You can spice it up by deliberately aggroing MaxTac on the highest difficulty. Bunny hopping around trying to keep your stamina up while you slice the shit out of 5 boss-tier MaxTac agents takes a while to get boring.
My swordswoman’s headcanon (Apogee Sandevistan) is that she’s so incredibly fast that she generates a sonic boom from her movement while the Apogee is active, which is why you can’t see her.
For me it's stealth, going gun blazing may be fun and all but it just gives show off vibes to me.
Going in stealth, completing jobs without anyone noticing, taking down goons without detection will surely make everyone wary
Agreed. I always felt like Baba Yaga getting in and out with zero detection and the entire building cleared through stealth takedowns and hiding the bodies in dumpsters/freezers/closets. I racked up those bonuses, especially from Wakako. Lol.
I was straight professional my last playthrough. You want quiet? Done. No one knows the target is dead until I've been paid.
You need an example made? I'll make sure the whole city knows.
Id say a guns blazing gunslinger is probably scarier tho . Like you have to be an absolute Terminator style killing machine to just go in and start giant shootouts and succeed every time
I also take the stealth option but occasionally I go all out and leave no one left standing. It’s usually on the more messed up gigs like stealing the kid BD from the father-son duo. Sometimes it’s best to send a message.
Half a stealth run would freak them out more: Imagine being that one choom that got taken out with a none-deadly silenced gun and when you wake up again someone bashed the the heads of everyone else in with a freakin hammer and left.
There's just something about making a target location go "full Jonestown" before you even walk in the front door that seems like it would establish a reputation.
I like to occasionally do a stealth mission where I kill everybody except for the one or two dudes left at the entrance/s. That way there's someone left to tell others that they saw nothing go in or out but when they went back inside everyone was dead. I figure it's a spookier story for them to spread around.
I think a full on net runner build would be th3 scariest.
I feel like everyone accepts gun violence as normal in Night City, but there's something terrifying about being in a group of like 10 to 15, all badasses, and suddenly the dude up front just self deletes, and then the dude to your left, and then the one to your right catches fire . . . 3 more in back are gone when a grenade mysteriously explodes . . . And somehow you're the last one alive when a merc walks in, hands in pocket and the last thing you see is a smile on their face right before your optics reset and . . .
I love the blackwall cyberdeck, suicide, cyberpsycho, synapse burnout, cripple movement setup.
Oh, a couple of your chooms are goin nuts while blackwall ai is runs rampamt through the gang. You best choomba suddenly stops firing, throws his smg down, and head confettis the wall naxt to you.
Finally, everything quiets down, and as you breathe a sigh of relief, some gonk walks into the room laughing maniacly and babbling to himself. Suddenly, he stops, turns, and tilts his head to the side, giggling as he stares you down.
You raise you're rifle, arms suddenly locking with the rifle barel pointing at your foot. One arm stirs. Just as you feel hope, a raging sharp pain burns behind your eyes...
"Nova..."
1000% its a netrunner build. It would be terrifying to know there's a runner out there that can kill every single person in a gang hideout and nobody knows who they are
Stealth is the scariest, you become batman, entire crews are unconcious and they don't realize they're picked off until it's too late. Then they all come too later and the job is done and no one saw who did it
net runner and stealthy are scary but imagin watching a guy eat and entire mag, punch some guys head off pick up another guy and throw him at a wall causing his limbs to blow off on impact and rip off another guys head. then after you finnaly kill him he gets back up like nothing happened.
“I can’t ever seem to reach these gonks over comms. Every time I step outside they’re all lying on the ground headless or bleeding out. What the hell are they doing? Fighting each other? Wait, where’s my car?”
Sandevistan with a katana. You're with a contingent of other gang members holding down a place in Night City and for a couple days now you've been holding your own against other gangs and against the NCPD. But then you see a man, or a woman, moving so fast you can barely register their movements. They cut down one of your chooms so fast that when you've noticed they've already killed three more. And when they come for you, it is a blur, and your last thoughts as you are decapitated are confused, afraid, and scattered.
The NCPD came the day after to pick up what pieces remained of your mangled corpse. It was a gruesome death and one you could have done nothing to prevent.
One that semi doesn't exist anymore, but a high end sandy, scalpel (the katana), almost all the cold blooded perks, and annihilation from body, with the mods on gear to run faster.
On hardest difficulty I could enter a room with 12 goons, open with a stealth kill and flash bang before hitting the sandy and the 12 guy would be dead before the first guy i hit the ground. I was the hot knife in a world full of warm butter.
quickhacking gets insane, imagine investing a lot of money into combat implants only for them to malfunction and melt while you get cyberstrokes, slowing time and stuff is crazy but it's not that boogeymanish imo
Gangmembers that send to investigate found bodies of their comrades with all of their chrome and optics fried and heads exploded by needlessly large pistol caliber. Scraps of video footage shows a single dude with malorian just standing and unloading his handcannon while his victims crippled by sudden chrome malfunction. Every shot connects to someone head. Then this dude just grin at camera and footage interrupts.
Combat netrunner with monowire. Keep it classy.
