Cyberpunk 2077 Netrunner Build Guide: Best Quickhacks and Perks
How to spec Intelligence, pick quickhacks and cyberdecks, recover RAM fast, and beat enemy netrunners in Cyberpunk 2077.
Playing a netrunner in Cyberpunk 2077 lets you win fights from a room away. You hide in a stairwell, jump into a security camera, and melt a whole squad before anyone figures out where you are. The 2.0 update rebuilt all of it, with quickhack queues, RAM that actually runs dry, and enemy netrunners who hack you right back. The build still shreds. It just asks you to make some real choices about where your points go, and that's what this guide covers.
Intelligence Attribute Priorities
Intelligence carries this build. Every 4 points of Intelligence adds 1 to your max RAM, so a full 20 points is worth 5 extra RAM before your cyberdeck even enters the picture. The attribute also gates the perk tree at 4, 9, 15, and 20, and a netrunner runs on perks far more than on gear. Gun builds get their power from weapons. You get yours from the tree.
What each breakpoint unlocks
At 4 Intelligence you can grab Optimization, a flat +35% RAM recovery rate, plus Proximate Propagation, which cuts quickhack costs by up to 35% the closer you're standing to the target. Cheap, and you'll feel both all game.
At 9 the tree really opens up. Hack Queue unlocks quickhack queues, Feedback Loop speeds up RAM recovery while hacks are queued, Data Recycler refunds RAM on kills, and Counter-A-Hack gives you an answer to enemy hackers. This is the engine room of the build.
At 15 you get Overclock, the ability that lets you cast quickhacks on health when your RAM hits zero. At 20, Queue Mastery and Spillover round out the top end. Those last perks are strong but not urgent, so don't rush 20 the second you can.
A leveling order that works
Push to 4 early and buy the cheap perks. Park there while you fill out the tree, then push to 9 by the mid game. That single jump changes how the whole build plays, because queues plus refunds means you can chain hacks instead of hoarding them. Get to 15 before the late game so Overclock is online for the tougher gigs, then finish the climb to 20 whenever the points show up.
The one mistake to avoid is splitting points early. Attribute points are tight (the level cap is 50, or 60 with Phantom Liberty, and you can't come close to maxing everything), so a netrunner who dips into three attributes at level 12 just ends up weak everywhere.
Where the rest of your points go
A common endgame spread looks like 20 Intelligence, 15 Technical Ability, 15 Reflexes or Cool, and whatever's left in Body. Technical Ability is the sneaky second priority, because it raises cyberware capacity, and half your RAM economy lives in implants. Cool helps with stealth and crit damage if you like the quiet approach. Reflexes is the pick if you're pairing the deck with smart weapons.
Body is the dump stat for most of the game. You'll be squishy up close, kind of a glass cannon. Overclock plus the Power Surge perk covers a lot of that hole later, and Phantom Liberty's ten extra points usually go into Body for the health.
Best Quickhack Loadout
Quick word on trace before the picks. Every hack you upload adds to a trace meter, and when that meter fills, the whole map knows where you're standing. Covert hacks add zero trace, control hacks add 15%, combat hacks add 30%, and ultimates add 50%. So the room you're in decides what you can spam.
Here's a core loadout that covers stealth, groups, and raw damage:
| Quickhack | Type | RAM at Tier 5 | Why it earns a slot | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Ping | Covert | 7 | Reveals every enemy and device on the local network, and at Tier 5 lets you hack devices through walls | | Sonic Shock | Covert | 6 | Deafens a guard so they can't hear you, and from Tier 3 on, stops your hacks from growing the trace meter | | Reboot Optics | Control | 7 | Blinds a target and resets their detection, and at Tier 5 a headshot kill refunds 3 RAM and spreads the blind to the next enemy | | Contagion | Combat | 12 | Poison that spreads to 2 nearby enemies (4 from Tier 3), ideal against tightly packed groups | | Overheat | Combat | 9 | Burn damage over time, and it melts armor by up to 40% from Tier 4 | | Short Circuit | Combat | 10 | Instant burst damage with a bonus against mechs, drones, and turrets |
That leaves one or two slots for an ultimate, and the ultimates are where playstyle really shows.
Picking your ultimate
Suicide costs 24 RAM and simply deletes one enemy while adding 50% trace. It's the cleanest answer to a single heavy with a big health bar. Cyberpsychosis costs 22 and turns one enemy against their friends for 20 seconds, or a full minute at Tier 5. Chaos, and honestly pretty funny.
