Cyberpunk 2077 director Gabe Amatangelo has revealed how to become what he believes is one of the most fun architypes in Phantom Liberty: “a warlock netrunner.”
Speaking to PC Gamer, Amatangelo said the combination of the monowire cyberware and quickhacking multiple enemies can essentially inflict a never-ending cycle of chaos if done well enough.
“There [are so many fun builds], but I’d say the netrunner, spreading hacks with the monowire from the Relic Tree,” Amatangelo said when asked which build he recommended players try. “That one’s so much fun, especially if you are able to work in the combos and the rhythm for refunding your memory and your cooldowns. When you do it in concert with the monowire, you get the bonuses from the spreads.”
Players can quickhack enemies in Cyberpunk 2077 to cause all sorts of problems, from short circuits to malware infections and more, but doing so costs the player RAM or memory that needs to replenish. Amatangelo’s warlock netrunner essentially overcomes that problem, however, by using a combination of skills to replenish that memory very quickly.
“Basically, the bonuses you get from combos happening, you set a debuff hack on one person, you spread it to a few, and then you do a follow-up hack on all of them — you get the bonuses and memory refunds from all of them,” he continued.
“You can really get into this rhythm of sustaining your hacks at a cool pace. You could do it with a stealth hacking build, which is fun in its own right of course, but this is more of a bob-and-weave kind of suppress everyone [build]. It’s like a warlock, if you will, a warlock netrunner.”
The perks required include two in Phantom Liberty’s new Relic Tree (Jailbreak and Data Tunneling), alongside everything in the leftmost branch of the Intelligence Tree. A full breakdown of the best skills and builds can be found in IGN’s Cyberpunk 2077 Guide.
Phantom Liberty arrived September 26, with the game-changing Update 2.0 laying its foundation a few days earlier. It completely revamped Cyberpunk 2077 with features such as a new perk system and improved AI and also brought closure to an Elon Musk fan theory, a reference to the late racing legend Ken Block, and bizarre additions to the game’s biggest mystery.
All this caused a spike in Cyberpunk 2077’s popularity on Steam, a number that only grew as players got their hands on Phantom Liberty.
In our 9/10 review of the expansion, IGN said: “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty completes an immense turnaround for CD Projekt Red’s future RPG kickstarted with the anime spin-off, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and its latest 2.0 Update.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