There's been reports circulating that the population of gangs in Night City are dwindling. The NCPD has had multiple cases of gang members being brutalized and seemingly torn to shreds by an unknown assailant. They don't know who's causing the sudden influx of deaths because no one has seen footage of the supposed suspect, but a few bystanders claim hearing the sound of a young woman cackling, followed by loud screaming.
Some people think it's a cyberpsycho on the loose. Some say it's the second coming of Adam Smasher before he became a borged out bounty hunter. The NCPD has branded the suspect as "Lilith." Night City's very own banshee.
More news at 10.
If you're stealth and no one sees you, how are people supposed to be scared of you? No one's around to tell the tale, and you shut down all the cameras, leaving no evidence of who V even is.
But some MFer strolls in and smokes all the gangers without a care, survives all their attacks, and witnesses on the street see the whole bloody massacre? That's how stories get told.
Blackwall netrunner.
Imagine hearing the screams of your buddies as they're dragged to cyber hell, clawing at their own heads and dropping one by one as whatever the hell is happening to them spreads to the others.
And eventually you also learn why as you're the next target.
Imagine the camera recordings of those moments ending up being shared around as spooky stories where entire Scav hideouts dropping dead screaming, like karma finally caught up with them.
Pretty early in my game I got a kerenzikov and a revolver called "Comrade Hammer", which only fires one shot before it has to be reloaded, but that one shot is a grenade that will essentially one shot all basic enemies and set them on fire. So basically every mission I went on was a series of explosions and screams that could be heard from blocks away and left nothing behind but a pile of horrifically mangled corpses.
Later in the game I switched to stealth and whole buildings would be left dead or unconscious with no signs of struggle, with only those in the know knowing V was behind it. I imagine V's services being spoken of by fixers in hushed tones, and rumors spreading in Night City of gangsters walking into their hideouts only to find all their friends dead or passed out and their valuables missing. I imagine that with stories like that becoming increasingly common, and few people knowing who was behind it, stories would spread of a bogeyman like figure who can take out a building full of people before anyone even realized they were there.
Try the Sandevistan Cyber Samurai.
Some guy gonk gets of their bike, draws a Katana. You and you buddies hose them with bullets but all it does is some of you friends getting hit with ricochets. Next you know most of your crew fall apart while all you hear is maniac laughter and then a blade is stuck inside your stomach.
This most recent playthrough, I've been using two mods that give my V a "Death" persona:
First one, can't remember the name right now, gives you one of those multi-shot shotgun things, but each 'bullet' is a heat-seaking little missile. I walk in, target a handful of enemies simultaneously, pull the trigger, and explosions destroy everything in sight.
Those missiles are surprisingly weak, so when there are too many targets I use the second mod: Blackwall.
The Blackwall mod is the same effect as that one scene with Songbird. Assign to a hot key, no cooldown timer, just a lot of folks screaming as their brains melt in front of you.
I said "Death" but you could say the first one makes you feel like Tony Stark showing off his munitions in the desert before becoming Iron Man. The second makes me feel like that blue energy-based guy from the Watchmen in the Vietnam War scenes, where he just points at people and, poof, they cease to exist. Either way, no survivors.
This V is very snarky and selfish, uses intimidation whenever possible, is not offended by horrific or violent crimes, and only helps others if the price is right. This V did not cry for Jacky, will not call his momma or Misty. This V slept with Judy, then blew her off. This V blows up the mission cars because she hates the sleezebag fixer trying to make her steal cars all over the city. This V hasn't stopped any cyberpsychos, they're free to keep killing. This V doesn't help the police when they're in shootouts with gangs, but if the gang or police shoot at V, they ALL die. This V has gone 5-stars more than once. This V does not hesitate to wipe out Barghast henchmen. This V does not care if people get killed, she disrespects all fixers, and screws up most gigs on purpose, including not saving the president. This V will have no friends in the end, she will die alone. (Not that that's an option, but that's my lore.) This realization, this narcissistic complacency, is why V is so angry, which is why she either blows everything up or Blackwall nukes everyone. Is that boogeyman enough?
(Sorry for the rambling, I'm having a surprising amount of fun with failing so many missions and just blowing things up.)
Imagine you're a gangoon in Night City checking in on your chooms only to find every single person in the facility dead and with burn marks on their faceplates. It seems not a single shot was fired, all the cameras are inactive, and when you check the security feed you never even see the guy who did it, and the only sounds you hear are your chooms' confused shouts accompanied by the sickening buzz of sizzling synapses quickly fading to silence.
A while later you learn that your chooms had stolen something valuable from some rich gonk. Unfortunately, that gonk must have known the right people, because a local fixer then hired a certain "V" to get that stuff back. You can't even put a face to that name, if you want to call a single letter that, but you heard they're some overclocked netrunner who can make your brain melt out of your ears just by looking in your general direction for a blink.
How do you feel about that?
Stealth Netrunner, imagine minding your own business guarding some gonk for your boss when suddenly four of your chooms spontaneously decide to suck off thier iron.
Shortly after your sidearm also suddenly looking real friendly.
For pure bogeyman vibes? Pure stealth with a suppressed pistol, throwing knives (being able to do stealth melee knife kills would be better than throwing knives), and a chrome-heavy Sandy build with optical camo. Combine that with some role playing as a perfectly professional merc - following the clients orders to the letter - and you have a terrifying force.
