There are 20 Skill Points in the Base Game.

Screenshots are taken directly from my 4k video playthrough from their original encoded files, scaled down to 1280x720 using Linear interpolation, 4:2:0 chroma quartered, Floating Point, JPG at 90% Quality to keep image file sizes down.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 
You will walk straight past here, after the advertisement blimp crashes as part of a main mission.

In the Meat Face building.

In front of Wandas at Stimtown. The achievement for Snooze can also be obtained by talking to the NPC just down from it.


 

 
Required: "DOORS = 3"


 

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshots are taken directly from my 4k video playthrough from their original encoded files, scaled down to 1920x1080 using Linear interpolation, 4:2:0 chroma quartered, Floating Point, JPG at 70% Quality to keep image file sizes down.

There are 10 Cyberdeck Upgrades in the Base Game. The DLC does not have any.

x1 Cyberdeck Upgrade:
(Information about ICE levels will be displayed here soon)

Screenshots are taken directly from my 4k video playthrough from their original encoded files, scaled down to 1280x720 using Linear interpolation, 4:2:0 chroma quartered, Floating Point, JPG at 90% Quality to keep image file sizes down.


 

 

 
You need to accept the side-quest "Prison Break" to reach this one.

You need "DOORS = ICE 1" to reach this one.

 
You need "DOORS = ICE 2" to reach this one.

You'll walk straight past this one, as part of the "Data Storage District" Main Mission. When you are about to appropriate the AG Data Vault.

Down in a corner inside an Ice Chest. It is located on the lower level, a bit to the left from the area transitions you see on the map leading to Dream World & Meatface basement. Take the lifts down.


 

Screenshots are taken directly from my 4k video playthrough from their original encoded files, scaled down to 1280x720 using Linear interpolation, 4:2:0 chroma quartered, Floating Point, JPG at 90% Quality to keep image file sizes down.


 

 

 
You need "CHESTS = ICE 2" to get this weapon. Like the EBR Enforcer, this weapon also has homing bullets but of the Ballistic type.

You will walk straight past here, after the advertisement blimp crashes as part of a main mission.


 
You can obtain this weapon early right after the Stackboss meeting in Grinder, if you'd like a bit of a challenge and 5000 deaths.


 

Screenshots are taken directly from my 4k video playthrough from their original encoded files, scaled down to 1920x1080 using Linear interpolation, 4:2:0 chroma quartered, Floating Point, JPG at 70% Quality to keep image file sizes down.

Cosmodrome - BOSS: Siege Mech
Weapon ~ "ASTROSMASHER"

This is my solo playthrough, played on Normal difficulty.
There are a total of 21 Videos.

Chapters are included for these items, which are visible in the video seekbar as well. So you should be able to easily find the item you're looking for.

29:48 Skill Point (1/20) - Cluster 13
Weapons: 1 (HABDEFENDER PPW)
Cyberdeck Upgrades: 1

5:56 Skill Point [2/20] ~ Waste Recycling Network (deepStink)
19:42 Skill Point [3/20] ~ Gratitude
23:42 Cyberdeck Upgrade [2/10] ~ No Man's Land
29:50 Skill Point [4/20] ~ Grinder

13:59 Skill Point [5/20] ~ Gratitude
14:53 Weapon: HCF HEAT ~ Gratitude
15:41 Skill Point [6/20] ~ Nitroad
23:29 Weapon: THE CRAZYMAKER ~ Nitroad
33:25 Cyberdeck Upgrade [3/10] ~ Coder's Cove (Black Lake Towers)

16:59 Cyberdeck Upgrade [4/10] ~ The Glut
21:04 Skill Point [7/20] ~ Tham's Gate
22:20 Cyberdeck Upgrade [5/10] ~ Cosmodrome

5:24 Cyberdeck Upgrade [6] ~ Nitroad
8:30 Weapon: ABR Commander ~ Cluster 13

13:25 Cyberdeck Upgrade [7/10] ~ AG Data Vault (deepStink)
24:10 Skill Point [8/20] ~ Onyx Void HQ (The Node)
24:20 Weapon: P9000 ROOMSWEEPER ~ Onyx Void HQ (The Node)

16:39 Cyberdeck Upgrade [8/10] ~ corpZone
19:58 Skill Point [9/20] ~ corpZone

27:48 Skill Point [10/20] ~ Stimtown
29:53 Weapon: THE FIST ~ Dirty Dive (Stimtown)

22:11 Weapon: OVERWHELMER ~ The Edge
22:18 Skill Point [11/20] ~ The Edge

17:11 ~ Skill Point [12/20] - Lanier's Apartment
17:31 ~ Cyberdeck Upgrade [9/10] - "Lanier's Apartment
25:46 ~ Skill Point [13/20] - Outskirts"

5:04 ~ Skill Point [14/20] - RezDev
7:39 ~ Weapon: THE MINOR NOTE - exMat Lab (RezDev)
9:21 ~ Skill Point [15/20] - exMat Lab (RezDev)
9:43 ~ Cyberdeck Upgrade [10/10] - exMat Lab (RezDev)

19:52 ~ Skill Point [16/20] - Scrapland (The Node)
21:01 ~ Skill Point [17/20] - Scrapland (The Node)

16:57 ~ Skill Point [18/20] - Golden Satori (highStreet)



18:39 ~ Skill Point [19/20] - Ascent Group HQ (Pinnacle)

7:36 ~ Skill Point [20/20] - Silo 86 (deepStink)
8:07 ~ Weapon: THE DEALBREAKER - Silo 86 (deepStink)

