In many games, the beginning of the game is the easiest party - you’re new, getting used to gameplay elements, and hence you’re handled with kid gloves. In many ways, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 follows suit… until the prologue ends and the game begins properly. Once you’re freed from the pillory in Troskowitz, it’s sink or swim time - you’re given some direction, but you’ve got a lot of skills to level and have to mind Henry’s creature needs (he needs, sleep and food, mainly) and how you go about leveling those skills and meeting those needs is largely up to you. To help out new, directionless players cast adrift in a cruel, unforgiving world, this page will list - in rough order of importance - what your first steps in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 should be.

Page Breakdown¶

Starter Tips¶

After Henry is freed from the pillory in Troskowitz, you’ll finally be free to explore as your little heart desires - and you’ll be responsible for dealing with all the survival/sim elements in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. This includes finding a bed to sleep on so you can replenish your Health and Energy (and so you don’t pass out from sleep deprivation!) and a reliable source of Nourishment. You’re also going to want armor so you don’t get torn to pieces by the first pack of wolves you encounter, weapons to fend off bandits, and nice clothes so you can pass Speech checks more easily. Money makes the world go round and finding a way to earn groschen will take care of a lot of your problems… simply put, there’s a lot to do and no clear order in which to accomplish these goals. You’ll probably stumble your way to stability on your own, but this page will help you hit the ground running - follow the steps below and you’ll get off to a great start!:

Beds, Food, and Money¶

• As soon as you’re out of the pillory, talk to Bara (the beggar woman wearing red) and she’ll tell you about a hero named Tomcat, starting the quest Combat Training I. This will come in handy later.

• Now it’s time to earn some money so you can secure the essentials to keep Henry happy and healthy. From the pillory, continue west down the street until you find the alchemist’s shop to the left (south), across the street from the general store. There’s an alchemy bench in a shed nearby and a drying rack in said shed. You’ll want to brew some Chamomile Potions and sell them to the alchemist, and you can find the required Sage and Chamomile in the alchemist’s garden. If you’re having trouble brewing potions well, check out our [Brewing Perfect Potions] guide - ideally you’ll sell off Strong Chamomile Potions until you have at least 120 groschen. We’re going to want more money in the near future, however, and it won’t hurt you to empty the alchemist’s pockets (300~ groschen).

• Once you have at least 120 groschen, travel west and slightly north (the roads from Troskowitz will lead you southwest, north, then northwest) to reach the Zhelejov Wagoners’ Inn. Talk to the Innkeeper here and pay him 120 groschen for long-term lodgings. This nets you a high quality bed, the storage chest nearby, and access to the stew pot downstairs, which should cover all of Henry’s basic needs. Just return here to sleep whenever you want to save or recover Energy. The stew pot gives around 25~ Nourishment a spoonful, but food is served morning and evening, so if you’re late you might miss out.

• If you want another good bed, head to the town of Tachov northeast of the Zhelejov Wagoner’s Inn and north, northwest from Troskowitz. Talk to Blacksmith Radovan and complete the quest The Blacksmith’s Apprentice by forging a Hunting Sword for him - this is the game’s blacksmithing tutorial, so you can’t really muck it up. Once done he’ll give you a room to sleep in nearby, complete with a decent bed and a storage chest.

• You’ve sorted sleeping and storage out, but you still need a source of food in Tachov. Talk to Innkeeper Prochek (uphill to the north from the blacksmith) and rent long-term lodgings from him for 50 groschen. This just gets you a pile of hay to lie on, and there’s no good reason to use this when you have the blacksmith’s bed nearby… but it also gets you access to the stew pot in the inn. It’s not as nourishing as the one at the Zhelejov Wagoner’s Inn, but it’s enough to keep Henry fed, and the more beds and sources of food you have, the better. At the very least it extends your range.

• Return to Troskowitz and brew more Chamomile Potions, then talk to the tailor (his shop is east of the pillory) and buy some better clothes from him. A Burgher Coat isn’t terribly expensive, can be worn over most things (including armor!) and has a relatively high Charisma value, meaning you’ll have an easier time with Speech checks and haggling. Pay around 50 groschen for it - it’ll pay for itself. No need to go crazy buying expensive clothes to boost your Charisma, however - you can find a lot of good stuff as loot and also boost your Charisma via perks. The Burgher Coat is just a very affordable option that’ll likely last you a good bit.

