My Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 tips and tricks collect together all the things I wish I'd know about before I started playing. This brings together the advice and knowledge I've learned the hard way, so you don't have to repeat the same mistakes.
It should all massively smooth out those first few hours and help you get to grips with this unforgiving but rewarding medieval world. KCD2 is not an easy game at the best of times, and those early hours can be particularly hard on players who aren't familiar with how things work in this series.
1. Buy the Marigold Decoction Recipe at the earliest opportunity
The Apothecary in the starting town of Troskowitz sells you all sorts of helpful items, but most helpful is a recipe to make Marigold Decoctions - aka, healing potions. It's expensive at 150 Groschen, but it should be an early priority, especially as once you have it the ingredients to make Marigold Decoctions are very cheap and easy to find. Buying it might seem optional, but this recipe really is essential, and you'll be happier for having it. For more info on this process, we've got a dedicated guide on making your own Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 healing potions and Marigold Decoctions.
2. Build a Fast Travel network and use it mostly by day
Each major settlement you reach is a place you can fast travel to, marked on your map by a blue icon with a wheel. If you've reached a settlement and that blue symbol doesn't appear, try exploring around a bit more until it pops. Having a big network of these points to fast travel between makes the game a lot smoother and faster, so roaming around between quests to find new areas is an investment that will pay off.
Secondly, it's safer to use this network by day as when you fast travel there's a chance of a random encounter. These can be good or bad, but attacks by bandits tend to be more common during the night. You're not entirely safe in daylight hours, but your odds of not being accosted are better.
3. Beds are essential, just make sure they're yours!
Sleeping in a bed heals you and gives you rest, as well as being one of the methods to save in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, but sleeping in somebody else's bed risks a brush with the law. Certain quests will give you free beds (such as helping the Blacksmith in Tachov), but you can also go to Taverns and Lodgings and pay for places to stay. A small payment will let you stay for a night, but a bigger one will gain you permanent room, which can help a lot.
There's also a difference between rooms. Go to a tavern and ask for a place to stay, and all they might have is a bale of hay in the barn. Go to a proper inn, and you'll get a bed that provides a better night's rest, as well as access to a chest that serves as a player stash to put spare inventory, as well as food. Of course, the hay bale is likely to be cheaper, and if you're really desperate, you can find abandoned camps in the wilderness, or clear hideouts of bandits so you can use it for yourself.
4. Always haggle, even if it's for pennies
Haggling is a minigame that you can do with every trade you make, from equipment to horses, beds and more. Haggle poorly and you risk upsetting the merchant and paying full price, as well making further haggling attempts difficult. Over time you'll learn the sweet spot for this minigame, but ultimately you should always haggle, even if you ask for very little discount. Importantly, you can also haggle when selling to get more groschen out of your own stock!
Successful haggles grant you positive reputation, increase your Speech skill, and over time all that saved money will really start to add up. One good idea is to occasionally haggle the wrong way - offer to pay a little extra to make the merchant love you, then come back and haggle for a really expensive item to get a serious profit.
5. Build three loadouts to match the game's playstyles
You can have three loadouts that you can then swap between. You can make these whatever you want, but we recommend building them around the big three Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Playstyles: open combat, stealth and dialogue. Just be aware that you can't swap loadouts during combat or dialogue, so you need to know or anticipate what's coming to be ready for it. As you progress through the game, you might even find equipment that pulls double-duty (such as plate armor that grants a hefty charisma boost), and works in both loadouts, though you're unlikely to find a build that works for all three.
6. The Masterstrike is a combat game-changer attack
One of the early combat abilities you can learn in KCD2 is the Masterstrike, taught to you by a travelling swordsman called Tomcat. You can find him at the Nomad's Camp west of Bozhena's house and, after meeting a few criteria, he'll teach you the Masterstrike, a special counter-attack. It can only be done with swords, but it's incredibly powerful and fairly easy to pull off, deflecting an opponent's strike and hitting them with a follow-up attack that often leaves them vulnerable to even more follow-up attacks. If you're focusing on swordplay, this skill should be an early priority. Frankly, we think that most of the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 best weapons are longswords, and their ability to use the Masterstrike is part of the reason why.
7. In combat, try to keep opponents in a line
Fighting is a lot harder when there's more than one enemy to deal with, so your best option in fights with several people is to try and control their placement - so you only have one at a time to deal with. Back away so they fall into a line to follow you, have Mutt attack one of them to keep him distracted, and stay agile - if you get surrounded, you're probably going to die.
8. Potions don't just heal and cure you, they can make certain challenges easier
There are plenty of skills that you'll be terrible at early on, like Speech, Blacksmithing and the Thievery minigames. The only way you develop these talents is with practice (or by reading special skill books), but there are also special consumables you can find and brew yourself like Quickfinger and Perfume, which provide temporary buffs to certain stats. If you're coming up against a challenge you really want to beat - a lock you want to pick or an NPC you want to win over - having these in your pocket can help get you over the edge.
9. There's a stash of money near the start of the game you should grab ASAP
Northeast from the starting town of Troskowitz you'll find Trosky Castle. You'll come here later as part of the main story, but if you head to the Quarry just outside the castle walls, you can find a stash of 549 Groschen. It's an easy win and a significant cash sum early on that can do a lot to smooth out your early hours. Of course, if you're looking for more ways to get cash rich, we've got a guide on the best possible Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 money farm.
10. Find a horse trader, and rob them blind
Wondering how to get a horse in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? You can get a free horse - and even two - when playing the main quest from generous NPCs, but if you want one with better stats you'll have to take a different route. You can buy them from Horse Traders, but we suggest instead finding a Horse Handler, (it's different), then stealing one of the Traders' horses under cover of night so you're not caught doing so. Immediately head to the Handler with your stolen horse, and you can register it as yours for a fraction of the buying price.
11. You can farm Strength by being overencumbered
If you want your Strength to go up, pick up everything you can find, and then walk across the map when you're too heavy. Seriously! It's boring, but it works and it's easy to do - a rare thing in this game. Being overencumbered slowly grants you Strength experience, so long walks with a backpack full of armor are a low-risk way to improve your muscle mass and do more damage with melee weapons as a result (as well as increasing your max equip load so that it's harder to be overencumbered).
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