In thisKingdom Come: Deliverance 2guide we’re going to be talking a little bit about character progression, stats, perks, character builds, and how it all comes together to make Henry into the sort of character that you want. This is going to be kind of a lengthy guide because we’re going to be going into the ins and outs of some of the stats as well as a lot of the perks. So if you’ve been kind of wanting to figure out like how to put together a character that you want to play in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, you should probably watch on for some helpful information.
Main Stats Overview
So in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 you have a main level which progresses predominantly as you progress the game. You have stats, strength, agility, vitality, and speech that progress as you do activities related to these. And you have skills and combat skills that will increase the more you use them. For instance, if you use a bow or crossbow a lot, your marksmanship will increase faster. Or if you use a sword a lot, your sword’s combat skill will increase faster. And what this means is that the way that you playHenryis going to have strengths and weaknesses.
For instance, if you find yourself getting into fights constantly and you really like getting into combat in this game, then your strength stat is going to improve faster than maybe your vitality or your speech. And also whatever weapon type you’re using predominantly in combat, that will progress very, very quickly, whereas maybe the other weapon types in the game don’t progress as quickly because you’re not using them. So you’ll quickly find yourself identifying what sort of character build you want to use and what benefits you’ll have by what activities you do in the game.
The Main Stats
Now what’s really interesting aboutKingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s character progression forHenryis that yourmain level, your stats,strength,agility,vitality, andspeech, your skills, and your combat skills all have perks associated with them. And as you level these higher and higher in the game, these skills, these combat skills, these stats, etc., not only will you gain passive benefits from doing so, for instance, like you canlockpickmore easily if you increase thievery, you will also gain access to perks that can make thieving easier for you in general. So in this guide, we’re going to go through what some of those are and the ones that I highly recommend getting.
Main Level
So first we’ll take a look at the main level. This is your main character level. This increases as you progress the game by improvingstrength,agility,vitality, andspeechand just doing general quests inside the game. The max level for any skill in this game or any stat is 30, by the way, so you can’t get higher than that.
You can see your current level at the bottom left. You can see that at the top as well, but you can also see your progress to your next level. Something I want to note really early on in this guide is that you will have enough perk points to get every perk that you want in this game by the end of the game. You will have plenty of perk points to do that. However, there is one exception, which is there are some perks that are black and white. For instance, like if you get one, then you can’t get the other one. And if you get the other one, then you can’t get this one. So there are some scenarios where you’ll lock yourself out of a perk because you select a different one, but you will have enough perk points to buy all the perks that you want.
If you level every stat to 30, you just might not be able to acquire them all because some will make it so that they’re exclusive to one another.
So strength inKingdom Come: Deliverance 2allows you to increase the control and damage you deal in melee attacks. It also allows you to perform better with unarmed attacks. It increases your carrying capacity, which is really important because you’re going to be hauling a lot of stuff around in this game. And generally speaking, how much you carry is very much limited by your carrying capacity because you’re almost always full of stuff. It also makes it easier to do full draws on like bows that have high strength requirements and easier to move and fight in heavy armor.
You predominantly gain experience from this by fighting. So you’ll generally gain strength from either doing unarmed combat in tournaments or like little brawl arenas or just from fighting enemies on the landscape. So if you’re somebody who enjoys fighting every time you can possibly fight, you’re going to probably have pretty high strength, which is great predominantly for the carrying capacity and the melee damage.
I highly recommend for strength that you pick upTrain Hard, Fight Easy!andTrain Hard, Fight Easy! 2as soon as you’re able to get them. This is going to reduce the strength required for any weapon that has a strength requirement. This will allow you to use better weapons early on. Oftentimes early on in the game, better weapons are gated behind higher attribute requirements. So even if you find them, you won’t be able to use them. This will make it so that’s not the case. So you definitely want to take these two as quickly as you can.
So next isAgility. Agility predominantly affects your melee weapon attacks, making them cost less stamina, which is important because stamina often regulates how many attacks you can do and how aggressive you can be in combat. It also increases the speed at which you attack with melee attacks as well as how quickly you draw a bow. So if you like using bows and you want to shoot faster, this is great. It also makes you move quicker, and suffer less damage from falls, which can be deadly in this game if you’re not careful.
So that’s good. It makes you better atstealthif you like to playstealthily. It also makes it so that you handle heavy armor more effectively and that your dodges in combat will generally be more effective and easier to use.