System Collapse is the stealth pick. It costs 28 RAM, knocks an enemy out cold with zero noise, and adds no trace at all. From Tier 5, every knockout trims 20% off your trace meter, and knocking out an enemy netrunner this way wipes the meter completely. If you're playing quiet, this is the one.
Combos that actually kill
The queue system is where the damage lives. With Hack Queue you can stack 2 hacks on one target (3 once you have Queue Mastery at 20 Intelligence), and they upload in the order you add them.
- Non-combat first, combat second. On a Tetratonic Rippler Mk.5, a combat quickhack that immediately follows a non-combat one in the queue deals 40% more damage. Queue Reboot Optics into Overheat and enjoy.
- Contagion then Overheat. From Tier 4, applying a burn to a poisoned enemy detonates the leaked toxin as an explosion. It removes the poison, but the blast is usually worth it.
- The nap combo. At Tier 5, uploading Sonic Shock to an enemy already wearing Memory Wipe and Reboot Optics knocks them unconscious. Three cheap hacks, one silent takedown.
- Memory Wipe first. From Tier 4, hacks queued after Memory Wipe don't add any trace. Lead with it when you're about to do something rude.
A note on tiers
Higher tiers aren't automatically better. RAM costs climb as you upgrade, so Overheat goes from 3 RAM at Tier 1 to 9 at Tier 5, and Short Circuit goes from 3 to 10. The effects scale up too, but early on, when your RAM pool is small, a Tier 3 Overheat you can cast four times often beats a Tier 5 you can cast twice. Upgrade once your recovery and max RAM can carry the bigger costs.
Cyberdeck Selection Tips
First thing to know: your cyberdeck sits in the Operating System slot, the same slot as a Sandevistan or Berserk. Going netrunner means giving up bullet time. That trade is worth it, but go in with eyes open.
The deck decides three things: your RAM pool, how many quickhack slots you get (up to 8), and your buffer size for Breach Protocol. Each deck line also carries its own passive effects that change how you play.
All numbers below are the top upgrade tier of each deck:
| Cyberdeck | RAM | Slots | What it's for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Militech Paraline | 9 | 8 | The deck the story hands you early on, solid for smart weapon hybrids | | Arasaka | 9 | 8 | Stealth, with enemies taking 40% longer to trace you and cheaper Covert hacks | | Biotech Σ | 9 | 8 | Damage over time, extending Combat hack durations by up to 60% | | Raven Microcyber | 9 | 8 | Spread builds, adding up to 100% extra spread distance (shows up around level 20) | | Tetratronic Rippler Mk.5 | 20 | 8 | The combo deck, with the biggest RAM pool in the game | | NetWatch Netdriver | 13 | 8 | Camera warfare, with half-price device hacks (available from level 40) | | Militech Canto Mk.6 | 10 | 4 | The Blackwall deck, unique to Phantom Liberty |
The default pick: Tetratronic Rippler
For most netrunners the Rippler Mk.5 is the end of the search. Twenty RAM is almost double what the other decks offer. More ultimates, more queues, less waiting around. The tier 3 passive (that +40% damage on a combat hack following a non-combat one) was built for the queue system, and the tier 5 effect is a small riot: activating Overclock automatically uploads Reboot Optics and Weapon Glitch to every enemy within 8 meters of you. Free crowd control on a cooldown you were pressing anyway.
Match the deck to how you play
If you live in stealth, the Arasaka line keeps the trace bar slow and refunds 5 RAM per takedown from tier 4. Contagion spammers should look at the Raven Microcyber, since its spread bonuses turn one poison into a room-wide plague, and at tier 4 hacks spread the moment an upload starts instead of when it finishes.
Camera players, the ones who never enter the building at all, want the NetWatch Netdriver. Combat quickhacks uploaded through devices gain 15 to 30% damage and 20 to 50% duration, device hacks cost half RAM, and traceability through cameras drops 20%. Sniping a compound from a parking garage camera with this deck is a whole different game.
Phantom Liberty owners have one more option. Finish the quest Somewhat Damaged and you can walk out with the Militech Canto Mk.6, the iconic Blackwall deck. It unlocks Blackwall Gateway, a 14 RAM ultimate that spreads to 3 enemies within 20 meters and flat-out kills anything organic while shutting down mechs and drones. Each spread eats more RAM than the last, so it pairs best with the recovery stack in the next section. Only 4 quickhack slots, though, so you'll choose your tools carefully.
RAM Recovery Perks
RAM trickles back on its own, slowly, and way slower once you're in a fight. The whole art of the late-game netrunner is stacking recovery until the bar feels infinite. You build it in layers.
