"Baptism by Fire" Rant

Gameplay
#9

The only difficulty I had in this quest was when I had to infiltrate, explore and sabotage the camp. I had to try a few times and use a savior schnapps during the infiltration to retry until I managed to explore (I think) most of the points, poison all the food, and burn all the arrow racks. I didn’t manage to do it all stealthy and for the last ones I had to run, create chaos and escape under a rain of arrows and shouting. That was actually quite great.

I told Radzig to ask Talmberg for reinforcements and the battle was easy, I stayed in a supporting role, flanking and attacking and backing while the soldiers did all the heavy fighting. Runt was challenging and a long fight, but I got him in the first try.

Overall a great experience.

1 Like
#10

Mission was easy. Went to the right of the camp to a burnt out building that is on the boarder of the cuman camp. Picked up the set of armor there. Then explored the outer pramimater of the camp finding all of the attack points. Also scouted around the outside area of the camps to get an idea of how many soliders there were and the see what the turrian was like for battle. Then moved into the bandit camp first to scout out and the cuman camp afterwards. In the cuman camp there is some stairs that lead down underground that has water in there. I went down in there and waited till night. At night most of the soldiers were asleep so it made it easier to burn the arrows and poision their food.

Overall I spent about an hours worth of gameplay at the camp itself to make sure I hit all “quest markers” to get the best possible plan of attack. Unlike the beta trailer we seen, the game chooses how many men and where to attack for you depending on what you find.

Fight with runt was easy. I beat him with 3 or 4 attacks. After the neuhoft attack I spend a couple of hours training with Captian Robart and got my combat skills up to about level 15 on average. And went and got all of the warhorse armor from the aincent maps.

#11

The mission is not all that difficult if you keep these in mind:

  1. It’s a battle, you’ll need skill and equipment, luckily the game gives you a great opportunity to get both for free. There’s a quest called “Ruin” given by Captain Bernard in Rattay, in which you have to destroy bandit camps and bring proof of conquest. This quest then continues with Sir Robard in Talmberg (fighting cumans) and Sir Sebastian in Sasau (bandits again). During this quest you’ll have the opportunity to level up your character and learn to fight when outnumbered. You will also collect very good gear including penultimate armor. You can get this quest as long as you complete “Train hard, fight easy”. Whenever you feel like your skill is lacking you can always grind some with captain Bernard.

  2. Battles are chaotic, which this quest shows adequately, to survive stay out of the center of events, engage only the enemies who are on the side, and adopt a defensive playstyle. If you jump into the middle of the fray you’ll be lucky to survive.

3.Camp defenses can be sabotaged in the prior mission “nest of vipers” you will either need very good stealth, or decent combat. Sabotaging arrows will reduce the number of archers during the battle, poisoning food pots will reduce the number of other footsmen.

  1. Runt is made to be a very strong opponent, so a defensive fighting style is also recommended there. If you fight grunt aggressively, he’ll most probably make use of his superior warfare, defence and sword skills to counter your attacks and follow up with deadly combo. Instead try to use master strikes against him. Aiming at the head (with bows or melee weapons) helps, because the game keeps track of whether a given part of the body is protected by armor,

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that this mission is broken, instead being a milestone in the story it assesses your character build. Good fighters will find the fighting easier, good thieves will not find it hard to sabotage the camp before battle via stealth, good diplomats will find a groschen or two to buy a better armor and make their best to stay out of the fight like they always do. If you can’t use any of these three options i’m sorry, but you need to develop your character more.

2 Likes
#12

Yes, that battle is difficult, especially if you haven’t acquired protective armor, or go into the battle with degraded armor. Several potions will also make it easier, if you have them.
You may have started that quest too soon. I could see where that would be a problem.
I avoided it for some time just to get my stats up, get better armor and to equip myself with several potions.

I’m presently playing another game that is not letting me get

I had reached the point of battle with Runt when the video was suppose to play, but the game at the time had a bug that caused the game to crash and exit to the XBox One main menu. Got to this point several times and that was very frustrating, but in my frustration, when the screen went black the last time, I pressed the “B” button and the video played and I was able to fight Runt. I lost to him at least three or four more times.

