On the positive side, you will need to explore much more of Night City than you otherwise would, as several methods for making quick money in Cyberpunk 2077 involve exploration, questing, and not a small amount of voluntary manslaughter.
Here’s are four ways to make a lot of money quickly in Cyberpunk 2077.
Sell All Non-Upgrade Loot
You will kill or KO a lot of enemies in your journey through Night City, and all of them will drop a weapon, plus whatever armor and gear they have on their person. Keep what you find if it has better stats than what you’re using. However, the majority of what you’ll loot off enemies will be straight-up worse than your current equipment.
For anything and everything you don’t want or can’t keep due to weight concerns, head to any vendor or dropbox, and sell it. A standard encounter will net you between five and 10 pieces of equipment from enemies and some extra from the loot boxes scattered about an arena.
Depending on the rarity of the items you find — determined by your character’s level — that could easily be several thousand eurodollars for minimal effort. At higher levels, you might hit 10,000 Eddies in five minutes with good RNG on your loot drops.
This first method applies to almost everything else discussed below. You’ll want to keep an eye on your equipment load in the top right of the Inventory screen, as too much weight will negatively impact your mobility. Make regular trips to vendors as you move from objective to objective to keep yourself reasonably burdened. A little tedious, yes, but you’ll keep making money while progressing with little effort.
Collect and Sell Junk
There’s a lot of useless junk scattered all over the world of Cyberpunk 2077. Luckily for us, all of it has value and helps us make easy money. When you visit shops and dropboxes, you’ll see an option to Sell Junk. Hit that button every time.
Junk items have their own rarities, and the rarer your junk is, the more it’s worth.
However, if making money fast is your primary goal, avoid the Scrapper Crafting perk. It causes you to auto-dismantle all junk as soon as you pick it up, closing you off from this money-making method until you respec. Find out how to do that in our respec guide. Beware: it’ll cost you a lot of Eurodollars.
Fight Crime and Do Side Jobs
Crime is everywhere in Night City, and all of it offers an opportunity for some quick cash. The light blue icons on your map include:
NCPD investigations Crimes or assaults in progress Other random encounters that have you defeating enemies and completing simple objectives
As mentioned above, you’ll get a bunch of trash loot to sell, as well as a small reward for clearing the area of hostiles.
For more significant loot, head to the dozens of Side Jobs scattered around the various portions of the map. These yellow circles with exclamation points or hexagons with question marks denote more substantial side content.
These Side Jobs will see you sneaking or assaulting an area, killing a particular target, or investigating a building, usually through combat, or sabotaging equipment. There’s more to do than a crime event, and the rewards are commensurate with the additional effort, from experience to money and street cred. The money you receive from these missions scales with your level, as does the level of the enemies and the loot they drop.
Side mission areas are usually larger and have more items in them, including Eurodollars just sitting around waiting to be taken.
In summary: more enemies, more loot, scaling rewards, and additional opportunities for world-drop gear. Even better, you might run across some of the best writing Cyberpunk has to offer, pairing monetary gain with a satisfying narrative. Everyone wins.
Hack Every Terminal You Come Across
Most encounter areas, especially in side and main missions, have computer panels marked with a red computer icon on the minimap. These panels exist in Night City proper as well, or on the occasional vending machine or telecom antenna.
You can jack into these terminals with enough points in Intelligence, usually three or five. Getting the most out of hacking terminals requires you to activate all three levels. We’ve got a handy hacking guide so you can get the most out of terminals like these.
A successful hack of all three levels grants you the most money and provides up to legendary Quickhack Components. If you get good at hacking, a single terminal shouldn’t take you more than 20 or 30 seconds. And because you’ve probably already killed or otherwise removed every other threat from the area, most terminals are a little cherry on top.
You will often find packs of Eurodollars just sitting around the world, but if you’re looking to earn money fast in Cyberpunk 2077, these methods are tried, tested, and work 100% of the time, all the time. For more on CD Projekt Red’s new neon-colored RPG, head over to our dedicated guides page!
