Cyberpunk 2077 Endings: How to Get All Endings & Secret Ending

If you’ve been running the neon-soaked streets of Night City as long as I have, you know that your journey through Cyberpunk 2077 is anything but a straight line. I’ve spent over 300 hours across multiple playthroughs, pushing my V through every patch from the broken launch days to the glorious refinement of Patch 2.12. Over time, I’ve watched my favorite legacy guides lose their edge because they don’t account for the massive changes CD Projekt Red introduced in the 2.0 and 2.1 updates. Today, I’m going to share my personal blueprint to unlocking every single ending, including the brutal secret solo run and the tragic Phantom Liberty epilogue, using strategies I’ve verified myself in the current meta.

The Balancing Point on Misty’s Balcony

To kick off the endgame, you need to play through the main questline until you trigger the point of no return in the main quest Nocturne Op55N1. This happens when you go to meet Hanako Arasaka at the Embers restaurant. Once you cross this threshold, the game locks you into the final sequence. After collapsing in the elevator and waking up in Viktor Vector’s clinic, you will find yourself on the rooftop balcony of Misty’s Esoterica with Johnny Silverhand.

This balcony is the absolute pivot point of your entire story. The choices you make here, coupled with the side quests you completed before entering Embers, will dictate which paths are open to you. I always recommend making a backup save right here (press the Escape key, navigate to Save Game, and click New Save) so you can easily reload and experience every flavor of the finale.

The Corporate Bargain: How to Unlock the Devil Ending

This path is the default option, but getting its ultimate achievement requires some careful planning earlier in your run.

• The Big Requirements: You must agree to trust Arasaka on the balcony. To get the associated achievement, you also need to have saved Takemura during the main quest Search and Destroy. When the Arasaka strike team blows up the motel room, do not just run out of the building. Instead, double-back through the apartment ruins and fight your way upstairs to rescue him.
• The Balcony Choices: When talking to Johnny, select “Think trusting Arasaka’s risky but worth it.” and then choose to take the omega-blockers to suppress him.
• The Tragic Consequences: I find this ending to be the most chilling. You assist Hanako and Saburo Arasaka’s engram in taking over the body of Yorinobu. You end up in a space clinic where you must choose between signing a contract to digitize your soul into Mikoshi or returning to Earth to die of radiation sickness within six months.
• Unique Rewards: You get to keep the Genjiroh smart pistol, which I found hidden on a desk on the first floor of the Arasaka Mansion in North Oak during the final sequence, alongside some corporate cyberware.

Leaving Night City Behind: How to Unlock the Star Ending

If you ask me, this is the most emotionally satisfying path in the entire game, especially if you’ve developed a close bond with the Aldecaldos.

• The Big Requirements: You must completely finish Panam Palmer’s questline before meeting Hanako. This means completing Riders on the Storm, With a Little Help from My Friends, and Queen of the Highway.
• The Balcony Choices: Choose “Gonna ask Panam for help.” and take the pills to seal the deal.
• The Tragic Consequences: You raid Arasaka Tower using a stolen Basilisk tank with the nomads. Saul is brutally executed by Adam Smasher during the final breach, but you manage to defeat Smasher, connect to Mikoshi, and choose to return to your physical body. You drive off into the desert with Panam and the clan, leaving Night City behind to look for a cure in the Badlands.
• Unique Rewards: You get the Aldecaldos Rally Bolero Jacket and Cassidy’s unique power revolver, Amnesty.

Becoming an Afterlife Legend: How to Unlock the Sun Ending

If you want V to achieve their dream of becoming the ultimate mercenary legend of Night City, this is your path.

• The Big Requirements: You have to finish Rogue’s personal questline before the point of no return. This involves playing through Tapeworm, Chippin’ In, and Blistering Love.
• The Balcony Choices: Select the option “Think you and Rogue should go.” and take the pseudoendotrizine to hand your body over to Johnny.
• The Tragic Consequences: Johnny takes control of your body and convinces Rogue to mount an orbital AV assault on Arasaka Tower. Rogue is sadly killed by Smasher during the confrontation. In Mikoshi, Johnny decides to cross the bridge into cyberspace, leaving you with your body. You wake up as the undisputed boss of the Afterlife and embark on a high-stakes heist of the Crystal Palace casino in orbit.
• Unique Rewards: You get Rogue’s signature power pistol, Pride, and the iconic power assault rifle, Prejudice.

