How to Unlock ICE Doors in The Ascent

A real concern some people have about integrating technology with things like doors and locks is that, theoretically, any sufficiently talented hacker could take control of them. Bit of a scary thought, but at least in cyberpunk fiction, it makes for a handy means of opening locked doors. Here’s how to unlock ICE doors in The Ascent.

“Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics,” or “ICE,” is another common cyberpunk staple. In layman’s terms, it’s anti-hacking tech used to protect sensitive locations and objects from a cyberpunk setting’s numerous deck jockeys. ICE appears in The Ascent as well, primarily as a means of barring you from venturing where you shouldn’t be able to too soon. You’ll occasionally encounter doors and chests in the world that are locked with ICE, which means they can only be opened by hacking.

How to Unlock ICE Doors in The Ascent

You can attempt to hack open an ICE door by standing in front of it and pressing the C key. ICE locks are rated on a scale of one to three; ICE 1 doors can be cracked with a cheap, commercial-grade cyberdeck, but ICE 2 and ICE 3 doors require more sophisticated hardware. If your cyberdeck isn’t up to snuff, you won’t be able to crack the door.

To crack higher-level ICE doors, you’ll need to upgrade your cyberdeck. You can do this by finding special upgrade items around the arcology. Every cyberdeck upgrade you find increases your cyberdeck level, and when that level is high enough, you can crack the next level of ICE door. 

You can check what level of ICE you can break on your character’s cyberdeck menu. If you’re encountering a lot of doors with ICE levels too high for you to crack, look around nearby, as chances are good there’s an upgrade in the vicinity.