Kingdom Come: Deliverance

[Art Blade]

Here's another little story.

I had orders to seek and destroy a Cuman camp in the forest and to kill the Cuman leader. The Cumans were a Turkic nomadic people, hired as cheap mercenaries by Sigismund, King of Hungary (because the nobles of Hungary didn't support that war and a real army was too expensive) and they ransacked Bohemia, today's Czechia. Sigismund couldn't even pay them in full so they made up for it by looting everything, particularly the villages they destroyed. Henry (me) basically works for Wenceslas, King of Bohemia and elder half-brother of Sigismund. Now you kind of get the idea of the historical background.

The camp's exact location was unknown so I had to scout the forest. I like to do that at night because a camp fire is easier to spot at night while I can remain unseen in the shadows. For some reason, my horse can see and follow paths in total darkness so I can canter or even galop on those paths even during a pitch black night. When I arrived at the area the camp was supposed to be, I dismounted, stuffed all the jingling and glistering armour into the saddlebags (they've got to be enormous, my horse can carry more than 400kg in those) and continued on foot.

Unexpectedly, I noticed a shimmer right there and then, a camp fire. I approached it carefully, killed two Cumans with bow and arrow and finished off two more of them in a sword fight. There was quite a bit of loot to be gained and I lock-picked a strongbox with even more stuff in there. Naturally, I was slightly overloaded, having picked up all there was. The quest marker was still active which meant I hadn't destroyed the right camp yet so there was more to come.  I had now dressed up like a Cuman, trying out their gear. I wanted to approach the next camp in disguise.

Not far away, I found the camp I was supposed to destroy. There were just two people I could see, they were sleeping. I managed to sneak up on them unnoticed and killed them in their sleep. One of them was their leader, mission accomplished. Or so I thought. While I was looting the corpses, one of them apparently had risen from the dead, which gave me quite a start -- he was in his underwear and he too was a bit puzzled, he obviously didn't quite understand what was going on -- probably because I looked like one of them. In fact, I had looted two corpses and there was a sleeping Cuman I hadn't recognised as such because I thought he was one of the corpses, due to him wearing only underwear. Well, I killed him, this time permanently.

Then I heard voices. So there were even more of them. Actually quite a few. They came close, even passed me (cool, you can actually deceive enemies with a disguise) but then one of them realised something was wrong. What followed was brutal, and it took quite some time to finish them all off. By the time I was done with them, it had dawned. And I was handsomely overloaded. I stuffed what I could into the saddlebags and carried the rest in my inventory. The game allows you to overload yourself without limit but you can't run or fast-travel when overloaded, and it costs more stamina if you have to fight. Here you can see what it looked like when I was finished. You can't strip them naked, by the way.

Cuman encampment
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different angle of that camp
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Now I went on my way to report a successful mission. My poor horse had to carry at least 600kg already, including myself All of a sudden, a couple of deer crossed my path, I must have startled them. Why not improve hunting and archery, I had tons of arrows anyway, so I started to shoot deer when I heard voices. A bit down the path I had been following, I noticed a guy in plate armour, looked like a guard, and a Cuman (they wear distinct armour and clothing) and they were duking it out among themselves. I decided to get closer which alerted the Cuman of my presence, he made me right there and then and attacked me. The guard kept attacking him from behind while I was fighting him face to face. By accident, I hit the guard and when the Cuman was down, the guard attacked me. Not good. I hadn't saved the game. If he was a guard, he'd likely tell his friends, so I tried to retreat without actually fighting him but it didn't w0#k. He kept going after me. So I killed him.

Turns out that he wasn't a guard but a bandit. Damn, they're pretty well kitted out in these parts of the world. More voices. More.. guards or bandits? They spotted me and attacked. I killed them. They were bandits, too, no guards. Then I started to loot the corpses but interrupted that when I noticed a guy sitting in the path. I couldn't talk to him but the prompt for pickpocketing revealed that he was a merchant. Interesting. If he had watched me looting corpses, which was a crime, I'd have a new problem if he told his friends or the guards. So I killed him, too. There were several dead merchants I picked over, so the bandits must have ambushed the merchants and then the Cumans were likely being attracted by the ruckus and came to finish off the bandits. And then I came to finish off whoever was still alive. What a mess. By the time I was finished, I had like 900kg of loot in my pockets I'm going to make a fortune selling all that stuff Of course, I kept the best to myself, I had collected some very expensive armour and attires. I've got a complete Cuman set now, a complete disguise. I know I'll have to infiltrate a fortified large encampment with bandits and Cumans later on as part of a mission, so I want to use the disguise trick to infiltrate the Cuman part of the camp and poison their food. For that matter I have rotten deer in my saddlebags which will spoil their stew pots just perfectly. What a great little adventure that was, man, so much loot

