Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Tips & Tricks

This page contains Beginner Tips & Tricks for Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (KCD2).

These are all the basics and time-savers you should know before getting started with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2:

• Free Saves: In the Pause Menu you can click “Save & Exit to menu” to create a manual save for free without sleeping or consuming Saviour Schnapps. It creates a manual save (orange colored save). Good to do before lockpicking/pickpocketing etc. You can also make infinite Saviour Schnapps saves (golden saves), simply make a Save & Exit save, then drink Saviour Schnapps for a permanent save, then reload the orange save to get your Saviour Schnapps back! You then keep the golden Saviour Schnapps save without actually losing the Saviour Schnapps. You can buy Saviour Schnapps from most taverns. There are 30 Saviour Schnapps Save Slots, when you run out of these slots it will overwrite the oldest Saviour Schnapps save.
• “Chapter Select”: The game keeps a permanent autosave from the start of every main quest. If you made a mistake or missed a trophy/achievement you can always replay from there later. This is sort of a Chapter Select.
• Free Meals: You can steal soup from the pots in taverns, bathhouses, campfires etc. Free meal and doesn’t count as eating meat. Red soup restores more nourishment than green soup. Wherever you unlocked a permanent bed you can eat from the soup pot for free without it counting as stealing (any story location where you own a bed and any tavern where you rent a bed).
• See Quest Waypoints/Markers: you can only track 3 side quests/tasks at a time. If you already have 3 active, it won’t show new objective markers. This can be a bit confusing if you don’t know about it. To fix this, open the journal and press Square (PS5) / X (XB) on the quest names you want to track or untrack. Then you can see the markers where to go.
• Fast Travel: You can fast travel to any location with a blue flag icon on the map. Simply open the map and click the blue flag icon to fast travel (doesn’t work while inside buildings).
• Stealing Items/Armor/Weapons easily: at night when people sleep you can loot their key, then use it to open their bedside chest which contains all their items. You can do this on sleeping guards too to loot their full armor/weapons.
• Getting Good Armor/Weapons: Instead of buying new armor pieces at high prices, it’s cheaper to loot armor from defeated enemies. The “stolen” mark will cool off after enough time passed. It’s cheaper to repair stolen high-value pieces at armorers than to buy the same piece in new condition. Repairing the best pieces only costs a few hundred Groschen, buying the same piece new costs thousands. The defense stat on armor is affected by the condition (heart icon in inventory). You can also steal the armor from the merchant at night, if your lockpicking skill is good enough to break into their shop, just don’t get caught and don’t wear the armor in front of the people you stole it from as they’ll recognize it. There are many story quests where you fight armored enemies, can loot the best pieces from them.
• Avoid doing Crime: Don’t do too serious crimes that would get you brandmarked. Then people know you’re a criminal and treat you differently. If you then do serious crimes again you’ll get hanged at the gallows. If you only do smaller crimes, being locked into the pillory or flocked is fine, these only give temporary debuffs (can sleep it off). Be careful about stealing, people can deduce it was you who stole their stuff. Only steal if you need to, come at night when everyone sleeps, and make sure nobody sees you around the area. E.g. if guards see you wandering around town and something goes missing they can deduce it must’ve been you who stole.
• Getting Dog Companion Early: Doing Side Quest: Mutt gets you a dog companion, which can give helpful buffs with the Houndmaster skills.
• Make use of the 3 Outfit Templates: You can make 3 outfits, these can be changed by pressing Triangle (PS5) / Y (XB) in the inventory. Make one outfit for combat with heavy armor, one with fine clothes that gives high charisma for conversations, and one with dark clothes that gives low visibility for thievery. You can change this on the fly as needed, when talking to people use your high-charisma outfit, before battles switch to the combat outfit. You can’t change outfits mid-combat.
