Prey - Neuromods (Skills)

This post is part of our series of tips for Prey by Arkane Studios. It's not meant to be a comprehensive walkthrough filled with boring common-sense or easily-discovered points of interest, but things that might be tricky or that are easily overlooked.

Neuromods (Skills)

Stealth

• If you are playing on Normal or higher difficulty, Stealth is recommended as a first skill, unless you don't mind frequently fighting enemies directly.
• If you prefer to use the environment to kill your enemies, Story Mode is better.
• On Normal, enemies have a very long and sensitive detection range which makes sneaking hard when they can literally spot just a part of you from across the room and come to investigate.
• The Stealth I Neuromod helps with how quickly they detect you and drop alert status, but doesn't seem to help with the range.
• That said, because Story Mode has less detection range and faster alert drop, you need to get closer and stay closer to the enemy in order to lure them into your traps -- which is a different type of risk.
• Enemies are much more alert and at a longer range, to objects moving. So even if an enemy is far enough away that it isn't reacting to you not crouching, as soon as you pick up an object it might immediately detect and attack.
• If you develop your Stealth too much, getting the attention of enemies to lure them into traps might actually be hard. Try carrying large objects.

(Physician I > Necropsy) is recommended first.

• You end up fighting Typhon a lot and you might as well pick up the extra materials as soon as possible. Bodies CAN sometimes disappear, possibly if an area has reached some kind of object limit.
• When you go back and forth between areas, sometimes enemies will have spawned into areas you've already been, so theoretically you could try to repeatedly farm easy spawns for Exotic Materials. Even without doing so, however, there will be more than enough Exotic Material from defeating Typhon (and possibly recycling Psi Hypos) to get a lot of Neuromods, especially once you start having to move between locations and thereby encounter respawned enemies.
• Once you start encountering Nightmares, they can yield a lot of Exotic Material and your Neuromod production will substantially increase.
• Even if you beeline for your Office, you will get exactly four to five Neuromods and get Necropsy early:
• The one you are prompted to take by January
• Three on your office desk.
• There is also one in the Transtar Exhibit, for a total of give easily reached.
• You may be tempted to get Materials Expert early and get the most out of Recycling early, but you can stash junk in Recyclers and containers until you deal with them later. Necropsy just saves you a bit of running around and trying to remember where the not-yet-looted corpses are.

Materials Expert is recommended next

• For reasons similar to Necropsy (see above), (Repair I > Dismantle) might seem like a good next choice for skills. But you can get the Neuromod Fabrication Plan rather early on as well as a large cache of Exotic Materials, so Materials Expert is a good next step to start making Neuromods early.
• Also, you start encountering Operators only once you get to Hardware for the first time, so there's plenty of time to get Dismantle.
• However, if you feel going to Fabrication very early and before it is populated by enemies is unintentional, then go for Dismantle first. You can pick up a few Neuromods in the early areas of Hardware Labs to get Materials Expert.
• There's reason to believe it is indeed unintentional because there is a quest ("Copy Protection") that removes the limit on the number of Neuromods you can fabricate. You can finish this quest without even knowing about it if you can get to Halden Graves's Office.
• Recycle all food items. When you are low on health, use a Medkit in a crisis. But when you are safe, go to a source of water like a sink or drinking fountain. Each time you turn on the water, you get 1 unit of health restored.
• Also, all placed items do not magically restock (which happens in various other games to keep you implausibly resupplied). You may get some occasionally from Typhon you defeat (mostly Phantoms), but essentially what you scavenge is finite. So where possible, I recommend you use the infinite supply of water rather than the finite supply of foodstuffs and instead reduce food items into materials for use at the Fabricator. Most reduce to just Organic Material but for the processed foods you do get a bit of Mineral Material or Synthetic Material.

Dismantle and Suit Modification

• Once you are comfortable with combat, Dismantle and Suit Modification help you with inventory and keep you on the go without having to find a Recycler. And in general it is better to Dismantle weapons into Spare Parts than just recycle them.

Hacking

• Most keypads that have visible numbers (i.e., not broken) also have a keycode you can discover at some point or some means to open it without Hacking. Same with Terminals where you are allowed to enter a password; some terminals that cannot accept a password will need to be Hacked.
• For keypads, often it will either be on a sticky note nearby, or someone in that area has a Transcribe audiolog that mentions it. To locate persons in the area, use the Security Terminal to put a quest marker on them.
• This minigame can be really frustrating. Try to line up to pass between barriers first before zooming through, to reduce the chances of wasting time because you bumped a barrier. And keep retrying because the puzzle resets each time and you might get an easier layout.
• You get an electric shock every time you fail, so try to make sure you are in a safe situation before Hacking. Then if you fail, just go to a Water Fountain or other water source and drink to recover your health
• Higher level hacks can sometimes be easier because you might be able to save some time on an easy path.
• You can try to hack Operators and turn them, but often it is better to destroy them with a Turret and collect the Q-Beam ammunition. You cannot talk to successfully hacked Corrupted Operators  to get healing or repairs.

Leverage

• This can make for interesting environmental kills because heavier objects when thrown often cause the enemy to be knocked down (and cause severe damage) so you are almost never without a weapon. You can then follow up with another throw or just run to reposition or take cover behind a locked door.
• Acceleration does not seem to be taken into account, so the closer you are to the target, the more damage they will take.
• Combat Focus is a good supporting skill line, especially as large objects take a long time to lift, even with the Leverage Assist CRU[q1] suit chipset.
• Lifting and Carrying is actually quite finicky and can be very frustrating when for no clear reason you immediately drop an item you have just picked up, or it drops while you are moving and you even clip inside.
• If you force open a door, it stays open and therefore can no longer be used as a defensive location (by locking it).
• This is probably an exploit: If a heavy object is sitting on a lighter one (e.g., a Leverage III object is sitting on a Leverage II object) you can still move that lighter object and in doing so cause the heavier one on top to probably fall away.

Typhon Abilities

• You can't have more than a few before Turrets will attack you. This is not as bad as it sounds because a lot of Turrets start on the map destroyed and need to be repaired. Also, Turrets have a limited firing arc so you can still deploy them and stand behind or otherwise out of the way.
• There are many interactions possible at the story's end, depending on how many actors appear. How many Typhon mods you have installed can affect how these interactions play out. If you want to see the most interactions here in one playthrough, you will have to avoid adding Typhon mods until you are at that point in the game and before you start walking up the stairs to the Captain's Loft to trigger the interactions. Then you can prepare a savegame to reload before you add Typhon abilities.
• It's not clear now a New Game+ will affect this if it automatically re-grants you Typhon Abilities. You may in effect never be able to see some alternate interactions without completely starting over.