What a pity, indeed.
One would have thought that showing mercy in this game has some perks. Nope. It’s just as in real life, dear children. Show mercy, and you’re the loser.
Example:
Henry had to find a missing guy in order to retrieve certain item. And he found the guy, dead in a bandit camp. He made a short work out of both villains. One of them just run away. The other was a bit tougher, but he eventually yielded, asking for mercy.
Henry, being a good lad, let him go. There’s no point in killing, he thought. He was wrong. It turned out the item he was after, was in a chest. The chest was locked. The key was nowhere near the chest. Most likely it was on the bandit who was spared (note: Yes, it was). The padlock, as any other padlock in medieval Czechia, was indestructible. (Note: and to think modern banks spend millions on securing money, idiots, when they really should just use the medieval Czech technology to build indestructible chests and padlocks). Henry didn’t have a lockpick. He thought he didn’t need one, because lockpicking is not how Henry rolls. That’s not his thing. Period.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Henry either should be a merciless, bloodthirsty ****** as any other bandit or he should learn how to break into people’s properties. Or, you know, he should just accept that he’s a time wasting loser, ****** by the gameplay over and over again.
Eventually, Henry reloaded last saved game, slaughtered the bandits in a cold rage, because he couldn’t be bothered to backtrack from bloody Sasau to bloody Talmberg just to buy some lockpicks from Votava (miller Simon doesn’t sell) and then learn how to pick a lock.
Bottom line: don’t try to play the game your way. Just learn how to pick a bloody lock and learn alchemy asap, otherwise it will be roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. 