How To Spend Your Neuromods: The Best Abilities To Unlock In Prey

Installing Neuromods: a seemingly barbaric or at very least incredibly difficult surgery that Arkane Studios' Prey encourages its protagonist to self-perform. Beyond the literal implications, these deadly looking pieces of machinery give Morgan Yu some pretty game-changing abilities.

Prey has more than 90 abilities spread across six different upgrade trees, three of which deal with alien, or "Typhon" Abilities that allow you to do fun things such as summon aliens to fight for you. Given the vast amount of abilities you can choose from, it can be difficult to decide what's right. Take it from someone who has finished the game, you'll want to follow the outline below:

Get The Neuromod Fabrication Plan

 

Holding off on what to upgrade for now, you should first focus on making that easier. You can find a document that will give you the ability to craft Neuromods with the Fabricator. Best part is, you can do so very early.

 

We detail the path in this guide, but the big takeaway is that all you need to find it is the Volunteer Quarters Keycode (found here) and the Huntress Boltcaster (found here). You might want to have already procured a high-powered weapon like the shotgun, just in case.

 

After that, you should focus your fabrication efforts exclusively on Neuromods. Sure, you can Frabricate some ammo, if you need it, but you should make Neurmods whenever you have enough exotic material.

 

Get Hacking III and Leverage III

 

Now that you’re mass-producing Neuromods, use them to blitz both Hacking III and Leverage III. These are expensive (it will take you 22 Neurmods all told), but their worth cannot be overstated.

 

Once you have both of these, you can essentially move anywhere unobstructed. Leverage III is the highest you will ever need to move physical obstacles, and Hacking III is essentially all you’ll ever need to get into most doors and safes.

 

There are a few doors and safes that require Hacking IV, but they’re few and far between, and there are much easier ways of finding those codes (such as these helpful guides) than investing more Neurmods.

 

Upgrade Your Suit

 

While you may not have enough chipsets to justify the purchase, the extra inventory space granted by Suit Modification I, II and III is invaluable for being able to hold more junk that you can turn into crafting materials with the recycler.

 

Also, this will allow you to pick up other things you don’t need. Typically, if you see a shotgun or a GLOO Cannon on the ground when you already have them, you’ll just take the ammo. But, with extra inventory space, you will be able to pick these items up and recycle them for massive amounts of mineral and synthetic material, both of which can act as a bottle neck for your crafting desires.

 

Don’t Get Health Upgrades Out Of Order

 

You have an ability track in Prey that will allow you to buff the effectiveness of medkits by 150 and then 300 percent with the Physician I and II ability, meaning your medkits that used to heal for 30 health now heal for 90, and this is a great upgrade to get.

 

That is, as long as you’ve already upgraded your max health with Toughness I, II or III. If you upgrade your medkits to heal 90 health, when your max health is still 100, you’re doing it wrong. This will make it so you’ll never want to use a medkit, or it will be a waste if you do, forcing you to scrounge for food.

 

You can, however, go ahead and double the effectiveness of food, though, by getting the Metabolic Boost upgrade. In fact, that could even be the first health-related upgrade you get. This will make food heal for 10 health and alcoholic beverages heal for 2. While this may not seem like a lot, all it takes is three food items to eclipse the need to spend one regular medkit. Not to mention that the ability cost only 2 Neuromods, so it's a really low investment.

 

Be Careful About Typhon Upgrades

 

Yes, we all want to turn into a coffee cup, or a roll of toilet paper, or a banana, or any other on a list of objects, large and small, for whatever desired purpose. But, you have to be careful about Typhon Upgrades because of that huge Typhon enemy: the Nightmare.

 

Unlock three Typhon abilities, and the Nightmare will spawn. Install a fourth, and he’ll start to hunt you. Evade him, and he’ll go away for 20 minutes. Kill him, and he’ll go away for 30, but he’s never truly dead or gone.

 

If you want to play the whole game without the Nightmare hunting you, I’d suggest only getting Mimic Matter I, for the utility of moving through small spaces, and Kinetic Blast I & II. Kinetic Blast II will be powerful enough to kill most smaller Typhon Enemies, including a one-hit kill on Cystoid Nests.

 

If you’re planning to throw caution to the wind, though, definitely look into Pyschoshock and Electrostatic Burst. These are essentially the Nullwave Transmitter and the EMP in an ability form that also do damage. You can stack these abilities with their physical throwing version to prolong the effects of EMP or Nullwave and completely shut down certain Typhons. Also, make sure to grab Scope Chipsets that offer bonuses to Psi.

 

Lab Tech II is Essential For Late Game

 

You’re going to face a lot of really tough enemies in the game, especially if you opt to face the Nightmare on a regular basis. Regardless, you’re going to want to use the Q-Beam. It’s easily the most powerful weapon in the game, found in the Ballistics Lab area of Hardware Labs.

 

As such, you’ll want to upgrade it as soon as you can, but you can only upgrade each stat once until you have Lab Tech and Lab Tech II. It will cost you 10 Neuromods to get to this point, so it’s not exactly cheap, but think of it as an investment. Not to mention, this path will also include the Materials Expert ability which increases your recycling yield by 20%.

 

When you get to late game and start running into Telepaths, Technopaths and Weavers, all the while running away from the Nightmare, you’ll thank yourself for investing in this. As a side note, get the Cell Refurb 00Q-X1 Suit Chipset. This will make it so almost every robotic enemy you kill will have Q-Beam ammo on its corpse.