Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2: Mastering the Scholarship System

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 allows players to delve into medieval Bohemia, where literacy was a rare and valuable skill. The Scholarship system reflects this, offering unique advantages to those who invest in it. This article will explore the Scholarship skill, its benefits, how to level it up, and the most useful Perks it unlocks.

The Value of Scholarship in Medieval Bohemia

In the world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, literacy is not just an academic pursuit, it's a social advantage. As literacy was not common during the time period that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is set, being well-versed in reading literary scripts gives you many opportunities to flaunt your knowledge in many conversations. The Scholarship skill revolves around the ability of reading literary scripts to understand more about medieval Bohemia and putting that knowledge to use in both conversations and other important tasks.

Benefits of Investing in Scholarship

Beyond the ability to read texts and succeed at skill checks during conversations, you’ll also find some of the game’s most useful Perks in this tree. Investing time into this skill is well worth your consideration as some of the better Perks in the game can be found here! This makes leveling this skill as soon as possible a priority.

Leveling Up Your Scholarship Skill

Unlike many skills that level through action, Scholarship requires a more academic approach. While most skills can be leveled by putting them into action, such as Alchemy increasing by brewing potions, or the Houndsmater skill requiring you to bond with Mutt, Scholarship is going to cost you if you want to raise it quickly (which you should, the Perks here are very useful!). Here are the primary ways to increase your Scholarship:

Reading: The primary way to level Scholarship is by reading books. Seek out skill books from scribes in locations like Troskowitz and Trosky Castle. Consider these books a priority, even over better armor or weapons, as they directly increase specific skills, Speech, and Scholarship. Some books focus on lore which also boosts Scholarship.
Skill Checks: Scholarship will gain XP whenever you succeed at skill checks involving this skill. Always look to use this when available.
Skill Trainers: Like with every other skill in the game, you can level your Scholarship skill by making use of Skill Trainers. Discover their locations and pay the requisite coin per rank you want to learn. A lot of Skill Trainers can be found by discovering new areas, some will become a Skill Trainer after completing a quest for them. One such Trainer is Aranka at the Nomad Camp. After completing The Voivode’s Curse, you can have her teach you Scholarship Basics at no cost.

Essential Scholarship Perks

Every time your Scholarship skill reaches a new even level (so 6, 8, 10, etc.), you’ll get a Perk Point to spend, with each of these thresholds offering new Perks available to learn. While it is entirely possible to grab every Perk, that involves a massive amount of investment and as such, you’ll want to prioritize specific Perks. Here are some of the most impactful Perks to aim for:

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Liberal Arts

You’ll need to wait until you hit Level 10 to be able to learn this Perk, but this is the primary reason why you want to focus all of your attention on leveling Scholarship as early as possible. This Perk will show the difficulty of every skill check in conversations, a massive boon. You’ll see next to a choice a difficulty, such as Easy, Medium, and Hard, and as always, you’ll see your rank in the associated choice above. This does not mean you’re guaranteed to succeed the check, as the difficulty does not take into account your reputation with the associated party and your specific skills. Still, if you have a decent reputation, a skill level of around 10-13, and are attempting a Medium check, odds are you’ll pass. This perk allows you to see the difficulty of skill checks in conversations, giving you valuable insight into your chances of success.

Explorer

Along with Liberal Arts, one of the most useful Perks in the game. With this Perk acquired, it will completely uncover the game’s map and mark on there every Point of Interest, be it settlements, Fast Travel locations, or just random places that you may want to visit. This Perk reveals the entire map and all points of interest, making exploration significantly easier.

Wonders

There are three Wonders Perks to purchase and all of them are very useful, each one will help two different skills increase quicker. Wonders of Nature would be our initial pick, this will help both Alchemy and Survival to increase quicker which are some of the most useful early game skills. There are two ranks to this Perk, and both are well worth getting as soon as you can. With the first rank, your Bandages will be 25% more effective and you will double the effects of Food. Once you get the second rank of this useful Perk, any Healing Potion will be 20% more effective, this is the main winner here.

The Interconnected Skill System

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 you have a character main level, stats and skills that can all be leveled up. It’s important to understand how the Scholarship skill interacts with other aspects of character development:

