Power level guide

[Immanis]

I checked a few guides to max out Henry stats at the beginning of the game, but most are too much of a PITA to try because it takes forever to level up certain skills or can only be completed relatively late in the game, so I decided to add my own guide with a few exploits I found during my playthrough.

So without further ado, here we go:

1. Get both speech levels from the conversation with your mother (since speech is one of the hardest skills to level up)
2. Talk to Kunesh and pass the speech check. There won't be any fighting involved and he will not give you the goods
3. Sneak into Kunesh house and take a look at the chest. This will enable the stealth options in Skalitz
4. Go and talk to Fritz; he will give you a few lockpicks.
5. Train lockpicking in all chests in town in order of difficulty. Notice that doors in areas where NPC move get locked regularly, so you can level up lockpicking as much as you want, but once you can open very hard chests the progression almost halts so there is no point going further. Also, make sure to pick the "Lasting Lockpicks" and "Deft Grip" as soon as you can, otherwise you will run out of lockpicks rather quickly
6. Go and gather herbs. As many or as little as you want, but getting to level 10 and getting the "Day Leg" perk will allow you to level up strength a little. Still, not worthy IMHO, since the best you can get is level 18 in herbalism and around 5 to 7 in strength. So just get enough herbs to become "deforestation Henry" and move forward. Don't forget to sell the herbs you collect and get a couple of saviour schnapps for the important part
7. Save your game and knock out one of the isolated guards (I generally pick the one guarding the entrance from the road by Dutch's house because there is enough space to sneak behind without him noticing) and steal his bow and arrow. You can get everything else, but bow and arrow are the key items for the main step.
8. Go to the training arena and shoot and kill all sheep, taking care to not waste arrows. This will level up your strength, agility, vitality, bow and hunting skills levels.
9. Get all the meat from the sheep, go to your house and cook it to remove the stolen tag.
10. Go and sell the meat in the market, making sure to get all available saviour schnapps in town
11. Go back to the sheep pen, the sheep will respawn as soon as you approach the area, so repeat from step 8 until you are happy with your character progression
12. If you feel like training stealth, knock down everyone in town, starting from isolated civilians. Try to avoid guards until you are confident enough in your stealth skills (even better wait, for the "Et Tu, Brute" perk at level 10), because they randomly resist and if you get thrown in jail is game over. So use your saviour schnapps wisely here like I suggested in step 7
13. Things you put in the locked chest by the storage room in your house will remain there during the intro, so stash your plunder there before continuing the game. You only need the armour you took from the guard, your bow and arrows and a few saviour schnapps. Don't bother with bandages, since you don't know how to heal yourself at this point
14. Using your bow, kill quickly the Cuman going after you in the "run" quest. Try to kill with the bow the small group that comes to the path as well, just get somewhere were you can shoot from afar. Finally, kill the three Cumans trying to rape Theresa. There is partial shelter in the cart besides her house but some Cumans can hit you depending on their weapon.
15. Collect all the valuables from looting the Cumans you kill and steal Olena the horse (the others also work, but are considerably worse and the ride to Talmberg takes forever).
16. Loot the heck out of Talmberg wile everyone is in the outer bailey for more lockpicking training and some goodies if you want.
17. Once you leave the Talmberg castle, go to the inn and buy the room for several days (you will need at least 200 groshen, but you should have more than that from selling meat in Skalitz). That will give you access to your personal chest, so you can store all your loot there and sell it in Rattay after the intro.
18. Make sure to have a mace and axe before returning to Skalitz (you should have the bow from before and the sword from the main quest, and if you have enough money is a good idea to visit the huntmaster and get a better bow and more arrows)
19. Once back in Skalitz, during the fight with Runt, run immediately to the burn cart by the entrance of the upper bailey and climb on it. From there Runt can't hit you.
20. Pick up the three killable bandits that should be standing at the initial place of the fight with long distance arrows to lure near your position and kill them with your bow.
20. Shoot Runt and Zvyshek a few times so their HP become critical. They won't die, but are going to be more careful while attacking you.
21. Run to the combat arena and get inside. Runt will follow you, but Zvyshek will remain outside (since he is a coward and is hurt)
22. Fight Runt one to one with your sword. Simply wait until he begins his attack motion and use the stab attack (and only the stab attack) on him. He always uses wide sweep motions, so a quick stab is enough to interrupt his attack. All you need to do is be careful with your stamina so you don't miss the stab because you are too tired, but if you are careful enough you can essentially fight forever. Maxing out your sword skills takes around 5 minutes, just keep your cool and don't rush.
23. Once you get to level 20 in sword, switch to one of the other weapon classes and repeat the same process using ONLY stab attacks
24. Once you have level 20 with all your melee weapons, unequip the last one and start fighting him unarmed. This is a little bit harder, since you have less range and is easier to mess it up (it doesn't take too much for Runt to kill you) but if your pace yourself you can max out unarmed combat as well
25. Once you are happy with your progression, let Runt kill you and end the prologue

Following the above instructions, you can easily max strength, agility, vitality, bow and hunting skills and as long as you don't panic, sword, axes and maces skills and have decent levels in lockpicking, stealth, warfare and main level. And if you are successful in the weapon "training" session with Runt, you can also make a decent level or even max out unarmed combat. Not to mention starting the game with a lot of Groshen and loot to sell.