• If you want to keep brewing and making money, do so. You may have to switch to selling your potions to the general store merchant at a lower rate, but after a day or two the merchants will get their money back. Consider buying Saviour Schnapps from both the alchemist and general store merchant so you can save your game on the road. Buying Dried Belladonna and picking Nettles should allow you to brew your own Saviour Schnapps, too. Now that you’ve got a ready supply of food and a bed to bunk down in, you can waste time leveling skills like Alchemy and Survival while fattening your purse. This is optional, but helpful… but once you’re done it’ll be time to move onto other things.

Early Leveling and Exploration¶

Now that you’ve got your creature needs sorted, we can start leveling some skills. This is a bit of a boring grind, but you’ll be much better off afterwards. If you’d rather do something more exciting, you can safely skip ahead to Weapons, Armor, Mutt and Pebbles, but there’s a good chance you’ll do both of these objective clusters together, at least to some degree.

• Alchemy is for winners, a real god-tier skill. You can concoct poisons to aid in combat, soap to wash your clothes, perfume to increase your Charisma, potions to save your game, heal Henry, give you night vision, increase stamina regeneration and boost Speech, to name a few. Whatever you want to do, Alchemy can probably help you do it better. It also is a great way of earning money without fighting. Invest in it early, buy new recipes from the alchemist, and you’ll have a much easier time surviving in Bohemia.

• Alchemy is probably the best skill to work on early-game, but Survival is right up there. You need to pick herbs to brew potions, which levels up Survival. Get the “Leg Day” and “Lucky Find” perks and you’ll also level Strength and get random items (jewelry, dice, lockpicks, etc.) from picking herbs. Spending a whole day early on picking herbs to level Survival isn’t the worst idea, and you can dry herbs and store them if you wish, or sell them in bulk (albeit for a pittance).

• Herbs are light, individually, but picking a mountain of them is another matter. Even dried, hundreds of herbs will overencumber you… but this, too, has its uses. If you walk around heavily overencumbered you’ll gain Strength and Vitality EXP just by walking around outside of town. It’s slow and tedious, but easy, just load Henry up with a few hundred pounds of dried herbs and walk between the Zhelejov Wagoners’ Inn and Troskowitz to make some easy, early-game gains.

• Marksmanship is a lot of things, but easy to level via random gameplay isn’t one of them. Fortunately you can find a “Target on a Tree” POI in the forest just off the road between Troskowitz and Tachov, where you can find 30x Ordinary Arrows and a Dogwood Village Bow. It’s a starter bow, for sure, and not much use against bandits, but it’s better than no bow, and you can use it to level up Marksmanship.

• Speaking of which, return to Tachov and travel west to find the house of Gamekeeper Vostatek. He’s currently away and you’ve no immediate need to change thing (see the quest Lackey for more info) - his son Vitek is more useful to us now, as he’ll run archery tournaments you can compete in. This can earn you groschen and level your Marksmanship skill, when you feel confident enough to try it, but for now just shoot the archery targets to get a few levels in Marksmanship (you’ll also earn Agility and Strength EXP here). Once you can reliably hit the archery target from the further plank (rewarding more EXP per arrow) and win competitions against experienced archers, you’ll be able to make a bit of scratch, which you can use to buy more arrows, a better bow and Marksman Kits to repair you bow. Keep in mind that you won’t really be competent enough to use archery as a primary means of offense until your Marksmanship skill is at 18 and you have the “Eagle Eye” perk, but the cheap EXP gains is nice enough on its own. Also be sure to get the Survival skill “Master Fletcher” at some point to improve the trajectory of your projectiles.

• As you explore, you’ll discover bird nests. This will get you some Survival EXP, but if you throw rocks at or shoot down the bird nests, you can find treasures within, including lockpicks, badges, dice, crafting components, jewelry and more. Check out the page Are Nests Worth Shooting down for more details, but the answer is yes.

• If you’re really ambitious, head to Miller Kreyzl’s mill past Semine and start his questline (beginning with Materia Prima. This will get you another bed (albeit a low quality one) and tutorials on picking locks and pockets, and if you steal them, some starter thief clothes. If you want to level up Thievery, wait until night, sneak around, and pick locked doors and chests. Start with only Very Easy and Easy ones, and graduate to Medium and Hard as you level up. This will also level Stealth and Agility. You ideally want to be able to brew/buy Nighthawk Potions and Saviour Schnapps before trying this, as they make the process much easier (being able to see further than the guards is a big boon) and safer (save scumming). Just pick the locks - don’t actually steal anything. That makes it much more likely you’ll get arrested, even if you don’t get caught, and the goal here is to level up, not to earn money (potion brewing is faster, anyways). You can safely ignore this step if you don’t care to level these - it’s a good idea to level Thievery this way, but it can wait until later.

