Kingdom Come Deliverance 2: Beginner's Guide & Best Tips

The First Thing You Need To Hear

Look. I'm going to be straight with you. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is not a power fantasy. You are not the Chosen One. You are not a genetically engineered super-soldier. You are Henry of Skalitz, a blacksmith's son with the combat instincts of a particularly angry goose. And the game wants you to feel that.

I've put about 200 hours into this thing across two playthroughs. My first run, I spent the opening four hours trying to fight the bandit camp near the starting mill. I died seventeen times. Seventeen. I almost refunded the game. Now I can solo five armored knights without taking a hit. The difference? I stopped fighting like it was Assassin's Creed and started fighting like a real medieval peasant who would absolutely die if he got stabbed.

This guide is for the person who just bought the game, got their teeth kicked in by the first random encounter, and alt-tabbed to find help. I've been there. Let me save you the rage.

Why This Game Makes You Want To Throw Your Monitor

Let's name the elephant in the room. The combat is brutal. Not because it's complicated—it's actually simple once you get it—but because it punishes every mistake with death or a loading screen. The lock-on system feels sticky at first. The directional attacks (the five-point star system) make zero sense until you've practiced for an hour. And the stamina mechanic? If you drain your green bar by swinging wildly, you'll be huffing like a chain-smoker while the enemy casually bonks you on the head.

Here's what actually kills new players:

• Starvation economy. You start with basically nothing. The first merchant will charge you 120 groschen for a half-decent shirt. You have 14 groschen. Enjoy.
• Save system. Saviour Schnapps are limited and expensive early on. The game autosaves at specific checkpoints. You will lose progress. I have lost three hours of looting to a random wolf pack. I am not over it.
• Clothes matter. Walk into a fancy town wearing dirty rags? Guards will sneer at you. Merchants will refuse to buy your stolen loot. You'll fail speech checks that require Charisma. The game tracks your visible armor and clothing layers like a fashion-obsessed aunt.
• Hunger and sleep. If you don't eat, your stats drop. If you don't sleep, your vision blurs and you collapse. This isn't a survival game per se, but ignoring it for too long will get you killed mid-fight when Henry starts yawning.

The thing that made me almost quit? The lockpicking minigame. On controller, you rotate the left stick while holding the right trigger at a specific tension. If you overshoot by a pixel, the lock breaks. It's the worst version of this mechanic I've seen in any game. And you need lockpicking to access half the good loot in the first region.

Day One: You Are A Nobody And That Sucks

Alright. You've made it past the prologue. You're at the mill with old Rattay ahead. Here's what you do immediately.

Step 1: Train with Captain Bernard. This is non-negotiable. After the first Rattay quest, Bernard will offer free training with wooden weapons. You do this until he tells you to stop. The game's combat system clicks during this training. Practice master strikes (press block the instant the enemy's attack animation starts—not when the green shield icon appears, that's too late). Practice combos. Spend at least 45 real-world minutes here. I'm serious.

Step 2: Get a horse. Pebbles is free from the first quest, but she's slow and gets spooked by everything. Save up 500 groschen and buy a Kert from the Neuhof stable. Kert has high courage—she won't buck you off when a wolf shows up. A cheap horse that panics is worse than no horse.

Step 3: Learn to read. Find the scribe in Rattay (Uzhitz has one too). Pay him 50 groschen for reading lessons. This opens up skill books, which give permanent stat boosts. The Herbalism books alone make this worth it—you can buff your healing potions by reading three pages.

Step 4: Steal a guard outfit. Wait until night, sneak into Rattay's upper castle barracks, and grab a full set of unmarked guard gear. This lets you walk through restricted areas during the day. Just don't get caught wearing it near the same guards—they notice. I used this to access the armory and grabbed a Bailiff's Mace at level 4. That mace carried me for ten hours.

Step 5: Sell everything to the miller. Peshek in Rattay buys stolen goods with no penalty. Every other merchant will call the guards. Loot a bandit camp? Haul it to Peshek. He resells it after a few days, so check his inventory later to buy back good gear at half price.

Tricks The Game Never Tells You

These are the things that separate "surviving" from "thriving." I learned most of them by dying repeatedly and then watching a Russian streamer with poor subtitles.

Master the clinch. When you and an enemy are locked together at close range (both blocking), press the attack button immediately. Henry will shove them, giving you a guaranteed free hit. This works on every enemy type, including the final boss. The timing is tight—wait for the shove animation to connect, then swing. If you mash, you'll whiff. I farmed the Rattay tournament for hours using nothing but clinch + overhead slash.

Bow aim is not your crosshair. The bow reticle is a lie. The arrow actually flies about 15% higher than where you're aiming at close range, and the offset changes with distance. The only way to learn is to shoot the archery range targets until you can hit the bullseye blindfolded. There's a competition in Rattay that costs 5 groschen to enter. Do it until you win. Your bow skill will skyrocket.

Armor penetration isn't additive. The game uses a hidden damage formula. A sword that says "52 damage" with 10 slash and 30 blunt will hurt plate armor more than a sword with 80 slash and 5 blunt. Blunt damage bypasses armor better. If you're fighting knights, use a mace or a warhammer. I fought the first heavily armored boss with a longsword for two hours before realizing my mace killed him in three hits.

