4780

54 hours in, and there are still areas I barely visited, like Glen. I found the park that is there just now. The big, working-class city at the shadow of megabuildings, tall and impressive corpo skyscrapers and big suspended highways crossing the sky… it’s really cyberpunk. It’s like one of those cool sky background in Deus EX HR but this time I can play there.

I have to say that the difficulty balance is better than I said at first. I found new combat areas with harder enemies that made me sweat. There are a few problems, some weapons that can be obtained too early, the perk trees need a rebalance, but as long as I have the willpower to not cheese things too much with hacking, then it’s fine.

I also spent my moneys buying a legendary mark 5 cyberdeck and 2 other epic implants, so now I consider the economy fine :P

4781

Some of the side missions are pretty extensive, and as is the case in many RPGs, far more interesting than much of the main quest. Some of them start out simple, then spawn other questlines.

4782

You can discover the girl from 2013’s teaser trailer too.

4783

I think I failed at least one side quest by waiting too long to take the next step.

And maybe I just need to spend some more time poking around the city, but I haven’t stumbled across very much yet just exploring.

4784

So I killed myself by walking between two rows of concrete barriers in the middle of a road. There were bags of garbage all over. I must have stepped on something bad. I was vibrating up and down and then dead. Trash in Night City is toxic.

4785

This is what I was hoping for more than anything out of Cyberpunk. The best thing about Witcher 3? It’s consistently interesting. I have no idea how to define that, but it seems true. The writing quality of each of the subplots was compelling and everything tied together well to create actual character investment in the events unfolding.

I’m pretty sure Cyberpunk has this, as well as the beauty of the art and design. Let’s hope they get the technology solved. That’s CDPR’s Achilles’ Heel (OK, and the other one is company management turmoil, so they just have 2 regular heels full of poisoned arrows right now).

4786

I think there is no chance to fix the gameplay issues, particularly those related to the open world mechanics. They tried to make Witcher 3 in a GTA world and it simply did not work as some of the mechanics feel like place holders(traffic, cops, ragdoll physics etc), which shows they scrapped a lot of what they originally intended to do. I think they just need to focus on what they do best, ie. complex subplots in a basic or instanced open world.

4787

It really doesn’t. I’m now progressing with the main story and the first missions that you do with Jackie, ending with a heist job, are still the highlight of the game. By far. Everything else I’ve seen so far has been C tier at best.

4788

In hindsight and upon reexamination, I notice all the good footage in the trailers have been scripted sequences from the prologue and critical path missions.

4789

Well, yes. In the trailers and movies they released they talked about the mission where you go in with Jackie to pick up a robot from Royce and the various ways you can approach it. And all that stuff is in the game. It’s just that it’s the only mission with that sort of freedom that I’ve seen so far. I haven’t beaten the game yet, so maybe there’s more to come.

4790

So far the early game has been massively overloaded on content compared to the middle game which is routine with much less designer effort per quest. This is normal for games, of course they focus on what reviewers will see first, but it’s exaggerated here.

4791

The first act of the story is quite good by my estimation. But it’s hard to argue that the rest of it is of the same quality level.

I think a part of it is that early in the game you feel like you are part of a team. You’ve got Jackie with you, you’ve got your tech friend in your ear, and the three of you are talking back and forth.

For 90+% of the game you are completely alone with no companion, you cannot see your character, and V is a noticeably more silent protagonist than Geralt, who spoke to himself constantly about basically everything. Edit: Even in side quests. Especially in side quests, even.

4792

Don’t keep too many items in your inventory (apologies if already covered. I tend to skim a bit too avoid spoilers):

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-12-20-gog-advises-cyberpunk-2077-players-to-keep-a-lower-amount-of-items-to-avoid-corrupting-save-files

4793

I believe that, upthread, someone mentioned that it only happens if you have a ridiculous amount of crafting materials.

4794
4795

I have several hundreds (near a thousand?) and still have not problems.

4796

Can someone please tell me how crafting is supposed to work? @KevinC or anyone?

I’m picking up EVEYRTHING, dismantling half the stuff I get and selling the other half, and it would bankrupt me to buy all the materials I’d need for crafting and upgrading my guns and armor. Is there any way of doing crafting without massively investing into the crafting tree? I feel like I’m missing something easy or important with making crafting justifiable.

Along those lines… when you “upgrade” is it supposed to bring a lame gun or armor up to your level? Doesn’t seem like it so far.

4797

Like practically everything in Cyberpunk once you get past the veneer, crafting is completely broken. The amount of things you’d need to dismantle and craft to get all the way to L20 are stratospheric. We’re talking crafting well in excess of 1000 rare weapons to get there. However, if you are prepared to suffer the path of tedium and RSI, I do have a trick to share.

That trick is the maxdoc v2. While I cannot tell you how to get the recipe (be it just given to you for getting the ‘rare crafting’ perk or found out in the world), I can tell you that you crafting and dismantling thousands of these will see you drowning in both materials and eddies.

Y’see, importantly here, this is a rare (blue) item that can be dismantled yet costs no blue materials to craft. Essentially you pump in 6 white/3 green crafting materials per maxdoc yet get back 4 white/3 green/X blue crafting materials PLUS a bunch of blue upgrade materials.

With the crafting perk that gives you a chance of a free craft you will ultimately convert something like 1.2 white materials into a shitton of other stuff. Use the blue crafting materials you gain to craft rare weapons to level up a bit quicker and just dismantle them again. There is also a perk that allows you to upgrade e.g. 6 blues into 1 purple crafting material.

It will literally take hours to grind your way through this mess since you can only craft one thing at a time so I’d set up a macro to left click and release 1 second later since apparently none of the designers played Diablo 3 back when we all had to do the same for gemstones.

You’ll be drowning in blue upgrade materials before long. Since you can’t upgrade these to purple or really make much use of them at all you can just sell them. You’ll end up with so many of these you’ll have to visit multiple shops as they only have so much cash to hand to buy your junk.

Regarding upgrading: all weapons have a level like your character, though this isn’t shown anywhere on the UI I don’t think. Upgrading bumps it by one level, up to the same level as your character but not beyond. You will need to upgrade a single weapon multiple times. The cost is prohibitive and generally not worth it. Unless you MaxDocTM.

4798

Just to recap, unless I want to blow out my carpal tunnel, or invest every perk into the crafting tree and perk systems related to it… don’t bother?

Does the same hold true to Cyber crafting thingies?

If one doesn’t bother with crafting and upgrading… how does one keep their guns/armor current? just keep saving up to buy them? Or just inherit whatever drops?

4799

I don’t think you need to invest that much into the tree. You just need rare/epic/legendary crafting really. The ‘free craft/upgrade’ perks are nice, might make levelling quicker, but unessential. Don’t forget with the absurd amount of cash you’ll net you can pump all your points into it then just buy the perk reset from a ripperdoc.

Quickhacks are handled exclusively by the intelligence trees. I didn’t go that route so I can’t tell you much more. Since they’re not levelled I think you’ll just end up upgrading everything there one time and be done with 'em though (ie once you get them to legendary the perks are useless).

But seriously, anyone going this path - though it further ruins a ruined game - learn how to set up a macro. If you’ve got a logitech mouse you can do it right in their software.