Skills: You must use a skill actively to gain XP for it. It’s “learning by doing”. So using a specific weapon will increase the combat proficiency for that weapon type, or brewing potions increases the alchemy skill. Some quests also grant XP towards certain skills. You can also read skill books or pay skill teachers to gain some skill-specific XP. To unlock skills in each category you must first reach the required skill levels. Note that not all skills can be bought in a category. In the player menu it will show a star icon at the top to indicate how many skill slots you are still allowed to purchase in a category. Purchasable skills will have a yellow star icon on them, when you run out of skill slots they will get grayed out. Because of this you shouldn’t buy skills you don’t truly need as they will consume a skill slot and lock you out of buying other skills later.
Stats: The Main Level is determined by the value of all your main stats (Strength, Agility, Vitality, Speech). Leveling up one stat gives you XP towards the main level. It’s like an “average” value derived from your four main stats. Completing quests also yields some main level XP.
- Strength: leveled up by combat. Fighting with any melee weapon increases this. Using weapons with a high strength stat increases it faster.
- Agility: leveled up through Stealth (sneaking in restricted areas and doing stealth takedowns) and also from combat.
- Speech: leveled up by talking to people and winning skill checks in dialogue. Every new line of dialogue (white) counts, but greyed-out dialogues don’t increase it.
- Stamina: Stamina is raised by high Vitality levels and from buying passive perks.
- Health: Health is fixed at 100, you cannot level it up.
- Energy: Energy is fixed at 100, you cannot level it up.
- Nourishment: Nourishment is determined by how much you’ve eaten, it decreases over time and increases whenever you consume food. Anything above 100 counts as overeating and reduces your stamina.
- Charisma: Determined by your visible clothing (underclothing doesn’t count). Wear expensive ornaments and high-quality clothing to increase this.
- Conspicuousness: Determined by your clothing. This value is similar to Visibility. Lower values are better for stealth, higher values make you easier to spot.
- Visibility: Determined by your clothing. Also affected by light/darkness and how close you are to people. The lower this value, the better.
- Noise: Determined by your clothing.
- Speed: Determined by your Agility & Strength stats as well as clothing. Heavy armor can lower this value.
- Persuasion: Derived from your Speech & Charisma stats.
- Coercion: Derived from your Speech & Charisma stats.
- Impression: Derived from your Speech & Charisma stats.
- Domination: Derived from your Speech & Charisma stats.
- Presence: Derived from your Strength, Agility, Vitality stats and how good your equipped Armor/Weapon are.
- Intimidation: Derived from your Strength, Agility, Vitality stats and how good your equipped Armor/Weapon are.
Other skills:
- Alchemy: leveled up by brewing potions at alchemy benches. The better you brew the potion the more XP you earn.
- Houndmaster: leveled up by interacting with your dog, feeding it, and using its skills.
- Thievery: leveled up by lockpicking, pickpocketing, stealing items.
- Marksmanship: leveled up by shooting with ranged weapons (Bows, Crossbows, Pistole rifles).

Tips for Fast Leveling Skills

You have to use skills to level them up, which can take dozens of hours to max out each one. Some of them, like Horsemanship and Houndsman, can be leveled up quickly, but the likes of Scholarship and Marksmanship can take a while.

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Speech: Every time you're buying or selling items no matter the type of vendor, you should haggle the price. This grants a non-insignificant amount of Speech experience, and you can 'farm' by haggling items one at a time rather than selling or buying multiple at once. While you could spend groschen at skill trainers to level Speech, you likely do not have a lot of it to spend early in the game. Instead, save your groschen to purchase skill books from the scribes in both Troskowitz and Trosky Castle, or outright steal them, as they level both your Speech and the skill you're reading about.
Thievery: During the Wedding Crashers main quest, you're able to work for Miller Krezyl - who turns out to be running a sort of thieves guild. He has a chest that you can repeatedly lockpick in order to level up your skill; however, this can take some time and leads to little reward. After that, if you approach bandit camps at night most of them will be asleep, and you can pickpocket them without causing trouble with the law. If they wake up, you can either reload an old save (made with Savior Schnapps or Save & Quit), or you can simply fight and kill them. Finally, in certain villages like Troskowitz you can sneak about unlocking doors that guards aren't standing near.
Strength: The Melee at the Mill and More Melee at the Mill tasks are obtained from the Miller Krezyl who you meet as part of the Wedding Crashers main quest. These are unarmed fights that increase said skill along with your Strength. Finally, any time you're carrying a sack or a body your Strength slowly increases.
Survival: The Leg Day perk is obtainable when your Survival skill reaches level 10, and it rewards a very small amount of experience for picking herbs.

Choosing Your Background and Its Impact

You're forced to choose your class, or playstyle, very early on in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. During a heated conversation with a Captain Thomas by the side of a road, you must choose between three backgrounds for Henry to adopt: Soldier, Adviser, or Scout. Your choice will affect Henry's starting stats in several areas, all of which we've detailed below. No matter what you pick as your class, after the first main quest is finished an incident will occur which results in you losing several main levels and skill points. Regardless, there's still reason to pick one class over another, because you can still use those stat benefits during the first main quest, "Easy Riders". The Scout gains a +2 bonus to Survival, and a +1 bonus to Vitality, Houndmaster, Stealth, Thievery, Swords, and Marksmanship. In our opinion the Adviser is the best class to pick, because there are a couple of moments in the "Easy Riders" quest where you can make use of your Speech skills to try and convince people of certain things. The main choice you make in the first quest (aside from picking your class) comes immediately afterwards, when you choose what to say to Captain Thomas to allow your party past his group. Depending on your choice of class, you'll succeed or fail with different dialogue options.

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