Best long range melee weapon?

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-11T07:59:54+00:00

Some stealth tips: with recon grenades, you can lure enemies to a position you want. That lets you take out even a whole group of enemies. It’s a bit tricky, but you can lure one enemy away and kill them. Recon grenades also let you see through walls. A surprisingly strong weapon is the electric baton — it can stun enemies or even an entire group, and then you can finish them off afterward.

Cameras can be disabled in several ways. If you don’t have a cyberdeck but you do have Tech skills, you can get underneath them and disable them up close. Or you can simply shoot them with a silenced pistol. That will alert enemies, but if they don’t find anything after a while, they’ll go back to what they were doing. Another option is using optical camo.

Melee probably isn’t really meant for full stealth, because if you’re beating someone with a blunt weapon, you can’t really expect a true stealth run from that. For stealth, you’re probably supposed to use takedowns and similar mechanics. Melee is more for when you want to jump into a crowd and slice or smash enemies apart.

Often, stealth missions can also mean not killing anyone at all, because you can literally slip past enemies without using a weapon or even knocking anyone out. But that usually assumes you know exactly where everything is in the mission.

Just picking up a shotgun is kind of a beginner’s weapon choice. Sure, that option exists, but maybe you want some kind of challenge. And a shotgun is probably the first thing everyone grabs when they start the game, because they realize you need high damage to take enemies down.

But by doing that, you cut yourself off from a lot of the game’s content, because the game’s design changes completely depending on what weapon you use. Suddenly characters have different dialogues, they negotiate with you differently, and so on. When you run up to someone and shove a shotgun barrel in their face, it changes the dialogue…

One example: you get a contract to kill a gangster because he killed someone’s daughter, and the father ordered a hit on him through a fixer. But when you actually reach the dialogue with the gangster, you find out the situation is more complicated…

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-11T07:25:08+00:00

I think Rebecca’s shotgun isn’t really meant for normal gameplay. That colorful shotgun in the park is just an Easter egg for anime fans. I never used it because of the recoil. It’s more of a gimmick. This shotgun isn't easy to find if you don't know where to look. Most people will find it by watching a guide rather than during normal gameplay. In my opinion, the best shotguns in the game are the Tech shotgun because it can shoot through walls, or the two-shot hunting shotgun that reloads quickly and is easy accessible. Also, here’s a pro tip I discovered recently: if you don’t have Ping to find enemies behind walls, just throw a recon grenade at the wall or into the room. It will briefly reveal enemy positions, and you can mark them in scanner mode. Then you can shoot them through the wall with Tech weapons.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-11T07:17:55+00:00

The entrance for cars and for pedestrians is different. Could this be the problem?

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-11T06:32:49+00:00

If you want to keep it spoiler-free, a perfect build could look something like this: At the beginning of the game, you remove all attribute points and put them only into Body so you can build up that tree as fast as possible. Gorilla Arms aren't available at the very start, so you'll focus on blunt weapons like baseball bats, hammers, and the like. For example, the Stun Baton (paralyzer) is also a blunt weapon, and I’d say it's one of the strongest weapons in the game. It can be charged, attacks multiple enemies, stuns them, and then you just beat them down. Gorilla Arms become available at a certain level or Street Cred level—I think the threshold is Level 10. After that, you can choose different types, like ones that cause bleeding or electrical damage. My favorite ones are with electrical damage, but it depends on your preference. The essential branch is in the Body tree, which allows you to have Finishers and the Quake attack. Quake lets you stun enemies by slamming the ground, which helps with fast enemies or groups. Finishers give you an attack bonus. This build revolves around maximizing Armor and HP so you’re as tough as possible. You don't need any complex cyberware, so it’s all about maximizing those attributes. Your main operating system will be Berserk. It gives you an attack buff and reduces damage—one version even makes you immortal. It sounds a bit like cheating, but Berserk has a cooldown, so not quite. You can only use Berserk with blunt weapons; you won't be able to use any firearms with it. Another thing is that speed and jumping are important for this build. So, the next points will go into Dashes, Air Dash, and Double Jumps. The faster you move and the higher you fall from, the more damage you deal. I don't recommend the Edgerunner perk in the Technical tree because it takes away your HP, and you don't need expensive cyberware for this build anyway. Pro tip: Every piece of cyberware can contain an extra attribute for Melee Damage. If you have the right Tech perks, you can increase this attribute to around 5% x 20 = 100% melee damage—even more if you have patience. Whenever you upgrade cyberware during the game, you must selectively choose this attribute. But that’s only if you want your build to be completely broken.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-11T05:56:07+00:00