Alchemy is broken good. The fast crafting system (press the button to auto-brew if you know the recipe) is fine, but manual brewing gives higher quality potions with longer durations. The trick: follow the recipe exactly, watch the timer, and pull the potion off the heat exactly when the sand runs out. Not before. Not after. A perfect brew gives you three potions instead of one and they last twice as long. I always carry six Aqua Vitalis (temporarily immunity to bleeding) for big fights. It's the difference between surviving a combo and bleeding out in the grass.

Stealth is a dice roll until level 5. At low Stealth, guards will hear you breathing from across the yard. At level 5, you get the Silent Feet perk. At level 10, you can choke out armored enemies without waking their buddies. If you want to play a stealth build (which is viable for the whole game), spend your first few levels sneaking around Rattay at night without stealing anything. Just crouch-walk behind guards. The skill gain is tied to time spent undetected near enemies.

How I Died 47 Times Before Noon

I don't say this to brag. I tracked it. Here's exactly what killed me and what I should have done instead.

Mistake 1: Fighting multiple enemies without repositioning. The game's combat system is designed for 1v1. Against two or more, you get surrounded and stunlocked. My solution: run. Not away—past them. Sprint through the group, turn around, and now they're in a line. Backpedal while swinging. The AI is bad at flanking if you keep moving. I died to the "three cumans" ambush about six times before I realized I could kite them into a narrow path near the mill.

Mistake 2: Ignoring Charisma. I spent my first thirty hours in full plate armor with 0 Charisma. Every speech check failed. Every merchant gave me terrible prices. I had to reload saves multiple times because I couldn't talk my way past a guard. Fix: Keep a separate set of "nice clothes" in your inventory. A fancy hat, a clean shirt, and good shoes cost maybe 200 groschen total. Swap before talking to anyone important. The Charisma buff from clothing is massive—I jumped from 5 to 16 just by changing outfits.

Mistake 3: Not saving before risky fights. I know, Saviour Schnapps are rare. But you can brew your own at any alchemy bench with Nettle + Belladonna + Wine (wine is cheap from any tavern). Keep three on you at all times. The time you lose from a death is not worth hoarding them. I fell off a cliff during a quest and lost 45 minutes of progress because I thought "one more fight" was safe. It wasn't.

Mistake 4: Selling my starting bow. The first bow you get from the Rattay archer (after the tournament) has a unique draw weight that actually scales better with early skill levels than the expensive ones. I sold it for 30 groschen. Two hours later, I found a merchant selling a "better" bow that I couldn't even draw because my Strength was too low. Keep your starter gear until you've trained the relevant stats.

Mistake 5: Not using potions during combat. I thought potions were for out-of-combat healing. Nope. You can quaff a Lazarus Potion mid-fight (hold the hotkey, it's slow but it works). The Bivoj's Rage potion gives +5 Strength and +5 Agility for 5 minutes. That's enough to win the Rattay tournament with zero skill. I didn't use consumables until my second playthrough and I felt like an idiot.

Quick Answers To What's Breaking Your Brain

Q: Why can't I equip this weapon?
A: Check your Strength and Agility stats. The weapon will show minimum requirements in the tooltip. If you're 2 points short, you can equip it but your attacks will be slow and weak. If you're 5 points short, the weapon is un-equippable. This is similar to how Dark Souls handles stat gates—check out our Dark Souls guide for comparisons on stat priorities.

Q: How do I make money fast without stealing?
A: Herbalism + Alchemy. Pick nettle and marigold for 30 minutes, brew Marigold Decoctions, sell them to the Rattay apothecary. You'll make 400-500 groschen per batch. Alternatively, hunt deer with a bow and sell the meat and hides to the Rattay butcher. Hunting also raises Bow skill.

Q: What's the best armor in the game?
A: The Nuremberg Plate set from the armor smith in Rattay East. It costs about 8,000 groschen for the full set. But honestly, a mix of Knight's Plate helmet (cheap) and Brigandine body armor (good weight ratio) is 90% as effective for half the cost. You don't need the best gear until the last act.

Q: I keep failing speech checks. What do?
A: Speech skill scales with Charisma + Speech level + Reputation. Visit the scribe in Uzhitz to buy Speech skill books. Read them in your inventory (right-click, select "Read"). Each book gives a permanent +1 to Speech up to level 10. Also, drink Bard's Potion (makes you more persuasive) before trying hard checks.

Q: How do I kill the first big boss (Runt)?
A: He's heavily armored but slow. Use a mace or warhammer. Master strike him (block right before his swing lands), then follow up with a combo. He has a tell before his power attack—he raises his sword above his head for a full second. Backpedal, let him miss, then punish. If you've trained with Bernard enough, this fight is easy. I killed him in under a minute on my second playthrough.

Q: Is there a way to respec stats?
A: No. The game has no respec potion or NPC. Your perk choices are permanent (though you can unlearn a perk by visiting a certain alchemist in a side quest, but it costs a lot). Plan your build around a weapon type you enjoy. Swords are versatile, maces wreck armor, axes are okay at both. I recommend focusing on one until level 15 before diversifying.

Q: This game feels clunky. Does it get better?
A: Yes. Remember that you start as a zero-skill peasant. By level 10 in combat, you'll be parrying and comboing like a pro. The clunk is intentional—it represents Henry's lack of training. The game's progression curve is one of the best I've seen in RPGs. Stick with it for ten hours, and you'll be amazed at how fluid everything feels once your stats are up.