This is an unfortunate kind of "gotcha" that is present in the game. It's not really a bug, but rather just an unexpected thing the way non-lethal takedowns work as I've learned. Basically when you use any kind of non-lethal takedown, it is only the very hit that takes them down which is non-lethal. If the final non-lethal take down hit or shot or whatever has been delivered to them that drops their hitpoints to 0 or whatever, then if they are hit again after that at all by anything, they will be lethally killed.

So you must make sure that when you shoot them with a bullet, or hit them with a non-lethal grenade, punch them with gorilla fists or any other non-lethal option, that that you don't send a barrage of attacks at them all at once which hit them multiple times in a row, as only one single hit is non-lethal - the takedown hit.

Tossing 5 non-lethal grenades at someone, the first grenade that hits them and drops hitpoints to zero is non-lethal. The rest of the non-lethal grenades that go off after that within range of their body will kill them. Same thing for non-lethal rifle shots with weapon mod. Shoot them once and they go down. Shoot them with a spray of bullets and they're hit by one more bullet than it took to take them down, and they're dead.

Non-lethal takedowns IMHO always need to be done with very careful surgical precision, painstakingly one shot or hit at a time and making sure there is no splash damage from the weapon being used nor any skill mods or cyberware in use that causes damage to spread to nearby enemies etc.

It's kind of non-obvious at first and very frustrating, but once you understand what's happening you can adapt your approach to be more surgical and less "bull in a China shop" so to speak. :)

OK this was always the case I believe - but that was never an issue for me, and I suspect most people only noticed an issue recently. And I suspect that it's not due to hitting them while they're unconscious, it's something else...

I ended up accidentally killing two cyberpsychos yesterday despite having my non-lethal targeting eye upgrade installed, and the second one revealed the actual bug I believe.

The first one I have no idea how it happened, but I suspect it was the same way as the second one: not due to accidentally hitting them afterwards or anything, but simply THE ACT OF LOOTING THEIR BODY!

So, the guy was down on the ground, clearly still alive (he was moving a bit as people do who are down but not dead). So I naturally looted everything he had, because as with a lot of cyberpsycho cases, the loot from his body was needed before I could call it it.

I just grabbed everything in quick succession, and then all of a sudden I hear a slight noise, the guy stops moving and this pool of blood appears underneath him and gets bigger... sure enough, I call it in to say that "I had to take him down, didn't have a choice"...!

Now THAT is 100% a bug. There's no way that's intended! And this definitely only started happening after one of the most recent patches...

I suspect that it's exactly the same bug that's causing people to "die" by being put into a container - or at least it's related. Since I'd never experienced (or heard anyone experiencing) that bug until recently either...

Rumor has it that if you do all the Cyberpsychosis missions as non-lethal that whats her face, I think her name is Regina if I remember right will give you a bonus reward. Only problem is no one has every tried it...

There are people who have apparently completed this non-lethally - before the last few patches dropped - and supposedly all you get is a bit of dialogue from her confirming you did them all non-lethally. No additional reward beyond that.

Needless to say, it was very disappointing...

So it's entirely possible they've added a reward since then - but since they also made it practically impossible to do now, no one will have seen it even if that's the case...


And judging from the other bonus rewards she's given me - usually for completing a mission entirely stealthily and/or non-lethally - it's probably not a great loss. It's usually a weapon of some sort, but it's still adjusted based on level (i.e. difference between your level and the "mission level", or difficulty) - so at best it was maybe on par with what I already had, but usually much worse than what I already had, and never unique in any way. Probably made worse due to the retarded randomisation of items they've got going on, where common weapons can be stronger than legendary ones, and where rarity has almost no bearing on the amount of extra slots you get or anything.

Whoever came up with the itemisation in this game needs to be reeducated in North Korea.

It's entirely possible to do non-lethally. Been there. Done that.

I stand corrected and I thank you both...

I think I would try doing it as non-lethal if the final reward was something special. I mean she doesn't even give you a decent reward for returning Skippy, much less keeping him.