You predominantly gain levels in agility by using weapons in combat that have higher agility ratings. So if you want to level your agility faster versus strength, you could switch to a different weapon in combat, like maybe a different sword. Also from sneaking around enemies stealthily that aren’t detecting you, kind of like Skyrim, you may just get near them and if they don’t see or detect you, the more you sneak around them, the more experience you’ll gain here as well.
And just like with strength, you haveDeft HandsandDeft Hands IIhere for perks. I highly recommend taking both of these as quickly as you can because again, just like strength, they reduce the agility requirements for weapons. So you might find weapons you want to use, but you don’t meet the requirements and they’re better than what you have. This will allow you to lower those requirements until you can use them very easily.
Next, we move on tovitality. This stat predominantly affects stamina that you have and the rate that it recovers inside and outside of combat. This is really important because you use stamina to attack in combat, you use it to sprint and the less stamina you have, the less you’re going to be able to fight aggressively or be able to counter attack stuff and things like that.
So higher stamina is good. It also lets you like run longer distances. And a lot of times you’re running long distances in this game. So making that easier on yourself is really good. And also something that it does is it makes it so that your level of rest decreases more slowly.
Why this is really important is because you will constantly have to manage your level of rest in the game or you’ll start falling asleep while you’re doing activities and you can’t see things, which will make you have to go sleep somewhere. The less often you have to do this, the more you can play. So that’s a really good thing to have.
The main way to gain experience in this is through combat, especially by using advanced techniques likeMaster Strikesand other moves you can learn from trainers. Performing combos and training regularly also help. Beyond combat, you’ll naturally earn experience just by moving through the world like running, jumping, climbing, and other physical activities all contribute. You’ll gain this experience organically as you play.
If you feel like your vitality is not gaining as fast as you like, you can always read books. But I just find that you kind of just gain this throughout playing the game. You don’t really have to put a lot of effort into it in general.
One perk that I highly recommend getting as soon as you can isNext To Godliness. What this perk does is it allows you to heal for 10 points whenever you use aWash Tubor go into aBathhouse. And it also makes it so that you heal faster while you sleep.
So you’re going to get back up to full health while sleeping more easily. And I swear I use this all the time in my playthrough. I’m washing because I get dirty all the time and it just heals me every time I do this. And you can take like 30 steps in the other direction and then go back and use the tub a lot of times, depending on like how dirty it is around the place. So you can heal yourself a lot just from this one perk.
Next up isSpeech. The higher your level in speech, the more likely you are to succeed in skill checks, which will obviously help you in your endeavors unless you like combat as much. It’ll save you time. It’ll give you more rewards a lot of the time. And it also allows you to get like good outcomes in some quests that you might otherwise not.
And you can also make more money more easily because you can haggle more easily with vendors. So speech is a very, very important skill in this game. And it’s arguably the most important stat of the four since if you’re trying to play like a good Henry and you want to get good outcomes in quests, you’re going to need this a lot.
The primary ways you gain experience in this are through talking to people and using skill checks and dialogues, which if you’re trying to be a speechy character anyway, you will. And also from reading books, believe it or not. Reading books, you’re able to read books to improve other stats and skills as well. But just reading in general will improve your speech no matter which book you’re reading because it improves your vocabulary.
When it comes to perks, I really like theJack of All Tradesperk from speech. This makes it so you get a bonus of plus two to skill checks and you also get twice the amount of experience from using these skill checks. So this is going to make it just easier to do things with your skills in the game in general and it’s definitely one I recommend any character take.
Taking a look at stamina, stamina is the resource in the game that you do just about everything with. You fight with it, you sprint with it. And what you’ll notice about your stamina in this game is that it will lower as your health lowers. If you’re drunk or if you’re injured or if you’re tired, you’ll have less stamina and this will make it harder for you to fight in combat and things like that or even explore if you’re sprinting all over the place. So you want to make sure that you have high stamina and the best way to do that is to make sure that you take care of Henry. Make sure he’s well fed, make sure he’s well rested, make sure he’s not injured, make sure he’s not hungover, these sort of things. And improving yourvitalitystat is definitely going to help make sure that your stamina is better.
Healthis obviously how much damage you can take before you die and health doesn’t restore itself naturally over time. There are a couple of perks you can take that will replenish health over time which I’ll mention a little bit later in this guide that you should absolutely get. But you have to take care of yourself and Henry in order to regain your health. This is usually done by sleeping or visiting bathhouses is the perk I just mentioned before or using the wash tub if you have that will heal you some. Some foods will heal you,Marigold Decoctionwill heal you. And you know keeping track of your health is really important as I mentioned earlier it affects stamina which you know is pretty much a big factor in winning or losing a lot of battles. So even if you have low health and you’re very skilled if you have very low stamina it’s very difficult to win fights.
