Take Jackie to his mom and don't rush in Embers: 10 tips for Cyberpunk 2077 beginners
The second season of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime has sent another wave of newcomers into Cyberpunk 2077. Night City veterans welcomed them in their own way and piled on advice that sounds like gibberish and only makes sense dozens of hours into the game.
CD Projekt RED has seen this effect before. In 2022, after the first season of the anime, the daily player count climbed back above one million.
The most useful tips look like this:
Send Jackie's body to his family. After the failed heist, the game offers to take the body of V's friend to Viktor Vektor or Mama Welles. Many pick the ripperdoc: some recall the undertaker scene from The Godfather, others fear leading Arasaka to the family. Only the family option unlocks the funeral quest "Heroes," and skipping it hurts later.
Skye is the girl, and Angel is the boy. These are the dolls from the Clouds club. Players mixed them up constantly, so CD Projekt RED eventually added their images to the dialogue.
Don't forget the iguana egg and the sword on the roof. At the Konpeki Plaza hotel, it's easy to miss both a pet for the apartment and the Satori katana.
Embers can wait. Meeting Hanako Arasaka at the restaurant is a point of no return. The game warns about it at the doors, but all side stories should be wrapped up first.
Do not trust the Voodoo people. No comment.
Mind the characters' orientation. Panam and River prefer women only, while Kerry is interested exclusively in men. The wrong choice of V's gender or voice will close off the romance you want.
Remember the recipe. Vodka, lime juice, ginger beer, and a "splash of love." When that order comes up at Afterlife, it will be clear why it matters.
One more tip covers a line that throws off almost every newcomer. Early on, Vik tells V there are only a couple of weeks left, and many players start rushing through the story and forget about side quests. There is no actual timer, and the ripperdoc's prognosis is best read as a doctor's educated guess about a case nobody had dealt with before.
The anime offers a perfectly logical explanation. In Edgerunners 2, test subjects with implants died at different rates: some within hours, others held out for up to two days. The lore treats this as the general rule, since some people go mad after just a couple of implants, while Adam Smasher, roughly 90% cybernetics, keeps a clear mind.
Another hint is short: "The guy in your head isn't a reliable narrator." Johnny Silverhand exists in the game as an engram, a digital imprint of consciousness created by Arasaka's Secure Your Soul project. One player admitted that after the Devil ending, he finally realized the rockerboy in V's head works roughly like an LLM. The gaps in his memory over five decades were filled in by either the corporation or his own mind.
Veterans kept Phantom Liberty free of spoilers. Siding with Songbird means a firefight with spaceport security and a shuttle hijacking, while choosing Solomon Reed turns the game into a horror experience. One player put it this way:
The DLC can either be Call of Duty level action or Alien Isolation level horror. All based on your choices.
A newcomer came to Night City for the anime, and will leave wondering if they did the right thing with Jackie's body.