bandits, Cumans and traders.
Note the white thing in the grass, down left corner, it's another body. Most of them are spread out in the path.
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[PZ]

Good story! 

I feel sorry for that poor horse having to carry all that weight 

Does he slow like you would in Fallout?

[Art Blade]

Thank you

no, only the player slows down when overloaded. You can't overload the horse's saddlebags and the horse doesn't care about your weight

[PZ]

  

[Art Blade]

907 MB patch, that was quick! I too had issues with the barber, and told the devs. They read what we write, even on Easter holidays, and fixed it!

Release notes for version 1.4.1
30 MARCH   - MARTIN.KLIMA
Fixed various errors due to obsolete data having been published as part of 1.4. (e.g barber shop not working, issues with quest progression in Baptism of Fire & Question and Answers)

RECOMMEDATION
There is a distinct possibility that the save files created with version 1.4 might be corrupted. We highly recommend going back to your old save files that were created with version 1.3.4 or older.

If you finished main quest Baptism of Fire and the following quest (Questions and Answers) did not start, reload any save from Baptism of Fire and progress through the battle. The quest Questions and Answers should start after the duel with Runt.

[Art Blade]

just quickly three thoughts I wanted to share with you.

I told you I got an achievement "gambler" for winning 1,000+ Groschen. That achievement is quite rare, so far only 0.8% of all players have achieved it. By now, I've won 41 and lost 11 (still only 11) games, beat 12 different NPCs, and accumulated 1,507.1 Groschen. I'll keep gambling

I mentioned a camp I will have to infiltrate and that I wanted to poison the bandits and Cumans there. When I watched ESO's playthrough on YouTube, he tossed a potion into one of the pots (there are quite a few scattered around the camp) and he hoped to see some effects when they attacked that camp. Only he hadn't read the description of the potion properly. He mistook "potion" for "poison" and actually tossed something that today we'd call an energy drink into the stew Of course, that's not the effect I'd want to see I got really nasty potions that actually are poisons, and I got rotten meat to toss into the pots which is also very, very bad for someone's health So I won't make that silly mistake

I also mentioned disguising myself as a Cuman. I know about the disguise from ESO's playthrough (it worked) and he knows from the devs he's friends with: The more Cuman items you wear, the more convincing your disguise.

Which is why I was so keen on collecting a whole set of all items. The best way to explain that is to show it, I edited descriptions into the pic. Armour and clothes w0#k like a layer system. What you see in the pic is a damn good and expensive loadout for a noble knight. I can replace each and every item or leave it blank (e.g. no helmet = you'd see the head chainmail, and if you removed that, you'd see the coif, and if you removed that, you'd "finally" see the uncovered head)

loadout explained (I recommend you enlarge it to full size)
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Note bottom left, the red numbers, that's still my overload from those bandit camps, I added one more to it.. hehe, it's over a ton.

[PZ]

Nice w0#k  I like the idea of disguises - you could wear different outfits in Wildlands that was reported would be treated with different suspicion.

[Art Blade]

Thanks

The suspicion aspect exists on top of it, see the "conspic." (conspicuousness) entry in the pic bottom right in that rectangular box. Visibility is for stealth as in how quickly they can spot you (particularly in the dark) and conspicuousness is how quickly they recognise you. Plus "noise" which is also impacting stealth. It's quite logical that I can't sneak around while wearing a whole set of cutlery and pans dangling from me (like plate armour) I can dress in all kinds of styles and combine everything. The more you stick out, the more likely people will see you and if you don't have a high speech level (there are two more alternatives, like something representing status and something representing your combat power) then you can't talk yourself out of getting frisked or fined or even jailed. Charisma plays a role, too (only partially but at the time predominantly influenced by the quality of your gear, like a nobleman's wardrobe). And your visual appearance, too, like dirty clothes or blood splattered across your stuff.

