Beware this Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 crash bug

Warhorse’s medieval muck-o-rama Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launches today. It’s an engrossing RPG, despite developer co-founder Dan Vávra’s tendency to throw his weight behind alt-right harassment campaigns. Also, a relatively bug-free one.

In the course of my 51 hours as reviewer, I’ve encountered only a smattering of more significant technical issues. Firstly, some heavy slowdown while roaming Trosky Castle, the centerpiece of the opening Bohemian Paradise region, which I resolved by quitting and reloading. Secondly, a mildly terrifying moment in a dugout when a wounded soldier I was supposed to be treating struck a T-pose, as though afflicted by lightning early onset arthritis. And thirdly a repeated crash bug which I feel warrants its own article given that, together with Deliverance 2’s eccentric saving system, it cost me several hours of progress.

My game started to crash frequently following a larger patch before the review embargo, about halfway through my playthrough. The simulation would lock up in the menus, when using the photo mode, and sometimes during exploration. After some trial and error, I deduced that this had to do with my controller cable connection being a little loose. KCD2 does not, in my experience, like it when you appear to be switching rapidly between mouse-and-keyboard and a controller. After switching to a new cable, I was able to make headway without much further trouble.

The bug cost me hours of progress not because it wiped or corrupted saves, but because it formed a devil’s partnership with Deliverance 2’s interestingly fussy, hydra-headed approach to saving. As in the first game, you can checkpoint your progress by drinking an in-game alcoholic beverage, Saviour Schnapps. As Brendy observed to me during edits, it’s a fun bit of Ye Olde Meta Commentary that openly positions quicksaving as a vice.

It’s not quite as inconvenient as it sounds: I stumbled on fresh batches of Saviour Schnapps regularly during quests, and you can always brew it yourself from nettles, which grow all over the place, and belladonna, which is found in forest clearings. What’s more, apothecaries like the one in Trosky village buy the stuff for decent money, so you can turn a quick profit while stocking up. A single dose of Saviour Schnapps will render you merry (with associated stat buffs) but not absolutely plimsolled, so it shouldn’t interfere with your exploits providing you’re not the kind to hit F5 at the slightest whiff of peril.

The trouble with Saviour Schnapps is simply that Warhorse try to have their cake and eat it. If the idea is to teach you to weigh the prospect of failure properly, by making quicksaving more of a ritual, this is undercut by the fact that the game does checkpoint after certain quest milestones. As such, it’s easy to forget the need to toss back a schnapps now and then. Stir that inconsistency together with a persistent crashing problem, and you have a spicy cocktail I like to call The 11pm Shrieker.

Again, this is the only genuinely severe technical problem I’ve discovered in KCD2. The issue with loose controller connections may have been patched out by the time I read this. Still, you might want to check your USB ports, just in case. For more advice about drinking in moderation, here’s Ollie’s guide to saving in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.