do any of the level 20 skills work?

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i'm currently only able to test cold blooded rank 20 and brawler rank 20. i have 34 extra perk points to mess around and with after many tests i can confirm the abilities Merciless in the cold blooded tree and Guerilla in the brawler tree do absolutely nothing. has anyone tested any other rank 20 skills?
 
I had breach protocol, quickhacking, stealth and crafting at level 20 and never bothered with the level 20 perk because they didn't seem very useful to me, to be honest
 
I had breach protocol, quickhacking, stealth and crafting at level 20 and never bothered with the level 20 perk because they didn't seem very useful to me, to be honest

yeah i get you. the ones for cold blooded and guerrilla would give about 10% crit chance and 85% crit damage. completely unnecessary but like i said i have 30 extra perk points and need somewhere to put them. i decided to test to see whether they work and unsurprisingly they do not. my first tip off was the skill description

Merciless:

While Cold Blood is active, increases Crit Chance by 10% and Crit Damage by 25%.

+1% Crit Chance and +3% Crit Damage per Perk level.

if putting 1 point into the skill gives you 1% crit and 3%, then 10 points should give you 10% crit chance and 30% crit damage, which does not match the skill description. furthermore there's no limit to the points you can put into it, so what happens to the points you put into it after 10 points?

similarly guerrilla gives you 2% crit damage per point with 60 max. so that skill allows you to benefit from 30 points?

just another fake system used to create the illusion of a skill depth that is not actually present. i wouldn't be so upset if it wasn't so intentional. it would take next to no time to test this so they realized these systems were no in the game when they released it. making this an all too familiar example of an unfinished product
 
My understanding of Merciless is as follows

1 perk point gives you +10% Crit Chance and +25% Crit Damage with each additional perk point increasing these numbers by 1% and 3% respectively so 10 points should give you +19% Crit Chance and +52% Crit Damage when Cold Blood is active, or at least that is how I understand it.
 
yeah i get you. the ones for cold blooded and guerrilla would give about 10% crit chance and 85% crit damage. completely unnecessary but like i said i have 30 extra perk points and need somewhere to put them. i decided to test to see whether they work and unsurprisingly they do not. my first tip off was the skill description

Merciless:

While Cold Blood is active, increases Crit Chance by 10% and Crit Damage by 25%.

+1% Crit Chance and +3% Crit Damage per Perk level.

if putting 1 point into the skill gives you 1% crit and 3%, then 10 points should give you 10% crit chance and 30% crit damage, which does not match the skill description. furthermore there's no limit to the points you can put into it, so what happens to the points you put into it after 10 points?

similarly guerrilla gives you 2% crit damage per point with 60 max. so that skill allows you to benefit from 30 points?

just another fake system used to create the illusion of a skill depth that is not actually present. i wouldn't be so upset if it wasn't so intentional. it would take next to no time to test this so they realized these systems were no in the game when they released it. making this an all too familiar example of an unfinished product

I totally understand your point. I just picked the perks that I deemed strictly neccesary. In the end I had more than 50 points unassigned
 
My understanding of Merciless is as follows

1 perk point gives you +10% Crit Chance and +25% Crit Damage with each additional perk point increasing these numbers by 1% and 3% respectively so 10 points should give you +19% Crit Chance and +52% Crit Damage when Cold Blood is active, or at least that is how I understand it.

i also interpreted it that way after realizing the numbers didn't add up. in fact my testing was done just so i could determine which it is. in the end tho my efforts were fruitless since it didn't increase my crit damage at all. i tried it with 30 points into the trait, which would give me 115% more crit damage while cold blooded was active. it had no discernible change.
 
There are other perks, like Health Regeneration in combat, that doesn't appear to be working at all.

In other hand, there is some pretty nice synergy for with certain skills in Body tree and Annihilation perks.

I wasn't in the end that upset about it. This is not a multiplayer game. I played the game on normal difficulty and didn't had issues taking Arasaka tower in any of three endings I played.

But they really should fix those anyway. I'm not sure LMG builds are great experience, at least on higher difficulties before they get health generation working. It looks like they aimed to medium DPS build with a lot of staying power, like Arnold in Terminator movies, that might actually be something different but I'm not going to even try before they fix those perks.
 
There are other perks, like Health Regeneration in combat, that doesn't appear to be working at all.

