If you’ve spent any time in a Ripperdocs chair in Night City, you already know cyberware is how V actually fights. Arms Cyberware is one of the more dramatic examples. Slot one of these in and you’re not swinging a knife or firing a pistol anymore.
You’re unfolding blades out of your forearms, whipping a live wire at three enemies at once or turning your fists into pile drivers.
Here’s what the Cyberpunk 2077 Arms Cyberware actually offers and how it works under the hood.
Table of Contents
What Arms Cyberware Actually Is
Arms Cyberware sits alongside Hands, Legs, Nervous System and the rest of V’s cyberware slots. Unlike some categories that hold two or three implants at once, Arms only has one slot. Whatever you install here replaces V’s forearm entirely, so it’s a single, high-impact choice rather than a stack of small buffs.
Cyberpunk 2077 Arms Cyberware
There are four core Arms Cyberware options in the game.
Mantis Blades
A pair of retractable blades for fast melee slashing. Holding and releasing the attack button lets you leap at a target for a heavier hit, making them popular with mobility-focused melee builds.
Monowire
A whip-like filament weapon that lashes out at range, letting you hit multiple enemies in an arc instead of one target at a time.
Gorilla Arms
Reinforced fists built for brawling. They also grant a flat bonus to Body attribute checks, which matters for forcing open doors or winning environmental challenges, not just fights.
Projectile Launch System
A built-in launcher that fires explosive projectiles, with charged shots dealing extra damage, a wider blast radius and a higher chance to trigger a status effect.
Damage Types Change the Whole Kit
None of these four weapons come in just one flavor. Each is sold in four damage variants, and the variant changes both the damage type and the status effect it can inflict:
- Physical: bleeding chance
- Electrical (“Electrifying”): shock chance
- Thermal: burn chance
- Chemical (“Toxic”): poison chance
So “Gorilla Arms” and “Thermal Gorilla Arms” are mechanically the same weapon with a different damage type and a different secondary effect layered on top. That means the real decision isn’t just “which weapon,” it’s “which weapon, in which flavor.”
Rarity Tiers and Attribute Attunement
Cyberpunk 2077’s overhaul in Update 2.0 replaced the old Common-through-Legendary naming with a numbered Tier 1 through Tier 5 system (still color-coded grey, green, blue, purple, and orange, so the old rarity logic still applies visually). Arms Cyberware follows the same structure, and every tier jump brings a noticeable price increase.
The cheapest versions run in the neighborhood of 15,000–16,500 eddies, while the top tier climbs into the 86,000–87,500 range.
Starting around Tier 3, Arms Cyberware becomes “attuned” to a specific attribute like Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, Intelligence, or Cool. Start scaling its damage with points invested in that attribute, on top of whatever flat bonuses it already carries (extra melee damage, RAM regeneration, aim speed, and so on, depending on the piece). This is also where the weapon’s core numbers go up: higher status-effect chance, more capacity-adjusted stats, and a steadily climbing price tag.
Every version of Arms Cyberware in this category costs the same Cyberware Capacity (8 points) regardless of tier or damage type, so upgrading doesn’t change how much room it eats in your build, only how strong it is once it’s in.
Getting Your Hands (or Blades) On Them
Arms Cyberware is available from ripperdocs across Night City, and better versions unlock as V’s level and Street Cred climb. A handful of Arms Cyberware pieces can also be picked up as loot in specific locations or reward chests tied to certain gigs and side jobs, though exact spawns have shifted across patches, so treat any single “free legendary here” tip with a grain of salt unless you’ve confirmed it on your current game version.
The Bottom Line
Arms Cyberware is a small category with an outsized effect on how V plays. One slot, four base weapons, four damage flavors each, and a rarity ladder that rewards waiting until you can afford the attuned, higher-tier versions. If you’re building around melee, Mantis Blades or Gorilla Arms will carry your damage output; if you want range without giving up cyberware-driven combat, Monowire or the Projectile Launch System fill that gap instead. Either way, this is one of the few loadout choices in the game that changes what V’s arms look like just as much as what they can do.
Cyberpunk 2077
