Ultimate Guide to KCD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=91&v=m6I3oFcbGnM&feature=emb_logo

I bought this game during the Summer Sale 2020. I followed Camelworks' Youtube video above that had some excellent advice, but failed to emphasize some key points and emphasized certain other points too strongly, so I wasted hours in the Prologue that I did not need to. This guide is aimed to prevent others from making those same mistakes and wasting as much time as I did. I hope this guide saves you hours of your life and increases your enjoyment of this game.

Note - some reviews mention how many bugs this game has and have not been updated so that may put you off from buying the game. So far, I have only encountered one major bug, which was fixed by restarting the game, so it looks like much has been improved since release.

Note - it also appears certain exploits popularized by Youtubers have been fixed, particularly the "knock Kunesh out then hit him with an axe to level up your stats" exploit, so be wary of outdated advice.

Note - if the power goes out for you often, this game will probably drive you insane, because the only way to manually save is to sleep in your bed, sleep in the bathhouse (which costs money until you get a perk), or to use Savior Schnapps which you have to find, buy or create via Alchemy. It will suck if you spent hours exploring without an autosave or manual save because you did not want to "waste" a Savior Schnapps, only to have the power go out and all that time be lost.

MERCIFUL WARNING!

If you are going for the Merciful achievement, constantly check your statistics to see if you accidentally killed someone whenever you knock someone out or after a fight where you were trying to not kill them but they may have bled out or something that causes them to count as a kill.

I lost SO much time on my Hardcore run because I went to knock out the innkeeper in the inn east of Rattay at night, he was sitting at a table, and I went to knock him out, and it killed him, confirmed it showed him as a "People Killed" in my statistics.

So do not try to knock out people sitting at benches, or at least SAVE first!

Basically, if you see the option "GRAB BODY" but not along with "KNOCK OUT", that person is dead and you need to check your statistics tab, if if there is a kill, you need to reload your last save.

MAP RESOURCE & WIKI

https://kingdomcomemap.github.io/#2/2048.0/2048.0

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Kingdom_Come:_Deliverance_Wiki


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WHERE TO FIND BANDITS AND CUMANS

On the Github map, you can toggle to see bandit camps, but so far all I see is 3 camps.

However, look carefully at your map, particularly in forest areas or near camps. See the Smoke Icon? That indicates a Cuman or Bandit encampment. Now, it may be that those smoke icons move around so that is why the github map doesn't show them, but after I beat the game I noticed the smoke icon and went toward 2 of them, and found bandits or Cumans there.

On the point about the smoke icon moving around, this may be how you can tell if there are bandits along the route you would travel and possibly the likelihood that you will have an encounter if you fast travel??? Untested, let me know in the comments if you managed to confirm.

Prologue Essentials Improved Guide

Man there is some bad advice out there, and boy did I waste a ton of time having to redo stuff because I committed a crime and got caught, or because I was too cautious with how I approached things. I finally figured out how to get the lockpicks from Fritz easily and the best way to quickly complete the prologue, so here is an improved guide to the Prologue to save you so much time.

Follow these steps and you should be ready to complete "Unexpected Visit" in about 10 minutes if you choose not to gather herbs or do other leveling/preparations:

1. Pick Speech option with mommy, grab everything from chest, then go talk to daddy
2. Get Hilt from guards in front of castle
3. Go talk to Swordmaster and start him walking to the arena
4. Enter tavern area and start cutscene
5. Agree to help friends, follow them, talk to the wife, fight the other boys, then run away downhill
6. Once you and boys reach the guard it will say meet the gang at Kunesh's
7. Instead of following the boys, go up the hill and train with the Swordmaster
8. Training complete, now go talk to Kunesh
9. DON"T fight or convince him, tell him to "pay for stuff at least", then tell him you'll tell daddy
10. Go into Kunesh's house and click on the chest in his main area
11. NOW you can go talk to Fritz and get 4 lockpicks from him
12. Lockpick the chest and get daddy's hammer and nails
13. Go back to friends and talk to Matthias, get them to help you with Kunesh
14. Beat up Kunesh, then take his axe to sell
15. I sold a Marigold Decoction to quickly get enough gold to just buy the charcoal, but...
16. Go back to your home and lockpick the chest in the storage room to get 7 groschen
(If you are doing an illiterate run you can sell the book, keep the book if you plan to learn to read)
17. Buy 10 charcoal, then go talk to Biance in Tavern
18. Respond "You do" to sweet talk her, she'll give you a pitcher for daddy and 5 Savior Schnapps
19. Run straight to daddy to make sure he gets his ale cold, which will start cutscene
20. End scene, Theresa will be there, you should already have the nails, DONT TALK TO HER!

SAVE!

Now you are all set to do whatever you want next. If you talk to Theresa you will start RUN!

I recommend gathering every Herb you can (while doing this, DO NOT do anything illegal yet!), save up perk at Level 5 and then get "Leg Day" and then "Botanist" as soon as you hit Level 10 Herbalism. On Normal you should easily be able to hit Level 15 and get "Flower Power", on Hardcore you may not quite make it due to experience reduction. Gather every single herb to try and hit Level 15+ while also leveling Strength as much as you can.

SAVE once you are done gathering herbs! NOW you can decide if you want to do risky stuff. You can punch cows to level your strength; you can lockpick everything you can to level lockpicking; you can follow villagers to secluded areas and knock them out to steal stuff and level Stealth, you can (try) to knock out guards to get their armor and weapons.

Decide whether you want to sell all the herbs you gathered to get as much money as possible (doing this after getting "Botanist" means less walking back to your house to deposit herbs in chest to reduce weight), or put them along with anything else you obtain in the chest in your family home to have as little weight on you as possible for next step, only keep Savior Schnapps and daddy's sword (you'll get your stuff later just before completing the prologue).

When you are ready, SAVE again, then talk to Theresa.

22. Don't fight the Cuman, just run down the hill toward the houses. Whistle to distract the guards from Theresa for achievement and jump on a horse and start riding away from Skalitz. Cutscene.

23. Get through all the Talmberg cutscenes, SAVE, go talk to Lady Stephanie to get advice and some bribe money, then go to the guardhouse and use your lockpicks to steal gear to make a Talmberg Guard outfit so you don't need to use the bribe money. There is also the option of trying to knock out a guard and steal his stuff, although when I did this during my normal playthrough I got detected somehow when I thought I got away with it so I had to pay a fine and suffered reputation loss when I returned to Talmberg later in the game, so stealing the stuff is the best option. Also, steal a horse from the Talmberg stables so you can ride that out of Talmberg.

24. After the cutscene where you abandon the horse near Rovna, to get back to Skalitz easily without any fighting and without getting lost, go straight north sticking along the edge of the woods to your right (don't take the road, stay to the east of the road) all the way up past the south wall of Skalitz on your left, the only open gate is the North-East one.

25. From here, follow the wiki walkthrough, and make sure you get all your stuff from the chest in your family home before you start the final cutscene of the prologue.

ESSENTIAL

I don't think I was able to emphasize this enough in other sections due to word count limits, and it bears emphasizing and repeating again and again:

TRAIN WITH BERNARD!

ALSO!!! Get one of the weapon skills to Level 5, then learn MASTER STRIKES in order to learn PERFECT BLOCK!!! I don't think you could win the tourney without knowing perfect block, or at least it would horrendously difficult.

And make sure you train with Bernard between the Quests "Train Hard, Fight Easy" (hint hint) and "Keeping the Peace" but DEFINITELY before "The Prey". From memory, the first time you really have to fight anyone is when you rescue Capon from the 2 Cumans during "The Prey", so you really want to be skilled up before you embark on that. And right after "The Prey" starts "The Hunt Begins" which means that Bernard will be hanging out in Neuhoff and will not be available to train you until you finish that quest line. I held off on advancing that quest line a long time because I wasn't sure if advancing the main quest would prevent any side quests, and that inability to learn from Bernard caused me to lose so many fights and waste so much time, particularly The Arena.

DO NOT try your luck in the arena until you fully train with Bernard and I would say until you are at least Level 10 or 12 in Strength and your Weapon of choice.

And you want to be able to win The Arena ASAP because you can gain a whole suit of the best armor and some of the best weapons and a bunch of money if you do it 8+ times.


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GAAAAAAAAH. So for the Pilgrim achievement, you not only have to find the Conciliatory Crosses and Shrines, you have to READ them as well. You need 90 "Art Objects" found for this achievement. Art "read" in churches counts. You can track "Art Objects" in "Statistics".

BASICS you MUST Know!

https://www.ign.com/wikis/kingdom-come-deliverance/Walkthrough_-_Main_Quests

Quick Note - The game does not let you heal during combat. You need to be combat-free to heal, use bandage, etc.

Important Note - I will repeat this later, but it is so important it needs to be emphasized repeatedly. Your combat skills will be limited until you advance the main quest far along enough to train with Captain Bernard. Once he trains you then you unlock Perfect Block, Riposte and Feint, etc. Absolutely essential, and you can access him not long after you complete the Prologue, just go to Rattay, go to the main quest icon to cutscene with Radzig, and then go train with Bernard. Easy.

: The quest is called "Train Hard, Fight Easy" and is literally the second quest after "Awakening" after the Prologue.

