Is it worth buying anything from any vendor?

[Archon]

Guns, cyberware, armor, etc? I'm very early on and I know most games the best stuff comes from open world quests and enemy drops, wasn't sure if CP77 was the same.

[Tokenn]

Certainly cyberware, and clothing if you are going for a specific 'look'. Also, notice that vendor weapons are all unmodded (except for scopes, sometimes), and vendors always have a selection of useful mods and attachments (start collecting mods early and upgrade them for best effect). Netrunner shops can be useful in the early game, but once you start crafting Quickhacks, not so much. I think you have to buy crafting patterns for Tier 3, 4 and 5 Quickhacks, and they are only available from Yoko in Kabuki Market or the guy over in Japantown.

Pharmacy vendors are pretty much useless in the new game...you pick up boosters very commonly, and they don't sell crafting materials any more.

[Silverbane7]

Depends.

Clothing? Only if you want something specific. Like a particular pair of pants, jacket ect, that you know is for sale there.

Guns? Again, depends on specifics. Same with melee weapons. If you want a particular weapon and you know a vendor sells it, yeah.

But, all gear is now tied to level.
Lvl 1 thru 10, you get white quality drops. White quality gear and cyberware in stores.
After that, around ten levels each, better stuff starts dropping and being sold.
By level 40, you start getting gold (orange colour) items and cyberware.

There are exceptions.
Hidden gem items of clothing are usually gold versions. As are the weapons called 'iconics'
(Tho your free pistol, Dying Night, is white quality when you get it from Wilson)
Iconic weapons can be upgraded.
Iconics can be lower quality frames, but their backgrounds are always golden with lines and the term 'iconic' (with clothing not able to be upgraded anymore)

If you really want say, a grenade to be higher quality then yeah, buy it or its crafting spec.
But you will find them, the healing items and the rest of the items, out in the world as loot from crates, drops ect.

[Silverbane7]

Originally posted by Tokenn:

Certainly cyberware, and clothing if you are going for a specific 'look'. Also, notice that vendor weapons are all unmodded (except for scopes, sometimes), and vendors always have a selection of useful mods and attachments (start collecting mods early and upgrade them for best effect). Netrunner shops can be useful in the early game, but once you start crafting Quickhacks, not so much. I think you have to buy crafting patterns for Tier 3, 4 and 5 Quickhacks, and they are only available from Yoko in Kabuki Market or the guy over in Japantown.

Pharmacy vendors are pretty much useless in the new game...you pick up boosters very commonly, and they don't sell crafting materials any more.

I've collected crafting specs for tier 3,4,5 and iconics from breeching the points in game. Only had to 'buy' the first 'ping' quickhack from the quest (the gift)
The longer the bottom choices list of numbers to input, the more likely it is to have ether the quickhack itself, or the spec to make it.

Pharmacy vendors are useful earlier on for Netrunning builds (or hybrids who choose not to use 'overclock') as they sell 'ram jolt' to boost your ram up by 2.
(I miss being able to craft that, lol)
Once your Netrunner turns to 'overclock' tho, health boosters are more useful, or 'heal on kill' cyberware ect.

[Wrecked911]

The short version: Save your eddies for Ripperdocks and Netrunners. They are the most expensive of the bunch and carry gear you won't be able to (easily) obtain out in the wild. Cars and weapons are secondary. Everything else is personal preference.

Ripperdocs: Save your money for here. cyberware costs an arm and a leg, and afaik majority of augmentations are bought-only. Figure out which augmentations you like the most that suit what playstyle you're going for, then save up your crafting materials to spend on upgrading your cyberware instead of buying higher tiers outright. You can burn a ♥♥♥♥-load of Eddies here.

Netrunners: You can collect a lot of quick hacks just by stomping around the map and doing sidequests, but you won't be able to collect them all. This is where you can get your hands on better quick hacks quicker than what the game will offer you in the wild, plus, this is the only place you can buy quickhack component upgrade blueprints. These cost a ♥♥♥♥-load as well

Weapons: It's far easier to just pick guns off of dead gonks after combat, and experiment around until you find a favorite. The catch is a lot of dropped guns will have permanent mods in their slots that you can not take off. That's the biggest perk buying a gun has: they are sold to you completely clean and empty. There's many missions that have hidden legendary weapons, and if you miss them you can buy them from the Black Market Vendor in Dogtown. CPRs sorta failsafe for the player.

Melee Weapons: Same as above.

Vehicles: You'll be stuck with your car for a while until you reach any point in the game where you start getting reward cars. There's several that are purchase-only though. This really depends on how much you like driving and exploring vs just using the fast travel system.

Apartments: Completely extra, but it's nice to have multiple safehouses around the city for extra flair.

Meds: You can get temporary buffs here.

