Baptism of Fire is the 14th main quest in Kingdom Come Deliverance (KCD). This walkthrough will guide you through the objectives of the Baptism of Fire Main Quest.
Baptism of Fire triggers automatically after completing Nest of Vipers Main Quest.
Before starting this quest it is highly recommended that you bring a bow and 15-20 high-damage arrows (e.g. Better Piercing Arrows) for the upcoming boss fight!
Fight your way into the camp / Fight through to the Cuman camp
Simply follow behind your allies. They will kill all enemies for you, no need to get your hands dirty. You can pick up the loot from corpses and store it in your horse’s saddlebags to resell later.
Merciful trophy/achievement: If you’re on your no-kills run, you can simply let your allies kill ALL of the enemies in this quest. You never have to fight a single enemy, doesn’t matter if you sabotaged the camp before or not. Two of your allies (Commander Robard & Sir Radzig) have infinite health and cannot die and they will always defeat the enemies sooner or later. You can simply hide behind a tent for 15-30 minutes and they will finish the entire quest automatically for you. The only way to fail is to die. If you want you can help out by hitting enemies with your bare fists (only knocks them out but doesn’t kill them).
Deal with the archers / kill the Cuman commander
If you didn’t sabotage the camp, there will be a few archers shooting at your allies. They don’t do much damage and even if you ignore them completely your allies will easily defeat all the enemies. I recommend to ignore the archers, they will just deal you a ton of damage and make you bleed, it’s not worth the risk.
Let your allies kill the Commander and feel free to help out and loot the corpses.
After the Cuman Commander is dead your allies will hide from the archers for 1-2 minutes. Just hide behind a tent and wait. After 1-2 minutes the optional objective to kill the archers will go away and your allies will move on to the next objective and kill the archers automatically on the way.
Fight through to the church
Follow your allies up the hill. Again, you can just hide behind a tent in the back of the area for a few minutes until your allies have killed all enemies. Odds are, if you didn’t kill the archers, all but Robard and Radzig will die. However, these two are invincible and will kill the enemies after a while. If they are surrounded by enemies you should definitely help distract the enemies.
Defend the position
Stay in the same place and defend the area, or just hide behind a tent and let your allies do the job. Try not to lose too much health. The upcoming boss fight is tricky and you should have at least half your health left.
Kill the bandit commander in the steeple
Now you have to fight Runt.
He is very tough to beat in a swordfight, but luckily there is a much easier method:
Simply use the bow against him instead of fighting with melee weapons. Use “Better Piercing Arrows” or something else with high damage. Do headshots on him. He’s running right in front of you so landing headshots should be feasible. It takes roughly 10-12 body-hits with Better Piercing Arrows to kill him or 6-7 headshots.
Make sure you are walking in circles around the wooden beam at the end of the house. He will have trouble attacking you there, because the beam is in his way. He will sometimes do a quick stab but it doesn’t do much damage. Don’t run away from him, he’ll catch up and do a combo on you. Just walk slowly in circles around the wooden beam.
It might take a few tries but it’s much easier than melee combat (he has crazy 5-hit combos that drain your stamina too fast).
Merciful trophy/achievement: since Runt is a story-related kill and there’s no way around it, it won’t affect the Merciful trophy (you are allowed to kill him).
Killing Runt ends in a cutscene and finishes the Baptism of Fire quest. The next quest “Questions and Answers” triggers automatically.
Next Up: Questions and Answers
For more Walkthroughs, check out the full Kingdom Come Deliverance Walkthrough (All Main Quests).
Greg says
I keep failing the quest and it says ‘too many of your men died’ no idea what i need to do.
PowerPyx says
Weird.
Are you on PS4, XB1 or PC?
I did this tactic on PS4 with 1.02 patch and worked fine. I didn’t do any of the sabotages and all my men, except Radzig and Robard, died. I just hid in a tent for half an hour while they killed the enemies. It NEVER gave me a mission fail.
Greg says
PC, attacked on the bridge side and had both Divish and Hanush’ men called. Even if i try and kill as many enemies as possible it always says it and happens at the second group of people you fight.
PowerPyx says
Hmm sounds like a bug.
I’m on PS4. Maybe this is a problem on PC only.
Which patch were you on? 1.02 (saying 1.1 in the game’s pause menu)?