: A few quests later is "A Ginger in a Pickle", where you get your free horse. And according to an IGN video, apparently after this quest, you can return to Bernard for even more training.


You cannot read or pickpocket until you are taught how, so have Miller Peshek who takes you in right after the Prologue teach you how to pickpocket, then go learn how to read in Uzhitz. You also have to complete Miller Peshek's quest "The Good Thief" to unlock the ability to fence stolen items. Miller Peshek also gives you the opportunity to practice lockpicking during this quest if you did not practice already in Skalitz.


GET REPAIR KITS RIGHT AWAY! I messed up because I had managed to get near-top gear at the start of the game, and let it get damaged below 60% condition, so I could not repair it myself anymore. Get repair kits and whenever your armour or weapons takes any damage, repair it immediately. MUCH cheaper to buy repair kits than pay the blacksmith to repair your expensive gear. ALSO, if you repair an item when it is at 99% condition, especially when you have a high Maintenance skill, it may not even use up any of your repair kit uses, so you could theoretically never have to buy another repair kit.


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SAVES:

The "Save & quit" option does NOT allow you to reload more than once (it works like "save -> resume -> delete save"). It's more of an "extended pause" to allow you to resume your game later, than a real save. I recommend not quitting the game until you sleep & save in a real bed/the bathhouse or use a Savior Schnapps.

IMPORTANT: You can have 10 manual saves at a time using Savior Schnapps. Once you have 10 manual saves, you need to overwrite old saves.

The game creates an individual save automatically at certain points, typically after starting a quest or a cutscene, but not always, so check your save files. Again, the autosaves are individual so it is not overwriting the same autosave thankfully, but it is infrequent, so be aware.


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BEDS & Important Inn info:

IMPORTANT!: Renting an Inn room for 1 night is cheap but is only for one night. But if you pay the much larger sum for "several nights", you may ask how long that will be for. Indefinite, the answer is Indefinite, you are basically "purchasing" a room at the inn and it becomes another home for you. Therefore, definitely recommend buying an Inn room everywhere you can.


Since at least patch 1.5 the beds in which you can save are marked "Sleep and save" instead of just "Sleep".

Those "save beds" include all the ones marked as "Your bed" on your map, and have your inventory chest nearby (one exception) :


Free beds :

Talmberg Castle (no inventory chest)
Rattay Mill
Pirkstein Castle in south Rattay (after completing a specific main quest)


Paid beds :

Rattay Inn (east of the city)
Inn in the Glade (west of Neuhof)
Uzhitz Inn
Talmberg Inn
Ledetchko Inn
Sasau Inn

(^ also bathhouses like the one south of the Rattay Mill you start in after the Prologue, until you get the Troubadour perk that makes using them free)

Other beds allow you to sleep and save but are not marked on the map, and don't have your inventory chest either (one exception) :

Pribislavitz Rathaus (in the "From the Ashes" DLC, after building the Extended Rathaus ; has an inventory chest)
Pribislavitz Inn (in the "From the Ashes" DLC, after building the Inn)
Sasau monastery sick house
One dug-in house in Rovna, at a Y fork (where you meet a bandit in the prologue, when returning to Skalitz, IIRC)
One dug-in house south of the Skalitz' mines plateau, just before crossing the river south
... and possibly others such as poachers' hideouts in the forests, camps, sometimes ruined buildings, barns, etc. There are few places were there isn't a save bed nearby.


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HYGIENE:

There are troughs full of water all over the place, there is one right outside your parent's house for reference of what it looks like. You can touch up your hygiene to a decent level with these troughs, and you should be doing this constantly. If people's reactions and prices are terrible, there is a good chance it is because you stink.

If you really want to impress people, put on a noble outfit that maximizes your charisma then go bathe at a bathhouse, then do the sweet-talking you need to do.


After hitting someone with your weapon, it will become bloody. This will make you more intimidating, but will affect your reputation in other ways as well, and can even lead to you being accused of murder if you wear a bloody weapon near the scene of a trail side murder.

To remove the blood from your weapon, follow any step you normally would to maintain it: Sharpen it at a grindstone (which is free), pay for it's repair, or repair it with a blacksmith's kit.



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FOOD:

You can eat for free from the pots over fires located all over the place. For example, there is one in your room in the Rattay Mill, there is one outside the Lower Gates of Rattay plus a bunch spread throughout the city itself. It will then take awhile for the option to eat again from the pot to refresh, not sure how long but not too long, but it does refresh (once you're out of the Prologue at least). Eating from this pot gives +25 Nourishment.

Most food you carry on you or store in your chest spoils. If it is less than 50% freshness/condition (49% or less) it can give you food poisoning unless you have the "Human Dustbin" perk. Less than 30% freshness is extremely rotten.

You can cure food poisoning by sleeping in a bed for 4 hours or using an Antidote Potion.


There is food that will not spoil like "Dried Meat" and food that will spoil very slowly like "Salami".


If you poach games like deer (which is apparently a crime if seen), the meat you get will be marked stolen. Cook it to remove the stolen tag.


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BLEEDING:

Always carry at least 1 bandage with you. If you sustain an injury that starts bleeding, it will not stop until you use a bandage. Note that a commenter on a Reddit post said that if you are fully decked out in armor then bleeding basically does not occur and becomes a non-issue, but if for any reason it does and you cannot get to a bandage before you bleed out, you are boned.

Once you stop the bleeding, you can heal the injury itself and restore health by sleeping in a bed. You can also restore health by using the Marigold Concoction.


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ARMOUR:

Armour can truly save your bum bum.

Without armour on, if the enemy lands a strike on you it is going to cause damage and that damage will mount rapidly, plus there is the potential for bleeding that can kill you even if you win the fight but do not have a bandage.

With every slot for armour filled (Platemail over Chainmail over Padding, etc), I would get struck by sword strikes but not take any damage as long as I still had stamina remaining. Only when my stamina is empty and I get hit do I take damage (so far this applies to swords, have not dealt with getting hit by maces yet). So keep 1/4 to 1/3 of your stamina at all times and you basically will not die if you are fully geared up in armour.

COMBAT & BASICS continued...

A forum post I read mentioned that once you have too many autosaves the game may stop auto-saving properly. It may be a good idea to periodically delete old autosaves.

Autosaves from when a quest is started are marked with a little star icon and will say (quest name) started.

Savior Schnapps saves are marked with a potion icon.


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COMBAT

For the love of all things good and holy and your own sake, you need to train with Bernard before you engage heavily with combat.


Bernard will teach you skills you can only gain from him, such as Perfect Block, which is essential.


Your goal should be to train Defense to Level 12 (for "Well Worn") and sword, axe and mace skills to Level 10 by fighting with Bernard. Bernard can train your Sword, Mace and Defense skills at Level 5, 10 and 15 as well.

Captain Robard in Talmberg can train your Mace skill at Level 5, 10 and 15.

Make sure you keep armor and tailor kits on you to repair as soon as your equipment starts taking damage. I recommend fighting with practice weapons. You can fight with a shield, but I think you will level up your weapons faster if you fight without the shield since you should be able to hit Bernard more often.

Once you reach Level 10 with your weapons, your Defense skill should be decently leveled. At that point, to level Defense, equip a shield and just let Bernard attack you and practice timing your block as soon as he starts swinging so that you execute a perfect block, which will raise your Defense skill. Get it to Level 12 and get Well Worn, it took about 25 pounds off my inventory weight from the weight of my equipped armor being reduced, which is absolutely fantastic. Just having the barebones of plate armor and my weapons on me, my weight was 126, which was reduced to 99. Considering my max carrying capacity at Strength 18 is 198, obviously this is a huge boon.

Doing all of this should also train your strength and warfare and agility skills etc. Doing this properly early on will be the difference between the game being frustratingly difficult and rather easy.

Power Level Houndmaster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-0uu7tYgs

To get Mutt, talk to Theresa right after you at the Mill after the prologue in "Awakening". Mutt is super useful when leveled for hunting, attacking foes, and "Searching" to find hidden things like graves. Hunt will be a lifesaver in Hardcore mode to get you free food to keep yourself alive and to sell.

But how do you level Mutt quickly to get Houndmaster to Level 3 so you can get Hunt?

First, after you talk to Radzig as part of the first main quest, you should be able to talk to Huntsman Berthold and train Houndmaster at "Beginner" which should gain you a level right there.

Then, to power level Mutt to Level 3:

Giving Mutt food gives him 25 experience
Praising Mutt gives him 15 experience.

And since food is money (and precious in Hardcore), the best course of action is just to Praise spam Mutt until you get him to the desire level, or at least to Level 3 and get Hunt and then go hunting in the woods and let him kill a ton of Rabbits.

HARDCORE HENRY

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Hardcore

https://guides.gamepressure.com/kingdom_come_deliverance/guide.asp?ID=45627

https://kingdomcomemap.github.io/#2/2048.0/2048.0

MOST USEFUL TIPS

A Bird in the Hand side quest

Get the Bird Cages from Huntsman Berthold in Rattay, ASAP. You can place a bird cage on the map and it will show you where you are on your map. Make sure to pick it up again.

Note - This mechanism can only work when A Bird in the Hand quest is set as active.