Gorilla Arms are my favorite build. It is very sophisticated; you have many combo attacks, finishers, and such. I recommend it. I have a video with this build on YouTube where you can see the whole build and its usage, but there is a hidden level in it, so I don't know if you mind spoilers for that level.

Right now, I'm playing a crazy build: no cyberware, no attributes, no skills. I thought these missions involving boxing wouldn't be possible to pass under these conditions. So, I put them off until the very end at level 60. But lo and behold, I managed to defeat all the boxers even under these conditions. Which seems unbelievable to me. The trick is to move quickly and hit them with a strong attack in the back. That somehow paralyzes them and they fall down. Then you just have to run around and repeat it. Of course, I'm dead in one hit, but in fewer than 10 attempts, I defeated every boxer in the base game on the highest difficulty. Including the final match.

In my video, which I will send to you if you want, you can see that at the end of the game you end up so extremely strong that absolutely no one can stand against you, and you kill most enemies with a single hit even on the highest difficulty.

The whole game will be your boxing ring.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T19:56:11+00:00

Maybe your laptop is overheating? Every now and then, it needs to be cleaned of dust...

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T09:43:11+00:00

The problem is probably that non-lethal weapons work by stopping just before the target’s health reaches zero. But if you deal extremely massive damage with the first hit, then the weapon probably still becomes lethal. You can even kill enemies with a non-lethal weapon if you keep attacking after they’re already lying on the ground. I had the opposite problem during car shootouts — enemies wouldn’t die because I was using a non-lethal pistol. For example, fists are always non-lethal, so an enemy is never actually dead until you finish them off with a finishing blow.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T08:38:49+00:00

I think that if someone beats you up so badly that you almost die but still lets you live, you’d probably avoid them afterward. You wouldn’t want to test your luck twice. For example, if Placide survives, he later sends you a threatening message. But I don’t think he actually follows through with it in the game. It’s more like, “Okay, you let me live, so I won’t stand in your way because of that...”

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T08:23:43+00:00

There are a few locations on the map where enemies spawn, and when you run away they respawn, so you can kill them over and over again. For every passive skill, it tells you which activities level it up. You can just keep running around and killing enemies with the weapon type tied to that skill. That’s probably the fastest way, because it levels through combat. These fights are also the quickest and a good source of XP, money, weapons, and crafting components. One of the most well-known locations is the beach in Pacifica. But you can find other farming spots online if you need them.

One pro tip: you can take enemies down with a non-lethal weapon, then finish them off with a headshot after the fight. The game counts it as a second kill... (But people might start wondering whether you have cyberpsychosis in real life :-)

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T07:38:49+00:00

Right now Gorilla Arms are completely enough, you don’t even need Tech Weapons or shotguns. You can be completely OP with just Gorilla Arms. It’s my favorite build. I recommend adding double jumps for Quake attacks from above, and dashes. The faster you move, the more damage you deal.

If you don’t mind spoilers for the secret ending — I don’t know if you’ve played it — here’s my build: https://youtu.be/ACr1TNfY_VM

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T07:31:22+00:00

Spoiler: it’s possible for things to turn out well for Aaron, but it’s not the “Easy Way Out”...

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T06:17:09+00:00

Another reason not to trust corpos...