Additionally, you need to treat bleeding wounds with bandages or you’ll keep hemorrhaging health. This is why bandages might be one of the single most important items in the game. You should always loot them off any corpse you have. They weigh almost nothing. Carry as many of them with you as you have constantly because anytime you’re bleeding you’ll need to take care of that in order to be able to regain your health. Also, some foods can heal you. Keep an eye on what foods do on the side of the screen when you’re looking at them in your inventory and keep an eye out for ones like dried apples in particular heals you for high health every time you use them. It’s quite regular to loot off enemies so make sure you know which ones can heal you and you might be able to eat some of them from time to time as well to heal yourself. Just make sure you don’t overeat.
Energyis an important factor in this game and you’ll need to rest Henry from time to time in order to make sure he’s at top energy. Fighting and things like that will deplete his energy. Running around exploring will deplete his energy and you’ll need to rest to get it back up or he’ll be falling asleep. You won’t be able to see things when this happens. You can actually die I think if you let his exhaustion go all the way down to the bottom. I’ve never done that but I think it’s possible. And there are also things too that impact how quickly you recover this. For instance, if you sleep in a really good bed you’ll gain your energy back more quickly than if you sleep on a hard ground so keep that in mind. Also,you can prevent fatigue by drinking alcoholin a pinch or maybe you just like drinking alcohol in this game so be aware of that.
Nourishment
You also haveNourishmentin this game and that’s something you’ll have to manage as it gets lower it will negatively impact the stats of Henry like it’ll make his stats lower so it’d be less effective in dialogue and combat and things like that so you need to make sure you’re eating regularly. Make sure that when you’re eating food that you check the freshness of it and if it’s spoiled you will make yourself sick so don’t eat spoiled food. I generally don’t eat anything that’s like below about 70 percent freshness. There’s plenty of food in this game. You don’t have to eat everything you see and also keep in mind that dried foods last much much longer in your inventory so I highly recommend particularly when defeating enemies looting the dried foods or eating the perishable foods quickly and hanging on to the dry foods for maybe a scenario where you don’t have any. Also, be careful not toovereatbecause overeating will give you penalties so you need to try and keep it eating enough but not too much.
Secondary Stats
Charismaplays a big role in dialogue skill checks, determining how well you’re able to convince people and get favorable outcomes. Instead of being a fixed number, your Charisma stat is actually an average of the Charisma values from all your visible clothing and armor. That means if you equip multiple pieces with high Charisma, your overall stat will be better. However, items that are hidden under other layers of clothing don’t contribute to this value.
To keep your Charisma high, verify your gear is in good condition, damaged equipment lowers Charisma. Being dirty or covered in blood will also reduce it, so you’ll want to stay clean. Washing at a bathhouse or using soap at a laundry is the best way to fully remove dirt since wash tubs don’t always clean everything. If you notice your Charisma dropping, check your gear and hygiene so you don’t fail important speech checks.
Conspicuousness
Conspicuousnessplays a big role in stealth, making it easier or harder for enemies to recognize you. The lower it is, the more time you have to slip away before they realize you’re there, which makes sneaking through enemy camps a lot smoother.
Visibility
Visibilityis similar but works a little differently. It determines how far away someone can see you. If your visibility is low, enemies won’t notice you until you’re much closer, making it easier to sneak up on them. On the other hand, high visibility means you’ll stand out from a greater distance, making stealth more difficult. If you’re going for a stealthy approach, you’ll want to keep visibility as low as possible so enemies don’t even see you until it’s too late.
Another key factor isNoise. This affects how much sound you make while moving. If you’re wearing heavy armor, you’ll be easier to hear, making sneaking a lot harder. Lighter gear will help you move more quietly, so if you’re trying to be stealthy, avoid anything too bulky. But if stealth isn’t your thing and you’re focused on direct combat, heavy armor is worth wearing to help you survive.
Speeddetermines how fast you move and is mostly tied to agility, though armor weight also plays a role. Wearing heavy gear will slow you down and increase stamina drain, but boosting agility and strength can help offset this. If you feel sluggish early on, switching to lighter armor can help until your stats improve.
There are six dialogue stats, split into three positive and three negative ones.Persuasion,Impression, andPresenceare influenced by yourSpeechskill, a bit ofCharisma, and yourreputation. If you have a good reputation in a town or city, you’ll have a better chance of succeeding in these types of dialogue checks. On the other hand,Coercion,Domination, andIntimidationwork the opposite way, they’re more effective when you have a negative reputation in an area.