UNLIMITED MANUAL SAVES

https://www.trueachievements.com/a254575/hardcore-henry-achievement

"[]
Workaround: The game still saves when you sleep in an owned bed, drink a Savior Schnapps, and get healed at a bathhouse. These are useful, but our bread and butter will be the “save & exit” function in the pause menu. Loading from an Exit Save seemingly causes it to self-delete, but in actuality, the game merely hides it. To restore an Exit Save to the load list, Henry just needs to die. Either by suicide or in combat. It can be handy to keep a vial of Bane potion in Henry’s inventory for a quick end. Used in this manner, Exit Saves become unlimited use manual saves."

AVOID SLEEPWALKING

If you are going for the all negative perks achievement, one of them causes you to randomly wake up a mile away from your bed. This is a great reason to have the birdcage always on you in case that happens and you need to get your bearings. However, if you set your sleep an hour more than you need, and then interrupt your sleep about an hour ahead of when you were supposed to wake up, it should prevent the random sleepwalking from triggering and you should wake up normally.

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TIPS FROM MY PLAYTHROUGH

Play Normal first so that you know the game locations and can remember where to go from memory.

Try to get all the achievements you can from a Normal playthrough. For Hardcore, I went for:

Hardcore Henry (obviously)
'Tis But A Scratch
Merciful
Virgin
Trial-and-error (Renew the whole of Pribyslavitz without being able to read)
Kingdom Did Not Come (Die in Hardcore Mode)

The reason I went for these is because I did not want to do EVERYTHING again in my hardcore playthrough, I wanted to get through it as quickly as possible, hence not doing Stephanie's quests so I can get Virgin, etc.


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FISH TRAPS

https://kingdomcomemap.github.io/#1/1980/2000

On this map you can find the treasure chests for awesome loot.

You can also find FISH TRAPS, which I didn't even know about on my normal playthrough. From fish traps you can get free food that wont show up as stolen. You can also get Honey from BEEHIVES, again found on the map above.


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ARCHERY

You should have gotten good at archery during your normal playthrough. It was a piece of cake for me to bet 50 Groschen (the highest best) every time and win every time even starting from 1 Bowmanship. This is an excellent way to make money (150 each win) and you should realistically level your bow to level 5 in case you need the skill, because below level 5 you don't hold it correctly and it hampers your use of the bow.

MAX MAINTENANCE FAST

The fastest ways to get money are stealing everything you can and selling it all to Peshek, and making Potions to sell. Stealing everything is also how you can max your Maintenance skill super fast.

Sneak around at night and open chests and steal everything in them, knock people out and steal their clothes, etc. Ledetchko is particularly great.

BEFORE you sell everything to Peshek, get repair kits for each type, Cobbler, Tailor, Armorsmith, Blacksmith, so you can repair shoes, clothes, armor and weapons respectively.

Once you have repaired them to max, sell them to Peshek, and if you repair a whole bunch of clothes and shoes and armor and weapons, your Maintenance skill should be maxed out in no time. Seriously, save up a bunch of clothing that is in 70-99 condition, and repair them all at once, and listen to how fast your Maintenance skill skyrockets.


Also, start by repairing from 99 down, the less damaged the article, the less it uses up your kits.


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TRAINING WITH BERNARD

Don't wear a frock or shoulder garment, and either don't wear a gambeson or chainmail armor when fighting Bernard, or stop often and repair it, because those items get damaged fast and if they drop too low in condition, you have to go to the Armorsmith/Tailor to get them repaired and that is stupidly expensive.

LOCKPICKING

There is a chest in the loft of Peshek's place that you can lockpick and steal from over and over again, because Peshek/Theresa keep re-locking and filling it.

Try to get lockpicking to Level 10 asap, and then you can drink a Padfoot potion in order to be able to pick Very Hard locks, so you can steal the really expensive stuff from the merchants in Rattay to sell to Peshek much sooner.

Hardcore Henry step-by-step

https://kingdomcomemap.github.io/#2/2048.0/2048.0

^ Map can show everything, including treasure chests, fish traps, beehives, everything you need.

https://www.trueachievements.com/game/Kingdom-Come-Deliverance/achievements

^ will explain how to get achievements

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Unexpected_Visit

^ wiki with quest walkthroughs with more details so you should read it, at the top right of the page should be a section and there will be a link to the next quest in the Main Quest chain

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Alchemy

^ Look at this for the potions that are easiest to make and click on the potions to see their recipes

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Going into Hardcore Henry I needed the following achievements:

Second Playthrough Needed Anyway

Hardcore Henry
'Tis but a scratch
Trial-and-error
Virgin
Merciful

Could've and Should've Completed on Normal Run

Ginger
You had one job! (this one may Hardcore harder because I had to avoid drinking Savior Schnapps!)
Fighter

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Prologue Done Fast

Follow "Prologue Essentials Improved Guide", ideally prepare yourself as well as possible before completing the prologue, but honestly don't stress, you can do everything you need after the prologue is complete.

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Hardcore from Awakening Onward

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Awakening

1. Go complete Awakening to unlock everything going forward
2. Go to Hunstman Berthold and start " A Bird in the Hand" to get the cages, store 2 cages in your chest so you can just drop and pick up a cage easily when checking your map location, never complete the quest
3. Talk to Peshek, complete The Good Thief to unlock Peshek as your Fence
4. Also have Peshek teach you lockpicking and level as much as you can from that starter chest
5. Make sure you have a gambeson and maybe gauntlets on to protect your arm (you don't need the vambraces from Bernard if you have these to protect your arm). Go to Ledetchko and buy your Inn Room and then go do "Chumps on the River" with Vatzek and bet 50 and win repeatedly to get 150 each win. If you start in the morning, you should be able to do this many times in a day. When night hits, lockpick every chest, steal everything, and knock out everyone you can to level Stealth and lockpicking. Deposit your loot in your chest in the Inn. Keep up your nourishment and energy. Run back to Rattay and buy 2-3 small tailor kits, 2 small cobbler kits, and 2 small armorer kits. Go back to Peshek's house and get all your loot out of your chest, repair everything to level your Maintenance skill super fast, and then sell everything to Peshek.
6. Do the above until you have about 4000 Groschen, then go to Merjohed and buy Warhorse Jenda and a Hunter Saddle with Bag and Travel Horshoes from Johann
7. Hopefully you've been gathering herbs along the way. Now prioritize this because it is time to level up Alchemy. You want Chamomile and Mint, and Marigold and Nettle, and all the Belladonna you can get. Go east of Rattay and buy a room from the Inn there, and then continue on along the road up toward Neuhof. To the left of the road, between the road and the woods, are fields, and in a couple of those fields is Belladonna. Gather all of these and the Nettle. You need Nettle and Belladonna to make Savior Schnapps. Buy Belladonna whenever you can from the alchemist in Rattay as well.
8. Digestion Potions (2x Chamomile, 1x Mint) and Marigold Decoctions (2x Marigold, 1x Nettle) are easiest to make, you want to follow the recipe at least once in order to fully learn the recipe so that you can autobrew the potion once you obtain the Routine perk, but after that, just add the base (spirit, water for example), add the ingredients, then complete the potion. Level Alchemy to 10 and get Routine, then using routine continue until you are Level 13 and get Routine II (tip, you can press F twice and manage to autobrew twice each time you autobrew twice if you are quick about pressing F)
(If you need to complete "You had one job!" achievement like I do, DO NOT get the "Water of Life" perk because it will level your drinking skill faster"
9. Once you get Routine II, if you collected lots of Belladonna and Nettle, you can autobrew 3 Savior Schnapps at a time. You obviously should keep enough Savior Schnapps for yourself for saves, but any above what you think you need can be sold because I believe they and Lazarus potions are the most valuable potions to sell
10. Make tons of potions (but be careful, it is easy to make so many that both you and your horse weight is maxed out so you can't ride back home and it is a long walk while overburdened), and sell what you can to the Alchemist, and to the grocers and bakers and Innkeepers etc in Rattay, and sell the rest to Peshek. Heads up, All the merchants in Rattay except the Armorsmith, Swordsmith, Tailor and Cobbler will buy Savior Schapps. After selling what you can to merchants to raise their wealth, sell the rest to Peshek to raise his wealth, as he is your main source of big money.
(pro-tip, when selling potions to merchants, if instead of trying to get the max amount of money you can, if you give them the smallest discount, it will increase your reputation, but also, for all of them except the Alchemist, it seems that doing this will increase their wealth, so you may be able to get even the wealth of those trader ladies who stand in from of the armorsmith in Ratty to thousands of groschen doing this, when they start with like 20 and 40 respectively. Peshek's wealth will increase regardless and eventually he will have wealth in the 10s of thousands)
11. Continue making potions, stealing what you can to level Locksmithing and Stealth, repairing that stuff to level Maintenance, and selling it to Peshek to make money while also increasing his wealth so he can buy more from you. Eventually Peshek should have enough wealth to buy 20k+ worth of stuff from you at a time, you should be able to lockpick the Very Hard chests belonging to the major merchants in Rattay and steal their expensive stuff and sell it to Peshek, further increasing and your wealth.
12. Once you hit 100,000+ groschen, if you haven't already stolen and equipped the best armor set in the game, you can certainly buy it, and then buy the repair kits you need to repair it, and still have 75k+ you will need to restore Pribyslavitz.
13. Now you can go train with Bernard, and with level 5+ bowmanship you should be able to beat Hans at archery. Once you complete "Train Hard, Fight Easy", DO NOT start "Keeping the Peace" yet.
14. Make sure you have Maintenance Kits because Bernard will beat your armor up and you need to repair it before it becomes too damaged to repair yourself otherwise it is gonna be stupidly expensive, then continue training with Captain Bernard, you want to get your Strength to at least 12 so you can get all the Mule perks and "Clinch Master" and with Strength 12, Clinch Master should allow you to win most clinches. You also want to level Mace and Hand-to-Hand to at least level 10 each (for going for Merciful, you will be using either the Bludgeon or your Fists to avoid killing anyone); if you plan to win the tournament then you also want to get Sword and Axe skill to level 10 as well. Hopefully you can get Speech to Level 8 with the perks "Empathetic" and "Troubadour" as well, this combined with max charisma armor should allow you to win most speech checks.