Greg says
1.2.2
Keksorgel says
Heyho, got the same failure-message. But afterwards it worked out pretty fine. Just make sure you either hide or occasionally attack and hide again. To be honest less men died when I didn’t help at all T_T
(Oh and I’m playing on a PC)
Mike says
Kill the archers, otherwise they kill your men
J hall says
Even doing this causes the mission to fail due to too many friendly killed …. is it bugged as it’s been like this for 2 days
Dal says
runt was an easy fight if you have the strenght perk “head cracker” in my fight i hit him once in the head and he fell over unconcious and then easy kill :D
Joe says
me too! i was wondering why it was so easy :D
Crilat says
“too many of your men have died” cant progress in the story due to this bug…
PowerPyx says
So this is confirmed to be a bug?
From what side did you attack? I attacked from the bridge. I think you always attack from there automatically. If you attack from a different side maybe that’s what fails the quest.
Did you also rally Divish’s army?
In the previous quest I did not make any sabotages. I found the bridge on the side of the camp and told Sir Radzig about it, then I told him there are many men and archers are well positioned so he sent me to get reinforcements from Divish in Talmberg. I did this and then attacked from the bridge.
Try to replicate this and see if that fixes anything.
Crilat says
I have done this, tried every possible way i think, no idea what could be causing it. i thought at first the game thought the enemies were my men, as sooner or later, when an enemy would die in the mission, instantly it would come up with the message. But i am not sure.
kjstedz says
getting the same, my guess is its a patch to force you to do some of the fighting yourself, but its proving to have made this extremely difficult
PowerPyx says
I’m downloading the 1.03 patch now to check.
However, people have had this bug since yesterday (and the 1.03 patch was not released then?). So maybe it has nothing to do with the patch. I’ll test now and see.
kjstedz says
I am on PC, i get to ‘hold the position’ before it happens
PowerPyx says
At “hold position” there are new allies supposed to join you.
Are you getting another group of allies spawning in at that point?
kjstedz says
I don’t recall, let you know when in next attempt it – i’ve noticed new people arriving but can’t remember on whose side – if you did it with just Robard and Radzig surviving, it shouldn’t matter…
kjstedz says
Just tried again, that time i got the message before ‘hold the position’ so cant be the lack of reinforcements
kjstedz says
ok so ive managed it…i reloaded and went back to when you askk ser Divish for more men. I’d tried doing that before though. the only thing i did differently in battle was to set fire to the straw on the left of the entrance into the cuman camp, the smoke makes the archers less effective. I still did not engage heavily with the enemy, dipping in and out to help a bit but largely covering from the archers who are impossible to deal with. The only way to hurt them is to cover, peak, fire, if you hit one they often come looking for you and with melee are easy to kill.
norrie says
its true guys, this quest is bugged.
lucas barbosa says
same thing to me but suddenly the game jumped to the duel with runt lol
Proxema says
I’m experiencing the same issue. I’ve gone through the fight about 10 times now. I always manage to survive, and even have mastered the art of killing every archer in less than 60 seconds. I make it to the Church door with about 8-10 men, and still usually lose all but Radzig and Robard before we can start with the battering ram. Another wave of 10-12 enemies come from the bottom of the hill, yet I don’t get any allied reinforcements. (I followed your guide other than sabotaging since i’m lvl 01 sneak. A few seconds into the fight outside of the Church, I get a message stating “You’ve failed – too many of your men have died.” This seems impossible.
Jordan says
Easiest way to get rid of the archers:
There’s a hay bale you can light on fire between the gates to the church and to the first battle field.
Steven bentiss says
I just tried about 20 times too many of your men died, there’s no way to progress I have version 1.2.2
Honza says
Took me about 2 hours today to finish this quest (PC, v1.2.2). I was killed like 20 times and lost all men like 5 times. I did no sabotage and attacked from the bridge. In the first phase I killed 1 or 2 archers and retained about 80% health.
In the second phase I killed all the bowmen on the hill with almost no harm to myself. It is important to start with the one in red cloth – he gives the most damage, he was able to take me down like 50% of health in one arrow. I killed two of them over the fence from the hill, then run down to the camp and proceeded up through the hill until the last was dead. I was left about 70% of health after this phase.
In the third phase I shot everyone around me and almost got killed. It was 50/50 when I was killed and when I lost all my men. Finally I noticed bowmen on the walls, maybe I would shoot them if I knew about them. Luckily the try when I noticed them was successful, the gate opened and I entered. I was almost dead. Saw everything in red but the boss needed only one arrow in the head. Still it was very hard because I could get killed in one shot.
