Polearms Leveling & Perks Guide: And

Unlock the full potential of polearms in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Learn how to level the skill, choose the best perks, and master combos for devastating combat.

Polearms in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II are powerful but require investment to use effectively. This guide covers how to level the Polearms skill, the best perks to choose, and strategies for maximizing your damage output with these weapons.

Polearms Uses and Effects

Your Polearms skill directly impacts your damage and attack speed with polearm weapons. At low levels (around Lv 5), polearms feel sluggish and clumsy. As you gain levels, attack speed increases significantly, making combos a viable strategy. While polearms have an acquired taste and can be cumbersome initially, they become invaluable in certain story segments.

Success with polearms relies heavily on landing combos, which are stamina-intensive. Early on, their slow swing speed makes this challenging.

Leveling Polearms

The Polearms skill is leveled by defeating enemies with polearms. This means actively seeking out and engaging bandits in the countryside. Even with Masterstrike (a skill polearms do not benefit from), this can be dangerous. It's recommended to have Saviour Schnapps on hand to save your progress. You gain approximately 50 EXP per bandit. Polearm combat doesn't feel good until at least Lv 12, so patience is required for early levels. Polearms are also fragile and require frequent repairs, so bring Blacksmith Kits. They are, however, relatively cheap.

Skill trainers and skill books can speed up the leveling process, but they are limited and expensive. Investing groschen in these can be worthwhile for faster early-game progression.

Best Polearms Perks

Many early Polearm perks are designed to mitigate the weapon's inherent disadvantages, such as improving blocking, increasing durability, and reducing stamina consumption. Later perks offer damage boosts, including piercing damage, charged attack damage, and first strike damage. Given that polearms excel at combos, perks that enhance this playstyle are highly recommended.

Perk Recommendations:

• Keeping a Distance: Improves blocking effectiveness and reduces stamina cost when blocking with polearms. Essential due to polearms' inability to be paired with shields and their natural blocking limitations.
• Long Reach: Reduces stamina cost for attacks by 10% per rank. Crucial for executing lengthy polearm combos.
• Impaler: Increases piercing damage by 10% per rank, for a total of 20%.
• Iron Harvest: Refunds some stamina after performing a combo, allowing for more continuous fighting. While useful, consider stamina-restoring potions like Buck's Blood as a more reliable alternative early on.
• Tormenting Strike: Debuffs the enemy's stamina regeneration after a combo. More useful in later stages after other key perks are unlocked.
• Artery Slasher: Increases the chance of inflicting bleeding with every strike, a powerful debuff that can end fights quickly. Highly recommended for Lv 14 perk picks.
• Iron Rain: Boosts damage output based on consecutive attacks, rewarding combo execution. Even partial combos benefit from this perk.

Early-level perks like 'Keeping a Distance' help offset the intrinsic downsides of polearms, such as high stamina consumption, poor blocking, and low durability.

List of Polearms Perks: