Lucy Kushinada, more commonly known as just Lucy, is a hacking legend character in the adaptation anime of Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. In the anime, she’s a mysterious netrunner from Night City and a character with quite an introverted personality who doesn't like to talk much about her past​​​​.

If you want to play as her in the videogame, you can focus on building upon the two primary parts of her kit that we see her use in the anime, Quickhacking, and the Monowire weapon. This build has all the elements Lucy used in the anime as well as a few extras to make it stand out.

Updated January 27, 2024, by Sean Murray: Since Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 launch, Lucy's build has changed significantly. We've updated this build to account for those changes but still retain the same capabilities as Lucy in Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

Attribute Points For Lucy's Build

Lucy is a master hacker and netrunner, able to quickhack her way through anything Night City throws at her. She's also decent with a pistol, but your primary attribute is going to be the one that helps you hack, and that's Intelligence. You're also going to be sinking most of your perks into the Intelligence tree too, but more on that later.

While Intelligence will be your priority to reach 20, you'll want to ensure that your other attributes don't lag too far behind. Reflexes, Cool, and Technical Ability are all at healthy 15s in order to unlock some crucial perks and to ensure that your build isn't just a hacker. You'll be able to do a few other things too, but your primary approach to problems will be to hack 'em.

A Body score of just four points gives you the bare basics of health-regen perks, but that's it. Lucy isn't meant for a slugfest. You should avoid direct combat wherever possible, and seek cover whenever a firefight breaks out.

A good rule of thumb is to put a point into Intelligence at every other level, while the intervening levels can be put into either Cool, Reflexes, or Technical Ability.

Perk Points For Lucy's Build

The vast majority of your perks are going to be spent making Lucy the master hacker that she is, which doesn't leave a lot of perks to spend elsewhere. That said, there are certainly perks worth grabbing in the other attribute trees. Here's a rundown on where to spend your perks under each attribute for a level 50 build.

For suggestions towards a level 60 Lucy build, check out the Relic Perks section below.

Body

You won't spend more than a few attribute points here (or none at all, if you decide to start the game with four Body), so we're not going to spend too much time on the Body perks. Painkiller gives us a bit of health regen in combat, and Comeback Kid gives us more health regen the more health we've lost.

It's a basic combo that can save your bacon if you're wise enough to retreat when at low health.

Reflexes

Although we're putting 15 points into Reflexes, we're not spending too many perk points here. Slipper, Dash, and Air Dash give you the ability to dash in midair, and Mad Dash lets you rapidly close the distance with any target you want to unleash your monowire on.

Intelligence

Here's where Lucy's build will invest the bulk of her perks. The only part of this tree we'll be ignoring are the smart weapon perks as the only weapon Lucy uses in the show is a standard Unity pistol.

On the left, Eye in the Sky unlocks our hacker journey by highlighting access points and providing benefits to hacking cameras. Forcekill Cypher makes it easier to hack those access points and Warning: Explosion Hazard makes hacking explosive items that much more effective.

Hack Queue lets you start queuing quickhacks for greater effect. Feedback Loop and Data Recycler help improve your RAM usage, while Counter-A-Hack and Copy-Paste make it easy for you to best enemy netrunners.

Queue Acceleration gives us another quickhack to the queue, while Queue Hack_Root and Queue Prioritization improve your RAM cost and upload speed, respectively. Our first monowire-specific perk, Finisher: Live Wire, lets you finish weakened opponents using your monowire while restoring health and RAM.

Carhacker lets you hack cars. It's pretty self-explanatory, but being able to hack a car you want to steal makes grand theft auto a breeze.

For the middle tree, Optimization improves RAM recovery, Proximate Propagation reduces RAM at close range, and Encryption slows down opposing traces. We're ignoring Subordination only because control quickhacks get pretty long durations at higher levels, but you can grab this now and refund it later for free.

Embedded Exploit and System Overwhelm improve quickhack damage, while Speculation and Icepick improve your RAM economy. The second monorwire perk, Siphon, recovers RAM whenever you unleash your wires and improves that recovery if the target is affected by a quickhack.

Overclock unlocks a key ability for any netrunner to use quickhacks even when you're out of RAM at the cost of health. Luckily, Sublimation, Power Surge, and Blood Demon all mitigate those health costs, while Race Against Mind gives you an incentive to push into your health pool by improving your quickhack damage.

There's an argument to be made for ignoring some or even all the health-regenerating perks to keep your health at 50 percent to maximize the damage bonus offered by Race Against Mind. This can be effective, but it's typically best done in a build that maximizes Technical Ability as well for extremely high armor.

This build is somewhat fragile, so you'll be glad for as much health regen as you can get. Don't worry--your quickhacks will do plenty of damage.

Finally, we get our capstone perks. Queue Mastery unlocks the fourth and final queue slot, reduces the RAM cost of all quickhacks in the queue, and improves their damage. Spillover improves your Overclocked quickhacks by giving them a 50 percent chance to spread to a new target.

Technical Ability

Lucy isn't quite as chromed out as David Martinez is in Cyberpunk Edgerunners, but she's got enough that we can unlock a few perks to help with her overall fragility.

All Things Cyber, Driver Update, and Chipware Connoisseur improve your cyberwares overall stats and reduces their capacity cost. Since we have several attributes over nine, Renaissance Punk provides a boost to cyberware capacity, while Chrome Constitution reduces incoming damage by five percent.

Two points into License to Chrome improves your cyberware stats and gives you a healthy 40 armor, but you'll need more perks to expand this further (which means having the Phantom Liberty DLC--more on that later).

With so little health and armor, you'll be relying on health items to keep you alive when the going gets rough. Glutton for War, First Aid, Borrowed Time, and Health Freak all improve your health item recharge, while Transfusion makes your last health item extra healthy.

Cool

Lucy does use a Unity pistol in Edgerunners, but it certainly isn't the centerpiece of her arsenal. Focus and Deadeye make you a little more effective when you're down to pistol-whipping, but you'll find your quickhacks to be far more effective.

The Cool tree also offers some sneaky perks and damage mitigation perks that will help keep you alive. Feline Footwork, Small Target, and Blind Spot make you both harder to spot and more likely to shrug off damage. Ninjitsu does the same and also unlocks crouch sprinting, which can get you from cover to cover quickly and safely.

If you don't care for the -25 percent stamina of Deadeye and would prefer an alternative way to stealth kill, consider putting a point into Killer Instinct and investing in a good silencer.

Relic Perks

For those with the Phantom Liberty DLC, you've got a selection of Relic perks to consider. Start with Jailbreak to unlock the ability to administer a control quickhack through your monowire. Then grab Data Tunneling to make that quickhack effect enemies you incidentally hit with your wildly flailing monowire.

Vulnerability Analytics and Machine Learning unlock special weak points on enemies. You can't quickhack those points, but you can hit them with your pistol or monowire for an explosive damage boost.

Phantom Liberty also gives you ten more attribute points and more perk points. Definitely bring Technical Ability to 20 for additional armor, and consider grabbing the Cyborg, Ambidextrous, Built Different, and Extended Warranty perks. These can greatly improve your overall survivability.

As for the rest of your perk points, you could unlock a few more Cool perks to be better with a pistol, unlock the smart weapon tree for another tool in your arsenal, or spend some points in Reflexes to be a bit better at gunplay overall. The choice is yours.

Cyberware For Lucy's Build

We never really get to see what's under the hood in the show, but we know Lucy is an exceptional netrunner with incredible stamina (especially given how long she can jog). Here's what we'd recommend for chrome.

Best Cyberdeck For Lucy

You could go with the Arsaka cyberdeck to be a little more sneaky, or the Raven Microcyber if you want to specialize in wide-area quickhacks. But for Lucy, there's really only one option, and that's the Biotech Σ cyberdeck.

Which Monowire To Choose

When it comes to your monowire, you've got a few options. You can keep the regular monowire for physical damage, or you can swap it out for electrical, thermal, or chemical damage.

There's no evidence to suggest Lucy used anything other than a regular monowire in Edgerunners. However, the Electrifying Monowire has a chance to inflict EMP on your target, which can deactivate cyberware and prevent quickhacks. Grab it when you can.

Quickhacks For Lucy's Build

In the show. Lucy is portrayed as someone who can basically do anything. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't have quite the same universality when it comes to quickhacking, but you can certainly have a selection of quickhacks that will get you through almost any encounter.

Here's a few recommendations, but feel free to experiment and see what's right for you.

How To Look Like Lucy

With white hair and red-purple eyes, Lucy is an extremely colorful character. She is wearing red eye and lip makeup with her hair cut in a split bob style, colored in a vivid pastel rainbow gradient, and eyes to match that palette. So let's give the character her appearance!

How To Create Lucy's Character