Surrendering V’s Body: How to Unlock the Temperance Ending

This is the bittersweet path where Johnny Silverhand gets a second chance at life in the physical world, but at the cost of V’s identity.

• The Big Requirements: You can trigger this ending through either the Nomad path (with Panam) or the Afterlife path (with Rogue).
• The Critical Choice in Mikoshi: Once you reach the Mikoshi access point and talk to Alt Cunningham, you must make a choice. If you raided the tower with the Nomads, choose to let Johnny cross the bridge while V enters the well. If you raided the tower with Rogue, let Johnny enter the well while V crosses the bridge.
• The Narrative Consequences: V’s consciousness merges with Alt Cunningham behind the Blackwall, essentially becoming a part of a massive rogue AI. Johnny wakes up in V’s fully restored physical body, buys a guitar for a young kid named Steve, and boards a bus to leave Night City forever, finally at peace.

The Path of Least Resistance: V’s Quickest Exit

This is the bleakest ending available, cutting your story short right on the roof.

• The Big Requirements: None. You can trigger this option regardless of your side quest completion.
• The Balcony Choices: Select any of the standard ending choices, but immediately back out by choosing to reconsider. Look down at the pills or your gun and select “Could also just put all this to rest.” Follow this up by tossing the pills over the balcony ledge.
• The Tragic Consequences: V decides to commit suicide on the spot to prevent any of their friends from dying in a raid. The credits roll immediately, showing heartbreaking voicemail messages from your friends.

The Secret Solo Assault: How to Unlock Don’t Fear the Reaper

Now, let me address a massive myth that has been circulating in the community for years: you do not need a 70% relationship score with Johnny to unlock the secret solo raid. Trust me, I’ve tested this on multiple runs. You can check your relationship status by pressing Escape to open the main menu and hovering your cursor over the large middle rectangular icon at the top of the screen. But even if that percentage is sitting at 40%, the secret ending will still unlock as long as you chose the exact correct dialogue options during his gravesite conversation in the Northside Badlands oil fields during the quest Chippin’ In.

When you are standing in the dusty oil fields inscribing Johnny’s initials, you must select these exact responses:

• “The Guy who Saved My Life”
• “Nah, fucked that up too.”
• “What do you want from me?”
• “OK. But as second chances go, this is your last.”
• “You were a real dick in the beginning.”
• “When you said you let down your friends…”
• “Yeah, I’ll call Rogue.”

After locking those in and completing Blistering Love, head to the balcony in Nocturne Op55N1. When Johnny asks who you want to team up with, highlight the option “Think you and Rogue should go.” but do not press anything. Sit in real-time silence for exactly five minutes. Eventually, Johnny will break the ice and offer you a suicide run where nobody else has to die. Select “Let’s hear this plan.” followed by ” Means goin’ out with a bang- I like it” to initiate the solo assault.

The Math and Mechanics of the Solo Run

This is by far the most brutal mission in the game. Unlike other endings, there are no manual saves allowed here, and if you die at any point, the game does not let you respawn; it immediately rolls the credits, treating your death as a suicide.

To make matters worse, Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 2.0 introduced a continuous, non-reversible maximum health reduction system to simulate V’s body collapsing under the weight of the Relic. Let H0 represent V’s baseline maximum health before entering the Arasaka Tower lobby, and let t represent the elapsed time in seconds from the moment V breaches the front doors. Your maximum usable health at any given point in the mission, denoted as H(t), is governed by this step-decay formula:

H(t) = H0 × (0.75 – 0.01 × floor(t / 45))

This formula reveals the harsh reality of the run:

• Immediate 25% Cut: The moment you step into the lobby (t = 0), your maximum health is slashed by 25%.
• The 45-Second Clock: Every 45 seconds, a Relic malfunction occurs, permanently shaving off another 1% of your baseline health pool.
• The Absolute Death Timer: At exactly 3375 seconds (which is 56 minutes and 15 seconds), your maximum health hits zero, killing you automatically.

This mechanic aggressively targets players who rely on passive health pools. If you use cyberware like the Biomonitor, it will automatically consume your healing items when you fall below 50% health. Because your maximum health is decaying, this creates a nasty loop where your healing charges are completely drained without restoring your health.

To counter this, my personal go-to meta-strategy is to completely ignore raw health and focus entirely on stacking damage mitigation chance and mitigation strength. By combining the Defenzikov and Kerenzikov Boost Systems with the Neofiber and Spring Joints cyberware, you can achieve a 100% mitigation chance with an 80% mitigation strength. This means that every time you slide or dash, you only take 20% of incoming damage, making you functionally immortal even on Very Hard difficulty. 

