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CyberRealm: Overview

2025-01-30 // IOTM Overview

We've finally got a new realm! At the Ascension Speed Society discord, we often have light verbal jousts over what actually constitutes a "realm" in KOL. There are many different ways you can define a realm and many different silly exceptions to TPTB's traditional realm formula. But you know one way to settle that argument up right quick? Just put "realm" in the thing's name. What a lovely gift for the playerbase in 2025. Now: is it good for ascension? Let's find out!

General Summary

CyberRealm is a linked zone within Lyle's Monorail. After purchasing your very own CyberRealm keycode, you'll gain permanent access to the server room, the primary container for your hacking escapades. There is a desk -- if you click around the desk's drawers (and the trash can), you'll get a little data stick, a few 0s and 1s, and some funny flavor text. Outside of the sneaky desk clicks, there are three specifically marked clickable areas -- the mail tube, the terminal, and the Dedigitizer.

  • The Dedigitizer is used to spend zeros and ones, the bespoke currency earned from your Cyber exploits. Very few of these will be available to craft in a run -- the most important elements are the permable skills (discussed later), and the two potions. With proper routing, you could turn your 0s and 1s into one ten-adventure shot of +50% combat initiative per day, or one ten-adventure shot of +30% items every two days. There are other cute items in there too, as detailed on the wiki, but we'll discuss those later.
  • The inter-office mail tube is a way to convert meat into drugs, AKA spleen items. There are two spleen items that are explicitly relevant to CyberRealm (Drenchchrome adds damage to your cyber attacks, while eXpand adds RAM), but one that is useful in other ways -- the Synapse Blaster is a 1-spleen item with +5 prismatic resistance.

Finally, the terminal itself allows you to jack in to the mainframe and visit three distinct CyberZones. You can spend 18 combats and 2 NCs each day in each zone. The first zone is easy, the second zone is moderately difficult, and the third zone is quite a bit more difficult than the others. The zones consist of two types of creatures - digital processes (all constructs, with varying elemental alignments and flavor) or hackers (all dudes). While you can use your normal suite of combat skills against the dudes, you are plum out of luck with the digital constructs, who can only be damaged by CyberRealm skills (and who remove your ability to cast other skills).

On the 10th turn of the day in any of the CyberZones, you will be faced with a free noncombat; this will test your elemental resistance to a specified element (aligned to the element of the zone's hackers), and reward you zeros based on your resistance (8, 16, 32 respectively across the three zones). The final turn in each zone is a reward NC, rewarding meat (5k, 10k, or 20k) and dedigitizer schematics that can be used to make items at the aforementioned dedigitizer.

That's a lot of stuff!

Speedrun Applicability

While CyberRealm isn't something that's going to save you 10-20 turns a day, it still has enough speedster benefit that it's going to be chippin' in on your runs. The first and most obvious benefit is the spleen item; +5 prismatic resistance is a nice amount! If you are low-shiny, Synapse Blasters will allow you to simplify some of the math for the places you need resistance throughout your run. To list these out explicitly, this helps (and in some cases entirely solves):

  • Level 8's Icy Peak requires 5 cold resistance to access the Mist-Shrouded Peak
  • Level 9's Blech House scales very comfortably with sleaze resistance, and +5 is a hell of a lot, lowering the necessary moxie to cap your bridge parts by 100+ (on average)
  • Level 9's Twin Peak requires 4 stench resistance to ace the first option in the Great Overlook Lodge
  • Level 9's A-Boo clues siphon away HP based on your cold/spooky res; the higher they are, the lower HP you need to ace the clues and get the maximum 30% hauntedness reduction on A-Boo Peak per clue
  • Level 11's Haunted Kitchen stage requires 9 hot/stench resistance to get the desired 8-combat kitchen
  • Level 13's Hedge Maze requires 8 resistance across the hedge maze to finish the maze in the minimum 4 adventures

Realistically, most ascenders won't need to buy Synapse Blaster for these tests. However, if you lack the perms or IOTMs to safely cover these (or are playing a low-power avatar path), Synapse Blaster is a great way to bridge whatever gap you've got and ensure you're maximizing your turnsave. It's also available in avatar paths, many of which find elemental resistance a lot more difficult than the standard class. One (extremely minor) benefit is that you also get one datastick every run. Autosell that for an easy 50 meat to start your run, helping mildly offset the Synapse Blaster cost.

But that's the Cyberpunk equivalent of gravy. (Corpo condiments? Fixer food? Synth sauce?) The real value of CyberRealm is in the permable skills. Via the dedigitizer, CyberRealm users can generate 3 skillbooks, each generating a permed skill:

  • STATS+++ rom chip provides STATS+++, which gives you a passive +3 stats per combat
  • SLEEP(5) rom chip provides SLEEP(5), which gives you 5 free rests per day
  • OVERCLOCK(10) rom chip provides OVERCLOCK(10), which makes your first ten CyberZone fights per day absolutely free

The stats are extremely minor, amounting to 1.5 mainstats per combat, or about 200 useful pre-level-12 mainstat substats in a non-mouthwash speedrun. But SLEEP(5) and OVERCLOCK(10) are both excellent new skills that should be immediate perms for CyberRealm owners. The rests synergize with the Cincho de Mayo, getting us closer and closer to a new sneak.