It is a lot more a sim than an arcade game, in every aspect, as you might have figured out by now

[PZ]

Yes indeed - much more realistic. 

I like the idea of playing sims - formerly played lots of SimCity in various flavors, and even purchased another city sim that I have hardly started. Then there was a Civil War board game and if I check my game library, there are probably games that I don't even remember purchasing. I'm not entirely sure why I have never been able to get into sim games as I am aging - maybe having to remember too many things to play effectively 

[Art Blade]

I think those Sim.. games were a different type of sim (I played a few of those myself) and comparing them with KCD is about as accurate as comparing an oyster with an elephant -- both are living beings but that is about it. Sim.. and KCD only have in common that they're computer games and that's about it.

[Art Blade]

Here's an example. After a fight, your gear will be damaged from the hits you took and your weapons will wear down, particularly bladed weapons. You have to go to someone who's a tailor or a weapon smith or an armourer to have them repair your stuff for money (rather expensive) but they can only repair something they are trading, i.e. a tailor can't repair a sword.

Or you learn how to repair your stuff. There are kits you can buy that represent the trade, so you need different kits for your gear and there are small and large kits, depending on the amount of damage you need to repair. Like everything you learn or develop, you need to level up maintenance in order to become more proficient in repairing your stuff. I can repair smaller damages right now because I haven't got a high level in maintenance yet. Everything you can level up goes from 0 or 1 to 20. Not for everything but for some things, you can take lessons (for money, of course) and you can read books that you can buy or steal to receive a boost to a certain skill.

Stuff that you repair yourself may receive a bonus if you acquired certain perks, for instance armour will be less noisy and boots save 20% stamina when running and clothes will be awarded a charisma level. Blades will deal more damage. And so on.

Bladed weapons are an exception as you can use a grindstone to save a weapons kit. Also, only a grindstone can get rid of blood (which is a bit weird but it is as it is). Honing isn't exactly easy as you might gather when looking at the following help screen.

honing a bladed weapon
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[fragger]

Blimey, a weapons-smith simulator That's impressive.

The game sounds (and looks) amazing. I'd have to agree, it appears to be more like a simulation than a game. The devs seem to have taken everything into account. A lot of TLC has gone into this game, evidently.

Great stories, Art That poor horse though... I hope you gave it a carrot for being such a stalwart mount

The game evidently has a huge immersion level. If I was into games with sword fights and deep role-playing, I'd get into it too, but it's not really my bag. I like shooting stuff too much I find the history of medieval times fascinating, but I don't think I'd enjoy playing a game set in them, and with so much to learn and master. A bit too involved for my gaming tastes... But I really admire the way you've thrown yourself into it and how far you've come so far, good on you

[Art Blade]

cheers, mate

Before I forget to mention it, I've only just finished selling all the stuff my horse and me were carrying after finishing off those Cumans and bandits. Before, I had 9.1k Groschen and after selling most of it, I got 17.5k Groschen. And in between I had bought and sold some stuff (replacing gear) as well so it might have been even more. No matter how good you haggle, buying is always more expensive than selling which means usually (not sure if ever) you can't buy something cheap and sell it at a higher price.

Groschen is a currency used in the game. Before we had €uros, we had D-Mark (Deutsche Mark or DM) and 0.1 DM equalled 10 Pfennige but some people would call the 10-Pfennig-coin a "Groschen." Germans and German words were common in Czechia back in the Middle Ages. Maybe it's an old word from back then. In the game, 1kg (a litre, more like) of drinking water costs 0.1 Groschen, one unit (0.8 kg) of honey costs 1.7 Groschen. That's what the inventory says, a trader might still sell it for more. Top notch gear costs over a thousand Groschen. For instance, my most expensive piece is the Dyed Milanese Brigandine (like a cuirass, you can see it top right under "body plate" in the pic I posted earlier) and my inventory states that it costs 2.791 Groschen. Just to give you an idea. I think I bought my war horse (best in the game) for under 2k. So I'm not stinking rich (no castles or some such) but I'm doing quite well

Yes, the game is extremely detailed, in every aspect, which is what got me hooked as soon as I understood that from watching just one video, see link in the first pic. One example of detail: When it's raining and you go inside a building, the sound of the rain will still be audible but muffled. Really cool. Of course it doesn't rain through walls and ceilings, unlike in other games.

