Altered Carbon: The 10 Most Useful Sleeve Augments & Abilities, Ranked

Netflix’s highly rated cyberpunk series Altered Carbon is based upon the book series by Richard Morgan. The whole universe is a crash course on cyber punk and a religiously elaborate pseudo science.

The show is spun around a dystopian future where the consciousness can be transferred from one sleeve to another through a cortical stack and humans can practically live for gazillion years if only they have infinite wealth. Many of the meths ops for sleeve modifications and enhancements to improve or luxe their quality of life. Here are the ten best augments, abilities and body mods seen on Altered Carbon.

10 Miriam’s Genetically Enhanced Sleeve

Miriam Bancroft is the several centuries old femme fatale wife of Laurens Bancroft, a powerful Meth. She wears a bio engineered genetically enhanced sleeve, which has seduction and lust coded into it.

The sleeve has specially designed pheromones in the saliva, sweat and clit. They do the job of enticing men into sleeping with her and, in her words, provide ultimate satisfaction.

9 ONI

ONI (aka the Online Network Interface) is a mini computer that can be installed in a person’s eye. Everyone on Harlan’s World is required to wear the ONI in their eyes, which is then used to track its citizens.

An ONI also allows a person to connect with their devices, get online, make and receive calls, make or send videos, etc. It is an absolute wonder of the cyberpunk age that, unexpectedly, also has some dark privacy-breaching implications.

8 Combat Muscle Memory

Takeshi Kovacs’ Season 1 (Ryker) and Season 2 (Mackie’s) sleeves both have combat muscle memory, which is a huge asset when fighting against crazy gangsters and fearless mobs. Combat muscle memory is when someone is so good at martial arts or fighting in general that their muscles seem to have memorized the moves.

Both of the above mentioned sleeves have inbuilt combat muscle memory, allowing Kovacs’ body to literally memorize his fighting prowess. Needless to say, most of the incredible action sequences of the show have been contributed by these two.

7 Cybernetic Coils

In the second season, Trepp has cybernetic enhancements in her skull that allow her to interact with any technology or system in the immediate or nearby surroundings. Trepp calls these devices her coils.

These coils also allow her to hack into any nearby system or even jam into the Elders’ warfare weapon, Angel Fire.

6 Form Shifting Synth Sleeve

Elizabeth Elliot is released back to the reality by Poe in the first season, to a synthetic sleeve in the Head in the Clouds. She soon realizes she can shift her form just by directing her stack to do so, mentally.

She changes her sleeve twice to flaunt the augment and it is really a wonder why no one else uses this ground breaking technology in this world of opportunists. As if that wasn’t enough, this particular sleeve also has some remarkable ninja moves.

5 Self Healing

In the second season, Takeshi Kovacs’ and Kovacs Prime’s sleeves have self healing abilities, which means probably all of Colonel Carrera’s team might have the same augment too.

When Angel Fire pours down on the outlying forest area on the summons of Quellcrist slash the Elder, it burns the entire army down and takes the whole forest with it. Despite this, Kovacs Prime survives the attack thanks to his self-healing abilities.

4 Alpha Wolf

In the second season finale (and one other episode), Kovacs tries to pull the trigger on Ivan Carrera but the Colonel tells him that the sleeve he is wearing is a military graded, uniquely coded sleeve. This means it was specifically designed to only follow Carrera’s orders and can never kill him.

This feature is extremely cool and essentially makes any wearer of the sleeve nothing but Carrera’s, for lack of better words, b*tch.

3 Personalized Weapons Augment

The military graded sleeves of the Protectorate have personalized weapons augments which allow the person wearing the sleeve to access their nearby weapon through nothing but subtle gestures.

One can not help but notice that it is just like Thor calling his trusty hammer by just holding out his open palm towards its direction. This is another cool augment, hence its higher ranking here.

2 Military Grade Neurachem

When a disgruntled Takeshi Kovacs wakes in Ryker’s sleeve, the person in charge tells him that the sleeve has combat muscle memory and a military graded neurachem, which means enhanced reflexes.

The books describe its effect as the slowing down of time for Kovacs during fights. When this takes effect, he is able to focus better and knock all his enemies down. The series does not explore anything further about this chemical or body mod, but may do so in the future.

1 Secret Survival Instincts

Kovacs’ military graded sleeve of the second season is the best sleeve throughout the entire show. This sleeve has implicitly coded survival instincts which kick in whenever the body is in danger. For example, during the penultimate fight between Kovacs and Kovacs Prime, original Kovacs is knocked unconscious and Kovacs Prime kicks him off the cliff.

It seems that Kovacs is dead because no one can survive such a fall but, even when Kovacs is knocked out cold and probably dead, his sleeve’s survival instinct bring him back up and alive.

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