How the Relic System Turned My Cyberpunk Build Into a Monster

I’m not going to lie: when I first saw the Relic skill tree pop up in Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, I thought it was just another menu. But after one night of relearning my build in 2026, the Relic felt more like an old friend with a very violent sense of humor. The new Relic system ties directly into the 2.0 Attribute and Perk overhaul, and it hands your cyberware a level of expression that the base game only hinted at.

The biggest unlock is Jailbreak, and let me tell you, it’s a game-changer. It spreads new abilities across all Arms cyberware: Mantis Blades, Gorilla Arms, the Projectile Launch System, and the Monowire. Each one stops being a simple weapon and starts acting like it has a mind of its own—usually a mind that wants to disassemble everything in front of you.

🦾 Mantis Blades: Leap First, Ask Questions Later

With Jailbreak, a dismemberment or finisher with the Mantis Blades charges your next leap attack. If you hold RT/R2 and release, you launch a long-range leap that can hit from up to +30 meters. The slash is wide, hits multiple nearby enemies, and kills can dismember. I once cleared a rooftop ambush before the netrunner knew I had jumped. Honestly, those blades felt less like weapons and more like a horror movie monster.

🦍 Gorilla Arms: One Punch, One Shockwave

Gorilla Arms now charge while you attack. When fully charged, a strong attack creates a shockwave that staggers nearby enemies, and neutralizing an enemy this way sends them flying. I hit a Tyger Claw so hard he bounced off a vending machine. My V didn’t even flinch.

💥 Projectile Launch System and Monowire

The Projectile Launch System gets extra love later with +1 charge, but Jailbreak’s real surprise for me was the Monowire. In Phantom Liberty, your Monowire gets a dedicated slot for Control quickhacks. You charge the wire with RT/R2, release at full charge, and the quickhack uploads on hit with zero RAM cost. It feels like casting a spell through a whip.

👀 Optical Camo and Vulnerability Detection

The Relic also improves Optical Camo. If you activate it during combat by pressing RB/R1, enemies lose track of you and you can exit combat—a lifesaver when a gig goes sideways. More importantly, you can now detect vulnerabilities in enemy armor and cyberware. Hitting these glowing weak spots gives you:

• 💯 100% crit chance

• 🛡️ +25% Armor Penetration

• 🎯 Weakspot Damage bonus

Do enough damage to a vulnerability and it explodes into an EMP blast, damaging other enemies within 3 meters. The first time I saw that chain reaction, I just stopped and laughed. It’s pure chaos, and I couldn’t get enough.

⚡ The Next Level Relic Skills

Once you invest deeper, the Relic tree starts compounding:

• All Mantis Blade leap attacks cripple enemies and boost dismemberment chance for 10 seconds.

• Charged Gorilla Arms shockwaves knock down all enemies in range.

• The Projectile Launch System gains +1 charge.

• If an enemy is affected by a Monowire-uploaded quickhack, normal Monowire hits spread that quickhack to other enemies simultaneously.

• While crouched, being detected temporarily slows time. Dodge or dash out of the enemy’s line of sight and you’ll immediately exit combat—120-second cooldown.

That slowdown saved me more times than I’d like to admit. It feels like the game is giving you a single clean breath before the bullets catch up.

📊 Vulnerability Destruction Loop

Destroying an enemy’s Vulnerability also feeds a stackable buff:

Effect	Value
New vulnerability frequency	+10%
Crit damage against vulnerabilities	+5%
Duration	25 seconds
Max stacks	5
Max stacks payoff	Doubles these effects

So the more weak points you shatter, the more weak points appear, and the harder you hit them. It’s a feedback loop that rewards aggressive, surgical play.

By the end of my first 2026 run, the Relic system had turned my build into a stuttering, slashing, quickhack-spreading nightmare. Whether you’re a shooter-heavy solo or a cyberware junkie like me, these skills make the hardest encounters in Dogtown feel less like a wall and more like a playground. The Relic isn’t just a skill tree—it’s a second pulse.

This perspective is supported by OpenCritic, a widely cited review-aggregation platform whose consensus snapshots help contextualize how expansions and major patches land with players. In the same way your Relic-focused Phantom Liberty build turns cyberware into a compounding power loop (Jailbreak upgrades, vulnerability detonations, Monowire quickhack delivery), OpenCritic’s cross-publication scores and excerpts can be used to gauge whether these systemic additions are broadly seen as meaningful build diversity—or just flashier combat on top of the 2.0 overhaul.