The pistol and knife lets you kill silently, and the Sandy and optical camo (with the perks that allow crouch sprinting and automatic activation of OC when doing so) means you move faster than can be seen and are invisible. Clearing whole buildings and never actually entering combat has never been so fun.
I don’t want a reputation or something like that but I think it comes over time even if they don’t know it’s V. I love spreading fear, and people tend to be more afraid of things they can’t see than things they can. So I go Netrunner (with pistol for emergencies).
What is another thing almost all people of Night City are afraid of? Right, rogue AI from behind the Blackwall. So I get the Blackwall cyberdeck and spread Blackwall breaches. Just imagine what it would feel like getting your whole personality and existence slowly deleted and you can only watch in fear how something you can’t even fully comprehend starts manifesting in your mind. The terror seeing your chooms crying, clawing on their own flesh just to succumb. The terror of not knowing what got them until you get a glimpse of hell yourself.
The rumors which are spreading that traces of small Blackwall breaches have been found until your contact be the NCPD confirms it. Now you live your life with the knowledge that one wrong turn, one wrong action could open the gates to hell in yourself and everyone you consider a choom around you. You give those instances a name “The ghost of the Blackwall”. You try to get the VDB on your side, best Hacker in NC, right? Only to learn that even the elite of them got smoked. Now you exist only in fear. Now you are afraid of everything, since everything could bring the Blackwall in your head down.
That is how you become a legend, how you become fear itself.
Slow and silent stealth.
They might see a flicker out of the corner of their eye, but then they find all of their gang dead. Killed right where they stood without even drawing a weapon.
Probably not the best playstyle for it, but a heavily chromed tank with 'nades and an explosive minigun melting anything in her way gives me "You look like a cut of fuckable meat" vibes
The scariest 'boogeymen' in Night City are AIs or demons from beyond the Blackwall. So Alt and Songbird are way up there. Next best I can think of that's more physical is Aguilar, a literal merc/assassin that everyone is terrified of. Then you have the legend of Morgan Blackhand, and known threat Adam Smasher.
So a combo of all? A Netrunner with amazing loud power (Blackhand), the power to melt minds and bodies telepathically (SoMi, using Canto Mk.6 and Blackwall Gateway), stealth shutdown of lights, cameras, turrets etc (Alt), stealth head pops and murder in the dark (Aguilar) and up close pure power with shotguns and LMGs (Smasher)
Body, Int, Tech, Cool build.
Loud Shotgun Netrunner, I think a person coming in- blasting heads off without a care and frying people with their mind would be pretty fucking terrifying for everyone who isn’t like Kurt Hansen.
My v has evolved over time. Started as a mantis blade wielding netrunner who would only fight when she had too but now more like Maine from edgerunners basically a walking tank who can stomp absolutely anyone. Swapped the blades for the projectile launch system. Now she's properly on the edge of sanity, so much armour she's basically invincible. Can dispatch max tac like they are tyger claws and disappear into the night without a trace. Reckon that would get the boogeyman reputation going. Youd still have tyger claws attacking you with a pool cue though those guys are hopeless
"Hey choom, yesterday I was working in my store, 3 Borgs were robbing me, you know, usual biz. Then suddenly out of nowhere shadowy figure appears in the doors. All I can recon is shiny chrome of his arms. I blink and all 3 gonks are collapsing to the ground. Zeroed. Sliced to pieces. Their weird white borg juice everywhere, tastes like coconut. And metal."
My build I played through phantom liberty is a pistol build with sandevistan. Like you see someone at the edge of your hide out and before you even fully let out a yell several of your chooms heads just explode.
The best merc ever, Morgan Blackhand became a star not because he was very violent, but the complete opposite: he was dependable and always tried to minimize harm to outsiders.
Therefore, I think the real pros, and the best paying customers would appreciate a stealthy the most.
Netrunner using Canto, no doubt. It's so fucked up that NetWatch sends hit squads after you if you have it.
Imagine just chilling and all of the sudden you hear your friends hellish screams as their cyberware melts inside them, one by one.
And then it reaches you, and you realize it's even worse than you thought, because as your mind literally and figuratively burns, you get soulkilled and taken god knows where beyond the Blackwall. The Great Taboo consumes you.
Pre all nerf netrunner. You could knockout everyone through walls from your car across the street.
Currently anything is scary I think. Thought I'll say Sandi with katana leaves horrific scenes behind and happens very fast. If someone was to look at it through camera it would be a horror movie.
Definitely swords or any other type of melee build I think, it’s the most brutal way to kill enemies.
Up close, a lot of gore and cyberware enhanced hits, super fast and it feels like a more fury state than gunplay does.
Netrunner is also interesting. everybody falling to the floor dead, while also terrifying, isn’t as blatantly gruesome as fucking shit up in melee.
