Kingdom Come Deliverance: Some Early Game Lessons

Minor spoilers and some tips maybe

I have lost quite a few hours now, either from dying unexpectedly or abandoning quests and back tracking. The easy going exploration is over and I’m at the consult guides and obsess over stats stage. It’s so much like Oblivion that way. At least KCD doesn’t tie attributes to specific weapons.

To progress I must attend to skills that I have neglected. Even though horsemanship skills are valuable raising vitality requires a lot of running and jumping obstacles or surviving combat which Henry still isn’t good at. So for now Pebbles is only summoned for escapes. Sniff. I have equipped her with a better saddle though and she carts more loot. Other than that coin is preserved for food, repairs and training rather than niceties like clothing and tack.

Thanks to combat training, Henry can handle one assailant fairly well or even two or three unarmoured peasants. Two or more armoured opponents are still a problem. I thought Henry could overcome this problem by sneaking into enemy camps and poisoning food pots. This works fine as long as everyone goes to sleep and there are no dogs. Still working on this problem.

Raising stealth involves sneaking around danger. Happily it seems that lockpicking also raises stealth. Henry’s been spending quality time behind the Rattay mill opening the practice chest. He should have been doing this early game. Lockipicking got neglected because of the Steam controller. Additionally the left grip has stopped working and Henry couldn’t jump. I finally abandoned the provided KCD configuration and went with the controller and mouse camera template. This works excellently except lockpicking is now impossible because the right cursor snaps back to the middle. The keyboard works well. I would try another template but I have convinced myself that Henry can aim the bow better now.

Yes that bow skill. Henry has spent some coin on that. In other games, I usually adjust aim as I am drawing which is wrong in this one. I am embarrassed to admit how long that took me to grasp. This seems like an actual skill. Line the target up roughly in the centre of the screen and then draw. If aimed correctly the arrow will draw to the target. Now Henry can occasionally hit a deer if he can find one standing still. He is also good at knocking down nests. Finding them on the ground is now the greater challenge.

Other than alchemy, stealth and lockpicking, I’m not sure what to make of the non combat stats and abilities. They do add a sim quality. I am resigned that saviour schnapps might make Henry alcoholic but he’s getting better at drinking. Yay. I really don’t know how much drinking he has to do get that debuff but to be safe Henry now avoids unnecessary alcohol.

Picking perks can be difficult. There are some good main perks but most seem devoted to developing a particular character type or handicapping the game in some way. I have stuck to the ones that open dialogue or have no negatives. Some are obvious. If you want Henry to wear heavy armour he needs strength and mule perks. Right now Henry is carrying around a useless dagger which is another reason his stealth stat needs to go up so then he can acquire a stealth kill perk. I am saving some points because I have spotted desirable perks for higher levels or I just can’t decide. There is a potion to reset perks but I usually never do this in games. I like to just live with the consequences of decisions. I was happy with Henry being chatty and sneaky but that’s not getting it done right now.

The vegetation is so well dispersed on the maps that sometimes I feel like I’m running through a photo despite the low graphics settings. I get the occasional glitch but they are just funny most of the time. The other day it was conjoined twins. I finally got a possible explanation for all the uninteresting interesting places and accidents. They may be related to treasure maps or random encounters. Treasure maps aren’t Henry’s priority right now although maybe they should be. He needs more coin and combat practice first. His chances of avoiding or fleeing a fast travel encounter have increased thanks to map perks. Bandits masquerading as guards are another problem on the road so Henry just avoids everyone now.

Poor Henry.

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