That's it for the power level section; from here I suggest to travel to Ledetchko to collect the best sword in the game at the forest garden north west of the town, then go directly to Merhojed and buy "Warhorse Jenda" which is the only horse you will ever need in the game. Once you have the horse, travel to Uhittz to learn to read. From there, go dig the grave by the tree in the fields north of Uhzitz to get the second best armour of the game (there is only one marginally better you get after the band of bastards ending).

If you feel like completing the end game gear, go to the monastery in Sassau to get the treasures by the burn house in the hill north-west of the monastery, dig the grave by the river bank south west of there and finally, the one by the tree in the hill at the other side of the river. These also give you quite a few odd dice that pretty much trounce everything at Farkle once you collect six of them.

Finally, before starting the game proper, return to Rattay and buy a couple of alchemy recipes. At the very least, you will need to learn "Marigold decoction" and "Saviour schnapps" as soon as possible, but I also recommend "Lazarus potion" and "Nighhawk potion" if you can afford it at this stage.

If you want to power level your drinking skills, you also need to get the "Hair o'the dog" recipe to cure alcoholism as well. The rest is straightforward, go to the alchemy bench and brew some, then buy a lot of alcohol from the three taverns in Rattay. Finally, go to the mill and start drinking like there is no tomorrow. Once Henry gets drunk, but before he passes out, get him to drink the "Hair o'the dog" potion and go to sleep for a couple of hours, then continue drinking afterwards. You can max it out easily by following those steps, but there is no point. All you need is to get to level 10 to get the "Baccus" perk, the rest of them are honestly useless.

Congratulations, at this point the only thing you lack is sufficient levels in speech, defence, reading, alchemy, horse riding, dog training, pickpocketing and repairs. So go train with Bernard to improve defence quickly if you must, but you can learn all those by using them and except for defence and speech are not particularly critical for the game.

[Immanis]

Also, I forgot to mention that above guide also works with Theresa in "A woman's lot" as well. The main difference is that she doesn't get perks at skill level up and that sets hard limits in some of the skills, but killing enough sheep still maxes out all her strength, agility, vitality and bow skills and makes enough money to buy the sword from the blacksmith.

That is not enough to make a warrior of her since she can't wear armour, but she is still going to be lethal with bow and arrow, particularly once she get her hands in a Cuman bow. That paired with the dog skills should be enough to play the DLC as a badass.

[FON]

Have you considered making a guide instead of this random post that will disappear in 1-2 days?

[Go0lden_Archer]

Originally posted by vonPig:

Have you considered making a guide instead of this random post that will disappear in 1-2 days?

P.s. to level repair just need tl knock out 4-5 guards back in skalitz and use repair kits from merchants on all their gear. Few min and lvl is maxed.

[Nekcarb]

@immanis, thanks for the tips, steps 18-19, I have a bunch of equipment from clearing out the guards at the fortified building south of the village. What is a safe way to deposit that stuff for the fight and then pick up before it ends?

Hell, got a video on this? Because the best I can do is drop my equipment on my fathers body, then do the grave, then kill the guards from the cart, but then I can't stop Runt from doing a combo on me. I was planning on leveling my skills first and then hit and run on my way to grab the loot before letting the scene end.

Btw, from the cart, some arrows bounce back and can be recovered. And yes people you need armor on to resist the goon archers arrows.

[DargonBlak]

This is a 2-year old post.

The author does provide plenty of cheesy exploit tips, and the game is fairly easy if you want to cheese ur way through it (no idea why you *need* to be level 20 in everything, or even level 20 anything for that matter - the overall game is easy enuf).

However, i'd be interested in knowing where this "fortified building" is located. It seems u may be referring to building by the river ?

edit: Yes, found it. nvm. Forgot it was here & populated for "Homecoming"

p.s. the trunk where the Nails for Theresa were stored is retained, but if ur willing to cheese/exploit the game - simply hack your weight limit - it's much easier

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6409661-tutorial-tweaking-rpg-parameters/

BaseInventoryCapacity # base inventory capacity - meaning weight limit

[Scarebear]

How are you meant to shoot and kill any sheep with 0 skill in bows and arrow, the arrow just limply falls to the ground :/

[caverat749]

Originally posted by Scarebear:

How are you meant to shoot and kill any sheep with 0 skill in bows and arrow, the arrow just limply falls to the ground :/

well you can try and buff up your archery skills a bit with the 2 cows first , just shoot once and let them run, they'll come back, just be weary cause sometimes NPC will walk around the palisade path max 2 (easy stealth training if you time it right) ...
Also noticed that if I run like an idiot with the mace (the one from the bailiff ) and hit the sheep they die, Henry levels up his related skills and I only set up an "crime" alarm ONCE in all my testing, that's my suggestion
EDIT: you can use the cows for unarmed/ melee training , the sheep are better for fast lvl up archery and hunting once your Henry won't miss the side of a mountain with his bow