Do the items we hold scale with level?

[Fizzie]

Like ive had this katana since level 1 and upgraded it to Epic quality. is it worth upgrading it before trying to craft it to legendary? Im kinda confused over crafting/upgrading and when to do either. I found a rare/iconic Fenrir smg and can craft its upgraded version to Epic. But the new version has lower DPS output. I could also upgrade it to increase dps but i dont think thats worth.
In this case, is it better to upgrade its better quality version over upgrading its dps?

still figuring out upgrading and stuff.
seems like theres some RNG rolling stats and such

[['w']]

no

those in the shops, I never liked to do it that way.

That you find more and more of similar items which are suddenly better, only because I gained a lvl.

But someone decided that they want to play to the gatherer in us. Focusing more on enforcing addiction vs player skill.

[Zero McDol]

Whatever level that you are when you pick up a weapon, armadillo mod, or armor, is whatever level that it will be.

If you gain five levels, you need to either upgrade your gear to your level or buy new gear. Gear in shops are always around the ballpark of whatever level that you happen to be - keep in mind that shops switch gear every 24 hours. Armadillo mods can not be upgraded and must be crafted, bought new, or picked up fresh to match your current level.

edit:
Gear in boxes scale to your level, so if your low level, sometimes it's best to wait before opening the boxes in the world.

[Tuz]

Upgrading quality is always the way to go. The later you upgrade the bigger the stat boost will be. It generally tries to get it to your level, but you will need a few normal upgrades after the fact to get it to match yours. Since each time you upgrade the material costs increase, it's inefficient to upgrade it a lot at earlier levels. Better off to upgrade quality and then upgrade normally toward later game. You can still upgrade weapons and armor to help, but eventually you will discard it. Obviously keep iconics. Eventually you will turn them into legendaries with 4 mod slots...which you will slot for the bigger difference in armor or dps. Imagine picking up a hat with 4 armor and 4 mod slots. Each mod slot gets a legendary armadillo armor mod with +150 armor around level 35ish. That hat suddenly goes from 4 armor to 604 armor. Versus a hat with 40 armor becoming 640 armor. The difference becomes negligible on clothing. The quality matters above all due to mod slots making the biggest impact.

Weapons work slightly less. Damage is important, but mod slots still give a huge bonus. Imagine a LMG with 35-40 damage that gets slotted with 9 crunch damage mods each giving +9 damage. You practically double the DPS. An LMG doing 80-90 damage though will get a smaller buff, but still come out on top. An LMG with 15-20 damage will get triple DPS and a huge boost. The further in the game you go, the more the buffs will drop off. Upgrading weapons normally becomes more important to catch up on DPS because mod slots will only take you so far.

In the end,

QUALITY is MORE important on clothing to ADD mod slots. Mod slots have bigger impact than armor clothing. Early and Late game.

UPGRADE is more important on weapons at LATER levels than EARLY levels. EARLY levels the QUALITY is more important because mod slots do MORE. Later levels the UPGRADE is more important to catch up. MOD slots still provide massive upgrades. Equality important at later levels.

[Tanoomba]

Originally posted by Tuz:

*snip*

Good breakdown, thank you.

[Max]

legendary itmes in shops offers uprgrade with your level, so you always are able to buy something for your level, even same item in shop will be upgraded to higher level.

[Fizzie]

so im only lv 8 rn. should i just wait until im hhigher level to upgrade and just save up materials

[ƎϽ∀ƎԀ]

I upgrade all my stuff every time I gain a character level. Otherwise how are you going to upgrade your crafting skill? Making stuff and selling it at low level is way more expensive and less exp for the cost of mats. even if you scrap every single item you come across.

[Tuz]

Originally posted by Rex:

so im only lv 8 rn. should i just wait until im hhigher level to upgrade and just save up materials

Sorry after reading my breakdown I realized I wrote hastily and it was a bit confusing.

As a level 8 you don't need to worry much about crafting upgrades. Your priority should be to disassemble any weapons or gear you don't need. Make sure to level some perks in crafting tree that increase the amount of supplies you get. NEVER get the perk that disassembles junk items as some of those junk items cost good money and will give you negligent crafting parts in return.

To begin, disassemble everything you don't use. Those crafting parts stack up. A perk can let you upgrade crafting parts to better parts using more common and basic components. This nets huge crafting XP. By level 10 or so I typically have 3-4k common crafting parts. I typically find myself converting 2-3k of those into uncommon green parts and getting 4-5 crafting levels immediately.

Don't worry about upgrading guns or clothing early on. You will pick up so many new guns and collect so much new clothing that it's pointless to waste resources. Yes, you can do it to level crafting, but XP is very small. You are better off saving them for better gear.

Should you upgrade common (white) weapons and armor? No. Uncommon (green)? Rare (blue)? It depends on what you need. You should only really start to upgrade Epic (purple) and above. That gear will come with unique perks and more mod slots. It lasts longer before you dump them for new gear and you get the best bang for your buck.