You can check your reputation on the map by looking at the icon showing a face, its color and expression give you a rough idea of where you stand. Depending on what kind of Henry you want to play, you’ll probably focus on one of these approaches. If you’re aiming for high reputation, you’ll rely more onPersuasion,Impression, andPresence, while a lower reputation means you’ll get more use out ofCoercion,Domination, andIntimidation.
Moving on to skills, the first one is alchemy. This is how you make potions in the game. The higher your alchemy skill, the more mistakes you can make while making potions and they still come out fairly well. You’ll gain experience from making potions or reading books about alchemy. Those are predominantly the ways that you’ll gain experience in alchemy in this game, and the better you are at it, the more potions you can make at once, the higher-level potions you can craft, etc.
There are a couple of perks inside Alchemy that I highly recommend for anyone. The first one isSecret of EquilibriumandSecret of Equilibrium II. This makes it so that you can make more mistakes before your potion is messed up. If you make a bad version of a potion, you’ll get a weak version. If you make an okay version, you get a normal version, and if you make a great version, you get a strong one. This perk makes it easier to get those strong potions that have improved effects. The next perk isSecret of MatterandSecret of Matter II. This makes it so that each time you successfully brew a potion, you’re going to gain more potions of the same quality. It’s going to make it so that you can make more potions in the same time, because alchemy takes a lot of time to do. Not only do you want to have caution on the side of error from the previous perk, but now you’re going to get more out of it when you do it. Both of these perks are really good to have.
Craftsmanship
Next, we move on tocraftsmanship. You’ll predominantly see the results of improving craftsmanship in weapon sharpening and in blacksmithing. The blacksmithing minigame, when you first start sharpening your weapon in this game, it takes forever, but as you gain more and more craftsmanship, it gets so fast. You’ll definitely want to do it yourself later on in the game. You might want to have a blacksmith do it early on unless you are short of funds.
By improving your blacksmithing, you’ll be able to craft higher-quality equipment, and repair higher-quality items using repair kits, and you’ll use fewer of those when you repair your equipment or use the laundry. You predominantly gain experience in blacksmithing from sharpening your weapon, crafting things at the blacksmithing station, using repair kits, and washing your clothes. This can seem really tedious at first, but the higher your craftsmanship skill gets, the faster these things go, and the less tedious they get. So, keep in mind that it’s not always going to be as slow or difficult as when you first start out.
Additionally, I highly recommend finding books on craftsmanship and reading them or using skill trainers for this because it can save you a lot of time. Blacksmithing is a very time-consuming activity and it can get tedious if you just plan on manually ranking it up by crafting and crafting. You can save yourself some of that tedium by learning from books or from people who can teach you, so it’s just faster from the get-go.
There are many, many good perks in craftsmanship, and I’ll just draw your attention to a couple of them. The first isRazor-Sharp. This makes it so that when you sharpen your sword to 98% or better (which would basically be every time you sharpen it), it’s going to deal an extra 10% damage until it gets below 75% durability, at which point you’ll probably just sharpen it again. This is really good for increasing your damage.
Thorough MaintenanceandThorough Maintenance IImake it so your equipment takes less damage, which means you don’t need to repair them as often, and that’s just really good in general. Locksmith is excellent if you plan on lockpicking a lot in this game. I lockpick almost every single chest I see, basically, so this is really good to have, as it makes it easier to do. The last perk I want to mention isMartin’s Secret. If you take this perk, it actually allows you to create weapons that are quality 4. It’s the only way to get quality 4 weapons in the game, so if you want to have an even better improved version of a weapon you already have or can make, then you’ll definitely want to take this one.
Next is theDrinkingskill. This one should be pretty obvious. It makes it so that it takes you longer to get drunk when drinking alcohol, that it’s harder to get a hangover, they’ll be milder, and they’ll get rid of them quicker when you do have them. The predominant means of using drinking in this game, in my opinion, for the average player, is that there are just some parts of the game where you’re drinking with people in order to accomplish an objective, and you’re able to really mess it up if you get absolutely hammered and can’t pass some dialogue checks because your drinking skill is too low. So, increasing your drinking skill is going to allow you to pass those dialogue checks more easily.