By this time, having to start the battle over so many times, I began to form a strategy on how to win the battle.
After I beat Runt, it was a bit of a let down, cause I found I enjoyed the battle, even though I was getting my ass kicked.

You might try loading a previous save and get the armor and potions you need to win this battle, and practice the sword mechanics with Capt. Robard.

#13

I admit I Was as frustrated as OP and almost regretted buying the game because of this. Not because the fight was hard but because whatever I wanted to do, I couldn’t because of glitching or poor performance.

I ended up finishing the fights by hanging back and not doing much. Archers I shot with my bow, took a couple of attempts to not fall below half health and I killed Runt by fully charging two arrows through his eyesocket. I didn’t even bother moving against him, my poor mace and shield and crappy equipment meant I did no damage and took a massive beating. I also hadn’t yet learned master strikes or combos because I thought Bernard wouldn’t be available until after the baptism quest (I was wrong, he’s available after Ginger apparently)

What I wanted to do was to engage the archers in melee, and use them as cover against their allies. But the stairs are super glitchy. I can’t hit them even point blank from the stairs, and they just keep shooting me even up close when half their head clips through my camera. I also wanted to participate in the big combat but I could barely get any hits in with the abysmal performance I was getting. Finally I was looking forward to a proper duel with Runt but I was ill equipped to do that, and I would have never rushed ahead like Henry did, it went completely against ever fiber of my being with how I was playing Henry. Runt didn’t kill my parents, he only stole the sword. I get Henry was pissed but I was playing him as a smart fella who picked his fights carefully. This broke the immersion for me, I should have been given a choice whether to pursue or assist rather than just haphazardly walk into suicide (besides cheesing him with arrows). Overall this was the most disappointing quest and part of the game. Not just because of the bugs and poor performance, but because it could have been so much more epic than it ended up being. What a shame.

#14

set the pile of hay near the ramp and the cuman wood wall alight ( need a torch in possession). It will cause the cuman archers to come down and melee.

#15

Never happened to my Henry. Granted my approach to this RPG isn’t suitable for many. I was a battle spawn point sneaker until I could get adequate gear. That gear had the sole purpose of being traded in for groschen to purchase a high end horse (ie, Warhorse Jenda). Then, it was hit and run against battle spawn points until strength up and competent in melee weapon and archery. Only after that did I start nest and baptism. By then, Henry was kitted up as well as anyone else on the battlefield

#16

I’m long past the quest now but I don’t recall anyone making mention of this in the middle of battle. Likely something to add for the future, Radzig should at least shout out the possibility when he makes you handle the archers (unless he already does and I’m deaf, which is just as likely)

#17

Read about it in a thread. However if you happen to mouse over it even if at the scouting phase it will have a burn option but ( not sure) not light able then.

#18

Good rpg are like that ; you need to be well prepared. Here are my hints :slight_smile:
Basics :
Do not rush into a bandit camp of course.
Wear good equipment, in good shape (repair).
Do not carry more than what you’re supposed to, and don not eat too much. It’s bad for the stamina/breath.
Watch your stamina before to attack ; it should be high enough since it’s like a shield.
Do not use a weapon that has higher stats than yours (strength, agility).
Git Gud ; stength level 1 to 5 try to fight against 1 enemy at a time only. Str level 6 to 10 against 2, and so on. Train with captain Bernard with a wooden sword, learn the combos, master strike, perfect block.

Try to lure one or 2 enemies at a time (whistle like shown at the beginning to save Theresa for example, then go 100 meters in a bush ; some soldiers will go to the direction where they heard the whistle).

During night, poison the food if you are “sneaky skilled” (wear dark, low noise, low consc/visibility clothes). Kill or stun one of the enemy if he is far enough from the others and sleeping.

Wen there is 2 or 3 enemies left, shoot an arrow on the first enemy, grab your sword, choose a narrow place (the cave in the first “Cpt Bernard” bandit camp or stairs or a cliff or with bushes/trees around) in order to have one or 2 enemies max against you,
then :
-clinch + attack
-perfect block + attack
(the attack can be a combo)

Watch the hardcore playthrough from the youtuber sparkleedge. (google sparkleedge kingdomcome)

#19

Of course you can, but this weapon will deal less than nominal damage (debuff).

You can level your strenght and dexterity to 10 each and your defense to 20 (or a bit less) with very little effort at Captain Bernard.

