Cyberpunk 2077 Attributes | How to pick your starting Attributes
Assign yourself some skills
Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG at heart - it’s even based on a tabletop adventure - and as such there’s a complicated tree of starting attributes and skills to sift through. Furthermore, with Cyberpunk: Edgerunners having been quite the hit on Netflix recently, more people are flocking to see how Cyberpunk 2077 plays in 2022.
Picking the starting attributes for your character is always a tough job, whether you're new to the game or returning to a new save. When you’ve not had a chance to dig into the rest of the game and get a feel for your expertise, it’s difficult to know where to assign your points.
You can only raise the Skills that an Attribute sits over to the same level as the Attribute - so it’s important to distribute your points into your most used skills.
To help, we’ll run through how the different Attributes affect your character going forward.
Cyberpunk 2077 Starting Attributes
In Cyberpunk 2077 there are 5 Attributes to choose from, with 7 extra points to distribute between them at the beginning of the game:
| Attribute: | Bonuses: | Skills: | Playstyle Suited: |
| Body | Increase base health and stamina, Increase melee damage with fists and Gorilla Arms cyberware, Decrease movement penalties when wielding a heavy machine gun or grappling an enemy | Athletics, Annihilation (shotguns/machine guns), Street Brawler (Blunt Weapons) | Melee, Unarmed, Shotgun/LMG, Loot Hoarder |
| Reflexes | Increase passive chance to evade enemy attacks, Increase passive critical hit chance, Increase Mantis Blade cyberware damage | Handguns, Assault Rifles, Blades (Knives and Katanas) | Characters that use the listed weapon types |
| Technical Ability | Increase passive Armour by 5% | Crafting, Engineering | Stealth |
| Intelligence | Increase Cyberdeck RAM capacity, Increase Quickhack damage and duration | Breach Protocol, Quickhacking | Stealth, Hacker |
| Cool | Increase critical hit damage, Increase status resistances, Increase Stealth damage, Increase Monowire damage, Decrease speed of enemy detection | Stealth, Cold Blood | Stealth, Melee, Shotgun/LMG (making use of Cold Blood) |
Each of these Attributes is pretty distinct from all the others and on top of the percentage bonuses you get for each point spent, has a unique usage out in Night City.
- Body is used to overpower drivers on the road and hijack their cars, as well as forcing open some breakable doors, and unlocking a few tough-guy and military focused optional dialogues
- Reflexes unlocks optional dialogue options that require V to think quickly on their feet and pick up on slips from the person they’re talking to yield more information
- Technical Ability is used to open many shortcuts in main missions by unlocking side doors and gates. This attribute is a good one to consider no matter your playstyle, with crafting letting you create better guns and armour throughout.
- Intelligence opens up some optional dialogues where V can sound smart or anticipate the plans of the person they’re talking to, it’s also used to hack terminals you can breach to gather money and quickhack components
- Cool gives access to optional dialogue choices where V can quip back or make light of a situation, like cracking jokes in pressured situations. This'll also give you access to Ninjutsu and Cold Blood, which are good skills to have for stealth attacking and for stacking passive damage, if that's how you like to play.
After you've picked your Lifepath, you need to weigh up which of the different skill sets sounds appealing to your preferred playstyle and choose some starting Attributes.
If you plan to do a lot of shooting, try investing in Body and Reflexes.
While if you plan to take a stealthier approach, put some points into Technical Ability, Intelligence, and Cool.
On normal difficulty, Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t a very hard game, so during my first playthrough, I opted to ignore Body and invest in Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Intelligence - with a few points in Cool. That said, a Technical Ability build focused on hacking is one that'll get you far on all difficulties of the game, although it won't feel as strong during the early stages of Cyberpunk 2077.
Cyberpunk 2077 Example Starting Attributes
When you’re building your first character, you don’t need to sweat the minutiae too much.
While you will be giving certain Attributes a head start, you still get plenty of points to play with throughout the game, so you’ve not “ruined” your build if you decide you want to take a different approach later.
With the 7 Attribute points you’re given at the start of Cyberpunk 2077 it makes sense to give 2 key Attributes 3 extra points, with the spare in a secondary Attribute.
Below we’ve listed a few example builds for different kinds of playstyle. But as mentioned, whatever you choose to start, you can switch up later.
To reset your points at any time, you just need to visit a Ripper Doc and navigate to their trade section.
Example Melee Starting Attributes
Starting melee characters should probably invest in Body for the extra health and damage and either Cool if you want to get a head start on Cold Blood or Reflexes if you want to use Katanas and Mantis Blades.
Your extra point can then go in Intelligence to help soften up enemies at a distance.
| Cyberpunk 2077 Melee Starting Attributes (Blunt) | |
|---|---|
| Body | 6 |
| Reflexes | 3 |
| Technical Ability | 3 |
| Intelligence | 4 |
| Cool | 6 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 Melee Starting Attributes (Blade) | |
|---|---|
| Body | 6 |
| Reflexes | 6 |
| Technical Ability | 3 |
| Intelligence | 4 |
| Cool | 3 |
Example Stealth Starting Attributes
Although Cool governs the actual Stealth Skill, as a starting character it’s probably more important to be able to open shortcuts with Technical Ability and distract and damage enemies without entering combat with Intelligence.
You can then add your extra point to Cool.
| Cyberpunk 2077 Stealth Starting Attributes | |
|---|---|
| Body | 3 |
| Reflexes | 3 |
| Technical Ability | 6 |
| Intelligence | 6 |
| Cool | 4 |
Example Street Samurai Starting Attributes
A Street Samurai is an elite mercenary with the jack of all trades ability to handle themselves in a firefight as well as keeping things quiet.
This means you can focus the versatility of Reflexes, while making use of Quickhacks with Intelligence.
Your remaining point is probably best spent in Technical Ability to open shortcuts, but you could opt for Cool, or even body, if you wanted.
| Cyberpunk 2077 Street Samurai Starting Attributes | |
|---|---|
| Body | 3 |
| Reflexes | 6 |
| Technical Ability | 4 |
| Intelligence | 4 |
| Cool | 4 |
That's it for attributes. For more on Cyberpunk 2077, be sure to take a look at some of the best Cyberpunk 2077 mods for PC.