Again, this is another stat where I highly recommend reading books about it and improving your stats on it more quickly, unless you want to just spend an ungodly amount of time drinking alcohol in this game. The best all-around perk for drinking isIndomitable Drunk, which makes it so the negative effects of drunkenness will be milder for you. You can just enjoy the positive effects of it more easily.Nightcapis also pretty good, though. This makes it so that if you’re meant to get a hangover after drinking, if you go pass out before this happens, you won’t get a hangover, which is great because it’s a long negative effect. It also makes it so beds are more comfortable if you go to bed drunk, which means you gain rest more quickly and gain more energy more quickly. So, it’s just improved sleeping in general.
Horsemanship
Moving on to Horsemanship, this is going to increase your skill when you’re riding on a horse. Basically, it’s going to make it so your stamina consumption will decrease when you’re riding at high speeds, which means you can ride at high speeds longer. Your horse is less skittish when threatened, so it won’t buck you as easily, and it’s more difficult for enemies to throw you from the saddle. In my experience, you’re predominantly just using this to ride long distances without running out of stamina. That’s basically what the Horsemanship skill is good for, and you really gain experience from it just by riding and traveling distances. You don’t gain it from fast traveling, even though you will use fast travel a lot in this game. Keep in mind that that’s not going to improve your riding skill. So, this is another one that you can either read books about or you’ll just gain naturally from riding around on the landscape and exploring, which you’ll do a lot naturally anyway. I don’t find I do a lot of mounted combat in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. There are very few opportunities for it to make sense, and the controls are a bit difficult, so I don’t think you really need to worry too much about mounted combat.
One perk I highly recommend isHead StartandHead Start 2. This makes it so that if you’re on your horse and you’re standing still, and you press left shift, you’ll just take off quickly. This is a great way to get your horse up to speed fast, rather than kind of building up to speed, and it can get you places much more quickly.Final Stretchis also a must. This makes it so that when your horse is nearly out of stamina, you’re able to press left shift again (there’ll be a prompt) and it’ll recover some of your stamina once every two minutes, which is basically all you’ll probably need. Awful, if I’m honest, but this makes it so you can ride longer distances much, much longer before you run out of stamina.
Houndmaster
Next is the Houndmaster skill. This allows you to control Mutt in combat and for him to get stronger in combat, be more obedient, help you discover things on the landscape. I’ll admit I didn’t use him very much in my playthrough, but if you plan on bringing him with you, then you will definitely level this up over time, probably by like feeding him, petting him, using his skills in combat, hunting things like that—just interacting with him and having him interact with the game in general.
As far as perks go, there are some really good ones, but I really likeBark!. This allows him to draw attention to himself, so if you’re trying to play like a stealthy character and you need to move someone that’s blocking where you need to go, or maybe you want to stealth kill someone and you need to get behind them, but their back’s up against a wall, this can be great for allowing that sort of situation to happen.
Scholarship
Next is theScholarshipskill. This is basically like your knowledge of things in general. Well, you’ll find this impacts mostly your dialogues. You can make deductions about things and have better outcomes if you have high Scholarship. You’ll also be able to consume and read books faster to gain knowledge of them more quickly so that you don’t spend as much time doing them with this skill. You gain experience predominantly through reading books, applying your scholarship in conversations, and learning new interesting things. You can get Scholarship experience simply by having dialogues with people and asking about worldly things, like their travels and things like that. So that’s a great way to increase experience. Definitely, this is another one that I recommend potentially reading books to try and improve, or just reading books in general because it can really help a lot of conversations go your way.
And when it comes to perks, there’s a couple here that improve the speed at which you gain experience for skills. Highly recommend that because the faster you gain experience and skills, the better they’re just going to be overall. But there’s one calledExplorerthat I think is arguably like the best perk in the game, or could be considered the best perk, which basically reveals all points of interest on the map. This includes all NPCs that have some sort of interactivity in terms of vendors and things like that. So if you feel like you miss things and you’re like a 100% completionist, make sure you take Explorer. It’s probably the best perk you can get.
Next, we move toStealth. This is obviously for sneaking around and being undetected. It makes it so that as you improve inStealth, you make less noise when you’re sneaking, it’s harder for enemies to see you, and you can avoid situations when you’re fast traveling more easily. You gain experience in this by pickpocketing, picking locks stealthily, disposing of enemies, and sneaking near enemies. So, if you’re playing like a stealthy character, you’re generally going to just level this up from playing the way a stealthy character would, and it’ll just make it easier and easier to do over time. One thing I would recommend equipping, if you haven’t, is a Dagger if you’re playing a stealth character. This will allow you to go from just being able to knock out enemies to outright killing them or having a chance to kill them successfully from stealth. So, make sure you have a Dagger equipped if you’re planning on doing that. There are so many good perks within Stealth; you’ll probably take the vast majority of them by the time you’re through the game, or almost all of them. There are a couple of exceptions to that, which is the Rodent vs. Weasel Boy.