Food: You can get temporary buffs here.

Junk: Sell stuff here. Nothing of value can be purchased unless it is mission specific

Drop Point: Sell stuff here, but quicker.

Clothing: very few have buffs, but something is better than nothing. The nice thing is your equipment slots can have the clothing items with buffs, but your outfit slot (what you look like) can be completely different. This is pretty much the lowest of low priorities.

[Gr4vityFalls]

Wait for level 40 tbh

[NorthernDavid]

Also if you have Phantom Liberty, the expansion specific shops also can sell small permanent boosts that you cannot get otherwise.

[Graf Erik]

Cyberware?
Yes, always. Just randomly finding cyberware is super rare.

Gear?
Yes, if you want to look like YOU want to look. Otherwise you will and up looking like some hobo wearing random junk he found.

Guns?
Its complicated.
Iconic guns can very, very, very rarely be bought. Normal you find them, most of them during quests. But iconic guns arent even necessarily better then stock guns, they are different, come with certain perks. Depending on you playstile that might be better for you or not.
You will also find plenty of normal guns, which you will mostly break down or sell. Some of them, the best, you might want to keep and use. (keep i mind that most found guns will have random mods and you cant removes these)
But every now and then, if you are looking for something specific, and you didnt manage to loot it from a random corspe, you might want to buy it.

(e.g: In my current playthrough I'm now on lvl 20 and I just bough a tier 3 ax. My old one was tier 1+ and I was using that since lvl 5, so I was in desperate need of an upgrade there)

Also you might want to buy weapon mods and attachments.

[Jactar]

I upgraded my grenades to the best models using a gun vendor. For some reason, just playing the game never dropped the best version of grenades.

Sometimes you also find good iconic weapons from some gun vendors. At late game you have a lot of cash so buying all you can you can waste at least some of it.

[yahboi1988]

Go to every vendor in Dog Town though as they have permanent stat boost items for sale.

[Tangan Konduktif]

cyberware, hacks and clothes are worth it but I rather find weapons in open world because they are free and better

[Yes_1_am]

If you like using grenades, I recommend buying the recipe and making it yourself. Otherwise it's not important.

[burnouttx]

Unless it is iconic, the only chooms I buy from are ripperdocs and netrunners. Everything else, I be a loot goblin. If you got a bounty, I shoots you and take your shinies. Sometimes I don't drive, I run around everywhere and relieve Night City of it's gang population just for the trash run to keep my wallet fat and collect the crafting materials.

[MrFizzlepop]

As mentioned previously, yeah, shops are better than you thought.

Silencers reduce damage less at higher tiers, grenades do more, quickhacks and the decks that runs them gain more bells and whistles as they are upgraded, and they aren't dropping like candy.

Go to the ripperdoc and check out the different cyberdecks, though the default is considered one of the best.

One deck extends the tracing process so you have more time before combat starts, another adds damage to DOTs, etc. Even if you aren't mainly a netrunner, the sooner you switch to the one that best suits your playstyle, you sooner you get to a better gaming experience.

Clothing that is disassembled still shows up for clothing choices in wardrobe, and there are helmets, glasses, vests, and netrunner suits, that still add stats, oh and harnesses that now add to item recharge speed.

Equipment you wear, like helmet, googles, netrunning suit and vest, should be spared disassembly to raise stats by equipping them.

Outside Dogtown you'll only need to shop at the ripperdoc, netrunner, clothing, and gun shop to stay ahead of the pack.

As mentioned be someone above, every petty vendor (Junk, Drugs, Food, etc) in Dogtown sells one permanent buff. They are all a really small buff, but permanent.

[n0mad23]

There's occasional weapon mods for sale at gun shops that I almost never find to pick up out in exploration. Worth purchasing imo.

[ImHelping]

Might have been mentioned already. But the Dogtown DLC shops sell a single "Small +health" and "Small +stamina recovery" consumables even at food and junk vendors.

Which I overlooked FOREVER because of how it was the black market (to buy iconics you unlocked but missed grabbing) and all the DLC ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cybernetics that takes up your attention for DLC shopping.

There are a few weapons they put on vendors specifically as part of an old update, but that might literally just be too cool knives. To be fair they are very cool knives, the blue fang (throw Didn't kill them? cause a stun instead if they are not immune!) and headhunter (throw didn't kill them? Next gun headshot gets a combo bonus and warps knife into your pocket faster)

I can't remember the last time I saw an orange silencer for sale instead of loot. But you definitely want the orange silencer with the flavor text "Oh by the way this auto crits from stealth" on it.

Annoyed the auto crits cool perk at 20 cool does not work for non revolver handguns? Put it on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DLC pistol with +50% crit damage and watch it deal more damage than the overatch sniper rifle!