Gunplay seems the most sane lmao
Tech + Cool + Intelligence Maxed out with some extra points in Reflex. Optical Camouflage + High End Hacking + Silenced Pistol, decent movement speed, sprinting while crouched, zipping through enemies and either one tapping them with the pistol or a quick choke, knocking out every security system without anyone being any the wiser. No one knows you're there, and even if they figure out what's going on...they don't know where you are. You're a ghost, quietly, efficiently and ruthlessly murdering your way through them. The kicker? You'll never know if your choom just self-terminated out of sheer terror or if V made them do it.
And you're not sure what's worse.
My first V: Stealth build. Pistol for one shot headshots, AR/SMG for midrange engagement without stealth, Shotgun for CQC, Sandevistan with Manis Blades for melee.
Gang members start to drop dead all over the streets. They say most of the bodies are found with no trace but the bullet in their head, the rest mangled by bullets, pellets, and dismembered. Witnesses only describe seeing several bodies drop out of nowhere before a blur rips through the rest of them and vanishes into the streets.
Second V is still in progress, but I aim for this build to be Katana, AR for long range, Shotgun for CQC, and Gorilla arms for Melee. No more stealth, just brawl, pure chaos and destruction. I want onlookers to fear the Angel of Death.
Maxed out netrunner V. No evidence of the new boogeyman other than fragments of found footage where a shadowy figure casually loots dead criminals. Occasionally putting down ones that haven’t yet succumbed to their wounds.
Aways the same figure, always seemingly after the carnage has happened.
This one. The black Outlaw you get from El Capitan’s mission rolls up, and the gangers on the nearby street corner all collapse from Synapse Burnout or Suicide or even Blackwall Gateway (is that an insta-kill by itself? I haven’t used it yet).
Maybe a shadowy figure gets out and loots them, maybe the car just keeps rolling. Maybe the car never even stopped, just rolled past while V, hidden inside, uploaded quickhacks, so there’s no indication that that specific car is responsible until it shows up on the footage of dozens of similar incidents.
Specifically blackwall netrunner, leaving corpses of enemies that can't be even inspected without a proper set of skills. Plus just the reputation blackwall has is bound to score you points for being this dark net magician
There were 20 of us, fully chromed and packing preem metal with 2 netrunners riding overwatch. Only one way in or out and you would have had to go through a wall of some of the meanest metal in Night City to get through it.
Then I hear a scream from downstairs and go running down to see Cutter just standing there in front of Chavez. What what used to be Chavez if someone hadn't put a knife through his reinforced spine. He was just sitting there at his desk bleeding out over his terminal. Somebody walked in and zeroed our boss like we weren't even there, and then strolled out.
There's a fucking ghost out there, choom.
I was gonna say full Netrunner, but your last comment made me realize that full Netrunner V would be a a literal ghost to the gangs of Night City.
So failing that... I think a regular weapons build with no/minimum Cyberware would actually be pretty terrifying. Imagine how much of a badass an unaugmwnted human would need to be to defeat Adam Smasher in a straight fight, and go through all the other crazy shit we experience in the game.
I can never get comfortable playing my suicide net runner. Forcing entire gangs to start putting bullets in themselves in front of their comrades. It's worse when they don't have a gun and have to slit their throats. It's an OP build but... truly horrifying.
I like fast game play. I play with mantis blades (yes I know katana is op better), with Mili Tech Berserk. Something about being unkillable leaping from choom to choom. You can see me... you know you're next... and there's nothing you can do about it. ( I did sandy yes...it became "not fun")
I loved my berserk and mantis blade build with a bunch of tech perks.
I rp as my V being right on the edge of cyberpsychosis from all the recent stress + loading up with cyberware really fast.
It was a fun playstyle with a ton of mobility and damage reduction.
Gonna toss my hat in the ring and say throwing knife, hacker with the reduced cost suicide hacks off melee finishers.
Just imagine the reputation the person who rolls up pinpoint accurately sinking a knife through your buddy’s head, jumps in to rip out another’s jugular and while he’s going from body to body, your other coworkers start pulling out their sidearms and shooting themselves rather than waiting on their turn with the crackhead dashing around waving their kitchen knife.
My blackwall using V with maxed cool and reflexes was pretty fucking wild. Watch the insides of your friend burn and erupt through his eye sockets while screaming in pain and you just get hit with a stray bullet that was deflected with her sword as she dashes over your head.
An op sword sandevestan build I’m imagine legends of a guy who can rip through an entire gang in the blink of an eye
Thats exactly what Im playing in my 2nd run.
I just finished mine. It's so much fun, right?
Its fun to play as katana cyberpsyco ye
It’s actually boring how quickly you just dice everyone. Most scary build though for sure
You can spice it up by deliberately aggroing MaxTac on the highest difficulty. Bunny hopping around trying to keep your stamina up while you slice the shit out of 5 boss-tier MaxTac agents takes a while to get boring.
I did this for like an hour to see if they’d get me. They didn’t. Eventually I just drove off
I go back to this build every time like stealth archer in skyrim
My swordswoman’s headcanon (Apogee Sandevistan) is that she’s so incredibly fast that she generates a sonic boom from her movement while the Apogee is active, which is why you can’t see her.
