Cumans in Skalitz — so many of them standing still on the road, are they surrendering?

[NewbieOne]

I've decided to be a bit of a pesky little Henry and turn the horse on the first Cumans. I can kill some of them with thrusts while passing them by and hopefully avoid getting pulled down from the saddle by a different Cuman in the process. Of course, most of the time I'll slip and make a mistake and eventually be pulled down at some point.

My question, though: A lot of those Cumans are standing still on the side of the road, which looks like they have surrendered, and some of them even right in the middle of the road, which looks odd.

Does this mean several of them have decided to surrender upon the sight of a village boy with a nice sword but poorly mounted and in barely a decent jacket, forget armour? I may have successfully killed their comrade or two while executing a charge, but a half of all the Cumans in the neighbourhood suddenly standing still as though exiting the combat and asking for their lives to be spared is kinda… not very realistic.

Or is this a sort of glitch due to those guys being simply instanced waves that I am not supposed to actually end up fighting, so they don't have proper combat scripts?

I'm asking because this is my first run of KCD, so other than one or two friendly friendly fights in the village I don't have any experience with the combat system, so I can't properly tell if those guys really are surrendering.

I think on one reload or two I did get a tutorial message about enemies surrendering, but that was like once in 20 reloads or so — definitely not getting it most of the time.

And I'm partially asking because — maybe idiosyncratically — I wouldn't mind killing opponents that aren't supposed to be there, but I would definitely mind killing opponents who are actually surrendering.

[Yuz]

I killed all the killable cumans in Skalitz and looted everyone, including the cuman captain armor wich i used until i could get a better one. Just one surrendered.

But it was on my third run and hardcore mode and i left the Skalitz with STR 15 if i'm not mistaken with one of the Skalitz guards armor and his halbert

If you want to know how to do, it's a long and boring play leveling up in Skalitz killing sheeps with an axe and knocking out guards trying to find the one with the halbert, unfortunely the strongest one... one of the cumans has a spear just in case you don't get a halbert.

Remember to transfer all loot from the horse to your inventory while mounted, before reaching talmberg as all loot in horse inventory will vanish, after that just craw to the inkeeper and sell everything he can buy rent a room and store the rest, than you can go search for your parents and finish the "tutorial" part of the game.

P.S. If you are curious about how many sheeps to kill... it was something around 600 to 700 sheeps, Lol.

[NewbieOne]

Originally posted by Yuz:

I killed all the killable cumans in Skalitz and looted everyone, including the cuman captain armor wich i used until i could get a better one. Just one surrendered.

I didn't want to waste saves, so I decided to head for Talmberg after clearing the road, but yeah, I could have looked for more. Part of the reason for my decision was that the game was clearly sending mounted Cumans past me in timed intervals, and that was kinda realism-defying, as in upon seeing a mounted, armoured Cuman I oughtta run, not fight the infantry in his sight and expect him not to join.

Still got a bunch of armour (Cuman but not Hungarian brigandine, heavy lamellar armour, much headgear, some riveted vambraces) but not captain-level gear.

But it was on my third run and hardcore mode and i left the Skalitz with STR 15 if i'm not mistaken with one of the Skalitz guards armor and his halbert

I see. Well, I had a Speech Henry with like 4 STR from Herbalism and that nice jacket from a merchant.

If you want to know how to do, it's a long and boring play leveling up in Skalitz killing sheeps with an axe and knocking out guards trying to find the one with the halbert, unfortunely the strongest one... one of the cumans has a spear just in case you don't get a halbert.

Oh yes, one of them dropped a spear. I figured a spear could be better for mounted combat, as in avoiding clustered close contact with multiple infantry Cumans due to how the game handles cavalry-infantry collisions (i.e. bringing the cav to a halt, as opposed to getting the infantry trampled). But I decided against charging around with a spear while bleeding from a scripted arrow in my leg. AFAIK after leaving Skalitz you have like 3 mounted Cumans on your tail, which would be pure metagaming exercise in player dexterity to defeat while benefiting from the option to just reload the save and thus achieve something that only works 1 out of 20 times. I decided that would have been way too unrealistic, compared to my little stunt stint near Teresa's.

Remember to transfer all loot from the horse to your inventory while mounted, before reaching talmberg as all loot in horse inventory will vanish, after that just craw to the inkeeper and sell everything he can buy rent a room and store the rest, than you can go search for your parents and finish the "tutorial" part of the game.

I predicted that sort of thing would happen and transferred everything from the horse to Henry once mounted just in case but thanks for warning me! The saddlebags contained 220 lbs worth of stuff with mostly at least 40 gp per lb value (sometimes 20).