You can fight numerous enemies at once, but you need to move in a way to counter their efforts at surrounding you. You also require a very strong weapon to thin their numbers fast. Getting cosy in a narrow place always leaves a chance for you to be surrounded from the rear or stunlocked in a clinch (the latter equals death).

This is dangerous, because it requires a “warfare” skill higher than that of your enemy (or else the enemy will overpower you in a clinch every time), and many enemies have ridiculously high warfare.

This works best, especially against very strong single opponent, or a group of opponents.

#20

You can easily get second-best armor and some decent weapons doing quests for the local captains. The first one is so easy you can get it done with gear you loot from Skalitz (Skalitz Bailiff’s “Shard” sword, which is found in his hand when you revisit to bury your parents) and the basic armor you steal at Talmberg during the “Run!” quest (when talking to Lady Stephanie she’ll suggest you can sneak out disguised as a guard by stealing some basic armor from one of the easy locked chests at the armoury).

#21

Those were advices. You can do something or do it differently of course.

In my opinion training with Cpt. Bernard shouldn’t be done too much, since you better learn from mistakes against several enemies ; Bernard “only” teaches 1 vs 1.
Plus it’s a bit boring. He will never teach you mounted fight.

No you don’t. You can lure them one by one, or poison the food, or whistle, or sneak attack. Multiple choices.

#22

After 10 hours of working on it, I finally found a solution!

You need to install 7-zip so you can edit a file in the game folder without unzipping a pak file.
Here is the solution that finally fixes this otherwise game-breaking bug:

  1. Open the folder named Data in the installation directory. ( KingdomComeDeliverance\Data )

  2. Make a backup copy of Scripts.pak on your desktop. (Just in case - so you don’t need to validate all your game files if you make a mistake).

  3. Right-click on the file Scripts.pak and use 7-zip to “open archive” (do not try to extract or unzip the pak file. Doing so will corrupt it and apparently add some unwanted metadata to it).

  4. In the 7-zip file browser, go to Scripts.pak\Libs\AI\quests\

  5. Select the file q_pribBattle.xml and press F4 - this lets you edit the file without extracting/unzipping it. (Do not attempt to make a backup of q_pribBattle.xml, as you cannot re-insert the backup back into Scripts.pak without corrupting it).

  6. Delete the following lines from the file and save your changes. (You will be asked again if you want to save the xml file inside Scripts.pak after you close the editor. Say Yes).

The code below must be deleted to stop the “Too many casualties” bug:

<IfCondition failOnCondition="&quot;false&quot;" condition="&quot;$questObjectiveUpdate.ObjectiveName == &apos;battleLost&apos; &amp; $questObjectiveUpdate.State == $enum:ObjectiveState.Started&quot;">
                        <SetQuestObjective quest="&quot;&quot;" objective="&quot;battleLost&quot;" function="&quot;CompleteObjective&quot;" />
                      </IfCondition>
                      <IfCondition failOnCondition="&quot;false&quot;" condition="&quot;$questObjectiveUpdate.ObjectiveName == &apos;gameOver&apos; &amp; $questObjectiveUpdate.State == $enum:ObjectiveState.Completed&quot;">
                        <Sequence>
                          <QuestObjectiveCondition quest="&quot;&quot;" objective="&quot;playerFled&quot;" function="&quot;IsObjectiveCompleted&quot;" failSubtMissing="&quot;false&quot;" saveVersion="2">
                            <Then canSkip="1">
                              <GameOver Reason="&quot;Q_IR_FledBattle&quot;" />
                            </Then>
                          </QuestObjectiveCondition>
                          <QuestObjectiveCondition quest="&quot;&quot;" objective="&quot;battleLost&quot;" function="&quot;IsObjectiveCompleted&quot;" failSubtMissing="&quot;false&quot;" saveVersion="2">
                            <Then canSkip="1">
                              <GameOver Reason="&quot;TooManyCausalties&quot;" />
                            </Then>
                          </QuestObjectiveCondition>
                          <QuestObjectiveCondition quest="&quot;&quot;" objective="&quot;killPlayer&quot;" function="&quot;IsObjectiveCompleted&quot;" failSubtMissing="&quot;false&quot;" saveVersion="2">
                            <Then canSkip="1">
                              <GameOver Reason="&quot;LostABattle&quot;" />
                            </Then>
                          </QuestObjectiveCondition>
                        </Sequence>
                      </IfCondition>