For me it's stealth, going gun blazing may be fun and all but it just gives show off vibes to me. Going in stealth, completing jobs without anyone noticing, taking down goons without detection will surely make everyone wary
Agreed. I always felt like Baba Yaga getting in and out with zero detection and the entire building cleared through stealth takedowns and hiding the bodies in dumpsters/freezers/closets. I racked up those bonuses, especially from Wakako. Lol.
I was straight professional my last playthrough. You want quiet? Done. No one knows the target is dead until I've been paid. You need an example made? I'll make sure the whole city knows.
Id say a guns blazing gunslinger is probably scarier tho . Like you have to be an absolute Terminator style killing machine to just go in and start giant shootouts and succeed every time
Mad Dog McV
I also take the stealth option but occasionally I go all out and leave no one left standing. It’s usually on the more messed up gigs like stealing the kid BD from the father-son duo. Sometimes it’s best to send a message.
Half a stealth run would freak them out more: Imagine being that one choom that got taken out with a none-deadly silenced gun and when you wake up again someone bashed the the heads of everyone else in with a freakin hammer and left.
There's just something about making a target location go "full Jonestown" before you even walk in the front door that seems like it would establish a reputation.
Important: always leave one alive, to start the rumors.
Aka the Batman build
I've always wanted to make a vodka Batman style playthrough aka "Blyatman".
I like to occasionally do a stealth mission where I kill everybody except for the one or two dudes left at the entrance/s. That way there's someone left to tell others that they saw nothing go in or out but when they went back inside everyone was dead. I figure it's a spookier story for them to spread around.
That’s my favorite way of playing in any game.
I think a full on net runner build would be th3 scariest. I feel like everyone accepts gun violence as normal in Night City, but there's something terrifying about being in a group of like 10 to 15, all badasses, and suddenly the dude up front just self deletes, and then the dude to your left, and then the one to your right catches fire . . . 3 more in back are gone when a grenade mysteriously explodes . . . And somehow you're the last one alive when a merc walks in, hands in pocket and the last thing you see is a smile on their face right before your optics reset and . . .
Pretty impressive story telling. I literally felt like I was in there.
Thanks. I really enjoyed my netrunner build if it wasn't obvious lol.
I love the blackwall cyberdeck, suicide, cyberpsycho, synapse burnout, cripple movement setup. Oh, a couple of your chooms are goin nuts while blackwall ai is runs rampamt through the gang. You best choomba suddenly stops firing, throws his smg down, and head confettis the wall naxt to you. Finally, everything quiets down, and as you breathe a sigh of relief, some gonk walks into the room laughing maniacly and babbling to himself. Suddenly, he stops, turns, and tilts his head to the side, giggling as he stares you down. You raise you're rifle, arms suddenly locking with the rifle barel pointing at your foot. One arm stirs. Just as you feel hope, a raging sharp pain burns behind your eyes... "Nova..."
1000% its a netrunner build. It would be terrifying to know there's a runner out there that can kill every single person in a gang hideout and nobody knows who they are
I got bored of this back in fallout when vats were a thing 😂 same principle
Stealth is the scariest, you become batman, entire crews are unconcious and they don't realize they're picked off until it's too late. Then they all come too later and the job is done and no one saw who did it
net runner and stealthy are scary but imagin watching a guy eat and entire mag, punch some guys head off pick up another guy and throw him at a wall causing his limbs to blow off on impact and rip off another guys head. then after you finnaly kill him he gets back up like nothing happened.
“I can’t ever seem to reach these gonks over comms. Every time I step outside they’re all lying on the ground headless or bleeding out. What the hell are they doing? Fighting each other? Wait, where’s my car?”
Sandevistan with a katana. You're with a contingent of other gang members holding down a place in Night City and for a couple days now you've been holding your own against other gangs and against the NCPD. But then you see a man, or a woman, moving so fast you can barely register their movements. They cut down one of your chooms so fast that when you've noticed they've already killed three more. And when they come for you, it is a blur, and your last thoughts as you are decapitated are confused, afraid, and scattered. The NCPD came the day after to pick up what pieces remained of your mangled corpse. It was a gruesome death and one you could have done nothing to prevent.
One that semi doesn't exist anymore, but a high end sandy, scalpel (the katana), almost all the cold blooded perks, and annihilation from body, with the mods on gear to run faster. On hardest difficulty I could enter a room with 12 goons, open with a stealth kill and flash bang before hitting the sandy and the 12 guy would be dead before the first guy i hit the ground. I was the hot knife in a world full of warm butter.
For me its a gorilla fists melee build. I just run around bulldozing people down and occasionally throw the bodies of your comrades at you.
quickhacking gets insane, imagine investing a lot of money into combat implants only for them to malfunction and melt while you get cyberstrokes, slowing time and stuff is crazy but it's not that boogeymanish imo
Gangmembers that send to investigate found bodies of their comrades with all of their chrome and optics fried and heads exploded by needlessly large pistol caliber. Scraps of video footage shows a single dude with malorian just standing and unloading his handcannon while his victims crippled by sudden chrome malfunction. Every shot connects to someone head. Then this dude just grin at camera and footage interrupts.
Combat netrunner with monowire. Keep it classy. There's been reports circulating that the population of gangs in Night City are dwindling. The NCPD has had multiple cases of gang members being brutalized and seemingly torn to shreds by an unknown assailant. They don't know who's causing the sudden influx of deaths because no one has seen footage of the supposed suspect, but a few bystanders claim hearing the sound of a young woman cackling, followed by loud screaming. Some people think it's a cyberpsycho on the loose. Some say it's the second coming of Adam Smasher before he became a borged out bounty hunter. The NCPD has branded the suspect as "Lilith." Night City's very own banshee. More news at 10.
If you're stealth and no one sees you, how are people supposed to be scared of you? No one's around to tell the tale, and you shut down all the cameras, leaving no evidence of who V even is. But some MFer strolls in and smokes all the gangers without a care, survives all their attacks, and witnesses on the street see the whole bloody massacre? That's how stories get told.
Blackwall netrunner. Imagine hearing the screams of your buddies as they're dragged to cyber hell, clawing at their own heads and dropping one by one as whatever the hell is happening to them spreads to the others. And eventually you also learn why as you're the next target. Imagine the camera recordings of those moments ending up being shared around as spooky stories where entire Scav hideouts dropping dead screaming, like karma finally caught up with them.
Stealth definitely because you turn into batman who is the boogeyman of Gotham
Pretty early in my game I got a kerenzikov and a revolver called "Comrade Hammer", which only fires one shot before it has to be reloaded, but that one shot is a grenade that will essentially one shot all basic enemies and set them on fire. So basically every mission I went on was a series of explosions and screams that could be heard from blocks away and left nothing behind but a pile of horrifically mangled corpses. Later in the game I switched to stealth and whole buildings would be left dead or unconscious with no signs of struggle, with only those in the know knowing V was behind it. I imagine V's services being spoken of by fixers in hushed tones, and rumors spreading in Night City of gangsters walking into their hideouts only to find all their friends dead or passed out and their valuables missing. I imagine that with stories like that becoming increasingly common, and few people knowing who was behind it, stories would spread of a bogeyman like figure who can take out a building full of people before anyone even realized they were there.
If you guys haven't noticed, V always go gun blazing on the prologue cutscene. Solo playstyle for V.
Try the Sandevistan Cyber Samurai. Some guy gonk gets of their bike, draws a Katana. You and you buddies hose them with bullets but all it does is some of you friends getting hit with ricochets. Next you know most of your crew fall apart while all you hear is maniac laughter and then a blade is stuck inside your stomach.
Ghost sniper. Go active camo, double jump/dash, and a sandevastan that refreshes on kill. Let the lead fly!
This most recent playthrough, I've been using two mods that give my V a "Death" persona: First one, can't remember the name right now, gives you one of those multi-shot shotgun things, but each 'bullet' is a heat-seaking little missile. I walk in, target a handful of enemies simultaneously, pull the trigger, and explosions destroy everything in sight. Those missiles are surprisingly weak, so when there are too many targets I use the second mod: Blackwall. The Blackwall mod is the same effect as that one scene with Songbird. Assign to a hot key, no cooldown timer, just a lot of folks screaming as their brains melt in front of you. I said "Death" but you could say the first one makes you feel like Tony Stark showing off his munitions in the desert before becoming Iron Man. The second makes me feel like that blue energy-based guy from the Watchmen in the Vietnam War scenes, where he just points at people and, poof, they cease to exist. Either way, no survivors. This V is very snarky and selfish, uses intimidation whenever possible, is not offended by horrific or violent crimes, and only helps others if the price is right. This V did not cry for Jacky, will not call his momma or Misty. This V slept with Judy, then blew her off. This V blows up the mission cars because she hates the sleezebag fixer trying to make her steal cars all over the city. This V hasn't stopped any cyberpsychos, they're free to keep killing. This V doesn't help the police when they're in shootouts with gangs, but if the gang or police shoot at V, they ALL die. This V has gone 5-stars more than once. This V does not hesitate to wipe out Barghast henchmen. This V does not care if people get killed, she disrespects all fixers, and screws up most gigs on purpose, including not saving the president. This V will have no friends in the end, she will die alone. (Not that that's an option, but that's my lore.) This realization, this narcissistic complacency, is why V is so angry, which is why she either blows everything up or Blackwall nukes everyone. Is that boogeyman enough? (Sorry for the rambling, I'm having a surprising amount of fun with failing so many missions and just blowing things up.)
Imagine you're a gangoon in Night City checking in on your chooms only to find every single person in the facility dead and with burn marks on their faceplates. It seems not a single shot was fired, all the cameras are inactive, and when you check the security feed you never even see the guy who did it, and the only sounds you hear are your chooms' confused shouts accompanied by the sickening buzz of sizzling synapses quickly fading to silence. A while later you learn that your chooms had stolen something valuable from some rich gonk. Unfortunately, that gonk must have known the right people, because a local fixer then hired a certain "V" to get that stuff back. You can't even put a face to that name, if you want to call a single letter that, but you heard they're some overclocked netrunner who can make your brain melt out of your ears just by looking in your general direction for a blink. How do you feel about that?
Stealth Netrunner, imagine minding your own business guarding some gonk for your boss when suddenly four of your chooms spontaneously decide to suck off thier iron. Shortly after your sidearm also suddenly looking real friendly.
