Kingdom Come Deliverance: Henry Free at Last

Warning: Spoilers

At this point I decided Henry needed development and abandoned the main quest line. He is perpetually poor and cannot fight his way out of a paper bag. I did take advantage of Captain Bernard’s training in Rattay but after one round Henry is usually bleeding all over the place. His speech and herbalism skills however are skyrocketing. He now gets a strength boost from flower picking. Sad. His paltry funds go towards food, bandages and shoe repairs. I decided that Henry has no choice but to learn reading and alchemy.

These two skills are far more elaborate than in most games. The reading is a nice touch and alchemy is hilarious but gets tedious quickly. I am looking forward to that auto perk. For right now, I am very happy Henry can brew Saviour Schnapps and Marigold concoctions. And instead of just waiting around for NPCs Henry can improve himself by reading a book.

I must now amend this post. After spending some time on side tasks and sucking up to Theresa, Henry resumed the main quest and quickly ran into trouble. He very non courageously lied to an NPC and ran for his life from a fight. His only consolation (rather my only consolation) was that the NPC was unlikely to survive even with Henry’s help.

Henry loaded up with bandages and Marigold decoctions and headed straight to Captain Bernard and I incidentally learned then that Henry’s problems were due to some very poor decision making on my part. Early on in the game, I had priced swords at Rattay’s weapons shop and passed believing Henry could make due with his free bludgeon which he clearly couldn’t. So I had him trying to train mace skills only to be demolished. I decided to try a practice short sword this time which he survived quite well and managed to level up several combat skills. He only expended energy doing this and didn’t seem to lose any health at all. I do not know why this is but after training Henry went straight a way to buy a sword. I’m feeling at bit pissy at myself but I can’t help laughing at the same time. Henry was getting along fairly well without any combat skills but his lack of revenue was seriously holding him back. He needs to take some risks.

Henry next went in pursuit of a poison recipe which he couldn’t afford. His flower picking led him through a cow pasture back to Talmberg. He briefly considered practising archery on the docile cattle but not knowing the consequences decided to go peddle his plant collection in Talmberg. This led to a personal request from the charming Lady Stephanie. How could he refuse? Unfortunately, this request seemed time sensitive and optionally required a battle that he couldn’t win even with his new sword and updated combat stats. Ultimately I decided to reload a much older save and bypass the whole thing. Normally I would resent losing so much progress but with this game it seemed the least frustrating thing to do.

While loitering around Rattay, Henry managed to acquire and complete a very lucrative quest. With poisoning now in his repertoire along with a little more combat training he felt ready to ask Captain Bernard for some assignments. He was promptly sent to neutralize a bandit camp in the nearby country side. This took a couple of tries. The second time Henry got caught poisoning the stew pot but only the jammie-clad leader chased him out. He was easily defeated. Henry waited until morning and snuck back to observe the remaining bandits eat breakfast and return to sleep. What a stomp fest. Henry finally felt empowered. His haul from the bandits was so good that he excitedly gave Theresa a silver ring. She didn’t question at all how he came upon it.

Henry could now afford a lot more entries into the Chumps competition in Ledetchko. This is the most effective and least risky way to improve archery skills. Even this came to disaster and required a reload. Henry got front of a competitor and suffered a head injury from an arrow. This threw the whole competition off. The leader board disappeared from the screen, the competition never ended, Vatzek returned to his spot by the archery targets and refused to speak with Henry. Henry is now quite careful to stay out of his opponents’ way and his bowmanship has also improved a little.

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