the shooting gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077 can be somewhat different than the shooting in a regular First-Person game. Especially with certain types of weapons.

Unless you are pressed for time and rushing through the game just to see the ending (why would you do that in this game???) I strongly suggest you take your time and speak to the NPCs at length. This includes using up the blue chat lines during the dialogues.

In some cases this will help you get a better understanding of that character’s motives, in others it may actually unlock a new possible dialogue option later on. More often than not these are just fluff and serve to enrich and fill any gaps in your knowledge and understanding about the characters you interact with and the world you play (or should I say live?) in.

If you have a unique option that is marked with the symbol of your Lifepath, I suggest you choose it. If it’s a blue line, that is just a bonus. If it’s a Yellow line, it is an actual decision you are making.

If you plan to replay the game, choosing Lifepath-specific dialogue options will diversify your game experience even further and unlock possibilities you may never see with the other paths.

To draw the maximum out of your adventures throughout Night City, Street Cred will be incredibly important. Leveling your Street Cred is more important than your actual character level and it is also easier and faster.

Street Cred unlocks new items from vendors and traders, it also unlocks new dialogue choices, whole new NPCs to talk to, and new missions.

To learn how to level your Street Cred, check out our extensive guide. It will explain this system in more detail and give you tips on what to do, when, how and why, to become the most famous merc in Night City.

This is it for now! I keep expanding this guide with more tips and suggestions as I play through the game multiple times. If you want to share your own tips and ideas to improve the gameplay experience of other players, please leave a comment below!

I hope you enjoyed my collection of DOs and DONTs for beginner players in Cyberpunk 2077! Check out the other Cyberpunk 2077 guides here on VULKK.com!