The free fights, though? That's a big deal! We have so many familiars that are powerful in the 2025 standard set. The more free fights we can slam into our runs, the more time we'll have to generate Chest Mimic eggs, or split pea soup freeruns, or eagle banishes, or mini kiwis, or maps to Halloween town.

It's worth noting that these ten fights are strong scaling fights, too -- while most of our leveling will be dealt with in the next 2 years through Mmm-brr mouthwash, the fights within CyberZones scale to a cap of 10,000. This is pretty high; Neverending Party has a cap of 20,000, but every other free fight zone is a cap of 10,000 or less, and (generally) you don't reach 10,000 in-run. We have absolutely had prior metas where free fights against big monsters are the primary way you level. That won't really be true in the world of mouthwash, but CyberRealm is going to last 1 year longer than mouthwash; I wouldn't be completely shocked if 2027's leveling plan makes heavy use of a big mainstat boost before hopping in to CyberRealm for a big bucket of stats.

It is also worth noting that while it is 10 free scaling fights, they are a little weirder than other fights, owing to the fact that you cannot use skills against non-hackers; in-run, you can only throw cyber-rocks. In zones 1 and 2, that should be fine for defeating the monsters with little difficulty, especially if you leverage a healing familiar or thrall or something to keep your HP tapped up. Luckily, while the monsters scale in attack/defense, they don't scale in HP, so one tertiary damage source alongside your cyber rock is almost certainly going to be enough to win the day. But even though the monsters are still beatable, it means most of your CyberRealm turns won't allow you to do things that require access to your normal combat actions -- you can't derive extra value from things like shooting off your Everfull Darts or applying a rock band flyer or grabbing the candy cane sword cane initiative buff. This isn't really a huge deal; the familiar experience alone is going to be critical, with these 10 turns giving you 50-150 XP per day for eggs, depending on how aggressively you're wishing up experience effects. But it is something to think about as you plan out where to route your CyberRealm fights into your run. (Also, you want to avoid having a ton of ML on there, to ensure you have enough rounds of combat to chomp up their HP with your rock throwing.)

Finally, the dedigitizer. You probably won't get a ton of use out of it, frankly. My guess is that it'll be more useful for two of the 50% initiative potions over one 30% item potion on day 2. But I could also absolutely see speedrunners just totally forgetting to grab it with only a minor impact to their runs. It's not that important, the other stuff is much more valuable!

2024 In-Standard Synergies

As I alluded to earlier, there are a few critical synergies to get the most value when you cyber.

  • Be descriptive with your language, but not too flowery. Excess ruins the mood, keep them wanting more.

Having covered cybering, here are the IOTM synergies for CyberRealm:

  • With OVERCLOCK(10), your first 10 CyberZone fights are free. Similar to Oliver's Place, this doesn't work on backups, as it's a start-of-fight flag. But it does work on habitat monsters from the Book of Facts (2023)! In order to properly prep CyberRealm for your habitats, you'll want to use the Patriotic Screech from the Patriotic Eagle (2023), removing constructs; this gives you a zone that's 100% dudes, allowing you to use a non-freerun banish on one dude in order to properly place your habitats. One small note of caution -- CyberZone combat penalties still apply. So don't drag things with enormous HP into CyberRealm, as you'll still need to toss rocks at them to beat them in-run.
  • In addition to the base game value, the cold resistance from Synapse Blaster works nicely with the Sept-Ember Censer. Five whole res equates to a biiiiiiig ol' gob of extra stats with your Mmm-brr Mouthwash. Runners with a full standard suite will likely find this the only "major" use for the Synapse Blaster, as other free resist sources will usually fit the bill for the other base game uses. But it's a nice little tool in your pocket!
  • SLEEP(5) is a little less than half a sneak, for owners of Cincho de Mayo (2023). Assuming you have the base 10, it's 25% cinch of the 60% cinch needed for a Cincho Exit. That assumption is mostly valid, so long as you have a few critical IOTMs. There are 3 permastandard rests (the two Disco Bandit skills) and 3 with the Cincho itself. The Mayam Calendar (2024) gives 5 per day (and 10 one day of your run) while the Guide to Burning Leaves (2023) gives 5. Which all goes to say: you probably are only getting 25% cinch out of this. Still, solid value!
  • In the 2025 spring challenge path, Z is for Zootomist, your character is unable to access your existing perms, but is able to read skillbooks. This makes OVERCLOCK(10) rom chip a surprisingly solid pull, giving you 10 free fights per day for one D1 pull. This isn't really a traditional IOTM synergy, I just think it's neat!

Overall Rating

We'd rate the CyberRealm keycode as a tier 4 IOTM. In a shiny speedrun, it generates about 50-100 familiar XP per day, generates about 500-1000 substats (in synergy with the Censer), and provides something like half a sneak to Cincho owners. It's also just... ten free fights! EVERYONE loves free fights! Wheeeeee! Overall, it adds up to something like 1-2 turns saved a day, most likely, with a lot of flex around that and a lot of

Don't netwalk, netRUN now to Mr. Store!

Article contributed by Captain Scotch