Most of the frustration around best ending comes from missing a prerequisite rather than from the fight itself.

Short answer

Prepare first, then work through it in the order below. Nothing here rewards rushing the opening.

Optional preparation is what separates a ten-minute attempt from a two-hour one. A save immediately before the decision point costs nothing and occasionally saves hours. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing.

If it goes wrong

A failed attempt usually leaves the world in a state you can still recover from. Some outcomes are locked behind an earlier conversation rather than behind performance. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Reading ahead spoils some of it; going in blind costs some of it. Pick which you mind less.

The game signals the requirement once, quietly, and never mentions it again. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. Difficulty settings change numbers here, not the sequence.

The part people get stuck on

The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

  • Do not sell anything you picked up here until it is finished.
  • Complete the optional preparation — it is the actual difficulty setting.
  • If a menu path does not exist for you, your build is older or newer than the one described.
  • Save manually before the first irreversible step.

Choices that matter later

The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.

None of this needs a paid tool, a third-party launcher or an account on a site you have never heard of. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration.

Working through it

Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds.

Before you start

It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later.

Where people go wrong

  • Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.
  • Copying a setup wholesale from a streamer without understanding what each part does.
  • Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.

Cyberpunk FAQ

Do I need any mods or third-party tools for this?

No. Everything described here works with the base game on any supported platform.

I missed a step — is my save ruined?

Almost certainly not. Most of these have a recovery path, and where there is not, an earlier save covers it.

How long does it take?

Under an hour prepared, considerably more improvising. That gap is the whole argument for preparing.

Can I come back to this later?

Sometimes. Where a section closes permanently, that is flagged above — and it is the single most common way people lose access to content.

Work through it in the order above and best ending stops being a question you have to look up again.