Kingdom Come: Deliverance

DLC is definitely worth getting, especially if you can nab it on sale or find the Royal Edition on the cheap.

  • A Woman’s Lot gives you the dog companion early on in the game, and is worth it for that alone (though the quests and stories of Theresa and Johanka are great as well).
  • The Amorous Adventures of Sir Hans Capon gives you some pretty funny side quests with decent rewards that can be accomplished fairly early in the game.
  • Treasures of the Past adds a bunch of treasure maps to the game, some you can purchase, others are loot and some are hidden in barns, homes, etc… The loot from these chests is worth the time and effort in finding them, especially if you’re looking to make a bunch of coin for the From the Ashes DLC.
  • From the Ashes gives you a questline to turn what was an abandoned village turned bandit-camp back into a thriving town. It’s a huge money sink, but worth it for the goods and services the town will provide once you’re rebuilt it, and eventually you will make more money form the town than you sank into it.
  • Band of Bastards - a combat-focused DLC that adds a major new location with lots of new characters and quests, an interesting story centered around Sir Radzig’s past, plus a new suit of armor and some new items. Another good money maker for the From the Ashes DLC.

The treasure chests for this DLC are in the main game, the DLC just provides maps for them. If you use google you can still find and avail of the treasure without having to purchase the DLC.

What the?! I did not know that, and now I feel robbed. Granted, I only paid $0.99 for Treasures of the Past, so it’s more like petty theft, and the maps are pretty fun to decipher for yourself (though I had to resort to the internet for help on a couple).

I remember going to a wiki and all the treasure maps being there. I did that fairly early in the game for cash. Many require some lockpick skills though so you need those first.

Was there a way for me to learn lockpicking or have lockpicks in the opening town before the “Run!” quest?

Sort of. You don’t really learn the lockpicking skill until you can talk to your first miller (which is after the initial village and “Run!” quest), but if you talk to Fritz (one of your trio of friends) during the initial wandering around Skalitz quests, one of his conversation options will result in him giving you 4 free lockpicks.

By the way, I found lock picking to be almost impossible while using my xbox controller, but manageable with the key board and mouse. But the controller worked better the rest of the game.

Lockpicking on controller is hard first few levels, but I think after I had it at level 5 or so (of twenty) I was doing it on controller without much problem.

I’m back playing this nightly again. I had advanced all the way to the final series in the main quest line. Before I kick off those events (which will end the story once completed) I am finishing off all the DLC I hadn’t completed yet as well as a few side quests.

I finished From the Ashes, rebuilding Pribyslavitz completely with 100 reputation. Sir Divish was very pleased. I took a victory stroll around town and bought myself a nice new shield, a new horse and some armor for my horse’s head. The town will generate income for me now as well, though I don’t imagine I will be stopping by to collect very often now that the reconstruction is all finished.

I headed back to the Sasau monastery and talked to Johanka, kicking off her DLC questline from A Woman’s Lot. I had avoided doing the Johanka and Teresa stories thus far because I didn’t want to get sidetracked from Henry’s main story. I am glad I waited, as Johanka’s quest line had some parts that were made much less difficult by having Henry well equipped and with decent levels on stats and skills. I had read about people struggling with her quests and I can only imagine how difficult some of them would be at lower levels where your conversation options would be limited and your combat abilities less developed. While I didn’t exactly breeze through her story, I was really only challenged by a single fight against three well armed opponents, and even then I was able to pull it off successfully (on the third try) when I realized I could use nearby terrain to my advantage to force them to come at me one at a time.

The overall Johanka storyline was very good, well written with a solid ending that you had to work hard for (if you wanted the best outcome) and I liked how it made you reflect on your own actions as Henry thus far. I did have to laugh when Henry was wrestling with his conscience over the “few people I have killed, in self-defense mostly” and I checked my stats…117 people killed. It’s also a very good thing Sir Divish is pleased with my work at Pribyslavitz, as Johanka revealed that pretty much everyone in the realm knows about Lady Stephanie and that time with the shirt and well, you know…

I’m now working on the Teresa storyline where you get to play as her. It’s been interesting thus far, and I last saved right at the point where the Cumans show up and make it the worst day ever in Skalitz.

Nice writeup, I loved Woman’s Lot. Just a word of warning, you are about to play the most annoying part of it, trying to find some herbs at night…I will just say that some of them can be found by going from the starting point forward down and slightly to the left. I spent like two hours searching for them and was getting pretty miffed.

Oh, nice, thanks for the hint! This game does have an annoying tendency sometimes to have you hunt for stuff that you need to mouse over just right to be able to see or interact with. Thankfully it doesn’t happen often.

I’m about to replay this game too and I’d like to know if hardcore mode is worth it? I read that it doesn’t have fast travel but this is one of those rare games where I genuinely enjoy trekking the country side so it’s not necessarily ba deal breaker.