Dismantling the Re-Engineered Adam Smasher in Patch 2.1

If you haven’t fought Adam Smasher since the Patch 2.1 update, prepare yourself for a shock. The developers completely re-engineered him into a high-functioning cyberpsycho who moves with terrifying speed and uses devastating corporate implants.

• The Sandevistan Phase: Once Smasher drops below 80% HP, he activates a custom Sandevistan that allows him to move faster than V, even if you are running a top-tier Militech Apogee. He becomes nearly impossible to hit with standard firearms while he is dashing. I recommend countering this by using a Smart weapon like Genjiroh or activating your own Sandevistan to match his speed.
• Exposing the Core: After dropping below 80% HP, his chest plate catches fire and he rips it off, exposing a central glowing weak point. Hitting this core deals guaranteed critical damage. If you have the Relic Perk from the DLC, you’ll easily see this vulnerability highlighted.
• The Reinforcement Phase: At 50% HP, you will blow one of his arms off. He will retreat to the upper walkways and call in waves of Arasaka guards and turrets while launching lethal, shoulder-mounted mortar barrages. Get out of the center of the room immediately to avoid the blast zones.
• The Cluster Missile Barrage: At 30% HP, Smasher leaps to the center of the room and fires a massive circle of missiles that destroys all remaining cover in the arena. You must back away to the outer walls of the room to survive this spectacular attack, using the opportunity to reload and hit him with long-range attacks.

Siding with Solomon Reed: The Phantom Liberty Endings

The massive Phantom Liberty expansion introduces an entirely new narrative branch centered on NUSA sleeper agent Solomon Reed and rogue netrunner Song So Mi, also known as Songbird. Your choices during the main DLC missions Firestarter and The Killing Moon will decide which of the four main expansion endings you unlock.

• King of Wands: You side with Songbird during Firestarter and help her escape to the Moon during The Killing Moon by drawing your weapon and killing Solomon Reed. This rewards you with Reed’s iconic tech pistol, Pariah, but leaves V without a cure.
• King of Swords: You side with Songbird during Firestarter, but at the last second, you call Solomon Reed and hand her over to the NUSA on the shuttle launchpad in exchange for your survival. This successfully unlocks the alternative base-game ending, The Tower.
• King of Cups: You side with Solomon Reed during Firestarter to help him capture Songbird, but you choose to end her suffering by killing her in the deep core of the secret Militech facility during Somewhat Damaged. This leaves Reed devastated and locks you out of a cure.
• King of Pentacles: You side with Reed during Firestarter and refuse to kill Songbird in the core during Somewhat Damaged, handing her over to the NUSA alive. This secures your cure and unlocks The Tower ending.

The Harsh Reality of the Tower Ending

By securing a cure through either the King of Swords or King of Pentacles paths, you unlock The Tower as a brand-new finale for the base game. Instead of heading to Embers to meet Hanako, you call Solomon Reed from the balcony. You are flown to a military clinic in Washington D.C., where NUSA surgeons successfully extract the Relic.

But the surgery comes with a heartbreaking, permanent cost. You wake up from a coma to discover that two years have passed, and the medical intervention has completely fried your nervous system, making it impossible for your body to tolerate combat cyberware. Your career as a legendary merc is over. When you return to Night City in 2029, you find that your closest companions have all moved on:

• Judy Alvarez: She has left the mercenary life behind, married a woman named Bianca, and moved to Pittsburgh.
• Panam Palmer: She has completely cut contact with you, routing your calls to a dead voicemail box.
• River Ward: He fell into deep shame and sold classified police files to Trauma Team to pay for his nephew’s rehabilitation, refusing to meet you face-to-face.
• Kerry Eurodyne: He has achieved massive, legendary superstar status and is currently on an orbital space tour, far too busy to spend time with you.
• Viktor Vector: He sold his independent clinic to the Zetatech megacorporation, confirming one last time that your inability to use cyberware is permanent.
• Misty: She has closed her shop and opened a spiritual store, meeting you on the street to reassure you that starting over as a face in the crowd is a gift.

Tracking Down Ending-Locked Iconic Weapons

If you are a collector looking to fill V’s apartment stash wall, you will need to hunt down several powerful weapons that are locked behind specific ending paths.