Back to my previous post, there are some mods that are game changing. They are the weapon damage mod (CRUNCH) and the armor bonus mod (ARMADILLO). You can find both of those mods in Watson district by doing the police intervention missions. Two-three of those missions will have those mod recipes (plans) in containers you can loot. Keep your eyes peeled and loot. You can eventually buy them from weapon (gun) shops or clothing vendors at higher level in better districts. If you missed them, you will get opportunities to get them!

The more uncommon a weapon quality, the more mod slots it will have. I am not talking scopes or silences. I am talking the extra slots to change weapon preferences. More crit chance, higher armor, faster attack speed, etc. The more slots, the better you can make that gear.

At low level, those mod slots give a huge boost. A low level crunch damage mod for a weapon will give +5-6 damage. A lot of those low level automatic pistols have 10-15 damage per shot. Other weapons are fairly similar, I am just giving examples. That +5 damage mod will go a long way to tuning that weapon. Of course you can manually upgrade the weapon efficiency. Each upgrade usually gives a little boost to damage per second value. However, each upgrade becomes more expensive than the last. If you keep a level 1 pistol and upgrade it each level until lvl 50 you will need hundreds and hundreds of materials. It will be a resource sink. Therefore, normal upgrades are "short term" fixes until you find better gear to replace the one you have.

Those normal upgrades are A LOT better after you find gear that will be hard to replace. Either because it's iconic and unique or because it's high quality and comes with some great bonuses you enjoy. You will get more mileage out of that gear and it will be worth your investment.

After playing Cyberpunk almost 1,500 hours I find myself rarely upgrading my clothing unless I am already level 50. Why? Because there is a high cost but low reward. Like I mentioned previously, clothing found on lower levels will give less armor. Level 1 pants may be 9 armor, but those same pants at lvl 50 may give you over 100. The rarity is more important. Higher rarities, come with more mod slots. Legendary gear can have from 1 to 4 mod slots. Keep an eye out when you visit clothing shops. I typically avoid buying legendary torso (shirt) gear because it's ridiculously expensive 20-40k. The hats, boots, masks, and pants on the other hand tend to be very reasonable. I often find legendary (yellow) masks, hats, and shoes for around 400-900 credits that come with 3 mod slots. GET THOSE ITEMS! Obviously, if you don't like the way they look don't bother. You can always save, buy, try it on, and reload save if you don't like them.

Once you unlock those crafting mods like armadillo, when you get higher character level and crafting level, the quality of your crafted mods will improve. While a low level armadillo mod may give 15 armor, a higher level version may give over 150. As you level up, re-craft those mods and re-slot them into your gear to stay up to date. Once you get to level 50, you can invest whatever resources you want into getting your gear upgraded. It won't give much per upgrade, but it all stacks up because of other bonuses you will acquire as you level up.

Weapons. You will change them out a lot as you level. Low level weapons are garbage on higher levels. Enemies will become bullet sponges if you don't cycle out. Especially on Very Hard difficulty, which I often play. You will need to tune them more to stay up to speed. Once you get lvl 18 technical ability and the perk for legendary crafting, you can upgrade your discovered Iconic (unique) weapons to legendary. Their bonuses will go up, such as chance to apply various damage types, or crit chance, or crit damage, or headshot modifiers. They will also get more mod slots so you can get the most out of them. A few normal upgrades here and there can squeeze more DPS out of them, but don't go overboard. Do the normal upgrades less often to minimize how much crafting materials upgrades will cost. Upgrading their rarities such as rare to epic or epic to legendary gives them an innate damage boost. That will make the biggest difference that will be immediately noticeable.

As a bonus, if you go the technical ability route, which I strongly recommend as a new player. One of your missions or side missions will let you loot a container with a legendary schematic for a sniper rifle, called Azhura. Once you get level 18 technical ability, and unlock legendary crafting, you can build those sniper rifles. The higher character level you are, the more that rifle will cost when sold. The materials to craft it remain the same. Well, you can go to a gun shop, buy those materials, craft the rifle, and sell the rifle for a significant profit. Around level 40, that rifle takes about 120 credits worth of components, but sells for 3k credits. You have a crafting perk which has a chance to make crafting free. You will be printing money. The shops have limited credits, so walk out, fast forward time 24 hours to reset their money, and go to town selling again. Best way to make money in the game and will give you opportunity to be able to buy any mods, weapons, clothing, or cars you want to enjoy on your first run so you can test everything.

Let me know if I can expand on anything else and hope it helps.

Remember, just focus on disassembling. Put a point in technical ability here and there between your other skills as you level up. Upgrade your iconic weapon rarities. Only upgrade guns you plan to use for a while. Focus on weapons and armor with mod slots over ones without. Make it a goal to find crafting schematics for CRUNCH and ARMADILLO. You can youtube or google them to find exact locations. Then make sure you slot all of your low damage guns with CRUNCH and all of your armor with ARMADILLO. Melee weapons can't use crunch. I find attack speed buffs the best on those. Later in the game there are some mods for clothing that give critical chance and critical damage. Those are good to toss in with armor for damage boosts. For weapons, there are sniper rifles that do over 1000 damage. That extra small damage from CRUNCH wont make a difference in DPS. You are better going for %crit strike or % elemental damage chance.