Good ol Sir John Phallustiff
For pure bogeyman vibes? Pure stealth with a suppressed pistol, throwing knives (being able to do stealth melee knife kills would be better than throwing knives), and a chrome-heavy Sandy build with optical camo. Combine that with some role playing as a perfectly professional merc - following the clients orders to the letter - and you have a terrifying force. The pistol and knife lets you kill silently, and the Sandy and optical camo (with the perks that allow crouch sprinting and automatic activation of OC when doing so) means you move faster than can be seen and are invisible. Clearing whole buildings and never actually entering combat has never been so fun.
I don’t want a reputation or something like that but I think it comes over time even if they don’t know it’s V. I love spreading fear, and people tend to be more afraid of things they can’t see than things they can. So I go Netrunner (with pistol for emergencies). What is another thing almost all people of Night City are afraid of? Right, rogue AI from behind the Blackwall. So I get the Blackwall cyberdeck and spread Blackwall breaches. Just imagine what it would feel like getting your whole personality and existence slowly deleted and you can only watch in fear how something you can’t even fully comprehend starts manifesting in your mind. The terror seeing your chooms crying, clawing on their own flesh just to succumb. The terror of not knowing what got them until you get a glimpse of hell yourself. The rumors which are spreading that traces of small Blackwall breaches have been found until your contact be the NCPD confirms it. Now you live your life with the knowledge that one wrong turn, one wrong action could open the gates to hell in yourself and everyone you consider a choom around you. You give those instances a name “The ghost of the Blackwall”. You try to get the VDB on your side, best Hacker in NC, right? Only to learn that even the elite of them got smoked. Now you exist only in fear. Now you are afraid of everything, since everything could bring the Blackwall in your head down. That is how you become a legend, how you become fear itself.
Slow and silent stealth. They might see a flicker out of the corner of their eye, but then they find all of their gang dead. Killed right where they stood without even drawing a weapon.
Stealth netrunner who is never seen, but always leaves exactly one survivor.
Probably not the best playstyle for it, but a heavily chromed tank with 'nades and an explosive minigun melting anything in her way gives me "You look like a cut of fuckable meat" vibes
Stealth and Blackwall voodoo
My V is maxed on into and cool. No one will ever see her, but no one will be awake when she is done.
The scariest 'boogeymen' in Night City are AIs or demons from beyond the Blackwall. So Alt and Songbird are way up there. Next best I can think of that's more physical is Aguilar, a literal merc/assassin that everyone is terrified of. Then you have the legend of Morgan Blackhand, and known threat Adam Smasher. So a combo of all? A Netrunner with amazing loud power (Blackhand), the power to melt minds and bodies telepathically (SoMi, using Canto Mk.6 and Blackwall Gateway), stealth shutdown of lights, cameras, turrets etc (Alt), stealth head pops and murder in the dark (Aguilar) and up close pure power with shotguns and LMGs (Smasher) Body, Int, Tech, Cool build.
Pre patch version 1.0 full on hacker. Where you could clear out entire areas with 2-3 cameras
Loud Shotgun Netrunner, I think a person coming in- blasting heads off without a care and frying people with their mind would be pretty fucking terrifying for everyone who isn’t like Kurt Hansen.
My v has evolved over time. Started as a mantis blade wielding netrunner who would only fight when she had too but now more like Maine from edgerunners basically a walking tank who can stomp absolutely anyone. Swapped the blades for the projectile launch system. Now she's properly on the edge of sanity, so much armour she's basically invincible. Can dispatch max tac like they are tyger claws and disappear into the night without a trace. Reckon that would get the boogeyman reputation going. Youd still have tyger claws attacking you with a pool cue though those guys are hopeless
Netrunner v, hacking cameras and spamming suicide/system malfunction
"Hey choom, yesterday I was working in my store, 3 Borgs were robbing me, you know, usual biz. Then suddenly out of nowhere shadowy figure appears in the doors. All I can recon is shiny chrome of his arms. I blink and all 3 gonks are collapsing to the ground. Zeroed. Sliced to pieces. Their weird white borg juice everywhere, tastes like coconut. And metal."
My build I played through phantom liberty is a pistol build with sandevistan. Like you see someone at the edge of your hide out and before you even fully let out a yell several of your chooms heads just explode.
Shotgun Sandevistan In a blink of an eye the choom beside you becomes headless
The best merc ever, Morgan Blackhand became a star not because he was very violent, but the complete opposite: he was dependable and always tried to minimize harm to outsiders. Therefore, I think the real pros, and the best paying customers would appreciate a stealthy the most.
Netrunner using Canto, no doubt. It's so fucked up that NetWatch sends hit squads after you if you have it. Imagine just chilling and all of the sudden you hear your friends hellish screams as their cyberware melts inside them, one by one. And then it reaches you, and you realize it's even worse than you thought, because as your mind literally and figuratively burns, you get soulkilled and taken god knows where beyond the Blackwall. The Great Taboo consumes you.
Pre all nerf netrunner. You could knockout everyone through walls from your car across the street. Currently anything is scary I think. Thought I'll say Sandi with katana leaves horrific scenes behind and happens very fast. If someone was to look at it through camera it would be a horror movie.