By the way, if you haven't, you should watch the vid a few posts above, taken from A Knight's Tale, it's worth watching the jousting, how lances explode on impact.. impressive.

The horse. I can't feed it, only whistle and it will approach me, almost like a dog, usually from behind so you don't see it spawn, no matter where you or the horse had been before. Very useful If you see it and it's a bit away, you can whistle and watch it galop to you. That kind of makes it likeable and you feel attached to it.

It is immersive, I can tell you that, and it is fun to play -- at least with the save cheat it's a lot easier. The mod comes with a ton of console cheats which I sometimes use, so I don't really suffer. Most of the stuff I have to do like everyone else, like levelling up my skills and all that, so it's not as if I could or had cheated everything you see.

Throwing myself into it, I think that's about how PZ describes me, too, and I guess it's quite accurate IF I like something, then I go all in.

Thanks for reading my stories, it's more fun to share if people read them and hopefully enjoy reading them

[Art Blade]

my most expensive piece is the Dyed Milanese Brigandine (like a cuirass, you can see it top right under "body plate" in the pic I posted earlier) and my inventory states that it costs 2.791 Groschen.

I'm right now in an armour shop and there it costs 5,382.7 Groschen I didn't pay anything for it as I won it in a duel.

I just sold the rest of my stuff that I had stashed away and I've got almost 24,000 Groschen right now. There's the option to use a crate next to a bed you rented or the one next to the bed in the miller's house where the game puts you after the tutorial phase. Stuff you put in it is available everywhere across the map, no matter where you rent a bed for the night. Also, it doesn't have a limited capacity.

Millers are fences so you can sell stolen goods to them. The first miller (the one with the bed) has got a strongbox somewhere behind the mill and it was either a hard or even very hard lock to pick which I did in the past, now I can access it without having to pick the lock again. There he keeps all the stuff I sold to him and there's all his money, too. Here I cheated a bit: I cheated money and put that into his box so he could buy a LOT of stuff from me. Saves me the waiting period until he got some money again (it kind of respawns after I think one in-game week) and allows me to sell everything (not only stolen goods) to him that I no longer want. And yes, I can rob his box and sell the stuff to him again, over and over, but that's ridiculous. I could just cheat money for myself instead. It's more fun to sell stuff to him that I collected somewhere else.

[Art Blade]

Argh.. (this is about a mission and how I failed, redid it and an additional run-in with bandits. I didn't expect this post to be this lengthy but I reckon it's worth reading it)

I had to go back quite a couple of saves so right now my cash is 17k again. The reason is that I had screwed up a very extensive side mission without realising how. I could have finished it anyway (without convicting a murderer) and continued with the game but I really wanted to do it better. Here is what happened.

The mission was House Of God, the one mentioned in the patch notes, that could really screw up your game by causing an endless save loop but lo and behold, it didn't happen to me thanks to the patch and thanks to the fact that I only started it after the patch. I was a bit worried because I haven't reverted to a savegame prior to patch 1.4 as they "strongly" recommended -- so far, my game seems OK except for a new bug: the screenshot I took regarding honing bladed weapons shows a help screen. I can reproduce the bug, as soon as I hit the help screen, I can't get back out of it anymore. I can live with that, no idea whether or not it's due to the new patch or an old bug. I don't care.

Well, the mission. Essentially, you've got to investigate an accident that caused one dead worker. The game sends you around and around and back and forth, there is a lot to do. I remembered a cutscene from a YT video that showed how someone drops a rock down at Henry and I knew who was guilty but I never got to see that cutscene and the guy who was guilty and supposed to end up dead was very alive and I couldn't talk to him anymore (as in, all questions asked, no longer available for chats) so I thought I might have run into a bug. I have to say that instead of the chat leading to the rock thrown at me, he told me the man I was looking for had confessed to him and then run away and disappeared for good. I didn't realise how that was very different from what was supposed to happen.

