How to start Phantom Liberty in Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty V posing next to Solomon Reed
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

Need to know how to start Phantom Liberty in Cyberpunk 2077? There are a few ways you can access and dive into the expansion, be it directly from the main menu or via a new or old game save. In fact, developer CD Projekt Red recommends that you start a new save in Cyberpunk 2077 to experience the story from the very start, letting you progress naturally into Phantom Liberty when you reach a particular point in the main story. However, that might not be exactly how you want to approach the expansion, so I've laid out all the ways you can get started with Phantom Liberty in Cyberpunk 2077.

How to start Phantom Liberty 

How to start Phantom Liberty

(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

If you start a new game in Cyberpunk 2077, you must play through the main story until you finish the "Transmission" quest to access Phantom Liberty. This occurs during the Pacifica storyline with the Voodoo Boys. It takes place after the "M'ap Tann Pelen" and "I Walk The Line" missions in Act 2, and all three quests are given to you by Soulkiller. After you finish Transmission, you'll receive a call from somebody called Songbird, adding the "Dog Eat Dog" mission to your journal, which is the Phantom Liberty introduction quest.

However, if you're carrying on from an existing Cyberpunk 2077 save file and you've already finished Transmission, Songbird will reach out to you for the Dog Eat Dog mission within the first couple of minutes of you loading in.

how to start phantom liberty in cyberpunk 2077

(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

Alternatively, you can also start a new game and choose to skip straight to Phantom Liberty. This lets you customize V's appearance like normal and choose their Cyberpunk 2077 lifepath, but also starts you off at level 15 with a good selection of weapons and cyberware, your Perk and Attribute points allocated for you, and any essential main story missions in your journal - however previous missions are autocompleted and cannot be replayed, so you'll miss out on those. You can also freely reallocate your Perk points thanks to the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update, and you get a one-time respec for your Attribute points.

Regardless of how you start Phantom Liberty, Songbird will tell you that she can save your life - that is, save V from the relic inside their head that is slowly killing them, but only if you help her. Talk to Songbird and she'll tell you to meet her by the entrance to Dogtown. From here, you'll sneak inside the district, past the Barghest soldiers - the private military firm run by Kurt Hansen, one of the villains of Phantom Liberty.

Dogtown is the all-new region on the Cyberpunk 2077 map, situated by the old stadium in Night City. The region itself isn't particularly big compared to the rest of the game, but it is densely packed with quests and building interiors to explore, and it works well for Phantom Liberty's spy-themed gameplay.

Alongside having a twisting story of its own with plenty of pivotal decisions, Phantom Liberty also adds a brand new Cyberpunk 2077 ending to the main game. No spoilers here, but it's definitely worth checking out.

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Ford James

Give me a game and I will write every "how to" I possibly can or die trying. When I'm not knee-deep in a game to write guides on, you'll find me hurtling round the track in F1, flinging balls on my phone in Pokemon Go, pretending to know what I'm doing in Football Manager, or clicking on heads in Valorant.