Good luck!




Also reference your main post:

"Like ive had this katana since level 1 and upgraded it to Epic quality. is it worth upgrading it before trying to craft it to legendary? Im kinda confused over crafting/upgrading and when to do either. I found a rare/iconic Fenrir smg and can craft its upgraded version to Epic. But the new version has lower DPS output. I could also upgrade it to increase dps but i dont think thats worth.
In this case, is it better to upgrade its better quality version over upgrading its dps?

still figuring out upgrading and stuff.
seems like theres some RNG rolling stats and such"

Quality increases damage, mod slots, modifiers such as elemental damage, crit chance, crit damage, etc. It's more beneficial than normal upgrades. Quality is always more beneficial than normal upgrading. In Fenrir's example. It's fast firing SMG with low damage but high chance to set enemies on fire. If you increase it to Epic, it will have higher chance to set enemies on fire and have more weapon slots. You can install a crunch mod to do more base damage, drastically increasing its DPS. Normal upgrading does not always increase DMG on a per upgrade scale. It may take 2-3 upgrades to get +1 damage. That +5 or +6 crunch weapon damage will make a huge immediate impact. If you can't craft crunch, you can always buy them in gun shops for cheap. Just because upgrade window says the next rarity has less DPS does not mean that is true. After you craft it, you will notice the DPS is considerably higher. Items you have do not scale. They will remain at their stats unless you manually upgrade them. Items in shops will always scale. Items found in the world scale. If you go to a container at lvl 1, a weapon will have one stat set. If you don't loot and and return at lvl 50, it will be completely different in stat set.

[tyke]

Originally posted by Rex:

Like ive had this katana since level 1 and upgraded it to Epic quality. is it worth upgrading it before trying to craft it to legendary? Im kinda confused over crafting/upgrading and when to do either. I found a rare/iconic Fenrir smg and can craft its upgraded version to Epic. But the new version has lower DPS output. I could also upgrade it to increase dps but i dont think thats worth.
In this case, is it better to upgrade its better quality version over upgrading its dps?

still figuring out upgrading and stuff.
seems like theres some RNG rolling stats and such

Distinguish 2 different things:
1) Crafting - Creating an item from a blueprint, or upgrading the Tier of an item (Rare-Legendary-Epic)
2) Upgrading - Increasing the Level of an item

If you have a single item in your inventory and you Upgrade it, each time you increase its Level by Upgrading it, the increase costs for the next time.
So it gets very expensive in materials to upgrade an item of weapon/clothing again and again.
You can change this with mods, such as:
Constant Upgrade Cost
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/2692
So the Upgrade cost stays the same and it doesn't get more expensive.
Or
Item Level Scaled Upgrade Cost
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/2873
So that the cost of components to upgrade an item is based upon the Level of the item, instead of the number of times that item has already been upgraded.

Or you could bypass the whole issue of Upgrading with
Auto Scaling Weapons and Armor
https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/1850
So that items just level up by themselves - though I've not used that mod and I imagine it's the sort of mod could be a bit buggy.

When it comes to Crafting an item I don't really know what the point is. It increases mod slots? It increases some additional stats for it? Whatever, don't care. Not like the game is hard. The game just throws everything at you all the time non-stop.
But if someone wants to use the same item - not craft a new one - and they want to Upgrade that item and carry it through their levels, then if you have a Higher Tier of item, then it requires high quality components in order to upgrade.

So not only I don't see the point in having high Tier items, but if you aren't running a mod to decrease Upgrade costs then It's a huge problem to have a higher tier item if you want to keep upgrading it through the levels.

[Luxaleksium]

Crafting a higher tier (blue, purple, orange) sets item level to 1 less than yours and randomizes stats (sometimes slots), consuming original item during craft
Upgrading an item increases its level by 1 (slight increase to all stats) and does not randomize stats.
Leave both to lvl 50, stash nice things in your car's trunk.

[tyke]

Originally posted by Luxaleksium:

Crafting a higher tier (blue, purple, orange) sets item level to 1 less than yours and randomizes stats (sometimes slots), consuming original item during craft
Upgrading an item increases its level by 1 (slight increase to all stats) and does not randomize stats.
Leave both to lvl 50, stash nice things in your car's trunk.

but what are you going to do with it at level 50? may as well just use items.

the levelling and upgrading system is intentionally designed to discourage people from using the same item.

if people want to get around that system then just use a mod to get around the system

[ƎϽ∀ƎԀ]

I picked up a pistol. Leveled it up 4 times ( what I was allowed ). Now it does 200 more damage than any other pistol. So instead I should run around with all my enemies as bullet sponges so that I can play min/max and put all the really useful stuff in my trunk? Yup, makes real good sense.

[Fizzie]

haha thanks for all the in-depth responses yall.
I think im just gonna take a break from the game till the next update lol. Mods make the game manageable but still not super fun for me