In other hand, there is some pretty nice synergy for with certain skills in Body tree and Annihilation perks.

I wasn't in the end that upset about it. This is not a multiplayer game. I played the game on normal difficulty and didn't had issues taking Arasaka tower in any of three endings I played.

But they really should fix those anyway. I'm not sure LMG builds are great experience, at least on higher difficulties before they get health generation working. It looks like they aimed to medium DPS build with a lot of staying power, like Arnold in Terminator movies, that might actually be something different but I'm not going to even try before they fix those perks.

yeah. like you, for me it's not so much about viability, it's more about the principle. there's no way, i mean no possible way, they released this game w/out knowing those skills didn't work. so why not tell us? or why not make them "temporarily unavailable" on perk tree or just take them out altogether? plenty of workarounds. they chose to intentionally mislead us. just not something i'm fond of having done to me

I can confirm that level 20 cold blood perk doesn't work. I have also tested the level 20 on blades, which also doesn't work. It seems like none of them works currently.

thanks for that. i stopped my reflex at 18 and was unable to test it. and i agree, all evidence seems to point to the fact that none of them work. it doesn't help that many of the others are difficult to test. i have stealth at 20 but i'm not sure how i could test poison duration
 
Here's one that works (kinda) and verification on more that don't.

TLDR: handguns, stealth, assault, and engineering the top perk doesn't appear to do anything. Like the William_Christop25 mentioned, crafting does, mostly.

Doesn't: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", handguns. "After a successful Crit Hit with a Pistol or Revolver, damage and Armor increase by 30% for 5 seconds. +1% per Perk level."

Baselined with no applicable perks, then 1 point, then 60. Used a low damage pistol (12-15) to avoid killing things so I could crit the same target many times to see if there was a discernable effect in-game. Checked the game's reported values (weapon info and character stats for changes to damage or armor value) after the first crit, and then many crits in. Once I was satisfied with the data for the group, swapped to a high damage pistol that capped crit rate to finish everyone off with a crit (in case the crit needed to be lethal to trigger). Didn't see any evidence that supported an effect for any number of points.


Doesn't: "Toxicology", stealth. "Increases the duration of Poison applied to enemies by 5 seconds. +0.2 seconds per Perk point."

Tested with poison grenades (uncommon and rare), Venomous Fangs perk (all knives apply Poison), and a shotgun with 16% Poison Chance. With no points in Toxicology, for enemies that survived a full poison application, there were 10 tics (infrequently I'd count just 9, but I suspect if I'd captured video and counted after the fact I'd find I was just missing a tic occasionally). The number of tics for survived applications stayed the same with 0, 1, and 40 points in Toxicology. I also equipped the metabolic editor (heals while poisoned) and the timer stayed the same (5 sec) regardless of the points in Toxicology (in fairness to the perk, I'm not an enemy so Toxicology probably shouldn't increase the duration, it was just easy to check). Other interesting observations: Grenades dealt approximately half the damage per application (or per tic) as the weapons. Honorable mention, the perk "Neurotoxin" works with all the application methods I tried in exactly the way described - I'm sure the damage of a poison application probably scales to level (50 in this character's case) but it still was quite effective at killing normal mobs with several tics remaining (generally in 4-6) even with just a single poke from the common 37 damage test knife.


Doesn't: "Punisher", assault. "After defeating an enemy with a Rifle or Submachine Gun, weapon sway is nullified and weapon spread does not increase for 10 seconds. +0.2 seconds per Perk level."

This isn't a hill I'd choose to die on because "nullifying weapon sway" or "weapon spread not increasing" could apply to some situation that isn't obvious to me, but it didn't do what I expected (or anything that I noticed for that matter). I crafted a several different rifles, observed firing after a kill (with the rifle) down sight as well as from the hip with 0 and 1 point (the effect doesn't change with more, supposedly just the duration). There isn't an identifiable buff applied, I expected "weapon sway" to relate to the extent that the crosshairs drift, but that didn't seem to change in a noticeable way (and "nullified" seems like it should be obviously gone). As far as weapon spread, the crosshairs from the hip definitely still expanded as I fired or moved. Although it's tough to eyeball the spread, with Sandevistan active I didn't see anything about the trajectories of the bullets that leads me to believe the crosshair expansion was an error.


