Cyberpunk 2077's 1.5 patch nerfed the hell out of crits without telling you

(Image credit: CD Projekt)

Cyberpunk 2077's huge 1.5 patch landed the other day, and the patch notes detail changes made to everything from enemy combat AI to an overhaul of the driving system to V's apartment decorating options and ability to get a haircut mid-game.

But the patch notes don't tell the full story. Players have noticed some pretty big changes in patch 1.5 that aren't covered in the patch notes, many of them pertaining to a major nerfing of V's crit chance and crit damage. YouTuber One Dragon has an excellent, in-depth breakdown (which I found via this Reddit post by headin2sound) of a whole host of changes introduced in patch 1.5 that don't appear anywhere in the patch notes.

For example, players used to be able to stack the Bully and Deadeye legendary clothing mods, both of which have a huge effect on V's crits. Bully increases crit damage by 30%, and Deadeye increases crit damage by 20% and crit chance by 7%.

Prior to patch 1.5 you could pile multiple versions of these mods up by stuffing them into V's various clothing slots, and all those beautiful crit modifiers stacked. The end result was potentially a 100% chance of a crit and a simply ridiculous amount of crit damage, which could lead to (as shown in the video) one-shotting hulking cybermonster boss Adam Smasher and knocking out heavyweight boxing champ Razor Hughes with just a couple punches.

The stacking of those mods, by the way, seems to have been introduced in patch 1.2 in March of last year (prior to that the Deadeye mod didn't actually function at all). Now, these mods can only be slotted into specific categories of clothing—Deadeye will only slot into eyewear, for example, meaning it can no longer be stacked with duplicate mods in other pieces of clothing. Legendary mods also now require legendary clothing, or else they can't be equipped at all, which also makes things harder.

That's not the only change to crits in patch 1.5. As One Dragon points out, adding a point to V's reflexes automatically came with a 1% increase to crit chance. That has been lowered to .25% per reflex point. Leveling up the Cold Blood perk (part of the Cool attribute) used to grant a 10% increase to crit chance with each level—that's now been shaved down to a mere 1% per level. Even V's default crit damage at level one has been cut in half, from 100 to 50. It's like CDPR has declared a war on crits.

Some weapons took a hit when it comes to crits as well. The Breakthrough, a legendary sniper rifle, formerly had a +75% crit chance and +200% crit damage. Now it has a mere +4.2 % crit chance and +26.25% crit damage, a shockingly big reduction, and it's a good bet that other legendary weapons have also been similarly nerfed. Some cyberware has been nerfed as well—shown in the video, the legendary Visual Cortex Support cyberware has been reduced from a 45% crit chance down to 30%. A legendary Limbic System Enhancement now gives a 7% increase of crit chance, where before the patch it was 25%.

So, if you've been playing a crit-focused build of V, it looks like you'll no longer be the unstoppable god of critical hits, which is maybe for the best? I imagine it's fun running around Night City scoring crits with each hit and doing absurd amounts of damage, but it's probably not all that challenging.

I recommend watching One Dragon's entire video, as it's got useful information on other changes that don't appear in the patch notes, such as tweaks made to armor and the Armadillo mod, the adjustment in the number of clothing mod slots, and more details on patch 1.5.

I haven't played the new patched version myself (except to check out the new character customization options and V's new apartments), but when I played Cyberpunk 2077 back in December, it still felt like an Early Access game to me. Hopefully this new patch (even with these rather drastic changes) brings it closer to feeling whole.

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.