I consider this not a bug but a very very difficult quest. I had to repeat the scouting because I went to the battle with only 10 arrows. For the second try I bought every arrow from merchant in Rattay but it was enough just to kill the bowmen in the second phase. For the last phase I took arrows from the bowmen I just killed.
PowerPyx says
It is a bug for sure.
It randomly fails the mission for people when NOBODY has died, even in first phase when you’re just running after your soldiers.
The Merciful trophy/achievement would be unobtainable if you have to kill anyone there yourself.
Brandon says
I don’t know why but one headshot killed him for me
Steven bentiss says
It’s now impossible to do the mission without killing anyone, too many of your men will die.
PowerPyx says
Still works.
Otherwise there is no way to get the Merciful trophy.
It’s just glitchy.
sarevok says
Did you guys received any reward after accomplishing this mission??
Sam says
Quick question, should the kill stats say 1 person/enemy killed after Runt dies? I cant figure out where i killed anyone else during the baptism of fire mission considering i was just watching the battle…
PowerPyx says
Yes that is normal. After killing Runt it will show 1 kill in your stats.
Sam says
Actually i asked that because i killed Runt with a long distance arrow to the head and it said 1 kill in the stats (he seemed to die before the cutscene). I then reloaded and shot him with hunting arrows to the head and it says 0 kills, even though I’ve obviously just killed Runt, he didn’t die before the cutscene this time though, he kind of kneeled down.
Obviously you’re meant to kill him with a sword as it is a duel, so there could be a bug involving the Merciful achievement/trophy, just thought id share it just in case.
christian says
Yeah this quest continues to fail because of too many men dieing so no clue how you made it happen by doing nothing.
Shogun1x says
It was almost ;pathetically easy after I lit the hay pile on fire. The archers just ran away and we pretty easily cleaned up the melee fighters. I helped by flanking people and hitting them while they were fighting someone else, but it probably wasn’t even necessary.
Shogun1x says
Just put an arrow in Runts eye. Feels good, man.
Chris says
Trying to get the Merciful trophy but in the mission “Baptism of Fire” my soldiers keep dying near the church part and in fails the mission.
grayfox says
I was having some trouble with this as well, getting the ‘too many of your men have died’ quest failure.
And it seemed the more I tried to engage in combat and help my allies, the faster I would get the failure message.
On my 6th attempt I got to the boss fight. I did it by almost never engaging in combat. I set alight (equip the torch) the small mound of hay between the archers near the church and the gate. I was forced into combat when the archers ran down, but just ran inside and let an ally take care of it.
The thing that I think was most crucial, although I could be wrong, was that I always kept close to the fighting, but stealth crouched and never tried to engage. I also didn’t loot anything, but I don’t think that would matter.
grayfox says
And at the time of my first post I was using patch 1.2.5
Xsident says
Tried the mission today,till Runt´s fight it was a super-easy,i just waited for the squad to clear the first “room” and till i looted all dead and checked what everything dropped i got ported to runt.Got to mention i did the only one sagotage-arrows.
Xsident says
i found out one super-easy way how to defeat him…as its adviced let the army deal with all enemies and loot corpses (for me was in fact benefitial to get overburdened),once you will appear at the roof facing runt hop to the inventory and dump all (armour and weaponry in the first place,food etc as last) till you are again able to run etc (i happened to have like 1800/80 on me),set the arrows,bow and hop back into the battle.what happened in my case was that it made around me some sort of barrier thanks to which he cant get to me for his melees tho i was still able to see his upper body,so when he was moving around (like trying to find a weak spot,but there was none as i got backed by the roof edge) i kept shooting him to chest and when he stopped (like thinking how to deal with it) i shot him to the face and since he repeated standing and walking i repeated body and head shots till the cutscene in which henry kills him.
Arm says
Runt is very easy to kill. Just reposte 1 time then hit on the head. 1 hit KO.
pappepfeffer says
Merciful run – same here: “You’ve failed – too many of your men have died.” I tried nearly everything, even reloaded like before nest of vipers and tried with and without sabotage.
Anony says
I shot him in the face once and he died…….
Anon says
Still happens Jan 22, 2020 on version 1.9.4. Unable to progress further to get Merciful achievement. Frustrating so uninstall, moving on.
mitch says
any fix 2024??