Here’s a rather short guide on the Crafting Perks Tree. Here you’ll find a list, tierlist, attribute requirement, shortened description about each perk, and a short blurb about why each perk is “good, bad, or something in between”. Here goes!
Overall, the Crafting perks tree deals with, you guessed it, crafting. It’s all basically crafting, upgrading, material & component management. That’s it for the most part. It’s also a popular perk tree to make money.
Crafting is joined by Engineering in the Technical Ability attribute tied Perk trees.
Crafting Perks List & Tierlist
Want to make money with crafting? You don’t need any of the perks.
They just make it “more profitable”, so “economic perks” are valued a little less…
| Tier | Perk | Attribute | Req | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Mechanic | Technical Ability | 1 | Gain more components when disassembling. |
| B | True Craftsman | Technical Ability | 5 | Allows you to craft Rare items. |
| F | Scrapper | Technical Ability | 5 | Junk items are automatically disassembled. |
| D | Workshop | Technical Ability | 7 | Disassembling items grants a small chance to gain a free component of the same quality. |
| D | Sapper | Technical Ability | 9 | Grenades deal more damage. |
| C | Innovation | Technical Ability | 9 | Consumables are 25% more effective. |
| A | 200% Efficiency | Technical Ability | 11 | Crafted Armor gain 2.5% more armor. |
| A | Field Technician | Technical Ability | 11 | Crafted weapons deal 2.5% more damage. |
| A | Ex Nihilo | Technical Ability | 12 | Grants a 20% chance to craft an item for free. |
| B | Grease Monkey | Technical Ability | 12 | Allows you to craft Epic items. |
| B | Efficient Upgrades | Technical Ability | 12 | Grants a chance to upgrade an item for free. |
| C | Cost optimization | Technical Ability | 14 | Reduces component cost of crafting items by 15%. |
| B | Let there be light! | Technical Ability | 14 | Reduces the component cost of upgrading items by 10%. |
| A | Waste Not Want Not | Technical Ability | 16 | When disassembling an item, get the attached mods back. |
| B | Tune-Up | Technical Ability | 16 | Allows you to upgrade lower quality components into higher quality ones. |
| B | Edgerunner Artisan | Technical Ability | 18 | Allows you to craft Legendary items. |
| A | Cutting Edge | Technical Ability | 20 | Improves damage and all damage related stats of crafted weapons by 5%. |
| C | Crazy Science | Technical Ability | 20* | Improves sale price of crafted items. |
Crafting Perk list rundown / viability / analysis
[A] 200% Efficiency (Technical Ability 11): Crafted Armor gain 2.5% more armor. Think of this as increasing your BASE ARMOR (which then gets modified by all your buffs). Incredibly important.
[A] Field Technician (Technical Ability 11): Crafted weapons deal 2.5% more damage. Again, this increases “base power”. Like the true meaning to the BASE POWERLEVEL of your build. This is extremely powerful.
[A] Waste Not Want Not (Technical Ability 16): When disassembling an item, get the attached mods back. Low key god tier. Once you find / setup your mod setup on clothes, you no longer have to worry about “losing them”. Removes a lot of BS and stress tied to armor and weapon upgrades.
[A] Cutting Edge (Technical Ability 20): Improves damage and all damage related stats of crafted weapons by 5%. Again, this increases “base power”. Like the true meaning to the BASE POWERLEVEL of your build. This is extremely powerful.
[A] Mechanic (Technical Ability 1): Gain more components when disassembling. I don’t understand how this is a level 1 perk. Godlike given its low attritube requirement. This can hard carry any characters aspirations to sell crafted stuff for money.
[A] Ex Nihilo (Technical Ability 12): Grants a 20% chance to craft an item for free. While I won’t rate the other “craft for money” perks highly. This one is CLEARLY a cut above the rest. Over the course of many crafts this is a 1/5th chance. If you’re absolutely desperate – you can save scum until this procs.
I’m gonna lump all of the “allows you to craft” perks here…
[B] True Craftsman (Technical Ability 5): Allows you to craft Rare items. As good as it sounds. For 5 measly points, this is insane value. Blues are enough to THRIVE in this game.
[B] Grease Monkey (Technical Ability 12): Allows you to craft Epic items. Most builds. 12 points to get this is a great “mid to high end” investment for some builds. Epic items and mods will help you a ton.
[B] Edgerunner Artisan (Technical Ability 18): Allows you to craft Legendary items. As good as it sounds, this can be overkill… 18 points is steep.
Upgrading items is EXPENSIVE and the whole system is divisive amongst the playerbase. But, it is what it is. I’m tempted to put these in C, but sometimes you just really want to upgrade your “favorite weapon” (iconics). Crafting a new weapon is almost always better…
[B] Efficient Upgrades (Technical Ability 12): Grants a chance to upgrade an item for free. If desperate, you can simply load / reload your game until this procs. Yep. Sometimes this perk is the only way you can “practically” play with your favorite legendary iconic. Although if you’re that poor… whew.
[B] Let there be light! (Technical Ability 14): Reduces the component cost of upgrading items by 10%. As I said, upgrades are expensive.
[B] Tune-Up (Technical Ability 16): Allows you to upgrade lower quality components into higher quality ones. Very closely tied to upgrades, and to a lesser extent crafting. Helpful since the higher rarity ones are extremely more rare.
[C] Innovation (Technical Ability 9): Consumables are 25% more effective. I would like to rate this higher, and it may be worth a “B”. 99% of the time this reads “heal 25% more from items”.
The crafting cost reduction perks are unimportant if you need to “craft for use”.
These are only great for “craft for selling”
[C] Cost optimization (Technical Ability 14): Reduces component cost of crafting items by 15%. Simple and effective. Basic as it gets “more value”.
[C] Crazy Science (Technical Ability 20*): Improves sale price of crafted items. Straight up increases sale price. This is how you know they planned on making Crafting a viable economy option, lol.
[D] Sapper (Technical Ability 9): Grenades deal more damage. Super niche. People either use ‘nades or they dont. And even if you do, they probably don’t account for a chunk of your “gameplay”. If you wanna make a meme grenade build…. well…
[D] Workshop (Technical Ability 7): Disassembling items grants a small chance to gain a free component of the same quality. A strange perk that, honestly, sounds terrible. It seems to be outscaled by the basic “Mechanic” perk.
[F] Scrapper (Technical Ability 5): Junk items are automatically disassembled. This is only listed as an F since it automatically junks the “gold” items! You know those 750$ junk items? Yeah, it scraps those. If this gets fixed this shoots up to A tier to prevent tedium. Alternatively when you’re super rich – take this to forget about junk forever. However I will cautiously place this as an F just in case a newer players excitedly tries to pick this perk up.
Summary and Closing
Don’t kill me for rating the “increased profts” a little lower. If you’re into that kind of gameplay loop (with or without the exploits) then they are of course good. You can even spec them out once you’re “rich”. But if you eliminate the “min/maxer” mentality, these are honestly not NEEDED, and you can turn out enough profits without ’em. (A crafter with 5 Tech will be decently profitable without worrying too much).
The Crafting perks tree is, overall, great at helping you craft, upgrade, and make money. But, the early releases of CP2077 had many huge QoL issues with crafting in general, so yeah – while the overall feel of this tree is great, it’s heavily tied down to how balanced / fixed / QoL the actual crafting system IS.
Well that’s about it for a list of Crafting perks – hopefully you enjoyed our tierlist of these perks to help you decide what to get for your build! Check out our tierlists on the other perk trees in Cyberpunk 2077!
