Baptism of Fire will be your hardest mission in Kingdom Come Deliverance so far. Not only are all steps of the quest dangerous, but you’ll face the first boss of the game, Runt. Figuring out how to kill Runt in Baptism of Fire was one of the biggest brainbusters of Kingdom Come for me, and you shouldn’t feel bad at all if this whole quest gives you major issues. Here’s how to complete each step of Baptism of Fire, including dealing with the archers and killing Runt in Kingdom Come Deliverance.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Baptism of Fire: Fight Your Way Into the Camp
The mission begins with Sir Radzig leading the charge into the outskirts of the bandit camp. Your best bet here is to hang loose until the allied troops get across the bridge and use a bow to pick off bandits. Remember to loot those corpses as soon as they drop, and store as much as you can on your horse. Once you reach the weight limit you’re screwed with loot here, so make sure you’re only picking up the most valuable things off each body. Sorting loot by price is a god save here.
Eventually, your forces will break into the Cuman part of the camp. Keep hanging back and taking out targets of opportunity as you can. Your primary focus here should be not to get pinned by enemies. Even though your allies will cut through the Cuman pretty quick, it only takes the enemy hitting Henry just right a few times to kill him.
Keep up the pressure on the Cuman and your allies will push them back to a barn-like structure. Usually, there is where the Cuman commander will be. Just keep killing any enemy you see, and eventually, the commander will go down. Make sure and peruse his equipment when he dies. More than likely it’s better than what you’re wearing at this point.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Baptism of Fire: Deal With the Archers
Even though I sabotaged the arrows in Nest of Vipers, I still had quite a few archers taking shots at allied troops in the camp. After the Cuman commander goes down, Radzig will ask you to deal with the archers, which is where this mission gets tricky. The archers he’s talking about are up the stairs to your left as you enter the Cuman part of the camp. There are five of them, and they all have eagle eye aim and can kill you pretty quickly.
If you’re good with a bow at a distance then that’s the best way to take them out. However, they’ll start firing at you as soon as you start trying to kill them, and their aim is almost perfect. The best way to do this is to strafe and run backward and forward while you’re drawing your bow, only stopping to take aim once you can fire.
This part took me a few tries, but I was able to kill the first three with arrows and the last two further up with my sword. Note that you can fail this objective if you take too long, but you should still kill them anyway. During the next part of the quest, you can get a game over if too many of your allies die, and archers are the greatest threat at this point.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Baptism of Fire: Fight Through to the Church
Once you deal with the archers, you need to head into the bandit side of the camp in front of the church. As long as there aren’t a bunch of arrows flying through the air, this part isn’t too hard. Again, it’s best to rely on your bow until the bandits at least start thinning out. Then you can draw your weapon and start teaming up on the remaining enemies with your fellow soldiers.
Make sure that you head over to where your allies are fighting shortly after getting this objective. It seems like for some reason your allied soldiers just fight worse unless their within your line of sight for some reason and if you dilly-dally you’ll get the “Too many allied soldiers have died,” message and have to reload.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Baptism of Fire: Defend the Position
This is just a continuation of the last objective. Just keep killing bandits, and you’ll eventually complete this objective. One thing to make sure of is that you keep your health as high as possible during this section. After you repel the attackers here, you’ll have to fight a boss and won’t have a chance to heal before you do.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Baptism of Fire: Kill Runt the Bandit Commander
After a cutscene, you’ll find yourself high in the church loft facing off against Runt. More than likely you’ll quickly die because Runt is the hardest enemy you’ve faced so far. He’s wearing plate armor and mail, so if you want to go melee against him, you’ll want to equip a weapon with high bash damage. If you’re looking to fight him straight, then this fight is primarily won on how well you know the combat system, how much you’ve trained, and a bit of luck.
We’re not going to fight Runt straight though; we’re going to cheese him. Odds are, you entered the fight with only about half or so of your health remaining. What you need to do is go ahead and die real quick. The game has created an autosave, for better or worse, right before the fight starts.
Load the autosave and spam the inventory button. You should be able to get into your inventory and use a healing item before the game switches over to combat mode. Once you return to the game, you’ll start healing, even once you switch over to combat mode, and as long as you can stay back from Runt for a second you should regain enough health to make it.
After getting out of your inventory, immediately equip your bow. We’re not going to fight fair, and since Runt doesn’t have a shield then killing him with arrows is the way to go. Just aim for his head and backpedal away from him as much as you can. It’s hard not to hit him at this range, and there’s little he can do to stop your volley of arrows.
Once you launch the final arrow into Runt’s head, a cutscene will play. Afterwards, you’ll get an objective complete notification and Baptism by Fire will be over.
For more info on Kingdom Come Deliverance see our game hub or look at the guides below.