Checking the internet revealed that at a certain point during the mission I should have got that chat leading to getting a rock thrown at me but it never happened BECAUSE I WAS LATE! I didn't know something like that could happen, I "shouldn't" have played around with whatever it was and gone straight to that guy but instead, meanwhile, he got rid of the only witness. So it was no bug! The guy was simply sure he was safe, he knew I couldn't prove his guilt anymore. In a way, the mission design is clever if you think about it. However, I wanted to convict that guy of murder and not let him continue as if nothing ever happened.

The next interesting part is this: If you got to said chat, he'd make an appointment with you to meet him at night but instead, he'd send someone else to drop a stone on you while the guy would have gone after the witness, killed and disposed of him (second murder, even) and then I'd have to fight and kill that guy which is what I had expected to happen.

However, my online source had one single comment by a reader who basically told us to avoid that chat and go find the witness instead, confront him and by that, make him confess the whole story (not only was he a witness, he was also an abettor who had helped that guy and helped cover it up) so that was very intriguing. That would prevent the second murder and the guy was supposed to get locked up. I liked the idea and wanted to try it.

It took some time and more research, turns out that the abettor had hidden from the guy for fear of getting killed which indeed would have happened. He was hiding upstairs in a mill, three rooms across, in a zone I wasn't allowed to go and I might even have got caught trespassing. I would never have found him there. Very clever. And this time I did it right, I got there on time and indeed, it worked Funny side note: I noticed the guilty guy was dead in the mud instead of locked up but I hadn't killed him. I reloaded and made sure I was quick enough to watch what happened: Guards went after him, he drew his sword and then they killed him in a fight which is why they couldn't lock him up anymore. Well, he was dead, so the result was the same as if I had gone through the "normal" process.

To finish the mission, I had to report back to Sir Divish across half the map. As you may remember from my last post, I was no longer overloaded so I was allowed to fast-travel. And really not far from where I started fast-travelling, there was a hold up. You see, fast-travelling works like this: mark one of those fast-travel points on the map you want to go to and then you watch an icon (you) move around the map. If something happens, you might want to stop and take over control which is what I did.

When I got from map mode back into the game, I found myself on a small path at the end of a forest and a lush green valley ahead. In the path were three guys sitting there and about a handful guys fighting: Cumans versus bandits, once more. I dismounted, went to a pair of fighters and randomly stabbed this guy once and then that guy once and so on, kind of funny, it was always a sandwich with one of them between me and the other guy. I killed both and went to take care of another group composed of three guys. Two of them attacked me while the third ran away, that bastard. I killed everyone but him, he had escaped.

Then the bonus part began: LOOTING. I decided not to play around and took everything at once from each corpse and approached the three guys still sitting there. A prompt that was new to me showed up: "unbind." Aha. The Cumans had captured and tied up those three bandits, that was a new one. I untied one and was surprised that he didn't attack and that I didn't have any options to interact except pickpocketing. Well, he was a bandit and walking around with my going-to-be loot, can't have that, can we. I stabbed him with my longsword in the back just twice and he croaked. MY loot, thank you very much. Considering the remaining sitting guys.. I decided to crouch which enabled stealth kills (cut the throat from behind with my dagger) and slowly I started: cut, one, cut, two, cut, three, cut, four.. hold on, there were more than three guys sitting tied up but I hadn't noticed due to the combat situation. So I must have looted nine guys, Cumans and bandits, and they had a lot of loot. My inventory showed almost 700kg. Before the fight, I had less than 200 so I must have picked up around half a ton of loot and didn't even have to fight hard for it. Wow.

Time for my horsie to do some exercise again Because that incident happened not far from where I had started, I decided to ride back, go to an inn and order a bed (with that magic trunk to put my stuff in) so I could unload all the loot and be light enough to finally fast-travel to Sir Divish. The trunk wasn't empty.. ah yes, because I had to reload a game prior to selling that.. But you know what will happen next.. "give" some money to the miller and then sell all that stuff to him. I might end up quite a bit richer than before I decided to reload. Good on me. So I fast-travelled AGAIN to Sir Divish, no incidents, and mission success without bugging out. Excellent

And JUST by the way, regarding choices and how clever some missions are.. look at this:

"Kingdom Come: Deliverance's Script Is Twice The Size of Lord of the Rings Book Trilogy"

http://www.shacknews.com/article/103133/kingdom-come-deliverances-script-is-twice-the-size-of-lord-of-the-rings-book-trilogy