Rodentmakes it easier to sneak indoors, whileWeasel Boymakes it easier to sneak outdoors. These are mutually exclusive, meaning you can’t have both. I find it’s harder to sneak indoors for quests. Generally, it’s easier to be caught, and that’s why I took that one. Weasel Boy would be better if you’re planning on stealthily eliminating camps of enemies regularly. I found myself that as I progressed the game and Henry got stronger in general at melee combat, the stronger and stronger I got, the less stealth I was doing outside on the landscape. Really, the only times I was needing stealth were like on particular missions or in particular circumstances where I needed to steal something inside. That’s why I went that way. The Ambusher perk is also really good. This applies to both melee and ranged damage, so whether you’re ranging down an enemy that doesn’t know you’re there or you’re meleeing an enemy, it’s good in general. So, I highly recommend that one.
Next isSurvival. This basically makes it easier to hunt game, obtain more meat from them, makes it so gathering herbs is quicker, and it makes it so it’s easier to escape when you’re fast traveling if you’re put in a situation where you might be ambushed for things like that. You gain experience from this from hunting game, gathering herbs, smoking your food, drying it, etc., and from discovering new places on the map. I find I don’t care much about the skill. I feel like its primary use in general is just escaping fast travel situations. Typically, at the beginning of the game, though, you want to experience these, so this typically comes into play later in the game. But you don’t really need to smoke, cook, and dry a lot of meat in this game. I find that just simply playing the game, I looted so much food that hunting didn’t seem as relevant to me inKingdom Come: Deliverance 2as it did in the first game.
I don’t think you’re going to really need this skill all that much. However, the skill does have some excellent perks. The firstone isWanderer, which makes it so that you get more rest when you’re sleeping. So, this is just really good in general.Heartseekeris really good, increasing the damage that you do when you hit enemies in the chest, andHeartseeker IIas well. This applies to the back as well. So like if you’re trying to stealth kill enemies and you shoot them in the chest, you’re going to do more damage, or if you’re just aiming for center mass, a lot of times you’re going to do more damage.Master Fletcheris also really good if you’re playing like a ranged character and you’re focusing on using crossbows, bows, or firearms or something like that. It’s very good to have, andLeshy, I find, is also really good, getting the stat increases while you’re out on the landscape is like constant, pretty much. So that andLeshy IIare both really, really good. Recommend both of those.
And then lastly, we come toThievery. This makes it so lock picking and pickpocketing is easier. As your level increases, you’ll be able to tackle muttier locks. What they’ve done in this game compared to the first game is they made it so that you can’t attempt very hard or difficulty locks early on to prevent people from getting frustrated. So, you’ll have to increase yourThieveryin order to do like the hard and very hard lock picking, so keep that in mind. You’re primarily going to gain experience from this from lock picking and pickpocketing, shocking the stronger locks you overcome and the more valuable items you steal, the more experience you gain. This is going to be something you use all throughout the game. It’s definitely a little bit easier in my opinion in the first game, and you will notice that it’s easier and easier to do the higher yourThieveryskill is.
So, when you first start lock picking at the beginning of the game, it’s going to be quite frustrating, but it should get easier fast. By the time you’re at like 10Thievery, 15Thievery, you should be able to do medium locks with no problem. A couple of perks I really like here areTool Master. This makes it so your lock picks are more durable and they last longer before breaking. So it just makes lock picking in general a little bit easier because, again, at the beginning, you’re going to struggle a bit and you don’t want your lock picks to break. And thenStamping Groundis also really good. This makes it so that your stealth is higher by three in settlements or their immediate vicinity. Again, like stealthing around people where lots of people are is like the hardest thing to do, so you want your stealth to be higher in those scenarios.
Combat Skills
Moving on to combat skills. First isWarfare. This basically makes it so that your attacks are faster, and the harder it is for opponents to read them and parry your attacks, which happens quite frequently in combat. Your weapons also take less damage during combat. The way this skill increases is from just using your weapons in combat, improving your weapon skills and unarmed combat. So, it’s going to improve naturally as you fight with different weapons and things like that. You’ll really notice a difference as this skill goes up in the game because you get parried a lot, and you get blocked a lot in combat. As you get further into the game, this starts happening less and less often, and the game kind of turns into a left-click simulator at some point because enemies just can’t deal with your attacks very well as this skill gets really high, closer to 30. So, you will notice this very easily.