You can also see my solution here (listed under callsign FIREFLY): https://steamcommunity.com/app/379430/discussions/0/1777136225026409755/

I hope this will help everyone enjoy the game again. It took me all night to finally find this solution. And boy was I happy when I finally beat “Baptism of Fire”. Because nothing else worked for me. No trainer. No Mods. Not Cheat Engine. Not rewriting the reputation mods to grant negative reputation. Not spawning villagers into prebyslev to kill them to decrease reputation with the village. Nothing. Only the solution above.

#23

Or simply do some training with bandits before continuing Baptism On Fire. You can plunder bandits without any regrets. Take everythingrthey have, sell what you don’t need. Find the bandit camps, so you can take them out one by one. Bandits from random encounters are much harder. There is a map here in the forum with nearly all static bandit camps. Those bandits will respawn after 7 till 14 ingame days. Maybe you have to unlock the chest to allow respawn. At the first bandit camp east of Rattay is a very hard locked chest. The bandits there did not respawn before i was able to unlock the chest

#24

Let me explain. The game has a bug where some players with old save-files from earlier patches of the game cannot beat this mission due to a bug. The bug happens when players accidentally become allied with the non-existing villagers of pribyslav by killing off bandits during the recon mission before baptism of fire. I myself had a positive standing of 66 with pribyslav. So when the battle starts, the cuman and bandits are registered as allies by the game, and as soon as ten of them dies, it gives the player a game over due to “too many friendly casualties”. This happens even if your own team has zero casualties.

This means that some players will get a game over every time they kill the first wave of bandits. And the only solution that does not end with a game over, is if you use cheats to enable you to knock out the bandits with your fists, since unconcious bandits do not count as casualties for your team.

So please stop telling people to level up further. I tried cheating and punching out 20 bandits before my men killed enough “friendly” bandits to cause a game over.

Also, the devs cannot solve the issue, but they have created 3 add-on scripts for the battle, depending on your game version, and if you look inside the xml file, you will see the devs even make the player invisible to the enemy (yes, you can run straight up to the bandits and punch them in their face, they still won’t attack the player). Unfortunately the devs never figured out what is causing the game to give you a game over when “Too many friendly (bandits) have died”. I figure it could be caused by a single faction ID from the script being mixed up, so bandit casualties count towards friendly casualties, but whatever the case is, my solution is the only solution that fixes the bug. I fear the developer who wrote the original battle script may not be working at Warhorse studio, or he would certainly have fixed the bug by now.

Captain flies away.

1 Like
#25

Also, I can send you my savefile if you want to see the bug in action.

#26

Hi, you seem knowledgeable about the scripting part. Is there a way to increase the numbers of troops that are spawned in? I finally got a decent pc and would like to greatly increace the battle size, especially of the final battles. I’ve done it with the ambushes, maybe too much so I cant fight my way into skalitz due to too many enemies

#27

Sorry. It took me all of 10 hours just to find the right pak and quest file. Every time I thought I had found the right line, I had to start over. (That’s why I ended up deleting all 3 Game Over condition and both lines with “battleLost”. Otherwise I probably only needed to edit a single condition to fix the bug, instead of deleting the Game Over conditions.

Okay, I can think of one way to add more soldiers to battles. You could copy-paste existing soldiers from the xml file and let them spawn at the same coordinates as the originals. The game’s collission-boxes should then force them apart automatically.

The following code specifies the type and nicknames of some of the squads in the battle:

