Description¶

Beat on the Brat is an early Side Job you can accept while in V’s apartment block and unlocks four more Side Jobs associated with it. These all involve taking on brawling fights around Night City before returning to Coach Fred for the final battle.

Steps¶

1. Speak to Coach Fred and spar with the Training Bot (Optional)
2. Defeat all opponents to get to the final round

Speak to Coach Fred and spar with the Training Bot (Optional)¶

The first part of this Side Job can vary based on your actions. As you head through the gym on the way to the elevator in V’s apartment block, Coach Fred will call out to you. You can opt to ignore him and walk past him, at which point he’ll send you a message with the details, beginning both this Side Job and Beat on the Brat: Kabuki.

If you do choose to head over and speak to him, he’ll ask you to spar with the Training Bot, a simple task if you’ve completed the tutorial, just focus on blocking at the last moment to parry the Training Bot and return a few punches yourself. Following this, Coach Fred will offer the Side Job.

Beat on the Brat - Beating the Brats¶

If you played any of The Witcher games, you’ll recognize this questline - every Witcher game had fisticuffs-related quests, and CDProjekt clearly didn’t feel the need to drop it for Cyberpunk. Unlike The Witcher games, however, in Cyberpunk you won’t find yourself up against pushovers that’ll roll over provided you’ve got the basic mechanics down and aren’t horribly under-leveled.

The first foe you’ll have to vanquish might give you the illusion that this questline is easier than it really is, but without proper preparation, you’ll find yourself in a small pit fighting a pugilist who will down you in several punches, while you’re expected to land - without exaggeration - up to one hundred or more hits yourself. That’s the arithmetic of defeat, there.

Instead of viewing this as a general quest everybody can easily hope to complete, this should perhaps more accurately be viewed as a quest for characters who have invested in Body, specifically into the Athletics and Street Brawler skill trees, as many of the perks in those skill trees will help immensely. Perks that are especially helpful include:

• Steel and Bone: (bonus to melee damage)
• Like a Butterfly: (dodging does not drain Stamina)
• Crushing Blows: (increased Strong Attack damage)
• Flurry: (increased combo damage)
• Human Fortress: (reduces blocking cost by 50%)
• Biding Time: (health regenerates when blocking attacks)
• Rush: (attacks regenerate health)
• Efficient Blows: (reduces Stamina costs when attacking)

Not investing in Body isn’t a deal-killer, but doing so will make things significantly easier. Body or not, you’ll want to invest in some Gorilla Arms (the more powerful the better) and try to get your hands mods for Gorilla Arms, particularly one that inflicts some form of damage-over-time (Bleed, Burn, etc.). Last and certainly not least, invest in a Sandevistan operating system, particularly one with a good uptime/cooldown ratio (the amount of time dilation isn’t as important). There are a lot of tools you can’t use during these Beat on the Brat fights, but oddly enough Sandevistan is perfectly fine. A Sandevistan operating system will carry a Reflexes requirement, depending on which model you opt for.

A combination of Gorilla Arms, a Sandevistan operating system (and mods for both, if you can get them) will make these fights much, much easier, as will investing in Body. Keep in mind, however, that your Armor score doesn’t seem to matter much in melee, so sadly, the game breaking armor won’t help you here. Getting this cyberware is an expensive endeavor, but to be fair, such cyberware isn’t exactly useless outside of these quests, either.

Defeat all Opponents to get to the Final Round¶

To advance the Beat on the Brat quest you’ll need to complete several side bouts, each of which have their own Side Job. The quest you’ll have to clear are as follows:

Now that you know what sort of investment it takes to secure victory in these quests, you should feel content to postpone them until you’re good and ready. It’s also worth noting that the foes you’ll be fighting during these jobs are not equal - you should save Beat on the Brat: Rancho Coronado for last, and you shouldn’t become complacent after Beat on the Brat: Kabuki.

Razor Hughes¶

After you complete the quest Transmission, and assuming you’ve completed the four required Beat on the Brat subquests, the main Beat on the Brat quest should become active when Coach Fred messages you about your next challenger.

Head to the Grand Imperial Mall in Pacifica and wait on a bench until the appointed time, at which a woman will rouse you. Head into the gym at the back of the GIM (heh) and it’ll soon become clear why this quest takes place after Transmission - you needed to clear out the riff-raff so a suitable venue for your final bout. This time you’ll be facing a professional, who is stooping to your level for purely PR purposes.

Talk to Coach Fred and you’ll learn what a professional boxer is in Cyberpunk - more machine than man, equipped with the best cyberware a corpo-nation can concoct. Suffice to say, even with the best cyberware you could scrape together from various Ripperdocs around Night City, the odds against you are long. Coach Fred has an idea, however, and if you choose to hear him out he’ll give you the predictable offer: throw the fight and you’ll make more eddies than you would by winning. Plus, you won’t have to actually overcome your adversary.

Make whatever choice you will, then follow Coach Fred back to the ring. A child will try to distract you with a sob story, but your response here - if you even bother to stop - is irrelevant. Talk to Coach Fred again to start the fight, enter the right and sit on your bench, where good ol’ Vik will give you a pep-talk and tell you to aim for your foe’s newly-installed abs. His only weakspot.

After this, your fight with Razor Hughes will begin, and he’s easily the strongest foe you’ve faced thus far, blocking regularly, countering periodically, and capable of dispatching you in two hits regardless of your level, cyberware or the difficulty level. If you felt a bit guilty about using Sandevistan to win your fights earlier, don’t, as Razor Hughes will use it, to perform lightning quick charges, which are especially hard to dodge given the general floatiness of enemy melee combatants.

For your own strategy, you obviously must avoid getting hit at all costs, as a single attack can easily set you back 300+ damage. Ideally you’ll be able to use Sandevistan and spam strong attacks - targeting your foe’s abdomen - during the time dilation, and while you’re on cooldown stand back and recover. Like most foes you’ve faced in this questline, Razor Hughes can take a lot more hits from you than you can from him, so expect to have to use Sandevistan several times to finish him off.

If you win the fight, you’ll earn around €$2,500 for your trouble. A paltry sum for the amount of effort, perks and cyberware it takes to win these fights. If you take a dive, however, you’ll earn nearly €$7,000, which still feels like it’s missing a digit for how difficult these fights are. Alas, if you’re expecting anything more substantial, you’re out of luck. You don’t even get a lousy trophy or any other memento for securing victory here. At least that finally ends the quest Beat on the Brat, however.