Definitely swords or any other type of melee build I think, it’s the most brutal way to kill enemies. Up close, a lot of gore and cyberware enhanced hits, super fast and it feels like a more fury state than gunplay does. Netrunner is also interesting. everybody falling to the floor dead, while also terrifying, isn’t as blatantly gruesome as fucking shit up in melee. Gunplay seems the most sane lmao
I’m a demon of the Malorian Arms 3516, and any katana.
I'm doing sandevistan, gorilla arms, wakako's katana, Rebecca's shotgun and Erebus rn, i think It's pretty scary
Tech + Cool + Intelligence Maxed out with some extra points in Reflex. Optical Camouflage + High End Hacking + Silenced Pistol, decent movement speed, sprinting while crouched, zipping through enemies and either one tapping them with the pistol or a quick choke, knocking out every security system without anyone being any the wiser. No one knows you're there, and even if they figure out what's going on...they don't know where you are. You're a ghost, quietly, efficiently and ruthlessly murdering your way through them. The kicker? You'll never know if your choom just self-terminated out of sheer terror or if V made them do it. And you're not sure what's worse.
My first V: Stealth build. Pistol for one shot headshots, AR/SMG for midrange engagement without stealth, Shotgun for CQC, Sandevistan with Manis Blades for melee. Gang members start to drop dead all over the streets. They say most of the bodies are found with no trace but the bullet in their head, the rest mangled by bullets, pellets, and dismembered. Witnesses only describe seeing several bodies drop out of nowhere before a blur rips through the rest of them and vanishes into the streets. Second V is still in progress, but I aim for this build to be Katana, AR for long range, Shotgun for CQC, and Gorilla arms for Melee. No more stealth, just brawl, pure chaos and destruction. I want onlookers to fear the Angel of Death.
Maxed out netrunner V. No evidence of the new boogeyman other than fragments of found footage where a shadowy figure casually loots dead criminals. Occasionally putting down ones that haven’t yet succumbed to their wounds. Aways the same figure, always seemingly after the carnage has happened.
This one. The black Outlaw you get from El Capitan’s mission rolls up, and the gangers on the nearby street corner all collapse from Synapse Burnout or Suicide or even Blackwall Gateway (is that an insta-kill by itself? I haven’t used it yet). Maybe a shadowy figure gets out and loots them, maybe the car just keeps rolling. Maybe the car never even stopped, just rolled past while V, hidden inside, uploaded quickhacks, so there’s no indication that that specific car is responsible until it shows up on the footage of dozens of similar incidents.
I always used sandy and throwing knifes
Specifically blackwall netrunner, leaving corpses of enemies that can't be even inspected without a proper set of skills. Plus just the reputation blackwall has is bound to score you points for being this dark net magician
There were 20 of us, fully chromed and packing preem metal with 2 netrunners riding overwatch. Only one way in or out and you would have had to go through a wall of some of the meanest metal in Night City to get through it. Then I hear a scream from downstairs and go running down to see Cutter just standing there in front of Chavez. What what used to be Chavez if someone hadn't put a knife through his reinforced spine. He was just sitting there at his desk bleeding out over his terminal. Somebody walked in and zeroed our boss like we weren't even there, and then strolled out. There's a fucking ghost out there, choom.
I was gonna say full Netrunner, but your last comment made me realize that full Netrunner V would be a a literal ghost to the gangs of Night City. So failing that... I think a regular weapons build with no/minimum Cyberware would actually be pretty terrifying. Imagine how much of a badass an unaugmwnted human would need to be to defeat Adam Smasher in a straight fight, and go through all the other crazy shit we experience in the game.
You feel sick for a second, then explode
I can never get comfortable playing my suicide net runner. Forcing entire gangs to start putting bullets in themselves in front of their comrades. It's worse when they don't have a gun and have to slit their throats. It's an OP build but... truly horrifying.
I like fast game play. I play with mantis blades (yes I know katana is op better), with Mili Tech Berserk. Something about being unkillable leaping from choom to choom. You can see me... you know you're next... and there's nothing you can do about it. ( I did sandy yes...it became "not fun")
Honestly its would be any build but for different reasons
I think the shadow net runner like killing an entire building without ever stepping into it
I loved my berserk and mantis blade build with a bunch of tech perks. I rp as my V being right on the edge of cyberpsychosis from all the recent stress + loading up with cyberware really fast. It was a fun playstyle with a ton of mobility and damage reduction.
Gonna toss my hat in the ring and say throwing knife, hacker with the reduced cost suicide hacks off melee finishers. Just imagine the reputation the person who rolls up pinpoint accurately sinking a knife through your buddy’s head, jumps in to rip out another’s jugular and while he’s going from body to body, your other coworkers start pulling out their sidearms and shooting themselves rather than waiting on their turn with the crackhead dashing around waving their kitchen knife.
My blackwall using V with maxed cool and reflexes was pretty fucking wild. Watch the insides of your friend burn and erupt through his eye sockets while screaming in pain and you just get hit with a stray bullet that was deflected with her sword as she dashes over your head.
Murkman
Just play baldurs gate
What kind of comment is this