<SuppressFailure>
                <Sequence>
                  <Expression expressions="'$t_category = ´main´,'" />
                  <IncludeTree File="'quests/q_pribBattle.xml'" Name="'battle_indexedGraphSearch'" nodeLabel="60535784" />
                  <VarOperation varName="'t_output'" targetVarName="'cumanMainSquads'" operation="'Copy'" argument="''" />
                </Sequence>
              </SuppressFailure>
              <SuppressFailure>
                <Sequence>
                  <Expression expressions="'$t_category = ´heavy´,'" />
                  <IncludeTree File="'quests/q_pribBattle.xml'" Name="'battle_indexedGraphSearch'" nodeLabel="76940015" />
                  <VarOperation varName="'t_output'" targetVarName="'cumanHeavySquads'" operation="'Copy'" argument="''" />
                </Sequence>
              </SuppressFailure>
              <SuppressFailure>
                <Sequence>
                  <Expression expressions="'$t_category = ´bow´,'" />
                  <IncludeTree File="'quests/q_pribBattle.xml'" Name="'battle_indexedGraphSearch'" nodeLabel="76569998" />
                  <VarOperation varName="'t_output'" targetVarName="'cumanBowSquads'" operation="'Copy'" argument="''" />
                </Sequence>
              </SuppressFailure>
              <SuppressFailure>
                <Sequence>
                  <Expression expressions="'$t_category = ´leader´,'" />
                  <IncludeTree File="'quests/q_pribBattle.xml'" Name="'battle_indexedGraphSearch'" nodeLabel="86508295" />
                  <VarOperation varName="'t_output'" targetVarName="'cumanLeaderSquads'" operation="'Copy'" argument="''" />
                </Sequence>
              </SuppressFailure>

This code says that ‘main’ is the nickname for “CumanMainSquads” and ‘bow’ is the nickname for cumanBowSquads.
The file (q_pribBattle.xml) contains lots of these ‘nicknames’ - Like ‘shield’ for ‘soldierShieldSquads’, etc.

The problem now is: How to increase the amount of soldiers in a battle? Well I did find the code I think is responsible for spawning soldiers (soldiers is a nickname for one of the allied squads in the battle). Do notice that there is a reference to the units nickname, followed by a bunch of coordinates. This is probably the start location of each ‘soldier’ in the battle):

<Sequence editorPosX="730" editorPosY="4180" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="soldiers" breakpointFlags="0">
                <OutputBreakpoints />
                <Expression editorPosX="890" editorPosY="4180" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                  <OutputBreakpoints />
                </Expression>
                <SuppressFailure editorPosX="890" editorPosY="4260" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                  <OutputBreakpoints />
                  <Sequence editorPosX="1050" editorPosY="4260" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                    <OutputBreakpoints />
                    <Expression editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="4260" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </Expression>
                    <IncludeTree editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="4370" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </IncludeTree>
                    <VarOperation editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="4470" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </VarOperation>
                  </Sequence>
                </SuppressFailure>
                <SuppressFailure editorPosX="890" editorPosY="4580" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                  <OutputBreakpoints />
                  <Sequence editorPosX="1050" editorPosY="4580" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                    <OutputBreakpoints />
                    <Expression editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="4580" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </Expression>
                    <IncludeTree editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="4690" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </IncludeTree>
                    <VarOperation editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="4790" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </VarOperation>
                  </Sequence>
                </SuppressFailure>
                <SuppressFailure editorPosX="890" editorPosY="4890" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                  <OutputBreakpoints />
                  <Sequence editorPosX="1060" editorPosY="4890" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                    <OutputBreakpoints />
                    <Expression editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="4890" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </Expression>
                    <IncludeTree editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="5000" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </IncludeTree>
                    <VarOperation editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="5100" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </VarOperation>
                  </Sequence>
                </SuppressFailure>
                <SuppressFailure editorPosX="890" editorPosY="5200" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                  <OutputBreakpoints />
                  <Sequence editorPosX="1060" editorPosY="5200" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                    <OutputBreakpoints />
                    <Expression editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="5200" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </Expression>
                    <IncludeTree editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="5310" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </IncludeTree>
                    <VarOperation editorPosX="1190" editorPosY="5410" isCollapsed="0" hasInputBreakpoint="0" comment="" breakpointFlags="0">
                      <OutputBreakpoints />
                    </VarOperation>
                  </Sequence>

Notice that the first line mentions ‘soldiers’. Try and copy-paste the entire code block and see if the game now spawns twice the amount of soldiers.

Unfortunately you would have to manually guess which xml files contain the battles you want to ‘spice up’. Then you would have to locate the that spawns soldiers. So good luck and let me know if you try it out.

#28

What an amazing answer. I’ll check it out

© 2015 Warhorse Studios www.warhorsestudios.cz