Cyberpunk 2077 customize attributes guide: Where to spend your first Attribute Points

When you start a new game of Cyberpunk 2077, you’ll need to make a couple of important-feeling choices very early on — way before you have any real understanding of what those choices mean. The first is your Lifepath — you can read more about that in our Lifepath guide. The second (after you customize your character’s appearance) is assigning Attribute Points.

In this Cyberpunk 2077 guide, we’ll explain what those points do for your fledgling character and where you should assign them on the Customize Attributes screen during character creation, when the game tells you to “choose the core attributes you want to begin with.”

Attributes

The seven Attribute Points you get during character creation unsurprisingly allow you to improve your Attributes — the the broad categories of traits that define your character.

If you hover over each Attribute, you’ll get a more detailed description (and we go into a little more detail in our stand-alone Attribute guide).

Image: CD Projeckt Red via Polygon

Your five Attributes and their effects on your character are (and we’re paraphrasing for clarity here):

• Body. Health, stamina, melee, and grappling. A high enough Body score will also let you force some doors open.
• Intelligence. Quickhacks (using your cyberware to hack and attack or influence enemies and devices like cameras).
• Reflexes. Evasion and critical damage.
• Technical Ability. Unlocking some doors and increasing your Armor. This is also related to Tech Weapons, but you won’t have access to those for many hours.
• Cool. Crit damage, resistances, damage from stealth, and how long it takes an enemy to spot you.

Attributes and Skills (higher numbers are better)

The interplay of Attributes, Skills, and Perks is complex and way deeper than you need to worry about during character creation. All you really need to know is that higher numbers are better. (And you can only put three of your seven points into any one Attribute, so you’ll have no choice but to spread them around a little.)

Attributes are the broad category, but Skills are the more practical, situational stat to worry about. There are Skills for things like weapon types and hacking. Attributes put a limit on your maximum level of a Skill, but Skills are otherwise independent.

Builds and where to put your points

Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about tiny, incremental improvements. You’ll swap out gear that improves your Armor from 41.3 to 42.1. You’ll upgrade weapons from 80.7 damage to 81.2. So it fits that improving your Attributes increases stats by minor amounts like 0.5%.

We say that to say this: You won’t notice a huge difference in how your character plays right away, no matter where you put your points. Also, since Skills are not directly tied to your Attributes, you can mix and match play styles much more than in other games. You could dump all of your points into Body to make a strong melee fighter, while leveling up your Stealth skill by playing stealthily, resulting in a beefy sneaker (we apologize for that phrase).

And that means your Attributes don’t lock you into a play style.

Where you will see real effects early on (and throughout the game) are in two situations: locked doors and conversation options, and that’s where we’ll start our builds.

Opening literal doors: Body and Technical Ability (and Reflexes)

Putting points into Body is just a good idea mostly because of the increases to health and stamina. Beyond that, a decent Body Attribute will allow you to force open some otherwise impassible doors (and that opens up new paths to navigate the environment).

After the points in Body, invest your points in Technical Ability. You’ll want that Armor bonus since most of your enemies will have guns, but just as importantly, Technical Ability lets you unlock many of the doors that can’t be brute forced open.

For whatever points you have left over, put them into Reflexes. Since you’ll be fighting more often, you’ll want that bonus to Evasion.

Opening metaphorical doors: Intelligence and Cool (and Body)

There’s a lot of information in Cyberpunk 2077’s optional dialogue choices. It won’t always change the outcome of a conversation or a mission, but it will make the world a little richer and more understandable.

Some of those dialogue options are related to your Lifepath. Others have Attribute requirements. The ones we’ve seen so far require Cool or Intelligence (and sometimes Technical Ability).

Cool is a stealth-related stat, so it lends itself to a sneaky play style. Intelligence gives you a boost to your Quickhacks. Combining the two not only opens up conversations, but it also gives you a good start on a stealthy hacker-type character.

For your leftover point(s), invest it in Body for the health and stamina boosts.