7:18 ~ Weapon: GUILLOTINE - Harbour
14:20 ~ Weapon: ROCK CRUSHER - Harbour

5:40 ~ DLC Skill Point [1/3] - adminZone
10:40 ~ Weapon: GUILLOTINE - BioChoice Pharma Special Projects (adminZone)

4:18 ~ Weapon: ROCK CRUSHER - Canary Mech Factory
9:15 ~ DLC Skill Point [2/3] - Canary Mech Factory

5:32 ~ DLC Skill Point [3/3] - Phil's Den (Outskirts)

2 Players. With commentary in English.
Normal Difficulty. All Missions.
All game freezes/crashes, as well as getting stuck are kept.
Recorded at 2560x1440, 60fps.

https://youtu.be/6NRfitPueYg
https://youtu.be/IZauIPrx7zo
https://youtu.be/KSom9OOk2tw
https://youtu.be/OFDTHH4lU34
https://youtu.be/ZCduc7yg0uU
https://youtu.be/jGa0mHs1HKs
https://youtu.be/JivtazsA8_w
https://youtu.be/gX-nNBlgN20
https://youtu.be/4CV1W-wBQ0U
https://youtu.be/Bqs4C0YKRrw
https://youtu.be/NWT4qErO9f8
https://youtu.be/jv8AyX9RmJ0
https://youtu.be/v0zIr4Joid8

These tweaks can not only be used with The Ascent, but basically, every single other Unreal Engine based game.

Configuration ini files are stored in:
C:\Users\***Yourwindowslogin***\AppData\Local\TheAscent\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor

Disable Fog - Engine.ini

[SystemSettings]
r.Fog=0

Disable Bloom - Engine.ini

[SystemSettings]
r.BloomQuality=0

Disable Startup Movies - Game.ini

[/script/movieplayer.movieplayersettings]
bWaitForMoviesToComplete=False
bMoviesAreSkippable=True
StartupMovies=

Cap Framerate - GameUserSettings.ini

[/script/theascent.tagameusersettings]
FrameRateLimit=69.667696

0.000000 uncaps it.

My Engine.ini
Use at own risk. These lines may or may not make the game better or worse.

[SystemSettings]
r.Fog=0
r.FogDensity=0.00
r.FogStartDistance=20
r.DefaultFeature.AntiAliasing=0
r.DefaultFeature.AmbientOcclusion=0
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.MotionBlurQuality=0
r.Tonemapper.Quality=3
r.LensFlareQuality=3
r.BloomQuality=3
r.Streaming.AmortizeCPUToGPUCopy=1
r.Streaming.MaxNumTexturesToStreamPerFrame=3
r.Streaming.MinMipForSplitRequest=0
r.Streaming.HiddenPrimitiveScale=1
r.Streaming.PoolSize=5632
r.Streaming.DefragDynamicBounds=1
r.Streaming.HLODStrategy=2
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1
r.UseShaderCaching=1
r.UseShaderPredraw=1
r.Shaders.Optimize=1
r.Shaders.FastMath=1
r.TargetPrecompileFrameTime=13
r.PredrawBatchTime=13
r.AccelPredrawBatchTime=0
r.AccelTargetPrecompileFrameTime=0
r.FinishCurrentFrame=0
r.Shadow.CachePreshadow=1
r.UniformBufferPooling=1
s.AsyncLoadingThreadEnabled=1
s.AsyncLoadingTimeLimit=0.1
s.LevelStreamingActorsUpdateTimeLimit=0.1
s.AsyncLoadingUseFullTimeLimit=0
s.IoDispatcherCacheSizeMB=256
s.MaxIncomingRequestsToStall=1
s.MaxReadyRequestsToStallMB=0
s.MinBulkDataSizeForAsyncLoading=0
s.PriorityAsyncLoadingExtraTime=0
r.MipMapLODBias=0
#r.Streaming.FullyLoadUsedTextures=1
#r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate=30

"r.Streaming.FramesForFullUpdate". If this setting is higher, such as 60, textures may appear "blury" for a little longer before higher quality images are loaded. If it is lowered to 1, it could help the issue, but you could also make the game stutter more. Further testing has shown that even 30 causes higher quality textures to be loaded far too slowly.

"r.Streaming.MaxTempMemoryAllowed". You may see people recommending to utilise this line. But from my testing, it can cause certain textures to never load higher quality versions.

"r.Streaming.FullyLoadUsedTextures".
You may see people recommending to set this to 1. But from my testing, it can actually cause additional stuttering (which is actually doing the complete opposite of what people say). It becomes especially noticeable, when looking around at the same areas again (as if, the area has to be re-cached every single time you see the level geometry).

#'s can be used to comment out particular settings through Unreal Engine configuration files.

You can manually update the NVidia DLSS version used in the game.

It's possible that updating the DLSS version could help achieve better performance, stability or quality when DLSS is enabled in The Ascent or other Unreal Engine titles.

Updated DLSS files are located at Techpowerup
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-dlss-dll/

For those who just want to play the DLC (from the start), here I have provided one of my backup saves.

Maybe you played co-op, but the game puts you at the beginning of the game when you play single player. Or perhaps your save file got corrupted.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dsQMRj2dlcy4X-dtsopV-qH684PbSW9y?usp=share_link
You should see a TheAscent-DLCStart.zip

The Profile you want to load ingame, is not the first, but the profile further down. Note that you may want to reset the controls, as custom controls are stored in this file.

Everything is done and collected in the base game.

It will put you in Cluster 13, all you need to do is metro travel to Grinder & navigate your way to the station in The Edge. DLC Cutscene should play.

There should be plenty of Components for upgrading, and enough weapons at your disposal.