If anyone is interested in improving KCD combat (I think out of the box vanilla combat is pretty atrocious), I've been really enjoying the below mods:
Better Combat and Immersion Compilation -
https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/651:
This collection of mods does various things to improve combat and other aspects including:
- The time window for perfect blocks is lowered, so it's harder to get them, although this will still increase as you level up
- The master strike time window for both the player and the NPCs is lowered significantly, so this will no longer be something that breaks the entire system. You will see them much, much less often now.
- NPCs will block less often now, and instead perfect block and dodge more often.
- NPCs in groups attack normally now (in vanilla, they would slow down, Hollywood style, if outnumbering you)
- You can't clinch very effectively anymore, as this was pretty broken/OP in vanilla
- Damage gains from skills are halved
- NPC and player armor values are now similar, in vanilla, player had a lot more
- fast travel and player marker on the map are removed
- HUD is disabled
- less inventory weight allowed
No Mo' Slo-Mo -
https://www.nexusmods.com/kingdomcomedeliverance/mods/284
This mod lets you disable the slo-mo effect when you perfect block.
More encounters -
There are some mods available for this, but they were mostly out of date with the latest version, so I just modded this myself using Internet advice. It's pretty simple, you can follow this guide for example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/kingdomcom...o_get_more_random_encounters_any_kcd_version/
Basically, you are adding a console command to increase the random encounter rate. To make it automated (so you don't have to set it every time in-game), put this command in user.cfg file, and in Steam, add the command +user.cfg to launch options.
So what's the point of all of these mods? Well, KCD combat has some very fundamental problems out of the box. One problem for example, is that after a while, you and the enemies know master strike, which is a non-counterable move. So essentially, whoever masterstrikes wins. This is pretty boring.
Another issue is that in the 2nd half of the game (or even earlier), your armors and skills are so high, that you can steam-roll everything without any challenge.
These mods above address all of these issues (or at least try to). By signiciantly lowering the time window for masterstrike, these mods almost eliminate it from combat. By lowering the damage gain from leveling up, and armor values for the player, they also level the playing field so the NPCs have a chance even when it's late in the game.
But in addition to that, these mods create something that the base game doesn't have: a really nice flow to combat. When fighting against an experienced opponent, there are movie-like chains of exchanges, as each side attacks, parries, ripostes, counter-attacks, parries the counter-attack and ripostes itself. I would also sincerely advise
Smejki to check it out, because there are really good suggestions in these mods for the direction in which KCD2 should go into.
