Yeah Henry was using a sword in the cutscene
I took out both the camps single handedly during the sabotage quest. Lol. All the bandits and cumans were dead and I took my time poisoning the food and setting fire to the arrows. The battle was a piece of cake too. Runt went down in 3-4 wild blows of Herod’s sword. My stats were main level 13, Strength 15+2, and Sword 16.
I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now but nevertheless, concerning your taking damage in plate armor: generally, you won’t take damage in plate from a sword. Enemies can pound away and your fine. When you WILL take damage in plate from a sword is if you allow your STAMINA to get really low. If you are out (or nearly out) of stamina, any hit will deal serious damage.
Next time let the enemy hit you a few times at the beginning of a fight and see how little it damages you.
So before you go into the camp battle where you face Runt do 2 things: 1)check and make sure your sword and armor are fully repaired. You go in with a sword at 46%, your not doing damage. Bringandine or a curaisse at 30% is pretty useless; and 2) Make sure you’ve been practicing a lot with Capt Bernard. You can’t get away with just the little you get at the beginning.
In the fight, I only did 3 things: 1)wait for him to strike and parry him. Don’t try and hit him. If your stamina gets low, back away. Once you get a perfect block and deliver that automatic master strike (or whatever it’s called when you hit after a party) Runt will stumble. 2) immediately deliver any combo that strikes the face. I did the “top, right, bottom left” one that adds two little extra strikes to the face. If it works, immediately follow with a slash to the head (top). That did it for me…but if he’s still up, just go back to 1 and repeat.
If you can’t get the combo in, just go back to 1 and try again. The reasoning is that an enemy is vulnerable for a second after a master strike or combo hit. Your trying to get one in that he can’t block.
If you just swing at him normally, he will parry and “perfect block” everything and once your stamina is down, he will light you up.
So the most important things:
1)is don’t let your stamina get low. You really won’t take damage if you don’t.
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don’t strike. Just parry until you get in a perfect block with the automatic strike after.
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immediately after, give him a combo and immediately follow up with a head shot
Basically, your trying to get shots into his unprotected head and making sure you don’t get low on stamina
Try in some way, stab/slash his head. With herod’s sword, it should be one hit kill. His weakness is his head, as he doesn’t have protection like a helmet or a coif.
Couple tactics against any opponent without a close-faced helmet.
—Stab-feint. If you hold stab, motion upward and release (quickly), you can catch an awful lot of opponents with a face stab. This works best when you’ve backed off and the opponent is jogging toward you. Practice with Bernard or random opponents to get the timing right. I’ve also found it works better if you hold the normal stab for a moment before the motion upward; enemies take a moment to adapt to the position you look like you’re striking from.
—Slash to the head. If you’ve either just performed a master strike (not a perfect block, a block just before the green shield which produces a riposte/counterstrike) or won a clinch, virtually all enemies are open to an immediate slash from the top. I beat Runt with exactly one of these combinations - riposte and then slash to the head (8 second fight). Depending on the type of riposte/clinch-breaker, you may have to move back into range quickly to land the slash.
Note: if you’re still in 1.3/on console master strikes may not be working for you. They were fixed for me with 1.4.
SPOILER.
Runts weakness is in his head. As in his lack of brains. As in he should of never left me alive.
Here is a small snippet of me in kcd
http://goo.gl/images/miEejs
I took my bow and shot him in the eye, cutscene triggered, done.
Kind of funny how Henry suddenly had a sword in the cutscene. But I beat the Runt fight with a sword skill of 4, cloth armor and no sword.
You can still do all the practice and armor and knight stuff if you like it, but I love my thief Henry.
use bain on your weapon. if you are on PC use the mod Pro-bain, kills quicker. or doll maker and wound him and dance him in sword play till he drops. Oh ya get good at defense. Kiting him with arrows also works tho I go with Bain poisoning.