So, even though I am roughly halfway thru the game, I became a bit bored and wanted to experiment. So I backed up my saves, deleted all mods except Ultimate Saving, and started a new game. But this time, I didnt talk to my father in Skalitz. Instead I talked to mother, taking 2 speech points, since it is the only skill which cant be actively leveled. Afterwards I set off knocking out a guard and taking his things, which gave me armor and a decent weapon. And then, beating up Kunesh for strength (without starting the quest to approach him about his debt). Then I talked to father, met my friends and threw shit at Deutsch’s house. They offered to help me beat up Kunesh, so we wailed on him again, then I talked to Fritz for a few lockpicks. Then I started lockpicking all easy locks I could find, reloading a save after a failed attempt. I also began sneaking up on everyone I could find, either knocking out or killing, which eventually boosted stealth enough to let me stealth kill with a dagger. I started gathering all herbs I could find, selling them to merchants and intentionally accepting less money for the goods, which boosted speech again and raises reputation. The herb gathering eventually lets you take a skill which raises charisma, which in turn turns thing more in your favor when talking in general and dealing with merchants. Merchants wont buy stolen items, but Bianca will buy stolen food/alcohol for lowered price. I was able to significantly raise vitality while jumping over fences at a full run. I was quite surprised to learn that you can grind multiple skills to a decent level before leaving Skalitz.
But I never finished the quests yet and wanted to see what would happen if I were able to escape Skalitz before the Cuman invasion. So I invoked ‘p_fly_mode 1’ (free camera roam mode). I noticed that multiple people, like the catchpole and several peasants, were seemingly walking in the air). I got an idea, started walking from one end of town to the other in a straight line, which raised me up enough in the air that I was nearly able to walk over the fence to freedom. But after an hour of trying, I just couldnt quite get the height required to glitch over the fence. And if I disabled the command while in midair, Henry would fall to his death, even if I was just a few feet off the ground.
So I decided to make use of teleport commands to place myself in a random location (the coordinates I used put me somewhere outside Talmberg):
1.You can enter Talmberg but the guards will not greet you with the Robard scene.
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Merchants or anyone else wont talk with you at all, with the exception of a few traders, so you cant buy/sell or do quests, etc.
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If you are caught for murder and the guards arrest you, you will go to jail, which triggers the Skalitz jail acene where you die in jail and game ends.
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If you are caught for lesser crimes you can buy your way out, or talk your way out if charisma/strength is high enough
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It is always daytime, night will never come
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You can still go to bandit camps or otherwise fight enemies, places like Pribaslavitz will still have Cumans even though the invasion in Skalitz hasnt technically been triggered
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If you enter Rattay the guards and others will not greet you with the speech lines you would normally get when going in for the first time via the “normal” route
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Miller Peshek will not talk to you, so you cannot train in lockpicking/pickpocketing or start The Good Thief quest, but you can still store stolen goods in the chest and they will lose their stolen tag eventually
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Most skills can be levelled normally, skill points granted and used, etc.
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You cant fast travel even after discovering a location
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You cant ride a horse
I’m still exploring in this way, it does seem that the entirety of the map is accessible. But all in all you are very limited in regard to what you can/cant do. I’ll eventually just liad one of my saves and resume the questline from where I left off. I would imagine that playing in such a nonconventional/unintended manner might trigger weird game behavior even if I teleported to Skalitz to finish up. I was just wondering if others have tried what I’ve dine, what you learned, your experiences…