When it comes to perks, I like theAgainst All Oddsperk. This increases your strength, agility, and warfare skills when you’re outnumbered. You’re outnumbered more often than you’re not in combat in this game, so you’ll get that benefit very frequently.Unbreakableis also really good—if you’re outnumbered in a fight, your stamina will recover 20% faster. Again, you’re outnumbered all the time, and getting that stamina back will allow you to fend off attackers more easily.One Man Armyfollows the same concept: when you’re outnumbered, you deal 10% more damage. You’re outnumbered more often than you’re not, so it’s good to have that damage increase in this case.
So moving on to the actual different weapons themselves, the first is swords. The higher your swordsmanship skill, the faster your attacks are gonna be, the more damage they’ll do, the harder it will be for your opponents to block them, and obviously, the best way to gain experience with swords is by using swords in combat. You’re gonna use swords orLongswords, any sword weapon:Shortswords,Hunting Swords,Sabres, all of these will improve your sword skill. One particularly great thing about swords is they tend to set bleeding on enemies. You’ll notice this when you get hit yourself, which can help kill enemies more quickly. But you will find, particularly early on in the game, that when you’re fighting heavily armored opponents, swords are not as good of a weapon since they can’t really punch through that armor very easily. As you get later and later into the game, this matters less and less, but in the first half of the game, it’s probably better to have a secondary weapon set with something that can deal with heavy armor.
Probably the claim to fame of swords isMaster Strike, which allows you to attack simultaneously when you see thegreen shield. If you are on the opposite direction of your weapon in relation to the person attacking you, so if they’re holding it to their right and you’re holding it to your right when they attack and you click attack, you’re gonna do an unblockable hit against them. A lot of combat in this game is won that way. This is something that’s unique to swords, and it’s probably a very big reason to use swords.
One really good perk for this isSwordmaker’s Wisdom. This makes it so your craftsmanship level will count as three levels higher during blacksmithing, making that easier. As I said, this can be kind of a tedious activity, so making that higher is good, and it also makes it so all sword-like weapons get 25% less damage in combat, meaning they’re gonna stay sharp for longer. If you combine that with theRazor-Sharpperk we were talking about earlier, that’s gonna make sure that extra 10% damage stays on your weapon longer.
Opening Strikeis absolutely fantastic, and you’ll find this out later on in the game. If you successfully wound an opponent by striking an uncovered zone, it makes it difficult for them to block your subsequent attacks. Again, as I mentioned, eventually the game just turns into left-click spam. This is one of the reasons for that if you’re using a long sword or something because you hit them with that first hit, and then it’s just easier to hit them afterward, and they just eventually go down.
Heavy Weapons
Next, we move to heavy weapons. Heavy weapons includeClubs,Maces,Axes, andWar Hammers. The higher skill you have with heavy weapons, the faster your attacks will be, inflicting more damage and making it harder for your opponents to defend against them. These weapon types are usually best against heavily armored opponents, especially if you like or if you want to use a shield. They’re great with using a shield as well, so it’s definitely not bad to have these like in a backup slot, particularly in the first half of the game when you’re fighting very heavily armored enemies, and your sword just isn’t cutting it.
Obviously, the way you gain experience with these is by using them in combat and usingmaces,axes,war hammers,clubs, etc. So if you want to gain experience in heavy weapons, the easiest way is to just equip them and start using them in combat, or you’re able to read books on it as well, or you can go to skill trainers. There are a lot of good perks in heavy weapons. It kind of depends on what sort of weapon you’re using. There are some specific to like axes and some specific to like maces, so you might take those depending on which weapon type you like.
The benefit of maces is they do more blunt damage, so they’re better against very heavily armored opponents, whereas axes do some blunt damage but not as much. But they can also cause bleeding, which is good. I do likeSundering BlowandSundering Blow IIthough. This makes it so when you hit an enemy with a heavy weapon, their armor count is lowered. This makes it so they’re less armored if you bash them, making it easier to deal damage to them.
Then we come to polearms. Polearms include weapons likeSpears,Halberds, andGlaives, orPoleaxes, or even two-handed night hammers and axes. These are the longest weapon in the game, so if you like long reach, it’s really good, and it can be good against enemies when you’re outnumbered because you may hit an enemy from a long distance while you kind of stay out of reach from other enemies. One of the biggest issues when you’re outnumbered in this game is trying to attack an enemy without getting hit by other enemies, either from the side or the back, and this can make that more easy.
