Cyberpunk 2077 Best Weapons: The Ten Worth Chasing and Their Chrome

Night City sells guns on every corner and almost none of the ones worth carrying are for sale. Nine of the ten below are earned rather than bought, pulled off a body, looted out of a room or crafted from a spec that drops somewhere specific, and the tenth costs six figures. Before any of that matters, though, there is a decision nobody tells you about at the start: every gun in this game belongs to one of three classes, and two of those classes are close to inert until you have paid a Ripperdoc for the implant that switches them on.

Three classes, and the chrome each one is waiting for

Power weapons fire rounds that bounce off hard surfaces, which sounds like a novelty until you realise you can aim at a wall instead of at the man behind it. The bounce becomes something you can steer rather than hope for once the Ballistics Coprocessor is installed. Tech weapons charge, and a charged shot goes through armour and, on some of them, through the wall the armour is standing behind. Smart weapons fire rounds that chase the target, and they do nothing of the sort until the Smart Link is in your arm, which is a very common reason a new player picks up a highly rated smart gun and decides it is rubbish. Our best cyberware guide covers what else is worth the capacity, and our Ripperdoc locations guide says which clinic to walk into.

The ten, ranked

Read that ranking as a list of what each gun solves rather than a ladder of raw numbers, because the top and bottom entries are separated by convenience more than by damage. Sasquatch's Hammer swings with a 200 percent base damage multiplier and comes last on the list anyway, because it counts as a very heavy weapon and a very heavy weapon takes away your sprint and your dodge. Standing still in this game is how you die. If you miss it during I Walk the Line, the Dogtown stadium vendor stocks it later.

What the top four actually do

Ba Xing Chong is Adam Smasher's shotgun and it stopped behaving like a shotgun in the 2.0 update, when it became a launcher that sends homing rockets at up to six targets at once. Stack grenade perks on top and it ends encounters rather than winning them. The catch is timing: the access token comes off Smasher's corpse, the armoury only opens after the credits, and there is no route to it that skips the ending. Every ending hands over the token, so the choice you make at the end does not cost you the gun. Our Adam Smasher boss guide is the page for getting that far.

Comrade's Hammer is a revolver with one explosive round in it and the accuracy requirements of a shotgun, which is a fair description of why it sits second. It punches through the heaviest armour in the game and it makes you reload after every single shot. The 2.0 update gave it an instant reload off a quick melee, which is the fix for the reload problem if you are willing to walk into range to use it, and took away its ability to shoot through walls. Errata is the melee answer: it sets what it hits on fire, it closes the gap for you with a leap, and every follow-up swing on a burning target is a critical. Widow Maker fires two chemical rounds at a time, poisons what it hits and shoots through cover, at the price of an eight-round chamber that empties in four trigger pulls.

The one you buy, and the two that ask for perks

Order is Brick's customised double barrel, and it is the exception on this page: you pay Herold at the Dogtown black market for it, in six figures. Charge it past two thirds and it deletes whatever is in front of it. Hawk is a different kind of trade. Aiming down its sights marks whoever you headshot and leaves them slowed, off balance, unable to use abilities and hitting for less, which is excellent, and it does that by weakening your headshot damage and cutting the magazine by a fifth. It wants the Sharpshooter perk before it makes sense. Ogou fires two explosive rounds per burst with a dismemberment chance, and any follow-up shot into a dismembered enemy lands as a critical.

Malorian Arms 3516 is Johnny Silverhand's pistol and it is on this list partly because of whose it is. It looks and sounds like nothing else in the game, and it does not hit hard enough for late-game armour, with no mod slots left after the recent updates. Yinglong is a craftable smart SMG that has been in the game since launch, deals electrical damage and has exactly one mod slot. Our two articles disagree about where its spec drops, one naming an Animals boss called Denzel Cryer during a suspected organised crime activity in Heywood and the other naming the hustle in Wellsprings, which is in Heywood, so treat those as the same job described twice.

Five to pick up in the first few hours

None of the ten above is an opening-act weapon, and you do not need one. Dying Night, a Power pistol, is waiting downstairs in the 2nd Amendment shop inside V's apartment block. Lizzie, a Tech pistol, comes out of Lizzie's Bar. Satori, a katana, and Kongou, a Power pistol, are both in Yorinobu's penthouse during The Heist. Chaos, a Tech pistol whose damage type rerolls on every reload, comes off Royce during The Pickup, and only if you kill him. All five are iconic, all five scale if you keep upgrading them, and the precise room each one sits in appears on our iconic weapon locations guide. That page is also where our two accounts of Lizzie and Satori part company. Where they do, trust the iconic page: those weapons are its subject and a passing mention here is not.

For everything else Night City puts a price on, our main Cyberpunk 2077 guide sorts the collection by which bill you are currently staring at.

FAQ

What is the best weapon in Cyberpunk 2077?

Ba Xing Chong, Adam Smasher's smart shotgun, which fires homing rockets at up to six targets. It only unlocks from his armoury after the credits roll.

Do smart weapons work without cyberware?

Not properly. Their rounds only home in once the Smart Link is installed, which is why a smart gun feels weak to a new player who has not been to a Ripperdoc.

Can you buy the best weapons in Cyberpunk 2077?

Mostly no. Order is sold by Herold in the Dogtown stadium for six figures, and Sasquatch's Hammer can be bought there if you miss it, but the rest are looted or crafted.

What weapons should I get early in Cyberpunk 2077?

Dying Night from the shop in V's building, Lizzie, then Satori and Kongou during The Heist, and Chaos from Royce in The Pickup if you kill him.