Get MASTER STRIKES done once one of your weapon levels hits Level 5 in order to learn PERFECT BLOCK!!!

15. If you are Strong enough, Suave enough, and Rich enough, the rest of the game should be easy to complete going forward.

Hardcore Main Quest Tips

KEY TIPS

1. When you go the windmill in order to find Timmy and you talk to Mirka, consume a Bard potion before you talk to her next to the Windmill.
2.
3. At the end of "All That Glisters", to not fail the Merciful achievement, get near the mine entrance and hide behind cover, time-skip to night-time, then consume a Buck's Blood, a Padfoot and a Nighthawk potion so your stealth is high and you can see in the dark, and then squeeze by the bandits at the entrance and into the mine, then run along it. Beware that you will encounter bandits along the way that you may be able to hide from as they pass by, but I ended up fist fighting them into submission. After they pass or you beat them up, put on your High Charisma armor, take a bard potion, and then convince Jezhek to surrender.

4. Make sure to save before you enter Vranik in "The Die is Cast", and also after you fight the combat master and before you reach the top of the hill and enter to talk to Erik for the second time (in case you have to reload the save multiple times due to stealth failures and getting killed trying to escape)

5. Save before you talk to Divish in Talmberg which will start the attack on Vranik during which you cannot save. It is already costs a lot of time having to get through the cutscenes, you don't want to have to redo long travel times as well.

6. In the Vranik fight, don't even use your bludgeon, just use your fists while being completely decked out in armor, and drink a Buck's Blood potion for endurance regen.

MISSABLE QUESTS

The Madonna of Sasau - Casting Lots

According to Youtube guides I've watched, to get the achievement "You Had One Job!" for getting blackout drunk when trying to get Ambrose to stop gambling, you need to do this when your Drinking skill is 9 or lower, otherwise it will be impossible, which I confirmed when I was Drinking Level 18 and could not get the achievement.

INQUISTOR

Make sure you save before talking to the Inquisitor and going for the "Cleric's Pet" achievement, because if you tell the Inquisitor the wrong name of the Monastery Novice who witnessed the drinking in the monastery, you'll spend 6 days in Jail and miss Johanka's trial.

On the other hand, this is a fantastic way to get the "Convict" achievement.

Dead Men Tell No Tales

Confirmed, it is ok to not start "Dead Men Tell No Tales" before you win your first Rattay Tourney, you can go to Samopesh after killing Black Peter and getting the poisoned Page Sword and complete the quest.

Thanks to Skander for this info:

""If you have already won a Rattay Tourney, it is possible for Black Peter to ambush you before you begin the quest. If you then talk to the Blacksmith and begin the quest, you can finish it immediately within the same dialogue." Quotes from the dead men tell no tales fandom page"

--------

I'll just throw this in here, when doing "Money for Old Rope", all you have to do is get the Executioner's Sword to 0 Condition then go put it back in the Executioner's chest, that is when Henry will make the comment that the sword is dull.

RED DEER vs ROE DEER

There is definitely a difference between Red Deer and Roe Deer. If the quest says it was Red Deer Liver or Red Deer Meat, Roe will not work, learned that the hard way. I think one of the online guides says you can find Red Deer north and NE of Sassau.

Actually just look on your map, there will be Roe Deer Hunting Spots, and Deer Hunting Spots. Deer Hunting spots must be Red Deer.

And the liver will be named "Deer Liver", not "Red Deer Liver".

MISSABLE ACHIEVEMENT

Before you do "A Rock and a Hard Place", make sure you make a save, in order to get the achievement "Judas", and then reload, because you want the people who die as a result of going for "Judas" for later stuff.

THE KING's SILVER

Protip, when you find the guard standing outside the mine entrance, mark that location on your map, because trying to find it again was a pain in the tush for me.



ALL THAT GLISTERS

Protip - Try to keep Ulrich alive until you go to confront the counterfeiter, but when you guys run up the hill and fight the enemies at the entrance to the mine, you can let him die here, he doesn't show up later and him dying there actually makes things easier if you have high speech and want to take the counterfeiter alive.


Also, you do not need to get the keys from Bernard in order to talk to Jezhek, it looks like the game just gives you the keys for free.

CUTOFF

The Die is Cast quest can be started up to talking to Radzig, but there is a point of no return when you go to Vranik that will cause side quests to fail, so you want to make sure you do as much as you can/want before you go to Vranik during The Die is Cast.

FULL HOUSE SINNER Achievement

https://www.trueachievements.com/a275732/full-house-sinner-achievement

Note that for me, I didn't remember being in jail in my active save (I'm sure it happened, but I thought I reloaded a save to before). I almost screwed up because I just went to Johanka after her speech on the hill without spending time in jail, but the achievement still popped for me right away, so I got lucky. Basically, save before you talk to her, and if it doesn't pop, see what you may have missed, jail being a big one if you played a good character.

Prologue Essentials

* indicates alternatives/clarifications/reasoning I will go into at the bottom of this section. I want to focus on emphasizing key info and do not want to overwhelm you with info while doing so.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read):
Choose Speech with mom, get to Level 15 Herbalism, SAVE, knock out the south guard at least to get his armor, sword and bow (guards have a chance to resist the choke, hence doing this right after saving); knock out a peasant in the north field to get a dagger, level your stealth to 5 to get stealth kill perk (by sneaking and knocking out more isolated peasants, peasants are a guaranteed knockout, just do not let anyone see you), level your lockpicking skill and get the stuff from the locked chest in your parent's house, sell your herbs to get money and then buy as many Savior Schnapps as you can, start dad's quest, complete it, store everything in the chest in your parent's house and SAVE before you give nails to Theresa. Wear armor and bring bow (you don't need sword since you will be carrying the quest sword) if you want to try to kill Cumans, otherwise RUN like the game advises, whistle to distract the rapists to save Theresa, ride to Talmberg, to escape Talmberg knock out a guard and steal his gear and wear it, get to Skalitz and do the steps to reach the end, make sure you get all your stuff out of the chest BEFORE you bury your parents and SAVE, then Lose the scripted fight with Runt and boom Prologue complete.


IMPORTANT!: There is a secret achievement called "Merciful", to get it you must complete the game without killing anyone other than "Runt". Note that the first time you meet Runt in the Prologue he is invulnerable and he is scripted to beat you, so do not waste hours trying to beat him. Also, if you go for "Merciful", do not get the Stealth that let's you stealth kill people with a dagger, or if you do anyway, then do not carry a dagger in your inventory. You can knock people unconscious which is super useful, but I found it very easy to accidentally stab them instead while having a dagger in my inventory and that perk.

IMPORTANT!: If you enter the center of the village, where the Tavern is and you can see a couple men sitting at a bench drinking, it will start a cutscene where you speak to your friends and you will have to make a choice. I recommend avoiding entering this area until after you have completed the Herbalism step and you have made a save so you have the worst part done before you make story choices, particularly if you plan on making a backup of that first save file.


1. When speaking with mom, select both dialogue choices for (Speech). This will give +2 to your Speech stat, 1 for each dialogue choice. Speech is much harder to level than the other skills.*

2. Do not speak to dad yet. Speaking to dad starts his quest and more importantly will cause the game to create a free autosave. You start with 3 Savior Schnapps (on you or in that chest in the room you start in) that you can use to manually save with. I found 6 Savior Schnapps that could be purchased in the Prologue, I believe 3 from one of the traders and 3 from Bianca? I think you are also rewarded with Savior Schnapps at certain points as well, because I think I ended the Prologue with 11-13 Savior Schnapps.

--- I emphasize the number of Savior Schnapps because the Youtuber "Camelworks" made the Savior Schnapps seem so rare that they needed to be absolutely hoarded, so I did, and that boned me big time. Be judicious with using them, but anytime you can ask yourself "do I want to have to redo everything I just did if I screw up" and the answer is "absolutely not", use a Schnapps. ---


3. The first big step you need to complete is getting to Level 15 Herbalism by collecting most of the herbs in Skalitz. Camelworks said he was able to reach Level 17 by collecting every single herb, but that is overkill here because you only need to reach Level 15, but collect more if you want. Camelworks said it took him about 30 minutes to collect the herbs. Put everything you have including your clothes in chest in your house to eliminate weight (because you can be overburdened from carrying herbs, actually quite easily once you get a high herbalism level).