They need to really rebalance the whole reward system in this game. It doesn't take long before you easily get far more cash from just selling all the loot than the actual job itself.

Though that's probably not as important as all the other stuff they need to fix first...

No idea about that but I completed all the missions, but the first 2 or 3 I had to kill the Cyberpsycho as they were way overpowered for me. It was tough to take them down and I had no non-lethal means at my disposal that would have been effective at the time. I suspect it'll be that way for most players on their first playthrough.

Having completed the game now and learned a lot and become a boss at taking down enemies in any way shape or form... when I do my next playthrough I will avoid the Cyberpsycho missions UNTIL I have proper non-lethal means to take them down with minimal risk. The best way I found to do that in game was with SYSTEM RESET cybermod which works like a champ.

[UPDATE: As of patch 1.2, SYSTEM RESET no longer works on cyberpsychos. That sucks. New challenge to solve for the next playthrough I guess though, and there are other options so just have to adapt to the changing game.]

If someone wants to try for complete non-lethals with that questline just get the SYSTEM RESET mod first and level up a fair bit with max street cred also and it's probably not that hard to do.
The reward you get is knowing that you saved 17 people's lives. :)

You can just use the cybereye implant, I forget what it's called, that makes all of your attacks (at least your weapon attacks) magically non-lethal. I've managed to incapacitate cyberpsychos by firing tech sniper rifles through walls directly at them, and they were still alive but on the ground.

I can't remember where I got that implant from, but it was really early in the game, as I had hardly done any main missions by that point (though I was still too weak to reliably take on cyberpsychos at that point, but I did have fully non-lethal means at my disposal).

Of course the system reset is much easier... It's basically a win button...

I will ssay it's a little messed up when I can shoot a Cybersycho with a sniper rifle and cause 3,000-4,000 damage, watch him go down and I'm teling Regina that I took him down and he's still alive. Lot of times I just went for the killing but my messages back to Regina told her that I went non-lethal.

I agree, having a magic cybereye that somehow means any weapon magically becomes "non-lethal" is pretty ridiculous, even in a sci-fi cyberpunk setting.

It "sort of" makes some sense for smart weapons, since when they're set to "non-lethal" (whether by a mod or via the cybereye or something), the bullets actually go for limbs and not the chest or head - that said, I would have expected someone with massive wounds to all their extremities to be bleeding out quite quickly.

Seems like a too easy copout to be able to do this. It also makes the "blunt" melee weapons completely unimportant, since otherwise one would have to use them (or fists) to do "non-lethal" (not including takedowns or hacks of course).

And while I really like the ultimate "system reset", it's a bit strange that something such as that, in a high-tech world like this, hasn't been countered in the meantime. It would make some sense if higher-level enemies at least had some way to counter it, or at least reduce its effects. That said, I'm mostly glad these cheesy things exist, since it allows us to easily bypass the more boring bits.

Don't know, never defeated any Cyberpsychos in her office. ;)

Seriously though, I notice that it doesn't mention anything about them being alive... so there's a chance I'll see this sometime in the next few months, when I can be bothered getting back into this.

I know the feeling... After spending over 238 hours on the game and finishing all the missions and side quests. It's pretty hard to jump back into the game right now... I would if a DLC was released right now but only until then...

I haven't even completed half the missions I reckon, both main and side.

I'm currently downloading the new full version, since I think I missed one and this way is probably quicker than grabbing the last two updates, since this one is quite chunky. Since I'm stubbornly doing it via the offline installers, it's taking a long time.

Not sure I'll even get back into it, but am almost tempted to restart from scratch after reading about the changes. Almost, because 1) the game overall will still be an action game with half-assed RPG elements, so will undoubtedly still be disappointing despite being a good game due to not being what I originally wanted it to be, and 2) Disco Elysium released their Final Cut the other day, but most importantly 3): there's no mention of them fixing the absolutely retarded itemisation and levelling, which is the main thing that's dampened my enjoyment of the game.