Does, mostly: "Crazy Science", crafting. "Increases the sale price of crafted items by 10%. +1% per Perk level."

At least the bonus points in this actually work, mostly. Points past the first increase the sale price, by about 1% of a base value, and vendors indeed purchase them for that increased price. Also the 2nd point in the perk appears to make the sale price 2% higher than the sale price for a character who's never had the "Crazy Science" perk. Which is also to say, I have no idea what the first point does. Comparing one character with 1 point in Crazy Science and one character who'd never had any, both level 50, the character without the perk actually had higher sale prices (and the % difference wasn't consistent, for some items the character with the perk was 1% lower, in others 2%). So there's some definite squirreliness that goes on with it. Other examples: The boosted sale price did not go away when I respecced and stayed boosted until I'd exceeded the previous # of points invested (at which point it began increasing again). Also there's some downright wacky stuff going on between the sale price amongst different saves, even different characters, because at one point my non-crazy science character was showing the boosted prices from the character who I'd left with 10 points in just prior to loading the 2nd save. On a different occasion, when I loaded a save for the first character (2 points in Crazy Science at that point) the sale prices listed matched the base values (100%) from the 2nd character who I'd just swapped from. Adding a 3rd point to Crazy Science at that point did make the prices change to 103% the base price. Tbh, haven't totally figured out the interaction but my guess is there's some table / set of variables that doesn't update completely unless you restart the game.


Doesn't: "Revamp", engineering. "Increases damage from Tech weapons by 25%. Increases charge damage from all chargeable weapons and cyberware by 10%. +1% charge damage per Perk level."

This one doesn't appear to work (or at least not particularly well). I used a couple of crafted Nekomata's, one with a large base charge multiplier, the other with none listed. Both crit capped so each shot was a crit. No damage perks aside from Revamp, Superconductor, and Up to 11. Up to 11 since I'd read that the "Feedback Circuit" cyberware didn't function without it and didn't want that screwing something up. My thinking for superconductor was eliminating armor variance should keep the damage ranges a little more consistent. I didn't notice much difference before / after adding Superconductor but there wasn't much before testing and it could just be a small effect in this instance since the Nekomata has pretty high damage per shot. Did several laps with each around Westwind Apartments aiming center of mass with fully charged shots and noted the damage ranges at 0 points, 1 point, and 50 points in Revamp (so roughly 60 shots per setup, not quite 400 shots total). The damage ranges stayed largely consistent within a little less than +/-10% of the average for each rifle which makes sense because the min damage per shot for the rifle is about 82% of the max. The rifles themselves did have different ranges b/c of the differences in charge multiplier and crit damage. I did note a very occasional hit ~10% higher than the usual max with 1 point and 50 points in Revamp. I suspect it had to do with rushing a little more and hitting off target in a more vital area, because the overwhelming majority of hits remained in the same range. Because of the weirdness with "Crazy Science" I actually re-loaded the 50 point test and did another lap from a fresh start, but no change.


"Merciless" and "Dragon Strike" not working was already mentioned, and the bit I've tested seems to support that.
 
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None of the top level perks work. There is a mod that fixes this (together with Cataresist not applying its resistance bonus correctly) but you need to hotkey it and reload the mod every time you load a save game you must disable it and restart the game before entering any braindance sequence, then re-enable the mod after the sequence is over otherwise it breaks all your armour mods. The mod is here: Gameplay Patches at Cyberpunk 2077 Nexus - Mods and community

It could be that they don't work in the first place due to something that isn't carrying over through save/load game state. Looks like a pretty complex problem. I am reminded of something someone once said to me about software devs - that its like being a car mechanic except when you change a tire, there is a non zero probability the engine will disappear. That seems to be whats happening in this case and nobody has figured out why just yet.
 
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i'm currently only able to test cold blooded rank 20 and brawler rank 20. i have 34 extra perk points to mess around and with after many tests i can confirm the abilities Merciless in the cold blooded tree and Guerilla in the brawler tree do absolutely nothing. has anyone tested any other rank 20 skills?

based on the mod scene, it appears they only work until you reload the game, so basically its broken. some one put out a mod that redoes them when you reload.

I wonder if they even know about some of these bugs? I don't think they have fixed any of the game mechanics bugs since release
 
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