--- You start out picking one herb at a time. This of course makes people think herbalism is for the birds. But remember, this game is known for not telling you most things and makes you figure it out. One of these "secrets" is that as you get a higher herbalism level, you pick more flowers and collect more herbs. You will reach the point where you will go to gather from one flower in a patch of 6-8 and realize all of them disappeared, because you collected them all in that one motion. You become an herb collecting machine very quickly. ---

Why do you want herbalism? Because:

"Resistance" is a secret perk that permanently gives +2 vitality and you get it from gathering 100 Nettles, which you can easily do in Skalitz.

Level 5: Choose "Flower Power" and then carry around (30) flowers in your inventory for +2 Charisma. This will be super useful for helping your speech checks and haggling.

Level 10: Choose "Leg Day" and herb-picking activity will add experience to your Strength stat too. Get this at Level 10 and you should gain 2 levels in Strength by the time you hit Level 15 Herbalism. Once you get out of the Prologue, one of the first activities you could do is collect every herb you see to level straight to 20 Herbalism while also leveling your Strength stat.

Level 15: Choose "Botanist" so you get a 15% higher price when you sell herbs.

Level 20: Choose "Horsenip" which will cause your horse to shy less if you have (30) fragrant herbs in its saddlebags.

And if you go for Alchemy, which I will recommend later in this guide, you will want to collect the herbs yourself rather than buy them.

Of course if you are experienced and know how to get loads of money and beat the game without Alchemy or Herbalism and your time is precious to you by all means skip this bit of grind, but I'm assuming you are a new player reading this and thus taking advantage of everything you can to give you an edge I recommend.

--- Note that there is a villager tossing hay just before you go through the gate into town. The guards at the top of the hill cannot see you. I was able to choke him out and steal his stuff repeatedly, and if I left the area and returned, he respawned with all of his stuff on him. So I could farm his stuff and level my stealth with no worries. Interestingly, once I started dad's quest, once I knocked him out and stole his stuff, he stayed "naked" and I'm not even sure if it let me knock him out any more. He is the only villager I think you can safely knock out while collecting herbs before you make the crucial save upon reaching Level 15 Herbalism.


4. You hit Level 15 Herbalism, you have "Flower Power", "Leg Day", "Botanist", "Resistance", you should be Strength level 2 also so go ahead and get the "Stronghold" perk. Put everything in parent's house chest. Now SAVE!

^^^ I recommend using a Savior Schanpps and save the Autosave from starting dad's quest until you have completed all the leveling and looting you wish to do and are ready to move on from the village (remember that you only get 10 manual slots before having to overwrite so if you want to backup a save after having achieved perfect preparation for the game, you want to save dad's quest autosave for that backup). I would to the south of town where the guard with the bow stands, and Schnapps SAVE there. ^^^


* If you go for the +2 Strength with mom, and you get +2 from picking herbs with Leg Day, you could be Strength 4 and get Mule 1 in the Prologue, which is FANTASTIC, but considering you can level Strength from picking herbs and maybe punching cows, and the fact that you can beat the game only killing 1 man and Speech is harder to level, I definitely recommend Speech over Strength.

Prologue Essentials continued...

--- Important Note that the Guards, the Traders, and Kunesh have a chance of resisting being choked out ---

5. That south guard with the bow, make sure no one sees and go into sneak mode and choke him out and loot everything off him. If you fail the choke you can just reload the save and try again. Since you have the recent save, you could also try to choke out the other guards, the one to the east and the one to the north, and maybe the peasants in the north fields near the north guard as well, since if you fail it hopefully should not be too much time wasted to try again. If you succeed in choking them all out and looting them without getting caught, I would SAVE. Either way, with the bow now go back up to where the sheep are and shoot the sheep to level your archery and get meat. You can then cook the meat and sell it to the traders. Do not hit wood with the arrows or they will break, hit the sheep or worst case the ground and recover the arrows. Make sure no one sees you (no one should be around) because it is probably a crime to kill the sheep. Once done with the sheep, you can cook the meat, deposit the guard armour in the chest (because it is heavy!), then take the herbs from the chest and go sell the herbs and cooked meat to the traders. You could save by starting dad's quest before or after you sell the goods, but if you save after, again hold off on going to Bianca or starting the cutscene in the center of town until after you save.


6. However you order selling your items and starting dad's quest and getting that sweet free save, here are some key steps you want to complete in whatever order suits you:

: Choking out lots of peasants right after a Save is a good idea. Just don't try it in the center of town, too many witnesses. Hunt around the edges. Reaching Level 5 Stealth is a good goal.

: Purchase as many Savior Schnapps as you can. Like I said earlier, I counted 6 that I could purchase, although I only ended up purchasing 5 because I did not have enough coin because I did not gather more herbs than needed for Level 15 Herbalism and did not know about the sheep and their meat trick yet.

: How to get Lockpicks - After starting dad's quest, go up the hill and get the crossguard from the guards in front of the castle. Then go to Kunesh to get him to pay his debts, fail to convince him but do not fight him. Sneak into his house to find the locked chest and get near enough to lockpick it and then look at it, Henry should make a comment about getting lockpicks from Fritz. NOW go to the center of town near the Tavern to start the cutscene and talk to your friends.

: Reputation - if you want to keep 100 reputation in Skalitz (important for an achievement), when your friends ask if you want to throw manure at a house, you cannot refuse them but you also cannot help them. What you need to do is agree to help them, but get the lockpicks from Fritz and then never help them throw Manure, they will just stand there waiting for you, so complete the Prologue while they are chilling to keep 100 reputation.

: Now that you have the lockpicks from Fritz, you can go lockpick Kunesh's chest and get your dad's stuff. You can also go around lockpicking people's houses and chests for loot and to level your lockpicking skill, but most importantly, to lockpick a chest in your parent's house that has a book and some good loot.

: There are four categories of locks, here are the thresholds of level one must have in order to unlock said locks:

Very Easy - lvl 1
Easy - lvl 1
Hard - lvl 4
Very Hard - from lvl 9 to 15 (from Level 6 if you get the "Luck of the Drunk" perk)

: At Level 3 lockpicking you want to get "Lasting Lockpicks", and at Level 6 you want to get "Deft Grip", unless there is a Very Hard chest you need to get into much sooner than Level 9 in which case get "Luck of the Drunk" at Level 6, but consider the noise cost for the rest of your playthrough.

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Lockpicking

: You can buy the charcoal from the charcoal assistant, although apparently there is a trader with charcoal that you can buy from so that you can then get that money back by selling him herbs, etc, but the charcoal wasn't that expensive.

: The final step of dad's quest is getting cold beer from Bianca and once obtained, taking it straight to him while it is still cold. You have about 2-3 minutes to get the beer to him once Bianca gives you the beer.


7. If your dad accepts the cold beer (if you let it get warm you have to go get another and this time pay with your own money), then the quests proceeds to the next step, where Theresa shows up and you are supposed to fetch and give her some nails. At this point either EVERYTHING you have should be in the chest (except the Savior Schnapps and the clothes that boost your charisma and 30 flowers for Flower Power so you can more easily succeed speech checks later); OR, if you want to try and kill Cumans in order to get some great armor and weapons on top of the guard equipment you already looted, then I would equip as much of the best guard armor you can and maybe the bow and arrows too. You do not need a sword because you will have your father's sword (it starts equipped, do not un-equip it because I do not think you can re-equip it once you do that. To draw it to fight the Cumans, press the "Draw Weapon" button, same button to sheath it). Camelworks' advice was not to have any armor so you have as much capacity as you can for carrying Cuman loot, but you get over-encumbered with just 2 sets of armor anyway so it doesn't really matter, and I absolutely could not kill the starting Cuman that is right behind you after the cutscene without armour on, I would not even try it without armour on, and you still may not be able to win, because you do not have the skills you get from Captain Bernard yet. If you plan to fight, you definitely want to be decked out in armour.

: NOW SAVE. Once you decide whether you will store everything and run away or equip armour to try and kill Cumans, SAVE before you give the nails to Theresa in case you change your mind.

RUN!

IMPORTANT AUTOSAVE NOTE: You get an autosave after the cutscene that leads to "RUN!". You get an autosave after the cutscene once you reach the safety of Talmberg and another before you have a heart-to-heart with the Lady of the Castle. Then you get another autosave after the Lord of Talmberg convinces the Cumans to leave Talmberg alone (this one will be important).


9. After you give the nails to Theresa, cutscene plays, and when you regain control, you will be standing on a path looking at a path leading down to village huts below. If you turn around and walk back a bit, you will see a Cuman soldier with his sword drawn. He stands there for a second, and then he will chase you if you follow the game's advice prompt to RUN, but you can easily outrun him. And I recommend to heed the advice and RUN! You can fight him, but if you are new then you are almost certainly going to die. From what I have read, technically he is not invulnerable and he can be killed, but you have to your targeting of him (because they gave him perfect block if you are locked onto him) and stand in a certain spot to do it, and even then it will be really difficult unless you know exactly what you are doing. I would not bother trying, it is not worth it, just RUN!