• Prejudice (Power Assault Rifle): During the mission For Whom the Bell Tolls, after Rogue tells everyone to leave the Afterlife, wait for her to clear the bar. Check under the counters behind the bar to find this incredible weapon, which fires piercing projectiles.
• Pride (Power Pistol): This is Rogue’s personal handgun, and it is easily one of the strongest stealth weapons in the entire game. It features a 1.5x headshot multiplier, +100% critical damage, and deals guaranteed critical hits on the first shot. You can loot it directly from Rogue’s remains after the Adam Smasher boss fight in Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.
• Caretaker’s Spade (Blunt Hammer): Leaning against a rock behind a fallen, curved tree in the upper atrium area of Arasaka Tower during Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. This is a fun easter egg from the Witcher 3 expansion Hearts of Stone. Note that Patch 2.0 removed its old lifesteal ability, but it still features +25% armor penetration and +25% stun chance.
• Amnesty (Power Revolver): You can win this highly precise revolver from Cassidy Righter at the Aldecaldos camp during We Gotta Live Together by hitting 12 empty bottles in 15 seconds. This challenge is notoriously glitchy because the bottle hitboxes often desync, causing your shots to remove the glowing aura without actually breaking the bottle. To bypass this, I recommend activating your Sandevistan to slow down time or installing the Microgenerator hand cyberware so your reloads explode with lightning, easily shattering the bottles.
• Genjiroh (Smart Pistol): You can acquire this electric smart pistol behind a locked door on your right upon exiting the elevator on Floor 21 during the mission Play It Safe. Opening the door requires 11 Technical Ability, or you can enter the code 2906 on the keypad. If you miss it here, you can find a second copy on a desk in the main floor of the Arasaka Mansion in North Oak.
• Ba Xing Chong (Smart Shotgun): This is arguably the most destructive smart weapon in the game. To get it, you must defeat Adam Smasher in the finale, loot the Access Token from his body, and complete the game. After the credits, choose the “One More Gig” option to return to the last save before Embers. Travel to the DV Ebunike cargo ship at the Watson Northside docks, head behind the bridge tower, and use the keycard to unlock Smasher’s vault to find the crafting blueprint.

The Dogtown Black Market Economy

If you missed some of these weapons during your story missions, the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty expansion introduces a brilliant catch-up mechanic. Located inside the EBM Petrochem Stadium in Dogtown, Herold is a full-borg black market vendor who sells iconic weapons you failed to loot.

The economic loop here is highly balanced. Herold sells missed weapons like the Chaos tech pistol or the Errata thermal katana for a flat rate of 110,000 Eddies. While that sounds expensive, Tier 5 weapons sell for so much money in Dogtown that you can easily farm 100,000 Eddies in just six to eight standard side jobs.

But you need to keep in mind that Herold’s inventory has some strict limitations. He will only sell weapons from story areas that are no longer accessible to you. This means you can never buy these three highly sought-after weapons from him:

• Lexington X-Mod2: Can only be won by placing first in the Shoot to Thrill shooting contest at Wilson’s gun store in Megabuilding H10.
• Blue Fang (Iconic Knife): Sold exclusively by a lone weapon vendor located in the far eastern reaches of the Badlands, with absolutely nothing else nearby except a fast travel data terminal.
• Headhunter (Iconic Knife): Sold exclusively by a specialized melee vendor in Pacifica, near the apartment building data terminal.

Advanced Technical Workarounds and Game Breaks

Even in the highly polished state of Patch 2.12, some legacy bugs can still threaten to softlock your progress during the climactic final missions.

• The Lobby Elevator Door Glitch: During Don’t Fear the Reaper, a common physics engine desync can cause the central elevator doors to remain permanently shut after you collect the Access Token from the Arasaka guards. This happens when the collision UI fails to register that the combat phase has ended. To bypass this, place your crosshair directly over the panel, press Alt-Tab to exit the game, and then Alt-Tab back in. This forces your PC to redraw the cursor, instantly restoring the finger interaction icon. If you are playing on console, simply increasing your controller deadzone in the settings menu will resolve the issue.
• The Quiet Life Boundary Break: If you love breaking the game’s logic, there is an incredible boundary break still accessible during the solo assault on Arasaka Tower. Before you drop down into the lower mainframe room to connect Alt, you can use a noclip mod or teleport tool to break through the locked double doors next to Smasher’s battle arena. Once you are out of bounds, open your phone menu; surprisingly, the call to Solomon Reed to initiate The Tower ending surgery will go through, allowing you to arrange your NUSA operation right before you fight Smasher.