Weapons, Armor, Mutt and Pebbles¶

Level up some skills, get more groschen, explore. When you’re more familiar with the game, it’s time to see about expanding Henry’s range by improving his survivability. That means getting new gear and recovering some old friends…

• It’s generally a bad idea to get into fights without armor. Henry’s an awfully squishy bag of meat, and if bandits poke holes in him with metal implements he tends to bleed all over the place with startling alacrity. You can brew and sell potions to earn groschen, then buy armor from the blacksmith at Tachov, but a good piece of armor can go for hundreds of groschen - and you need plenty more than one good piece of armor. Picking armor off dead bandits is a much better idea, but how do you make them dead without being able to reliably kill them? Easy - let somebody else do the dirty work! Find a caravan and follow it, or find bandits on the road and let them chase you back to towns. Let guards or soldiers make the kills, then pick up the pieces… of armor!

• You will also need a new weapon to go along with your new armor. A Hunting Sword is just trash, if you can use it to run up to a bandit and cut him down before he can react, great, but in a straight fight - especially against more than one foe - you’ll come to realize how lacking this weapon is. Fortunately unlike armor, weapons are much cheaper and you only need one good one - buy a Military Sword, Basilard or Broadsword, when you’ve got the stats to wield them properly. The blacksmith at Tachov has what you need, and a Military Sword is only 100 groschen, and the other two weapons are just around 200 groschen.

• Now that you have metal armor of some description and a decent weapon, it’s time to start questing. We’re still picking our spots, however, as some quests are easier and more lucrative than others. First head to the Nomad Camp, talk to Tomcat near the battle arena, then complete Combat Training I to learn about combos. Next, defeat him in a duel (now that you have armor and a passable weapon, this shouldn’t be too hard) and he’ll teach you Masterstrike, the subject of the followup quest Combat Training II. Masterstrike, once you learn it and can pull it off regularly, is basically a cheat code for combat in Trosky, and while enemies will adapt to it later, it’ll make it much easier to win fight with bandits, making selling their armor and weapons a viable way to earn money, not to mention making it easier to level up combat skills.

• A good weapon, masterstrike and proper armor will make fighting bandits more tolerable, but there’s no good reason to stop stacking the deck in your favor yet. Go complete the quest Mutt, which will task you with dealing with some wolves (which should be well within your means to defeat now), after which Henry will be reunited with Mutt. This doggo of indeterminate breeding will assist you in combat, creating openings for you to strike, and you can give Mutt food and praise him to level up Houndmaster. He’s also useful in some quests for his ability to track - just good to have Mutt around so you can start leveling Houndmaster, really.

• Finally, return to the blacksmith’s questline and complete the quest The Jaunt and you should recover Henry’s faithful steed, Pebbles. It’s one way to get a horse, and this will allow you to travel faster and start leveling Horsemanship.

Scholarship and Graduation!¶

And just like that you have two beds with nearby stew pots for virtually unlimited food, decent clothes that boost your Charisma and make you more sneaky, a suit of armor that’ll protect you in combat (you can always buy more clothes/armor if you find any with better stats than whatever you got in the early phases of the game - or take them off the corpses of bandits). You also have a decent weapon, Mutt, and a horse, along with a way of making money by selling pots. In addition, you should know how to level various skills, including Alchemy, Survival, Thievery, Marksmanship and more! Most anything beyond this point is decided beyond “starter” advice, and outside the scope of this page - explore! Fight! Complete quests! You have the resources to do pretty much anything you want with reasonable odds of success. There’s only one more thing to keep in mind as you explore the rest of Trosky:

• Buy skill books whenever you see them for sale. They generally cost 100-200 groschen each, so you’ll need to keep making and selling potions to afford them. The scribe in Troskowitz sells a fair few, but most merchants (aside from innkeepers) sell at least one. Keep them with you until you’re about to sleep, then read one to get some sweet, sweet EXP. No need to refrain, or save them, skill books are just a flat EXP bonus that you’d be better off having. You’ll also level up Scholarship by doing this (and by reading non-skill books - also sold by the scribe), and if you get the “Explorer” perk at Lv 18 you’ll make exploring Kuttenberg much easier, when you get around to it! Sell excess skill books back to recoup some of the cost.

That’s it! Complete the steps above and you’ll be a proficient squire in no time! Well, maybe after a solid day or two of playing, anyways, but hopefully the tips above will help you get off to a great start!