P.S. If you are curious about how many sheeps to kill... it was something around 600 to 700 sheeps, Lol.

And how many Cumans in Skalitz? I think it was 12 for me.

What I'm worrying about now is that I'm supposed to escape Talmberg now, meaning more shenanigans with the house.

In retrospect, perhaps I should have run like they told me. It's not that you can't fight with some success in difficult situations, but when your job is that of a messenger with a warning, you do that ASAP to save more lives than you could by getting involved in fights along the way and wasting much time. Plus, you don't want to take risks so that you die and those folks you're supposed to warn don't get a warning. It's probably madness to keep charging back and forth on a road versus an enemy that has archers when all your armour is a civilian padded jacket.

Well, if I get to transfer the loot at least I'll have some extra cash. Or I wonder if I shouldn't perhaps keep it. But the problem is, I'm not even sure I can carry all the armour without encumbrance. I think the combined weight of a jacket, chainmail, plate mail, all the coifs, etc. exceeds my 87 weight allowance.

Too bad there's no weapon-/armoursmith or general merchant at the castle to trade with.

[Yuz]

Outside the gate, if i'm not mistaken there is 2 cumans that will spawn behind you and if you wait a bit 3 more will come from the path that leads to Theresa house, at Theresa there is three more cumans. From Theresa house if you go to opposite direction you will die by a stray arrow.

Once the chasing part starts, it's easy to kill everyone on foot with the spear or halbert, that's the 3 cuman riders (one of them is the captain) and the infantry behind them, 3 to 4 i think.

So yes, i think it's around 12 to 15 killable. You didn't missed much.

The only problem is, you are bleeding with few marigold potions and no skill to bandage yourself, you need to loot as fast as possiple and run to Talmberg, no time to look around for more cumans. Another reason not to botter looking for more cumans is... I'm sure the game will kill you with a stray arrow if you go anywhere but the road to Talmberg.

You can carry a lot of loot but as i said, you will be walking at crawling speed during the night patrol, you will need to ditch something by selling (or giving) to the trader inside castle to be able to mount again. Once outside castle, go to inkeeper to sell more loot and rent a room to unlock your chest.

[Yuz]

There is one general merchant inside castle sitting near the gate but he doesn't have much money. The Talmberg inkeeper will buy anything from you as a general merchant, you can use him while farming high grade loot later in Skalitz, or the huntsman he also buys anything.

[NewbieOne]

Well, I'm carrying like 350 kilos (or whatever unit it is) of high-value metal junk, so this is going to get complicated, though I wouldn't mind offloading at least some of the weight or converting it (at a loss) into something that weighs less but is still resellable, or simply building up my schnapps collection, with an opportunity to practice haggling while doing it.

If I leave some of the loot somewhere in the castle, e.g. the tiny bedroom in the courtyard lodge, will I be allowed to come back and pick it up? If I knew I could come back later, I would perhaps ease up on trying to haul it around in my present situation.

And where is the hunstman?

[MacSuibhne]

Originally posted by NewbieOne:

Well, I'm carrying like 350 kilos (or whatever unit it is) of high-value metal junk, so this is going to get complicated, though I wouldn't mind offloading at least some of the weight or converting it (at a loss) into something that weighs less but is still resellable, or simply building up my schnapps collection, with an opportunity to practice haggling while doing it.

If I leave some of the loot somewhere in the castle, e.g. the tiny bedroom in the courtyard lodge, will I be allowed to come back and pick it up? If I knew I could come back later, I would perhaps ease up on trying to haul it around in my present situation.

And where is the hunstman?

If you're in Talmberg, the Inn keeper in the village below the castle will buy anything. The Huntsman is around the corner and up the hill.

Not sure if the chest in the lower level of the keep will hold your stuff for any length of time. But if you get a room at the Inn, that chest is one of 'yours' and as such it is connected to all your other chests by a tenth dimensional wormhole. So whatever you put in one of them can be found in any of them.

[PafunaMT]

Originally posted by Aergistal:

You can get rid of all the cumans during the Run quest on hardcore without any kind of boring levelling up whatsoever. You just need the sword and a good horse. The black one on the meadow is the best. You just ride like hell, time your hits and don't stop until the last one falls. They don't respawn.

As far as the Cumans standing still, once you get out of combat range, they tend to stop chasing you, but for sure they aren't surrendering. Just wheel your horse back 'round and and 'round, keep hacking at them, and run down the archers first, they will hurt you.