10. Run straight forward down the cliff toward the houses on the left, not to the right. If you go right, you will end up running up BEHIND a group of running Cumans, with the starting Cuman running up behind you, which is not a good position to be in. Run straight and you should come to the building where you hear Theresa screaming as 3 Cumans start to violate her. To the left of the building are horses, one of the horses is called Olena so presumably yours but you can grab the closest one, does not matter. As you are about to climb on the horse, press the key to WHISTLE, which should distract the Cumans from Theresa so she can escape them into her house and get you the "Cavalier" achievement.


11. Choice time. First I'll address fighting first. Fighting on horseback gives you a tremendous advantage if utilized right. If you have a bow with enough arrows (I do not know how many arrows you get from killing that guard, it may not be enough), you could horse archer the Cumans to death. Just keep galloping far enough away to turn and shoot then, then run some more. If you fight with your sword, you can try the "lance method", where you gallop at an enemy and try to stab him as opposed to slash. You can try riding up and slashing them, the problem is they can pull you off the horse unless you keep galloping, which makes it hard to attack. It is probably much easier with armour on. The 3 Cumans trying to violate Theresa probably would not be too difficult to dispatch with enough skill and patience, the problem is, remember those other Cumans I mentioned? The first one chasing you and the others running toward Theresa's that you could end up running behind if you go the wrong way? Well they will join the party quite soon after you start fighting the 3 Cumans. Good luck with that. If you somehow manage to kill all 9ish of these Cumans, I would say that is enough and I would recommend proceeding. Camelworks' video shows that you can try farming other Cumans in a certain area, but I truly do not think that is worth it. Watch the video I link in the Basic Guide Info for yourself and decide, but I recommend just moving on.

: If you are not going to fight, then flee in the direction the game tells you (further east beyond Theresa's). You will hit the mark for another cutscene where more Cumans start chasing you on horseback, and when you regain control, you need to keep fleeing at a gallop toward Talmberg. Pay attention to the prompts and what Henry says telling you where to go, it may be possible to go the wrong direction and get a "Failed" screen and have to restart the sequence. If you slowdown the Cuman if going to hit you damaging your health.

: If you make it to Talmberg, you get a cutscene and now you are safe for the moment.


12. Now there will be a couple of dialogue events. The first one is as you are about to eat, a young woman will ask you a question, and if you do not engage her quickly enough, she will call you rude, and you may lose reputation. And when you do speak with her, I believe the dialogue choices have a time limit for you to respond. I chose the middle crowned heart option (Charisma-based I believe) for both choices and succeeded both times.

: Then you will go to your bed to sleep, and the Lady of the Castle will come to you to chat. I chose the crowned heart choice each time, succeeded every time.


13. After you rest, you get to go up on the walls for another cutscene. Then you get to stand watch all night. Doing so in normal time would be silly, just enter the "Wait" menu and set it to after dawn. Then you get another cutscene where the Lord of Talmberg convinces the Cumans to go away, yay! After the cutscene ends, the game will Autosave, and that is where I will begin the next section.

Escape from Talmberg and Prologue's End

14. Here we are in Talmberg after the Autosave and everyone is walking away from the battlements. Quickly speak to Sir Robard and select the first dialogue choice where you say you need to leave Talmberg to complete an objective. However, every speech choice to convince him to let you will fail and cause reputation loss, so just select "Never Mind". You can select the other dialogue options for more lore, no downsides in those.

: Now, 1 or 2 guard should head toward the hut on the battlements you were facing when the cutscene finished (that Robard walks in the opposite direction of), choke one out without being seen and loot everything, put all his armor on (particularly the tunic), and talk to the guard at the gate. Supposedly you can talk to him in normal clothes, tell him you need to bury your dead parents, he'll sympathize and tell you to put guard clothes on, which you can do, then he'll let you out. I just talked to him with the guard clothes already on and chose the Crowned Heart (Charisma) option and it succeeded and he opened the gate for me. NOTE that once you leave Talmberg, I do not believe you can re-enter. Important Caveat below...

CAVEAT - you may have to do everything else you need/want to do before you speak to the guard to get let out. I *think* it should be fine, you get him to unlock the gate, get the horse, eat, buy lockpicks, then leave, but if that causes an issue, just remember you have the recent autosave, try again.

: Before you leave Talmberg, you can eat from the pot where all the villages gathered to replenish nourishment, buy lockpicks from the merchant Votava, and you want to get a horse to complete an objective. You do not HAVE to get a horse, but you want to. Try whistling for a horse, but if that does not work then you can try stealing one. I tried getting on Olena and getting her out, but I could not get her to back straight up, and turning her got her stuck in the roof so I had to reload. Also, if you try to take another horse, that may be stealing so try not to be seen. I did not get a horse and the journey SUCKED especially as I was over-encumbered. You do not want to make the journey on foot and over-encumbered...

: And of course, you could go around Talmberg lockpicking and looting, and choking out guards and villagers, etc, if you want.

: Once you are ready, leave Talmberg, then turn to your LEFT to go back toward Skalitz (look at your map and go to Skalitz).


15. It seemed like it would take forever to get to Skalitz, which suuuuucked because I was over-encumbered without a horse, but the game will finally teleport you to a little ways away from Skalitz via cutscene. But even then, it does not deposit you right in town, you are still quite a distance away, so proceed. You will encounter some corpse looters along the way, kill them or definitely do not if you are going for the "Merciful" achievement.

: As you come up to Skalitz, where the marker leads you is to a charred gate that you cannot get through, so which way do you go, left or right? Go right, or to the North, as the entrance to Skalitz is on the Northeast side. You can loot the corpses, right near the entrance is the Bailiff's corpse and you can loot a named sword out of his hand. You can loot stuff off an important woman's corpse as well. You will finally come upon your parent's corpses and have a cutscene.


16. Camelworks said to go get your crap out of the chest, then go find the shovel. Screw that, you will be over-encumbered the whole trip back to find the shovel. Once the cutscene ends, turn around to face the entrance you came in from, head that direction looking to your left and listening to the dog barking (north side between 2 buildings). You will find a guy trying to loot a corpse and the dog not letting him. Get through the dialogue and get the shovel.


17. NOW, go to your parent's house and to the chest, and NOW get everything (and I mean everything) out of the chest and on your person. SAVE NOW. Then exit the house and look left at that tree. The spot to dig is slightly to the left of the tree, it was a pain in the bum bum to find, you gotta get your cursor over the specific spot, but it is there. Once you select the option to dig, a cutscene plays.


18. When the cutscene ends, you get to fight an unwinnable fight against "Runt" (an ironic name) that you are scripted to lose. Just lose and get it over with. Another cutscene will occur, you will be saved, and be transported to the Rattay Mill. End of Prologue.

RATTAY - WORK IN PROGRESS

I'm tired after hours working on this today, I'm not done but I'm sure many people bought the game during the Summer Sale 2020 and could use this guide to at least get through the Prologue, so I'm posting it now.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Do "The Good Thief" for Miller Peshek. You go dig up the body, find nothing, return to Peshek, he sends you back to the Executioner to lockpick his chest and get the ring. This is where you can get him to give you lockpicks and practice, see below. Once you follow the advice below, return to the Executioner, use the speech option to tell him that Peshek owes him some flour so he leaves his home, then break in to his house, lockpick the chest, get the ring and return to Peshek. Now Miller Peshek will act as a "Fence" that you can sell stolen goods to, and unlock other "Millers" that will also be Fences for you, and you will also start a quest to take the ring to another miller.

Get him to let you practice lockpicking by telling him you DO NOT know how to lockpick, practice on his chest until it will not let you. You can lockpick the chest, open and get stuff out one time, turn around and walk away to the edge of the dock, then turn back and it should be locked again. Lockpick it again, open it, turn around and walk away, turn back, Rinse and Repeat until the chest stay open even after you turn around.

: I do not know what it will let you do or how much if you have already leveled your lockpicking during the Prologue. IF you DID NOT do any lockpicking prior, then following the above steps should get you to Level 3 Lockpicking before the chest stops working, and the ability to get the "Lasting Lockpicks" perk which you REALLY want to get.


PICKPOCKETING: You cannot pickpocket until Peshek teaches you, I think you can only learn after completing "The Good Thief". Complete the quest, then learn how to pickpocket.


READING: You need to go to Uzhitz to find a scribe to teach you to read. Do so as soon as possible, and then start on Alchemy as soon as possible.


Make sure you wear all your armour when you go to train with Captain Bernard, and for the experience you will have right after that with Hans Capon. And any time there is a chance you may get into a fight, being decked out in armour is Muy Bueno.


However, wearing full armour uses up like 80 lbs of your carrying capacity. And remember you can complete this game only killing 1 dude, so running away is an option.

There are TONS of herbs in the fields around the Executioners house, many of which will be needed for the Marigold Concoction (see ALCHEMY IS EASY! section). Store everything in your chest in Rattay Mill, bring some Savior Schnapps with you just in case, then go gather all the herbs. Get to Level 20 Herbalism and get the final perk you can get "Horsenip". Then keep gathering herbs and see if it keeps leveling your Strength stat. Either way, gather all the herbs you can and save them for Alchemy. Watch your weight and stop gathering just before you become over-encumbered, not where you are, fast travel to Rattay Mill, deposit everything, go back to where you were and continue gathering. Hopefully you will easily get all the herbs you will ever need and along the way quickly reach Level 12 Strength, which is the Level of Strength you want to be able to get all 3 Mule Perks as well as giving the ability to win ever "Clinch" in combat.


