Making good on yesterday's promise of news today, CD Projekt Red today released long anticipated version 1.5 of Cyberpunk 2077. Full patch notes and a trailer are also available.

These notes are relatively short and worth a read if you play but we'll look at some of the major changes.

Housing

V can now effectively purchase - the notes say rent with a one-time-fee - up to four additional apartments after completing the Playing for Time quest.

• Northside, Watson (€$5,000)
• Japantown, Westbrook (€$15,000)
• The Glen, Heywood (€$40,000)
• Corpo Plaza, City Center (€$55,000)

Those prices are super cheap as player housing goes.

They can be rented by walking into one or via the EZEstates website on your desktop computer. Your starting apartment can also be customised for €$10,000.

A tour of all can be seen in this video.

Certain apartment interactions also give you short term buffs.

Character Customisation

At any apartment or safehouse mirror you can change your appearance without cost.

New makeup and hair options are available.

Item Changes

Several select changes to how this works may hint at the direction CDPR could be taking this part of the game in.

The 2 DLC jackets and registration reward items (Black Unicorn katana and Witcher / GOG clothing) increase their rarity after a certain amount of upgrades.

Additionally players now receive a base crafting spec for each of these.

Previously upgrading clothes to get max slots required save / reload tactics to ensure maximum mod slots.

Ditto for weapons and mod slots, along with whatever stats you wanted on them.

This is a huge improvement for these particular items. If applied more broadly it would spare players having to use save editors or mods to both look good and function optimally.

Upgrading melee weapons will now increase their level requirement.

Knife gameplay has been signficantly improved.

Instead of each knife being lost on throw, they automatically return to you after a certain amount of time which varies by rarity, or you can pick them up.

We would guess that speed of automatic recovery improves with rarity - which would incentivize using best quality knives.

One of the many new perk changes is a knife one. Upon critical hit or deathblow with a knife, all thrown knives are returned to you.

[ Main Image: Cyberpunk 2077 1.5 trailer. Credit: CD Projekt Red via YouTube. ]

References

CD Projekt Red (February 15, 2022). Patch 1.5 & Next-Generation Update — List of Changes. Cyberpunk 2077.

Gamespot (February 15, 2022). Cyberpunk 2077 Next Gen Update Launch Trailer. YouTube.

LastKnownMeal (February 15, 2022). Cyberpunk 2077: ALL NEW Apartments & Makeovers and Activities Showcase! YouTube.