Do you just play crafting the entire beginning of the game?

[Crescent Dusk]

Everything in this game is 3-4 shotting me and I can’t outrun ambushing bandits even with light armor.

It feels like I’ll just have to craft potions to sell for hours in order to buy armor and weapons to not get run over 24/7 by random events.

I don’t want to cheese killing farm animals while no one is looking just to raise my strength levels.

[Bad Brad]

Sounds like you need to meet Tomcat

[Kel'Thuzad]

Автор сообщения: Crescent Dusk

Everything in this game is 3-4 shotting me and I can’t outrun ambushing bandits even with light armor.

It feels like I’ll just have to craft potions to sell for hours in order to buy armor and weapons to not get run over 24/7 by random events.

I don’t want to cheese killing farm animals while no one is looking just to raise my strength levels.

Get the "Leg Day" perk and pick flowers until you become Hulk Henry

[Zenwolf]

Tomcats a good start, Leg day plus overburden walking around town bulks you up, crafting potion fills the purse and you can afford to kit yourself out nicely.

[KoV]

Well I found goblin treasure near herb lady for easy 125 coins
Paid herb lady her reward of 150
Money is just ok to get I guess

[corthew]

If you want to. Any skill you start working on will train up pretty quickly the first few levels. You could gather herbs and sell them, gather honey and sell it, talk to people like the tavern keeper to see who might have work for you, alot of ways to make some money initially and build up your skills and upgrade armor/weapons.
Its a pretty open game to whatever style you choose to play it in.

[Methwalker]

Better gear needed.. Yea most of the bandits on the road are wailing on me, but I've got fair gear taken from bandit camps... Ohhh man I spent a whole day last week low level ninja plinking a camp, running off to hide and repeating (1.5 in game days) until my crappy slow loading crossbow (because bows are broken right now) until they finally all bled to death and I looted their stuff lol

Money is hard to find, but if you lame-ass a game of dice you can get some cash in so collect those dies and cheat the AI back. Then you'll want to start meeting up with skill trainers and the like... I'll never be good at KCD combat but I'm so far way better off in this one than I was in 1. I'm actually doing some damage now just by skilling and gearing (plus practice). Always practice.

That being said... Crafting yea most of my game is that.. I'm honestly just having a good time pretending I'm in the era. Objectives are kind of coming secondary to me.

Obligatory vitriol triggering demand: Please for the love of god add VR support! I don't need hand motions, just let me use the headset natively so I can feel it lol

[Crescent Dusk]

I wouldn't even mind the crafting spam if I could quick craft in alchemy once I've crafted a strong version of a potion.

But selecting herbs from the menu to place, reloading the water, and then going through the craft sequence gets tedious real quick.

[Methwalker]

Автор сообщения: Crescent Dusk

I wouldn't even mind the crafting spam if I could quick craft in alchemy once I've crafted a strong version of a potion.

But selecting herbs from the menu to place, reloading the water, and then going through the craft sequence gets tedious real quick.

Have you discovered the blacksmith Rodovan(I think it is) yet?
I always did hate the alchemy in this game. 2 is worse than 1 as far as interface. I can't see the dang recipie book well and I'm on a 51" screen lol

Crafting is honestly more for you than it is income.

[Edmund Greyfox]

A boring but fairly consistent way to raise strength and vitality relatively quickly is just to walk around while overloaded. The more overloaded, the faster they will go up. You can also head over to the nomad camp and spent some time sparing with tomcat, but that seems a bit slower than it was with Bernard in KCD1. Take along a dozen high quality marigold potions you brew yourself, take off all your armor before you start (so it doesn't take any wear and tear), and do practice fights, healing between fights as needed. That will not only build your strength, vitality and agility, it will build your warfare and weapon skills. People tend to underestimate the warfare skill, but it effects how fast your can attack/block, and once I go it up to 10 fighting bandits became a lot easier.

Edit: Another little trick i found was to go over to Bozhena the herbalists hut, look around for the wild boar that wanders around it, crouch down and follow it around in stealth mode. Raises both stealth and agility, and since this boar never gets scared and runs off like most wild animals you can just keep following it and raising those two skills until you get bored.