Anyone got some suggestions for best armour items? Feeling like I’m still a bit too easy to kill when going against harder enemies.
By far the biggest factor in armour is the number of mod slots on it. The reason for that is the armadillo mod. Even the worst armadillo mod adds significantly to armour class. The best armadillo mod, crafted by a player with max crafting skill and who crafts a bunch and picks out the highest tier ones (epic, I think, maybe rare - I remember that you can't craft legendary tier armadillo mods but I'm not sure about epic ones), is extraordinary. Without any shenanigans you can raise your armour class to over 5000, which makes you close to invulnerable. Close explosions and other instadeath triggers (like walking down the "wrong" set of stairs) will kill you, but nothing can prevent that. I think it might perhaps be possible for an enemy with a weapon with an extremely high damage per hit to kill you, maybe.
So if you want the most effective armour, learn the armadillo mod. Shops sell plans for it IIRC. It's definitely not hard to learn. Slap armadillo mods in every mod slot on every item of clothing. It all stacks. The displayed figures on each piece will be wrong (unless that bug's been fixed since I last played) but the total armour class shown on your character screen will be right.
It's mainly a matter of armour class. Protection against elemental effects has some use, but most of what hits you will be kinetic energy and that's countered by armour class. Generally, higher tier (common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary) clothing will be better armour, but it's mainly a matter of the number of mod slots. Crafting applies again. Crafting is very powerful in CP2077. Item level (which you can't see because that's one of the design flaws in CP2077) has a significant effect on armour class (and everything else, like weapon damage). One of the reasons why crafting is so useful is that you always craft items (including mods) to your current level so you can just craft new ones as you level. Found items almost never level with you. I think Clippy does and I think that's the only one that does. Maybe uniques do, but I don't think so. You can upgrade a lower level item up to your current level, but it's
very expensive in terms of resources and I found it to be not worth it. But both my characters were heavily into crafting, so YMMV. You can also find legendary clothing items in fixed locations - there are details online if you want to look for them. The last time I played, legendary clothing
plans were still bugged, so they only appeared the first time you entered a clothing shop that sold them and never again in that shop. If you plan on crafting legendary clothing, you might want to see if that bug has been fixed or do the workaround - never enter a clothing shop unless you have a huge wad of money to buy all the legendary clothing plans the shop has on that first visit. Save before entry and save scum to get the ones you want, if you like. It's a valid workaround for a bug, since the shops should restock with a different selection of legendary clothing plans each time. Not all clothing shops ever sell legendary clothing plans - it's mainly the upmarket (and hugely expensive) clothing shops in the higher level zones of the city. City centre, mainly.
Do you know about the zoning? Roughly, the level of a zone increases in a roughly clockwise pattern from the top. The zone you start in is the easiest, then the one to the east/southeast, etc, with the last one being city centre. Sort of like the pattern on a snail shell. You can move straight south from the starting zone into the city centre right away, which won't go well. The game gives you no indication of any of this, of course. Another design flaw.
Also what’s the best way to level up fast so I can upgrade guns?
I wouldn't upgrade guns. I'd replace them. Later on, I'd craft my own guns from legendary weapon plans. To level up, I'd suggest doing all the side gigs and street gigs in whatever zone you can easily handle at the time. All the police scanner jobs too. Any street crime events that happened to pop up nearby (the flashing blue stars). Maybe go full psycho vigilante and kill gang members on sight. When you see them, scan them to find one with a bounty on them. You can kill people with a bounty on them on sight - they are literally outlawed. When the other gang members attack you, you can kill them too without any legal repercussions (it's deemed to be self defence) even if they don't have a bounty on them. Just don't hit civilians by mistake - the police teleport in if you do that.
It's worth keeping an eye on your stats and skills. Skills level with use, but only up to the level of the governing stat. So if you have, for example, a reflexes stat of 8 you will only be able to level weapon skills governed by the reflex stat (e.g. rifles and handguns) up to level 8. Any further use of those weapons will not train your skill in them until you raise the governing stat. It's more efficient to switch to something else, something you can still level. That way, you'll gain perk points faster and some probably useful bonuses since each skill level adds a bonus of some kind.
True but it'd be the first time. I started playing it soon after release but dipped in and out with months in-between and still only very early on in the game (12% I think). So if the next patch is large enough/lots of improvements I must just give it a go from the beginning again as I don't feel I'm getting the best out of it either when I try to pick up playing the game again. Doing the training stuff again might be good, and hacking etc. Not looked to see if this can be done again without restarting it.