The percentage stack
Four perks pump your recovery rate directly: Optimization at +35%, Embedded Exploit rank 1 at +10%, Overclock rank 1 at another +10%, and Feedback Loop at +25% for each quickhack currently sitting in a queue. Feedback Loop is the sneaky best one, because a netrunner who's chaining queues almost always has something uploading. It's a permanent bonus if you're playing right.
Refunds for killing
The other half of the economy is getting RAM back mid-fight.
- Data Recycler returns 80% of the RAM cost of any hacks still queued on an enemy you just killed. Killed them before the queue finished? Most of that RAM walks back to you.
- Recirculation gives 2 RAM per kill with a smart weapon, plus 50% of the RAM cost of any hacks the victim was wearing. Pair it with a smart pistol or SMG as your backup.
- Siphon gives 0.5 RAM per Monowire hit, or a full 1 RAM if the target's already hacked.
- Reboot Optics at Tier 5 refunds 3 RAM on headshot or weakspot kills. Free money for a build that blinds people anyway.
Overclock and its friends
Overclock itself is the panic button and the win condition in one. Rank 3 of the perk unlocks the mode at 15 Intelligence: for 14 seconds (on a 30 second cooldown) you can keep casting with empty RAM, and each unit you're short costs 10 health instead. With decent max health you can dump two or three extra hacks into a fight that you had no business affording.
Two perks make it sing. Power Surge heals you for 5 times your max RAM the moment you activate Overclock, so with a 25 RAM pool that's 125 health back, which usually pays for the casting itself. Race Against Mind adds up to +50% quickhack damage the lower your health sits while the mode is running, and your health is measured when the upload starts. Low HP plus Overclock plus Synapse Burnout is the classic "delete the boss" button.
Implants that do the work for you
The Frontal Cortex slot holds the best ones. The Camillo RAM Manager (ripperdocs, from level 30) instantly restores 20 to 23% of your max RAM whenever you drop below the 15 to 20% mark, adds 2 max RAM, and has an 80 second cooldown. The Phantom Liberty version, the RAM Reallocator from Dogtown ripperdocs and airdrops, restores a fatter 30 to 45%. Slot either one and your RAM bar basically refills itself once a fight.
Stack a RAM Upgrade for a passive 0.05 to 0.2 RAM per second plus 2 max RAM, and consider the Axolotl (Regina Jones's reward for finishing her Last Call quest) to shave 5 to 7.5% off all cyberware cooldowns per kill. Kills are the one thing this build produces constantly, so your RAM Manager ends up cycling a lot faster than that 80 seconds suggests.
Countering Netrunner Enemies
Since 2.0, enemy netrunners hack back, and they're genuinely nasty about it. When one locks onto you, a bar appears on screen showing their upload progress, and when it fills you eat the effect. They don't even need line of sight anymore, if their allies or the cameras have spotted you.
Their toolkit is limited but annoying. Overheat burns you over several seconds. Cyberware Malfunction disables your cyberware, and MaxTac squads in particular love it. Take Control can slam your own car shut mid-drive, which is a great way to die to traffic.
Find the yellow line
The moment the warning pops, hit scan. Somewhere there's a yellow, rope-like line running from you to the hacker, through whoever or whatever they're using as a proxy. Time slows while you're scanning an enemy, so you get a beat to look around. That line is your to-do list.
Break the hack
Any damage to the hacker interrupts the upload, and quickhacks are the easiest damage since the runner is usually hiding far away. A Short Circuit through a wall ends both the hack and the hacker.
If you can't see them, Counter-A-Hack (9 Intelligence) lets you counter-quickhack a netrunner who's targeting you straight through walls and obstacles, at 1 less RAM than usual. Copy-Paste sits right behind it and spreads your counter hack to their nearby allies. One catch there: each enemy the effect spreads to adds that hack's normal trace to your meter, so a 30% trace hack hitting four people spikes your trace by 120% and blows your cover. Pick your moment.
No points in Intelligence? A tech weapon punches through walls just fine, and hopping the camera network usually finds the yellow line's owner too.
Keep the trace bar quiet
Prevention beats the counterattack. Sonic Shock from Tier 3 stops your quickhacks from adding trace at all, which is absurdly good for one of the cheapest hacks in the game. Memory Wipe, uploaded outside combat, cuts 25% off your current trace. And System Collapse at Tier 5 trims 20% per knockout while flat-out erasing the whole meter when the victim is an enemy netrunner.
Last thing worth knowing: netrunner enemies resist quickhacks, so hacks cost more RAM against them than the listed price. Annoying, but by the time you're fighting MaxTac you should have the RAM pool for it. Keep System Collapse loaded, wipe the trace bar off the nearest hacker, and get back to work.