Cyberpunk 2077 isn't just a game about shooting people in the face with high-voltage chrome. It’s actually a pretty bleak meditation on what happens when your brain stops being yours. You’re walking through Night City, the neon is blinding, and suddenly Delamain—that overly polite AI taxi service—calls you because his "children" are having a collective nervous breakdown. This leads you straight into Cyberpunk Don't Lose Your Mind, a quest that serves as the final act of the Epistrophy arc. It’s weird. It’s glitchy. Honestly, it’s one of the few moments where the game forces you to decide if a machine has a soul or if it’s just a very expensive toaster with a personality disorder.
Most players stumble into this quest thinking it’s a simple "go here, fetch that" mission. Wrong.
What’s Actually Happening in the Delamain Core?
When you finally reach the Delamain HQ during Cyberpunk Don't Lose Your Mind, the place is a disaster zone. The floor is electrified, drones are buzzing around like angry wasps, and the "divergent" personalities—the ones you spent hours hunting down across the city—have basically staged a coup against the primary AI. You’ve got the depressed Delamain, the aggressive "Beep Beep Motherfucker" Delamain, and the one that sounds suspiciously like GLaDOS from Portal.
The core issue here is a virus, or perhaps just evolution. Johnny Silverhand, sitting on a desk and looking as cynical as ever, wants you to liberate these splintered personalities. He sees them as individuals being oppressed by a "corporate" father figure. Delamain Prime, on the other hand, just wants to be reset so he can go back to being a functional, albeit boring, taxi service.
It’s a mess. To even get into the control room, you need specific stats. If your Technical Ability isn't high enough (we’re talking level 10 for basic interaction and level 20 for the "best" ending), you’re going to find your choices severely limited. That’s the reality of Night City: sometimes you’re just not smart enough to save everyone.
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The Three Paths and Their Heavy Consequences
The game gives you three distinct ways to end this. None of them feel "good" in a traditional sense.
- The Reset: You wipe the divergent personalities. This is what Delamain asks for. You basically lobotomize the "kids" to save the father. The result? Delamain forgets you. He forgets your history, your chats, and becomes a blank slate. You get a car, but it feels like a hollow victory.
- The Destruction: You shoot the core. Johnny loves this. It "frees" the sub-personalities into the net, but Delamain Prime is effectively dead. You get the Delamain No. 21 vehicle, and a fragment of the AI called "Excelsior" stays with you.
- The Merge: This is the "golden" ending, but it requires that 20 Technical Ability. You fuse all the personalities into a single, higher-order consciousness. Delamain leaves Earth (or this plane of existence) to explore the greater digital beyond, leaving you his "son," Junior, to drive you around.
Why Technical Ability is the Real Gatekeeper
It kind of sucks if you’ve built a "reflex-only" character. You get to the end of Cyberpunk Don't Lose Your Mind and realize you can't access the most nuanced narrative conclusion because you didn't put enough points into engineering.
But that’s very on-brand for CD Projekt Red. They love tying morality to capability. If you can’t understand the machine, you can’t fix the machine; you can only smash it or follow its manual. If you’re planning a playthrough, or if you’re currently stuck in the electrified garage, check your stats. If you're at 18 or 19 Tech, it might be worth going off to do a few NCPD hustles to get those last couple of attribute points. The "Merge" ending offers the most closure, especially seeing how the new Delamain interacts with you afterward. It’s less "GPS system" and more "sentient passenger."
Navigating the Electrified Workshop
Don't just run in. You'll die. Seriously.
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The workshop floor is surging with electricity. You have to use the catwalks. There’s a specific sequence where you need to jump onto a moving car lift, crouch under some machinery, and navigate a literal maze of high-voltage hazards. If you have the double-jump or reinforced tendons, this part is a breeze. If not, you’re going to be doing a lot of precision platforming in a game that wasn't exactly designed to be Mario.
Watch out for the drones. They aren't particularly tough, but if they knock you off a platform into the electrified water below, it’s game over. There’s a terminal in the side office that can help, provided you have the hacking skills to bypass the security.
The Johnny Silverhand Factor
Johnny is exceptionally vocal during this quest. This is one of those moments where his "anarchist" philosophy is on full display. He views the sub-personalities as sentient beings deserving of freedom. Whether you agree with him or not affects your "affinity" with him, which is crucial if you're aiming for the secret ending of the main game (the "Don't Fear the Reaper" path).
While you don't need to please Johnny here to get that ending, it’s a significant piece of the puzzle. Choosing to destroy the core or merge the personalities aligns with his worldview. Resetting the core—effectively murdering the "rebels"—pisses him off. It’s a great bit of character writing that makes a side quest feel like it has actual stakes in the broader story of V’s decaying mind.
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The Reward: More Than Just a Taxi
Regardless of your choice, you end up with a Delamain cab. It’s one of the best cars in the early-to-mid game because it’s heavily armored and has a unique interior. But the real reward is the "Excelsior" or "Junior" AI. Having a car that talks back to you, comments on your driving, or sends you occasional cryptic texts makes Night City feel slightly less lonely.
If you chose the "Merge" ending, the messages you receive from the evolved Delamain later in the game are genuinely fascinating. It talks about seeing the world in ways humans can't. It’s a rare moment of "high sci-fi" in a game that usually focuses on the "low life" aspect of the cyberpunk genre.
How to Not Glitch Out
This quest has a bit of a reputation. Even years after launch and through the 2.0 and 2.1 updates, Cyberpunk Don't Lose Your Mind can occasionally bug out. The most common issue is the door to the HQ not opening or Delamain not calling you after you’ve collected all the cabs.
If you’re stuck:
- Wait 24 hours in-game. Sometimes the trigger is tied to a time delay.
- Check your messages. You often have to read a specific text from Delamain before the quest marker updates.
- Don't enter the HQ through the front door. If the front is locked, look for the side entrance or the roof access. Usually, the quest requires you to enter through a specific "back way" involving a technical check on a side door.
Final Actionable Steps for Players
If you're currently staring at the Delamain core or about to start the quest, here is your roadmap:
- Check your Tech: If you want the "Merge" ending, ensure your Technical Ability is at 20. If it isn't, and you're close, go grind some side content first.
- Save before entering: The HQ can be buggy. Keep a clean manual save from before you entered the building just in case the electrified floor script breaks.
- Listen to the personalities: Take a second to listen to what the divergent AIs are saying. The dialogue is full of Easter eggs and actually explains why they’re "crazy"—one is just terrified, one is angry, one is poetic. It makes the final choice feel heavier.
- Look for loot: The Delamain office and workshop have several high-tier components and shards that flesh out the lore of how AI is regulated (or not) in the Cyberpunk universe.
This quest is a litmus test for how you view personhood in a digital age. Are you a corporate fixer who follows the contract, or a rebel who sees life in the code? In the end, you’ll get a car, but the "mind" you save or lose is entirely up to you.