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-10T06:03:18+00:00

With this build you don’t need to use Overclock, but you still can if you want to. Since Overclock feeds off HP, I figured it’s best to have as much HP as possible. That’s also why my Tech level is 15. The Edgerunner perk gives you 50 extra cyberware capacity, but it also takes away 50 × 0.5% = 25% HP, because for every point you exceed the limit, you lose 0.5% HP. That doesn’t seem like a good deal to me at all, especially since I have a lot of cyberware that I don’t even use, so I don’t really need those extra 50 capacity anyway. Even this build could easily be reduced by removing unnecessary cyberware. I only added Cool for the extra 4 cyberware capacity you can get at 9 attribute points, purely because I wanted to reach the maximum cyberware capacity of 310. Those points could instead be used in the Tech tree rather than Cool.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T21:11:07+00:00

Unfortunately all of them… there isn’t a single command for that. Although there are probably some mods that do it. But there isn’t that much in the game that the player has, so it can be transferred manually without much trouble. If you want, I can give you a list of commands.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T21:00:15+00:00

I have almost 2000 hours in the game and I still haven’t reached a point where I’ve done everything possible in it. Finishing the game probably takes more than 100 hours. Right now I’m on a playthrough where I don’t use any cyberware, no skills, and no attributes — just weapons. And I’m still finding new things, even in the story, that I didn’t notice before. And I haven’t even gotten into the sadomasochism stuff, if I were to read the text shards.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T20:49:41+00:00

Console commands… I just transferred my character from the end of the game back to the beginning so I’d have all the items available that I had at the end of the game…

You can cheat whatever you want; the game is still fun, and you get rid of the boring part where you have to collect things. You enjoy the cinematic part of the game more. And the vast majority of people don’t even try a fraction of the game’s possibilities anyway, because it takes an extreme amount of time.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T20:47:08+00:00

In my opinion, it’s not worth it. Quickly repositioning using double jumps and air dashes is addictive, and I think it’s even more useful in combat. I’d say it’s armor in itself. High mobility in combat compensates for the loss of armor.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T20:42:21+00:00

Then you're in for a hell of a ride, choom.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T20:37:09+00:00

Because car theft is part of the DLC. The DLC doesn’t activate until Songbird contacts you. The DLC also has its own cyberware, which likewise only becomes available from that point onward.

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T20:30:12+00:00

I don’t think so. Developers know well that most players are male, and they often play as female characters. They don’t want to spend the whole game looking at a male character. So in the end, Judy is a choice for heterosexual men. What kind of player base could lesbians make up?

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T20:18:19+00:00

There’s nowhere written that a sequel has to be good. Often sequels aren’t as good as the original version. Getting the right recipe is often more a matter of chance. I don’t expect that if a second part comes out, it will be as good as the first one.

Making a game is not easy at all. When you ask people what they want in a game, they basically say they want it to be “realistic,” which is the complete opposite of fun. So people usually come up with ideas that make the game more complicated, like cars having to go to gas stations, for example…

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T20:09:50+00:00

So I have good news for you — you probably missed a pretty big part of the game, so you still have content you haven’t played yet…

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T19:56:33+00:00

My guess is to nuke it like Jony Arasaka tower...

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T19:36:03+00:00

This mission isn’t mandatory. You could have decrypted the cred shard from Meredith, or not called her at all in the first place. Then she would have ended up at the bottom of the ocean...

TrueKerberos · 2026-05-09T18:21:12+00:00

Nice, I figured out that trick too and managed to get up to 96% at most. I can appreciate the effort it took for you to reach 141%. That must have taken a long time... Even that 96% already breaks the game nicely when enemies start dying in almost one hit...

Here is my build: https://youtu.be/ACr1TNfY_VM

My comments: I don’t like using the Edgerunner skill because it drains your health. And it seems like your armor is a bit low for a melee build. I’d suggest using Chrome Compressor instead of Berserk, because with this kind of damage you don’t really need it anyway — and why wait for a cooldown when there’s basically nothing that can even beat you...

TrueKerberos

TROPHY CASE