• Get a High-Charisma Outfit Early: From the Tailor in Troskowitz you can buy some cheap coats, or steal the Burgher coat on the front shelf. At day throw a stone through the window to distract the tailor, then quickly go in and steal the clothes while he investigates. Just don’t get caught, make a save beforehand, don’t wear the stolen clothes in front of him. The high-charisma outfit will be useful to win skill checks in conversations.
• Power-Level Thievery/Stealth early: during miller’s questline “Materia Prima” you can practice on a very easy difficulty chest. Can lockpick it repeatedly. Just grab the 7 lockpicks from it, quit out, pick the lock again. It will stop working after a while, can be done around 15 times. Just don’t let the lockpicks break and you can reuse them every time. You can also pickpocket people at night while they sleep in their beds to quickly raise this skill.
• Stock up on Alcohol: Carry some alcohol with you (wine, schnapps, beer). Drinking 1 of these gives a temporary skill buff, can make battles easier. Don’t overdo it though, if you’re too drunk it gives negative effects. Only drink one at a time to get into the “positive” drunk phase.
• Stock up on Potions: Carry 1 of every type of potion with you. These are often needed to heal wounded NPCs for quest objectives. You can often find them as loot, buy at apothecaries, or brew yourself. For difficult combat encounters you can also consume the potions to give yourself strong buffs (raise stats etc) that make the encounters much easier. Marigold concoction can be quickslotted in your pouch to heal during combat.
• Potion Quality: Brewing Weak/Normal/Strong potion is dependent on how well you follow the brewing instructions and if you use 100% fresh herbs (for stronger potion) or dried herbs. The recipe is the same for all variants. You don’t need to buy/read the recipe to brew the potion, if you brew it correctly one time you automatically unlock the recipe for free, so save your money.
• Personal Chest to store Items: Your personal chest is at any bed you own or at any inn you rent. The inventory is shared across all your personal chests everywhere.
• Turn Stolen Items into Owned Items: Put stolen items in your personal chest, wait a few in-game weeks and the “red-hand stolen icon” will disappear. You can then sell the items to merchants.
• See difficulty of Speech Skill-Checks & read Skill Books: To perk under Skills > Scholarship > Liberal Arts allows you to see the difficulty to win each skill-check dialogue. It’s available at Scholarship Level 10, which you can quickly reach by reading lots of books. This is a good skill to have as soon as possible. You can also study skillbooks by reading them from the inventory and choosing to read them for a few hours to completion, which goes faster if you sit on a comfortable bed. Skill books give XP towards a skill category, they are awarded from quests, bought from scribes, or found as loot.
• Protect your Head: you can lower your bascinet (helmet visor) by holding D-Pad Up (PS5/XB). This gives better protection but restricts your vision. Good for big battles.
• Combat Tips: One-handed sword (e.g. hunting sword) is excellent with the various perks/buffs for it (no shield, nothing in other hand). Buy the perk under “Combat > Swords > Gladiator”, this makes it so enemies block less often and you deal more damage. Whether you block/parry with a shield or weapon-only doesn’t really matter, you counter it the same regardless. Better to fight one-handed if you have the perks that give more damage for it. Only use weapons for which you have sufficient skill levels (no red stats in weapon details). Otherwise they cost too much stamina and do too little damage. If you meet the skill requirement you do more damage and can do more hits before stamina depletes. Buy the perks that lower the required skill levels, otherwise you can’t use the good weapons till very late in the game. Drink all sorts of potions & alcohol before tricky fights if you get stuck somewhere. It buffs your stats which then increases your damage and chance to land hits and withstand more damage. Attack from the side that the enemy isn’t defending against. Try attacking left right left right and up down up down. When teammates are with you let them distract the enemies then attack from behind. You can also hang back and shoot the enemies with bow/crossbow while they focus on your teammates. Keep a Marigold decoction.

Other Tips & Tricks:

• Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 – 100% Completion Wiki
• Full Walkthrough (All Quests)
• All Side Quests & Side Tasks
• How to Get Horse
• How to Fast Travel
• How to Heal
• How to Reset Skills & Perks (Respec)
• How to Cure Food Poisoning
• How to Sell Stolen Items
• How to Pick Locks
• How to Increase Inventory Limit
• How to Level Up All Stats & Skills
• Full World Map