Train with Captain Bernard, and then compete against Hans Capon and win both the Archery contest (to get his very nice bow) and the duel (wear your Armour to make the fight easy). The game will autosave before the Archery contest so even if you fail (you very likely will), you can keep trying until you get it. Watch Youtube videos if you struggle, you basically want to aim and fire quickly before you start shaking. I tried to the arrowhead slightly to the top right of the bullseye when I loosed to hit the bullseye, or at least the target.

If you find the archery contest too difficult, you could revert to a previous save and instead of starting the archery contest, go to Ledetchko to compete in the Archery Tournament there to level up your Archery skill (and make money), and then compete with Hans having a higher Archery skill.


Advice givers I have read stated that since many quests have time limits, if you want to go exploring, you want to find a good stopping point. They said to proceed with the main quests until you get the quest to go on patrol with "Nightingale", and just wait to do that. Nightingale's quest will not expire, so you can go gather herbs and explore, learn to read, level your alchemy, get fully prepared to continue through the main quest, etc, then proceed when ready.

BELLADONNA

You need Belladonna to make Savior Schapps, so you should collect it whenever you can.

When you are near an Herbalist, buy all their Belladonna.

There is a big field of Belladonna between Rattay and Neuhof to the left of the main road.

https://kingdomcomemap.github.io/#2/2048.0/2048.0

^ Filter for "Woodland Garden" and you will see there is a garden right next to Sasau that has a bunch of Belladonna.

There are actually Belladonna plants along the road between Peshek's house and Ledetchko, just before/after the bend in the road in the middle land between Peshek's and Ledetchko.

ALCHEMY MADE EASY!

IMPORTANT NOTE - "the boiling step is nearly always optional" - the wiki

Marigold Decoction. Easy to get herbs, super easy to prepare, use this potion to level up your alchemy to Level 13, at which point you can autobrew Savior Schnapps and other potion to your hearts content:


STEPS:
0. Read the Marigold Decoction page in the Alchemy Book (and you must do this EVERY time you want to brew a potion; the game will let you pour water and then you will realize you don't have any herbs, because you did not read the page first. Reading the page is what tells the game what potion you want to brew. Also, you can read and back out to prepare quite quickly, just tap-tap the "Use" button to basically just glance at the page):

1. Pour water into cauldron
2. Grab Nettle and put into cauldron
3. Grab Marigold and put into cauldron
4. Grab Marigold and put into cauldron again
5. Grab a Phial
6. Pour the contents into the Phial to get the potion.
7. Repeat


SAVIOR SCHNAPPS:

To get a whole bunch of Belladonna safely and easily (as well as Nettles and Marigold in the same field), go here:

https://forum.kingdomcomerpg.com/t/belladonna-heaven/53571

Get to Level 13 Alchemy and make sure you have Routine 1 and 2, and Trial and Error. To unlock autobrew, you have to make the potion yourself the first time.

1. Pour wine
2. Add 1 Nettle to wine
3. Add 1 Belladonna to wine
4. Add 1 Belladonna to wine again
5.. Get Phial
6. Pour contents into Phial

Trial and Error will allow you to successfully make the potion without grinding the belladonna (remember boiling is already optional). And now with Routine 1 and 2 you can autobrew 3 potions at a time.

To autobrew quickly, aim cursor toward book, press E, then hold down F. You will have to turn toward the book every time, which is the most annoying part of the autobrew process.


From the Wiki concerning the "Trial and Error" Perk:

"By default, the game allows you to make one mistake, but still be able to produce the potion without issues, and with this perk, you are allowed for two. This perk allows to "speed-brew" potions: being able to skip 2 of the steps of any recipe (plus the fact that the boiling step is nearly always optional) allows players with a high alchemy skill to skip recipes entirely and brew potions just by tossing the raw ingredients into the cauldron."

^ IMPORTANT NOTE - Essential steps are pouring the base (water, wine, etc) and adding the correct number of herbs. The potion failed when I tried to use only 1 Marigold instead of 2. Since "boiling is usually optional", I believe the steps that the "Trial and Error' perk allows you to skip using the Sandglass and maybe the Still. So Trial and Error is not needed for the Marigold Decoction since the above method is the fastest I could achieve. However, still a great perk for manually brewing other potions with a lot more steps.


Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=59&v=1vgbnYxoDyg&feature=emb_logo

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Trial_and_Error



Comments from the Youtube video I don't want to delete even though my summary is better because of the time I took copying them:

@ "The quickest way to do this is as follows:
1. Pour water into cauldron
2. Grab Nettle and put into cauldron
3. Grab a handful of marigold
4. Bellow (you can do this with herbs in right hand)
5. Put marigold into dish
6. While cauldron is boiling grab another handful of marigold and put into dish
7. By the time you grab the dish the cauldron will be just finished boiling
8. Dump dish into cauldron
9. Phial it up and repeat

Almost zero down time with this order. I got lvl 10 alchemy in <20mins"


@ "You actually don't have to wait at all when making the potion. it says to but it's not necessary you can just complete the steps as quickly as you can select the things. Also if you've watched this video by now or already know what the ingredients are you don't need to buy the recipe, you'll learn it when you make it for the first time."

@ "You do not have to boil at all. Put in the water, put in 2 Marigold and 1 nettle. Take the phial and finish. No trial and error perk needed, because you are allowed one mistake anyways."

@" To make it even faster: you don't even need to wait for the fire from the nettle to extinguish. Just add the 2 Paris right after you activate the bellows. By the time the fire is off, you will be getting the phial. I've tested it, so it's all good."

@ "you can make three potions and every bit of experience for each potion you create so following the recipe is vital, PS don't go wasting points on auto brew, get the fourth potion skill. I just learned that the hard way, until you're high enough to get autobrew II theres no point on wasting the early game points."

@ "As of 2019 its best you pull the bellows 3 times so you get 3 potions."

@ ^ "you don't need to pull it three times, start the process, put water in, put nettle in pot, put two handfuls of marigold in the dish in front of you pull bellows once, wait 6 second (or till fires out) and then throw in marigold then grab vial and bam three potions.. quick and easy, you can harvest merrigold and nettle by rattay just past the training field where Bernard trains you, keep going up that road ive made easy 20,000 gold off of potions."

@ "You can speed up every brew with one step ( or two if you take the Trial and Error trait ) ... I never do the last boil for the saviour snaps and it never fails. For the marigold, you don't even have to boil it ... and do with only one marigold with above trait..."


@ "It takes about 100 merigold to get to level ten"


@ "There is a much quicker way, use the same recipe but don't boil. Just add water, 2 marigold, 1 nettle, then use phial. Then at level 10 get the autobrew perk."


@ "A few tips I figured out.

Don't use the sand glass.
Ignore trying to make the pot boil. (The visual of the bubbles is not needed)
1 pull of the bellows wait till it stops = 1 turn
Pull the bellows again and wait till it stops = 2 turns

You are allowed one mistake. So...
To save time, don't boil the Marigold Decoction. This will speed up the process.
To save materials, just use 1 Nettle and boil it, let it cool and add the 1 Marigold and phial it up. (This can be a big help on some other recipes!) (Not for Auto-Brew)"

@ "Another helpful tip. You can grab the feat that allows you to make mistakes, and use only 1 marigold instead of 2, so now you got 1-1 ingredients that produces income. Get to lvl 7 without using the trainer and the Alchemy training book he sells for fast lvl 10 which grants you the perk to auto brew. Now start producing Saviour Schnapps as they net you ridiculous amount of groschen for the cost of ingredients.

Best bet is to go find the Belladona garden spot, it gives you ridiculous amount of Belladona if your herbalism is rather high. Only danger is small bandit camp beside the garden, but their rather easy to dispatch if you got adequate armor and combat skills lvled a bit. Also by then you should have most of the money to buy good arms and armor for fighting thanks to potion selling being broken in this game.

By using Alchemy alone, I was able to Fund all of Henry's top notch armor and weapons and afford training from multiple people."


@" It’s also one of the most useful potions. If you go to one of the herbalists in the woods you can easily just steal all the recipe books out of their storage crate."

SUPREMELY USEFUL INFO

IMPORTANT - My first horse could carry 300 Marigold Decoctions, 30 Valerian herbs, and Fashionable slippers that weighed 2 lbs. I still had 134 Marigold potions and 423 Savior Schnapps on me after I did 1 big batch of Alchemy (and I used no where near all the Marigold and Nettle I collected). I was massively overloaded and it was a long walk back to the Rattay Mill. Be warned, stored your armour and weapons and pretty much everything before you do a big batch of Alchemy, and also, you do not want to do too much alchemy in one go.


If you use the repair kits on your gear when your gear is only slightly damaged (like 99%), apparently you can use your repair kit on it to fix the damage and the kit will not be used up, so you can keep using the same kit, plus using the kit should improve your Maintenance skill.

You can use the Grindstone on weapons to raise your Maintenance skill for free.


If you are Strength Level 12, you will win every "Clinch" where you lock weapons with your opponent.

Apparently you can punch cows to increase your Strength stat. Also if you are going to go looking for fights with bandits (hopefully after training with Captain Bernard), I believe the Mace uses and raises your Strength stat as opposed to using the sword, heads up.


