Cyberpunk 2077 mod has you regularly fend off random ambushes by bounty-hunting mercenaries

While a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 players are already imagining how sweet life will be when the Phantom Liberty Expansion arrives and they can ditch their old flame Keanu Reeves for a fresh celebrity companion in Idris Elba, some are still hanging out in Night City while they wait.

For the veteran players who’ve already shot their way through all of the gigs and missions in their quest log, stealthily scoured the underbelly of CDPR’s metropolis to unearth all of its hidden secrets and taken in the stunningly-rendered vistas the game’s newly added Ray Tracing Overdrive Mode, things might be getting a little stale.

If you’re in need of some fresh fights and exciting encounters to spice up the hours between your nightly trips to The Afterlife, a new mod might be worth adding to your load order.

Do you fancy getting into a few more chaotic scuffles in Cyberpunk 2077 while you wait for the Phantom Liberty expansion?

The mod in question is simply called ‘Kato’ and is the work of modder anygoodname. Some of their previous projects have added to the game’s Blade Runner easter egg and helped keep the populace of Night City calm when computers are turned on.

This time, they’ve decided to spice up V’s life by having a mysterious character called Kato place a bounty on their head and send hordes of armed goons at seemingly random intervals to try and collect on it.

The result is of this, as anygoodname explains, is a version of the game that contains “more fight opportunities” and allows for faster acquisition of skills, gear and money, with the trade off that you’ll never know what’s lurking around the next corner and might end up caught in a potentially lethal firefight at any time.

These surprising battles can be made even more chaotic by a variety of possible circumstances related to when and where they occur, with the likes of friendly NPCs and police attention possibly serving to help or hinder your efforts to repel the attackers.

That said, don’t feel like you’re always going to have to respond to mercenary arrivals by charging directly into action and confronting Kato’s goons, with anygoodname suggesting that you'll regularly have a chance to take a more stealthy or strategically nuanced approach to dispatching your pursuers.

Or, if you like to be able to pick and choose your battles carefully, the mod allows you to set up a ‘dismiss’ key that’ll immediately banish any mercenaries that show up at awkward times or are a bit too overpowered for your liking.

If you’re already salivating at the idea of scrapping the streets, you’ll first need to grab awpsoleet’s ‘Cyber Engine Tweaks’ and NexusGuy999’s ‘Native Settings UI’.

Regardless of whether you’re now on the run from the NCPD after accidentally blowing away a bunch of baddies right next to one of their cruisers, make sure to follow us for more interesting Cyberpunk 2077 mods and info on the Phantom Liberty expansion. You can also check out our mods of the month for March 2023.