I played with hardcore my first time and loved it to the point where I had to tell WH on twitter to damn make sure to have it in KC2 for launch and not as additional patch. Fast travel is indeed disabled, but with fast horse and some optimization (trying to do everything I can do where I am, planning where to go next…) it wasn’t a problem. I mentioned it few times but for me the biggest positive change is the extremely simple thing of removing the icon from the map, thus forcing me to orient myself by the actual environment. So much more immersive. I liked the somnambulant negative perk as well, spicing things up a bit from time to time.

Wow, you were not joking about that nighttime herb hunt! Even with the hint I still spent over 20 minutes creeping around the fields trying to find the spot where the right herbs were located. The whole time I could see and hear Cumans patrolling (thanks to the torches they carried) and I wasn’t about to light my own torch for fear it would be a dead giveaway of my location. It was quite tense creeping around in the dark, then when I finally did find the correct location there was a Cuman patrolling the area so I’d have to wait for him to pass by, rush out and snatch a few herbs, then back to the rocks/bushes to hide as he passed again, then repeat.

Even more difficult was just getting to that point though. I must have died half a dozen times attempting to move from the Mill to the mine entrances. So many Cumans everywhere! On my final attempt I did manage to kill a lone Cumin that caught me coming out of one of the empty mineshafts, but then a patrol saw me from the other side of the stream and I just ran for it. I knew there was only one place left to look for Samuel, so I ran straight through a surprised group of Cumans with the patrol hot on my tail and made a beeline up the hill for the mines. I took a couple of arrow hits, and I thought I was going to die literally in sight of the mines, but then the cutscene took over and I was miraculously fully healed (with no Cumans in sight) afterwards. I’ll take it, as I was getting more than a little frustrated with all the sneaking around and Cumans with eagle eye vision.

Kinda sucks that all that effort was futile in the end, but I figured that was going to be the case. When daylight broke and the Cuman army had moved on, I went back down to Skalitz and did a circuit of town helping all the survivors I found. I saved for the night with the main quest leading me to the castle, where I expect I will have a few more activities to do and then it will be time to save Henry.

Just as a pedantic aside, they’re called Cumans. Although in the context of an herb hunt, calling them Cumins does add a certain spice.

LOL! That is what I get for posting before coffee.

har har har :)

Finished A Woman’s Lot last night. Powerful stuff, and really nice to get a different perspective on the events in Skalitz.

I have to say though, when it was over I am now less interested in getting revenge on the knight that killed Henry’s mother and father than I am in hunting down and slowly and painfully killing the unnamed bandit/looter who murdered poor Tinker. If I see that bastard again in game it’s going to get ugly.

I moved on from that to start the Band of Bastards DLC. Kuno and his guys are pretty amusing, and they fight better than anyone I’ve seen in game so far. We took down an equal size group of raiders so fast that I hadn’t even finished off my opponent yet before they were all done and joined in my fight. I almost felt sorry for the raider.

Joining Kuno’s band took me two attempts. The first time Dangler kicked my ass pretty handily. Even though I’ve improved my combat skill (not just my character, but me as a player) significantly since I began playing the game, he parried damn near everything I threw at him and his combos were brutal. Then I remembered some advice @Balasarius gave me in another thread about using Riposte. Turns out I had not trained for that with Captain Bernard, so I reloaded, rode out to the training grounds and ran through a couple of new training options with him. The Mastery option taught me Riposte, and holy shit does that change the nature of swordfighting entirely. I went back to Kuno’s camp, took down Dangler with nary a scratch, and Kuno and the Bastards accepted me eagerly into their band. Good times!

Another word of warning, it is quite easy for Kuno to die which ends the DLC questline, so make sure to save before action and watch out for him. I had to reload on battle couple times before getting through it with him unscathed.

So Kuno proved quite sturdy for me right up until the final showdown with Sir Hagen Zoul. I made the right choices in dialog to convince Kuno to stay loyal to Radzig (though I was sorely tempted to just pay Kuno myself, as I think his guys are getting a pretty raw deal from Radzig and I’ve come to like them a lot over the course of our adventures). We charged into battle and apparently none of Kuno’s guys had his back so Zoul and one of his men-at-arms double teamed Kuno, killing him before I could get there to rescue him. The rest of the band lived, but they simply rode away on their horses after I finished off Zoul. I am going to need to reload from the save right before the event as I want Kuno to survive, so next time I will stick to his side and defend him.

I also made sure to finish the Ring of Bacchus quest prior to the final battle, as that was fairly entertaining even though the eventual outcome was pretty obvious. It’s hard to keep buying those guys ale when Radzig isn’t paying you anything! The Stone was my favorite, an entire dialog that consisted of “Mmm…hmm” and “Mmm…mmm”. Once again the acting talents of Tom McKay are on display throughout Band of Bastards as he manages to express bemusement, anger, exasperation, compassion, sarcasm and more using only the changes in his voice (though credit too to the animators who did a great job with Henry’s facial expressions and body language throughout much of the game). I have really enjoyed this DLC, and it’s the final one I needed to complete before tackling the end game sequence.