Cyberpunk 2077 offers a sprawling and immersive world, but for those looking to elevate their gameplay to the next level, modding is the answer. This guide highlights essential mods that enhance various aspects of Cyberpunk 2077, from graphics and gameplay mechanics to customization and immersion. Dive into Night City like never before with these top recommendations.
Essential Cyberpunk 2077 Mods to Enhance Your Gameplay
To truly feel like a cyberpunk legend in Night City, gameplay overhauls are crucial. These mods refine core mechanics, offering deeper customization and control over your experience.
Equipment and Cyberware Customization
- Equipment-EX: Tired of limited outfit slots? Equipment-EX provides a powerful transmog system with over 30 clothing slots, allowing for extensive wardrobe management. Customize your V’s appearance without sacrificing stats or inventory space.
- Cyberware-EX: Embrace the lore of Cyberpunk 2077 with Cyberware-EX. This mod expands cyberware slots, letting you chrome up V to their full potential, mirroring the universe’s lore where wealth unlocks extensive cybernetic enhancements. Choose from different variants to tailor the unlocking system to your preference. For those with multiple cyber arms, consider pairing this with Cyberarm Cycle for easy switching. Ensure compatibility by installing KingCode as a prerequisite. For gorilla arms users, the bypass patch enables body check bypasses.
- More Cyberware Capacity per level: Push the boundaries of cybernetic augmentation. This mod lets you significantly increase cyberware capacity per level, allowing for truly chrome-heavy builds that would make even Adam Smasher envious.
Vehicle Handling and Customization
- Better Vehicle Handling: Improve the often-criticized vehicle handling in Cyberpunk 2077. This mod fine-tunes vehicle controls, making driving through Night City smoother and more enjoyable.
- Car Modification Shop: Take vehicle customization further than vanilla Cyberpunk 2077 allows. The Car Modification Shop mod adds physical shops where you can upgrade your car stats, adding a new layer of progression and personalization to your rides.
Visual and Performance Enhancements
- Cyberpunk 2077 HD Reworked Project: For visual fidelity, the HD Reworked Project is a must-have. Created by the modder behind similar projects for Witcher 3 and Starfield, this mod overhauls textures and models, enhancing the game’s graphics without sacrificing performance significantly. Experience Night City in even greater detail.
- Pathtracing and Raytracing Optimized INI Tweaks: If you’re running Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing, this mod is for you. It provides optimized INI tweaks that can boost performance, allowing for smoother frame rates while enjoying the visual benefits of ray tracing.
Immersion and Customization Mods
- Edgerunners Lucy NPC: For fans of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the Edgerunners Lucy NPC mod adds Lucy to various locations in Night City. This mod is perfect for players who want to see a familiar face from the anime series within the game world.
- 2077 More Gore V2.5, More Blood Splatters, and More Frequent Dismemberment: Enhance the visceral combat of Cyberpunk 2077 with these gore mods. Together, they significantly increase blood splatter effects, dismemberment frequency, and overall gore, making combat encounters more impactful and brutal.
- Spicy HUDs – More UI and HUD colors: Personalize your HUD with Spicy HUDs. This mod allows you to customize your UI and HUD colors, offering a range of color schemes to match your style or improve visibility.
- Silent Silencers and Throwing Knives: Stealth players will appreciate this mod. Silent Silencers and Throwing Knives makes stealth gameplay more viable by ensuring that using silencers or throwing knives doesn’t automatically break stealth if enemies aren’t one-shot killed.
- JB – TPP MOD WIP third person: While still a work in progress, the JB – TPP MOD offers a third-person perspective option. Ideal for exploring Night City and admiring your character’s customization, this mod provides a different way to experience the game world, despite its jankiness.
Character and Romance Enhancements
- Panam Body Enhanced 2.1 & Panam Romanced Enhanced: For players invested in the Panam romance, these mods offer enhancements to both her appearance and romance storyline. Panam Body Enhanced overhauls her character model (requires Alternative Clothes for Panam Body Enhanced for outfits). Panam Romanced Enhanced expands the post-completion romance content, adding more depth to the relationship. Note: Mod loading order adjustments may be needed for compatibility.
- spawn0 – BODY MOD 2.0 – in game better body shape, Framework – Unique Evelyn Body Shape – Rig & Framework – Unique Judy Body Shape – Rig: Customize NPC appearances with BODY MOD 2.0. While it includes options for various NPCs, consider using it specifically for Evelyn and Judy with their respective framework mods for unique body shapes. Manual installation or selective file deletion after manager install may be required to choose specific bodies.
- Judy Romanced Enhanced: Similar to Panam’s romance enhancement, Judy Romanced Enhanced adds more content to her romance arc post-game completion. For players who encountered issues romancing Judy with a male V, this mod, or console command workaround provided, aims to address those limitations.
Controller and Audio Mods
- Enhanced DualSense Support: For DualSense controller users, this mod enhances the controller’s features in Cyberpunk 2077. While the game now has native support, Enhanced DualSense Support offers more customization and is considered superior by many for haptic feedback and adaptive trigger implementation. Requires DSX (version 2).
- The 24.7 I Really Want To Stay At Your House Radio (RadioExt): Expand your in-game radio stations with this mod, adding a station dedicated to variations of “I Really Want to Stay At Your House” song from Edgerunners anime. Note: This mod has moved to a paid mod site, Schaken-Mods.
Essential Fixes Post 2.11 Update
- Actual Chrome Compression: With update 2.11 reducing cyberware capacity, Actual Chrome Compression becomes essential for chrome-heavy builds. This mod helps optimize cyberware usage within the new limits, ensuring you can still achieve powerful, heavily augmented characters.
Conclusion
Modding Cyberpunk 2077 opens up a world of possibilities to tailor the game to your preferences. From visual overhauls and gameplay tweaks to deeper customization and enhanced immersion, these mods collectively create a definitive Cyberpunk 2077 experience. Explore these recommendations and start your modding journey to truly make Night City your own.
