Cyberpunk 2077 Crafting Guide

Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot of mechanics to it, but one that seems to be either ignored or used in passing is the crafting mechanics. Crafting is pretty much a staple in most RPG’s now a days, allowing players to create their own gear and improve upon it instead of relying on what they find in the world. Crafting in Cyberpunk 2077 is no different, offering tons of options for weapons, armor, consumables and even quickhack chips. 

While folks may have dabbled in crafting, this guide will really look into it, from where you can get the blueprints to the perks you need to be a successful crafter in your own right. This is your Cyberpunk 2077 Crafting Guide. 

Cyberpunk 2077 Crafting Basics

Crafting is pretty straightforward, you go to the crafting tab when you pause the game, and you simply select the recipe that you wish to craft from. If you have the right upgrade components, you can then craft the item instantly.   

Upgrade components come in five different flavors:

• White - Commonp
• Green - Uncommon
• Blue - Rare
• Purple - Epic
• Orange - Legendary

The upgrades also come in two component types; regular components, which have one to two different components and quickhack components. The regular components are for your general gear - weapons, armor, health and grenades - while the quickhack components are exclusively for cyberdeck slots for quickhacking.  

White and green components are the most common early on, but it is possible to gain multiple components for each type through various sources. The most common places to get components would be through standard exploration of Night City, either in lootable containers just out in the open. Fighting certain enemies also grants you a chance for different tier components. Hacking terminals for cash also yields quickhack components most of the time, and lastly, weapon and junk shops sell components in large stacks, so if you have the eddies to spare you can simply buy them off vendors.

The easiest way to gain components,  however, is to disassemble weapons and armor picked up throughout Night City. You can actually disassemble pretty much anything, from consumables to junk items as well, each of them yielding a small amount of components to add to your reserves. Disassembling is also affected by perks found in the crafting tree, but we will talk about that later.

Cyberpunk 2077 Crafting Blueprints

So the next step is to find some blueprints for crafting. For most items, it is the vendors across the city that sell these recipes to you. The blueprints are specific to the vendor as well, so a clothing store will have clothing/armor blueprints, while a weapons vendor will have weapon blueprints, and so on. Ripperdocs also have blueprints to sell too, offering different mods for Cyberware, arm weapons (like mantis blades or gorilla arms) and more. 

Vendors are not the only way to get recipes, however. Some rarer blueprints are often given out as quest rewards, or simply randomly dropped by hard enemies. Killing the leaders in the “Suspected Organized Crime” missions from the NCPD for example yield rare to legendary crafting rewards when completed, and a few of these blueprints are guaranteed. Leveling up your crafting skill also gives you access to the next tier of weapons, armor, and grenade recipes. The rewards for this are as follows:

• Level 6 in Crafting Skill - Uncommon Tier Blueprints
• Level 9 in Crafting Skill - Rare Tier Blueprints
• Level 13 in Crafting Skill - Epic Tier Blueprints
• Level 18 in Crafting Skill - Legendary Tier Blueprints

The only other form of blueprints to consider are quickhacks, which are directly tied to perk points. Speaking of...

Important Cyberpunk 2077 Crafting Perks

Crafting is made super easy if you have the correct perk loadout for it, offering a ton of benefits to not only gaining components or access to higher tier gear, but also in increasing the power of crafted weapons and armor. 

Two perk trees need to be considered depending on what you plan on crafting; the Crafting Tree, and the Quickhacking Tree.

Quickhacking is incredibly straightforward, as it is home to four different perks that allow you to craft quickhack blueprints of higher quality. Quickhacking is governed by your intelligence stat, so players looking to do a lot of quickhacks should consider picking up the following perks for those blueprints:

• Hackers Manual - Required attribute score: 5 - unlocks crafting recipes for uncommon quickhacks 
• School of Hard Hacks - Required attribute score: 12 - unlocks crafting recipes for rare quickhacks
• Hacker Overlord - Required attribute score: 16 - unlocks crafting recipes for epic quickhacks. 
• Bartmoss’ Legacy - Required attribute score: 20 - unlocks crafting recipes for legendary quickhacks. 

Quickhack crafting is powerful, but be ready to commit attribute points to intelligence to get them. If that is not part of your general build, then simply purchasing or finding the quickhacks in Night City will do the job instead.

The Crafting tree is a whole other story, offering a ton of rewards if you really play with crafting. The crafting tree is found in the Technical Ability attribute, so the higher your Tech Ability, the more perk points you can sink into crafting. The perks in the tree make it easier to gain components, unlock new tiers of blueprints, and even make your weapons stronger.

To even begin crafting items, you need to gain a few perks to allow them to be made:

• True Craftsman - Required attribute score: 5 - allows you to craft rare items
• Grease Monkey - Required attribute score: 12 - allows you to craft epic items
• Edgerunner Artisan - Required attribute score: 18 - allows you to craft legendary items

These perks are required if you plan to do a lot of crafting in the game. 

Some of the best perks that you should get as well would be the Mechanic Perk, the Tune-Up Perk, and the Cost Optimization Perk. The Mechanic Perk is available at level one, and simply gives you more components when you disassemble an item. Tune-Up is available with an attribute score of 16, but allows you to upgrade your components to rarer qualities, so uncommons to rares, and rares to epic components. Finally, the Cost Optimization Perk, which is available with an attribute score of 14, reduces the cost of crafting items by 15%/30% total. This is incredibly useful as crafting items, especially rare to legendary ones, becomes very expensive resource wise.

Outside of those perks, there are a ton of perks that are worth getting in the tree to help fill out your blueprints or give you extra bonuses to crafting and even upgrading your equipment. The last I should mention would be the Field Technician perk, which is available with an attribute score of 11. This slightly increases the damage of your crafted weapons by 2.5%/5%, making crafted weapons slightly stronger than those found in the streets.

Cyberpunk 2077 Upgrading Weapons & Items

Once you crafted an item, all that is left to do is to simply upgrade it from time to time. Like crafting, you need to have the right amount of components and a required level to upgrade your arsenal. Once you meet those requirements, simply go to the upgrade tab on the crafting screen and use your resources until you can’t any further.

 Upgrading equipment is an important part of Cyberpunk 2077, and is also a quick way to level up your crafting skill without much effort, giving you passive bonuses, new crafting blueprints,  and extra perk points in the process. Even if you don’t plan on crafting at all, I would recommend you at least upgrade your weapons from time to time, especially if you plan on playing Cyberpunk 2077 on very hard mode.

And that is pretty much the ins and outs of crafting in Cyberpunk 2077. Hopefully now, with some fresh gear and threads, V will be able to take on what awaits them across Night City with ease. 

So until next time, keep making better gear and stay safe, choombas.

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