Once you enter Act 2, Night City opens up completely and you can tackle jobs in almost any order you want. Cyberpunk 2077 ramps up the difficulty fast when you wander too far from your starting neighborhood. Certain areas are full of enemies that can shred you in seconds. If you’re aiming to do as much damage as possible, you’ll want to stack the right perks. You can get started very early in the game and start dishing out insane damage with the right synergy.
And I’m not just talking about finding powerful guns or getting new cybernetic mods. You don’t need to grind XP and earn higher levels — you can get tons of cash just by shooting enemies from half a mile away where they’ll never find you. Just don’t accidentally shoot any civilians or the cops will be on you instantly. That never ends well.
Here are my tips for taking on high level enemies and completing side-quests (gigs, hustles, and everything else) in Cyberpunk 2077.
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Police Hustles are one of the best, easiest ways to earn tons of cash, weapons, and crafting components. Each Police Hustle locations has several enemies you can defeat and a loot chest that can contain 5,000+ in cash. Search all the bodies too, you can keep everything you find.
- NOTE: Don’t accidentally shoot or harm any civilians. You’re free to shoot guns and kill criminals in public if they’re marked. Use Ping to easily mark everyone in the area so you know who to shoot.
High difficulty Police Hustles / criminal faction zones are located everywhere in-game. To take them down easily, you just need a Sniper Rifle and the right perks. A Sniper Rifle is critical for taking out enemies from long-range without risking taking damage — it’s by far the safest option, so its what I recommend.
How To Kill Everyone Easily
Complete the quest “Paid In Full” and give your RipperDoc Vic the 21,000 you owe him — then you can start installing cyberware. The best for our purposes is the Smart Link.
- Smart Link: Allows you to use Smart-Targeting — you can automatically aim for the head from a distance.
Combine Smart Link with Power Weapons to shoot through walls. They’re slow and require charging time, but they’re absolutely worth it. Now let’s pick out the best perks for sniping.
- Best Perks For Quickly Killing High Difficulty Enemies:
- Bulletjock: Assault Level 1 – Increases damage by Rifles and Submachine Guns by 3% / 6% / 9%.
- Bullseye: Assault Level 7 – Increases Rifle and Submachine Gun damage while aiming by 10%.
- Silent And Deadly: Stealth Level 1 – Increases damage dealt by silenced weapons by 25% while sneaking.
- Assassin: Stealth Level 7 – Deal 15% more damage to human enemies.
- Sniper: Stealth Level 1 – Increases damage from headshots fired from outside combat by 30%.
- Nerves of Steel: Assault Level 1 – Increases headshot damage with Sniper Rifles and Precision Rifles by 20% / 40%.
- Frozen Precision: Cold Blood Level 11 – Increases headshot damage by 50%.
With Smart-Targeting and multiple headshot modifiers, you can take out anything that moves very early in the game. Craft, buy or find a one-shot sniper rifle and make sure to equip a Silencer and a long-range scope.
All of these perks can be obtained early in the game. Even if you don’t get them all, you can still get an 180% base damage buff when shooting with a sniper rifle — just remember to aim-down-sights, enter stealth mode, shoot the head, and shoot from very long range.
This only works on human enemies, but seeing as they’re the most common, it just makes sense to focus. You can even get more perks to deal even more damage — get the perk that increases damage when shooting from cover, etc to stack even more bonuses.
And that’s not even factoring in critical hits. With the right combination, you’re doing +200% damage with every shot. Even the toughest enemies will go down ridiculously fast, and you’ll earn XP and Street Cred like crazy.
There are (at least) 10 soda machines in or around your apartment and apartment building — if you farm them all, you can earn 54,000 bucks for 20 soda machine farms. Not a bad chunk of change.