There is a trunk in the inn in Ledetchko that has a whole bunch of clothes in good but slightly less than perfect condition. There was a villager sleeping next to it. I pickpocketed him, then knocked him out (because he awoke when I lockpicked the chest), then lockpicked the chest and took all the clothes and repaired them with a Cobbler's Kit. Gained 1-2 levels doing that.

The Prey quest

https://www.ign.com/wikis/kingdom-come-deliverance/The_Prey

Important Note - Do not have anything stolen on you once you complete this quest. This means you need to cook the hare meat that you loot during this quest. I do not know if I just got unlucky or if this happens every time, but as soon as I finished The Prey and completed the cutscene so that "The Hunt Begins" started, the game autosaved, and a guard immediately wanted to search me. Thankfully I had nothing stolen on me, but heads up.

Important Note - If you do not have Level 5 Agility, you will not be able to use Capon's Bow you won effectively. You get a free bow from the chest in the camp you stay in with Hans that you will be able to use, as well as 30 hunting arrows.


You will want to have 1-2 Savior Schnapps at least on you for this quest.

You will want to be lightweight for most of this quest, but at the end of the quest you will fight two enemies at once, so you want to have plate armour for that. So, bring a sword, Schnapps and sufficient armour, 5 bandages, and be nourished, etc.


1. You meet Hans Capon at dawn, then run along beside him for quite a bit talking. You get to a camp, talk, then sleep through the night. The game will autosave once you wake up.

2. Note the camps position on the map since it is not marked, and note what Hans says, you will hunt until "Noon". Get the free bow and arrows from the chest, put everything else you have in the chest.

3. Hunt the hares. If you make 0 noise you can get pretty close to them. The easiest way to kill them is to make 0 noise, get parallel with the hare at the right distance not to spook it, and move in parallel with it as it hops along horizontally to you, that way it is presenting as much of its body to you as possible. It is even easier when the hare is moving to your right rather than your left since if it is hopping right then you can see it next to your arrowhead/bow rather than having the bow obscuring your vision.

4. I read that you only need to kill 2-3 hares to impress Capon and get 35 coin as a reward, but you got some time to kill and the archery skill to level anyway, might as well try to kill as many as you can. Remember to loot the hares for meat and arrows. You get A LOT of meat even off just one hares, I had like 200 meat after killing just 10 or so hares I think, it was ridiculous.

5. If you just want to get through this quest ASAP, you can kill 2-3 hares, get their meat, then return to camp and wait until Noon. I would not recommend cooking the meat yet, I do not know if cooking the meat will cause Capon to not recognize how many you killed and therefore not reward you or not. Note that with the amount of hares I killed, Capon rewarded me with 100 coin.

6. Make sure you get all your stuff out of the chest once you return to camp. You can make a manual save at this point if you want, but read further.

7. Once Noon hits and you are back at the camp, Capons will return to camp, it will take a minute but he is on his way. After speaking with him he immediately jumps on his horse and rides off to hunt a boar, you need to run after him. No autosave just yet.

8. You get to the boar hunt spot, a couple cutscenes play, and then the game Autosaves.

9. You have to find Capon, the map will indicate a big area for you to search in the woods. if you look at your map at the big "A Quest Marker", go to that marker which should remove the clouds from the map, now look at your map again. To the south of the marker is a complete road cutting east-west through the forest, that is not it. Instead, look to the Northwest (NW) of the marker and see a short incomplete road amongst the forest. That is where you want to go.

10. Here you will find a camp, Hans Capon was captured and tied to a post, and there are 2 Cumans standing or sitting about.

: Kill them, loot them (note their weapons may fall out of their hands on the ground so you have to loot them separately instead of getting them with everything else on the body), lockpick the chests, then sleep for an hour to save the game.

: IMPORANT NOTE! - Make sure you have everything, then untie Hans. Also, if you try to run to Talmberg to sell stuff, it is game over, because "you abandoned your liege and he died so you will hang."


The cutscenes will bring you back to Rattay and to the start of the next quest "The Hunt Begins" and an Autosave.

TREASURE MAPS!

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Treasure_maps

Above is a link to the wiki that lists all the treasure maps, where to get the maps and where to find the treasure.

KEY POINT - You do not have to obtain or even read the map in order to find and obtain the treasure. Follow the wiki and you can get the loot. Only reason to get or read the maps is to increase your Reading skill.

And the loot is absurdly good. Go find all the treasure and you should have some of the best armour and weapons in the game.

SELLING TO MERCHANTS

Some merchants have very little money, and I noticed at least one merchant who did not seem to refresh his limited budget.

Also, the Weaponsmith and Armourer will not buy your potions, which sucks because they have lots of money.


So where can you sell all those potions you can make from alchemy?

West of Rattay's EAST Gate, on the north side, is an area that has the Huntsman and a Blacksmith. They both seem to have a decent amount of coin (Huntsman 750ish and the Blacksmith 2000ish), and I believe they refresh their money daily...

Do what you will with that info :)

Controller vs Mouse + Keyboard

Just a quick note about Mouse + Keyboard vs Controller. I noticed I really struggled with riding my horse to try and fight the Cumans during the Prologue, and trying to get a horse in Talmberg to escape with, and I think that was mainly due to using a console controller instead of mouse & keyboard.

Once I switched to using Mouse + Keyboard, I noticed handling my horse was MUCH easier, especially backing up and turning around.

Just some food for thought.

BUGS

1. IMPORTANT - Bird in the Hand side-quest has a quest breaking glitch. The quest is where you have to trap 3 Nightingales for Berthold. You have to drop the traps from your inventory onto the ground in the right spot. The trap can disappear. First time i did it I had no issue and was ready to complete the quest, but then I went exploring and got killed by bandits so had to start over, and the 2nd time, I encountered the glitch, but thankfully I had manually saved first. To fix the glitch, I quit out of KCD and then booted it back up, and I was able to complete the quest.



2. While in the Monastery during A NEED IN A HAYSTACK, I think a glitch allows you to create potentially limitless potions that you can great with the herbs provided. You will want the Autobrew perk for this. I created 126 Buck's Blood potions before I got tired, and I was not running out of the ingredients.

COMPLETIONIST

So, I did every non-repeatable quest I could before getting to The Die is Cast, and after I completed the monk mission or talked to Radzig before going to Vranik in The Die is Cast, the achievement "Completionist" popped for me. I had not completed all the main quests or done The Sport of Kings or Hare Hunt, etc yet. So that was interesting. Apparently the # of quests you need to complete is 80.

https://kingdom-come-deliverance.fandom.com/wiki/Completionist

FIGHTER ACHIEVEMENT EASY

Fighter achievement is terrible because Bernard is so good at interrupting your combos. But not when you pick the speech option "I want to learn combos"

The combo he wants you to do is hard to pull off, but there is another combo that is much easier.

Halbschwert: Half Sword

Start from low left, then stab stab.

During the combos lesson Bernard doesn't tryhard so that you can practice on him, but I struggled to pull his requested combo off, plus, when you complete 3 of those combos, the lesson ends.

Instead, hit him with the Halbschwert: Half Sword combo, and you can get 12+ combos in before he stops the lesson.

The only thing that sucks is you have to reach Level 10 in Sword before you can get that perk, so you will have to grind sword quite a bit to reach that point. And the lessons are annoying because you cannot do anything for a minute or 2 until Bernard stops yammering instructions to you.

But once you hit Level 10 Sword and get that perk, doing "I want to learn combos" should make short work of the achievement.

Talmberg Race Easy Win

So after doing The Sport of Kings and starting The Talmberg Race, I had to wait until the next morning to do the race, so I worked on Sheep in Wolf's Clothing/Hare Hunt, followed by Cherchez la Femme, where I waited until the next morning to force Margaret to come with me to Hanekin and then finish the quest. Upon bringing the letter to Hanekin, the cutscene brought me back to the castle, and when the cutscene had finished, the Talmberg Race quest had "failed", but when I spoke with Divish, he said no one showed up so I automatically won the race and got the Knightrider achievement. Noice.

[Bjørn]

I'm tired of following people :(

[MinMaxRex]

@Skander - awesome, thanks for the info. Now I just need to find that Blacksmith myself :)

[Skander]

"If you have already won a Rattay Tourney, it is possible for Black Peter to ambush you before you begin the quest. If you then talk to the Blacksmith and begin the quest, you can finish it immediately within the same dialogue." Quotes from the dead men tell no tales fandom page

[MinMaxRex]

@SpecialOne

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UcwW82QEOw

That should help you.

[SpecialOne]

I do enjoy this guide! But I am struggling with getting the lockpick from Fritz in the prologue. When or how are supposed to get it?

[MinMaxRex]

@genericwhitemale - True, you can learn the recipe from the internet without having to buy it. If that isn't in my guide, I will need to update it.

[fast chiken]

Not true about alchemy.. you can place items from your inventory and you also don't need the recipe either -- you will learn it upon the first completion of the recipe successfully.

[MinMaxRex]

@Dhrakken - Appreciate it man, I still need to continue playing and update a bit further, so hopefully I can get around to that soon.

[Dhrakken]

Great guide, thank you for taking the time to put it together!

[MinMaxRex]

@kruczak3 - Awesome, I'll update when I get a chance later. Keep anything helpful to the guide coming, I appreciate it.