Militia Trainingis a great perk for this, reducing the strength and agility required for using pole weapons. That’s just good to have because it’ll allow you to use stronger polearms earlier on in the game.Impaleris also really good. This just improves your damage by 10% and increases even more when you takeImpaler II. You do piercing damage predominantly with polearms, and this is just gonna increase that damage, making them more effective.
Next, we come to unarmed. This is where you’re fighting with bare fists. You’ll do this a lot in the game, whether it’s in quests or just from fighting in tournaments and things like that. It’s a great way to gain experience with strength and agility too, so I tend to do this a lot just to help level up a lot of stats simultaneously. The higher your skill, the more powerful and faster your attacks will be, and the harder it will be for enemies to defend against them. You gain experience from this by fighting unarmed.
Obviously, I really like theNo Pain No Gainperk here. This increases the amount of experience in strength, agility, and vitality you gain when fighting unarmed. This allows you to really take advantage of the combat arenas that are unarmed, and like I said earlier, gaining more experience in everything simultaneously, making it really more rewarding to take on unarmed fights because they can get a bit tedious. But this is a great way to gain stats. I also really likeSting Like a Bee. This makes it so the first 30 seconds of combat, which are unarmed, your attacks will be 30% stronger and your stamina will recover 30% faster. Most of the time when you’re unarmed, you’re fighting one-on-one, and I tend to play very aggressively, and this lets you play aggressively more because you can just knock an opponent out really quickly, so you don’t spend a lot of time fighting.
Sandmanis also really good. It makes it easier to knock out opponents or stealth kill people from stealth when you’re in stealth, and if you like to play stealthily, you’ll definitely want to take this one. I think just about everyone can take advantage of this, even if you don’t always play stealthily, so definitely get this.
Marksmanship
Last up is marksmanship. This is using ranged weapons likeBows,Crossbows, andHandgonnesin the game, or ranged guns. The higher skill you have makes it easier to aim and makes it easier to hit things with your ranged weapons, which can be very difficult when you’re first starting out. You gain experience by using these weapons in combat or by hunting target competitions. It’ll also improve this, and marksmanship is definitely one that’s kind of difficult to increase organically, like if you’re trying to do it through combat, because usually what happens is you’ll start out at an enemy camp, and you’ll hit the first guy or the second guy. By then, enemies from melee range are attacking, and you have to switch to melee, and you get far more melee experience because there are like six guys you’re meleeing after you killed two with a ranged weapon.
I definitely highly recommend participating in shooting competitions. It’s a great way to gain experience. Also, reading books on archery or getting skill training from other NPCs that can train you is a great way to kind of jumpstart your marksmanship to get it to a point where it’s easier to do naturally, and you’ll find yourself using it more.
When it comes to marksmanship perks, I really likeSalvo. This makes it so after each shot, you get a short-term buff that makes it so that you reload and aim faster. If you want to fire off multiple arrows quickly, this makes shooting competitions go faster, but it also makes it more likely you’ll be able to use your bow or crossbow more quickly to take out enemies in combat. Right? Like you can’t just kill six dudes with one crossbow shot, so you’re gonna have to reload and fire again, and shortening that time till you can fire makes it possible to play a ranged character more easily.
One Shot At Gloryis also great. Your next shot after killing the enemy will deal 50% more damage, so if you shoot one guy and shoot the next, you might be able to kill them both in two shots, which is great.
Final Thoughts
That’s the progression ofHenryinKingdom Come:Deliverance II. I hope this gave you some helpful info based on my experience. I played about a hundred and some hours of this game, and these are the things that I’ve kind of learned in my time playing this. Keep in mind that you can level up everything in this game if you have enough time and can just grind it out if you want. So, you don’t have to specialize in one type of combat or one type of skill or another—you can level them all up. I’m just trying to give you some recommendations on things to do to speed that up so that you can play how you want to play.
For instance, if you’re using swords all the time, which is what I did in my playthrough, you might want to read books about heavy weapons and polearms or go to skill trainers to level them up. That way, if you get in a scenario where you only have a polearm or a heavy weapon, which there are some scenarios in the game, you’re not completely ineffective with those weapons.
So, that wraps up our guide. I hope it gave you guys some helpful tips and information for those of you that are looking for some advice before you start playing. The game tends to throw a lot of things at you really quickly, so it’s hard to understand all this at the very beginning. As always, if you have other tips that I forgot to mention or if you have other questions, please leave them in the comments, and I will try and answer them as soon as I can.
