Over the course of your adventure you may overhear folk talk about some hunter that dwells near Vidlak Pond, a good ways northwest of Troskowitz. Should you seek out this outdoorsman, you’ll instead find that he’s gone missing, long overdue to return from his last hunt. This page will provide a walkthrough for the side quest Lackey in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2!

Page Breakdown¶

Starting Lackey¶

While you may hear of the hunter who dwells near Vidlak Pond, this itself won’t start the side quest Lackey. Talking to POI Tipsters may mark an unstarted side quest in the area, however, as well as point out a Skill Teacher. To start this quest you’ll need to put in the leg work and follow the road northwest from Zhelejov Wagoners’ Inn until you reach Vidlak Pond, which you’ll find some time after the road turns northeast. The fisherman you need to talk to for the quest Mutt! can be found up this way, and indeed if you follow the road when it bends back northwest you’ll find a map marker for Vidlak Pond, near this aforementioned fisherman. This will get you close, but huntsman’s hut is uphill to the southeast of the Vidlak Pond map marker - fortunately there’s a trail that’ll take you there from the main road.

Alternatively you can follow a more humble road northwest from Tachov - it branches quite a bit, but if you keep going northwest (save for one bend after a fork that’ll take you southwest for a spell) you should reach the hunter’s cabin eventually.

However you get there, arrive during daylight and you’ll find Zlata somewhere on the grounds - likely tending to a patch of cabbage. Talk to her and she’ll ask you to find her husband, Vostatek, who is overdue to return from his last outing. It could be Vostatek’s habitual drunkenness holding him up or it could be legitimate trouble, but until somebody goes and searches there’s no way to know for sure.

Unfortunately Zlata’s grasp of the environs isn’t great and if you head off as-is you’ll be burdened with a silly large search area on the map, which encompasses basically everything that could be considered “north” and “forest”, but she’ll ask you to speak to her son,Vitek, before you leave to get a better grasp of things. Do so and he’ll prove unsympathetic to his father’s flight, deciding to believe he’s just a useless drunk who is wasting everybody’s time. Succeed at a speech check and he’ll give you more details for free, otherwise pay 20 groschen to overcome the kid’s teenage angst. Either way, the search area will be drastically reduced once you get information from Vitek, allowing you to search for Vostatek with a reasonable chance of finding him before the heat death of the universe.

Find the Huntsman in the Forest¶

Assuming you got intel from Vitek, you’ll notice the search area for Vostatek is fairly manageable now. Even better, Vitek gave you decent practical directions: Follow the road from the huntsman’s house downhill to the northwest and continue on a road across the water to the northwest until you find a Tanner’s house to the south and a fisherman’s house to the north. From here you just need to follow the trail along the pond to the northeast and north until you find Vostatek.

You’ll probably hear him before you see him, as Vostatek has been driven up a tree by some wolves. Equip your armor before approaching if you haven’t already, and the wolves will lose interest in the prey they can’t reach in favor of a potential snack they can actually sink their teeth into - you. If you’re armored, this shouldn’t be any bother at all - wolf teeth aren’t great at penetrating plate and mail, but even if you’re not, just block their bites and immediately counterattack to give them a good swat for their efforts. Do this a few times and the offending wolf will either die or run off. Once all three are gone, approach the stranded hunter in the tree, who will leap down with all the agile grace of a rather inebriated huntsman.

Which is to say, he borks his ankle and needs you to carry him to his camp. Yes, his camp. He left his best friend tied up there and has to go rescue him, and since you can’t leave him here and he can’t walk, you’ll have to pick Vostatek up and carry him to this camp. Hope you haven’t been skipping leg day! Don’t worry, though, Vostatek will guide you from his precarious perch.

Carry Vostatek to His Camp¶

Pick up Vostatek and he’ll give you instructions to find various landmarks en route towards his camp… and whine about Henry’s shoulder’s being too pointy. Beggars apparently cant be choosers. The landmarks you have to find are as follows:

• A Mossy Tree Trunk: Carry Vostatek northeast a short distance and keep an eye out for a tree trunk to the left. You’ll get an objective marker that will turn into a search area (your compass will glow yellow) when you’re close. Approach the mossy tree trunk and Vostatek will point you towards the second objective.

• An Anthill: Continue following the water - which is quickly losing the battle to land and devolving to a more of an over glorified puddle than a pond at times - northeast and east. Keep looking to the left and you’ll spot the anthill - it’s quite large and hard to miss. Approach it, Vostatek will chat, and you’ll get the next objective… a birch tree?

• A Birch Tree: Finding a specific tree in the forest might sound daunting, but fear not - this one’s easy. Birch is white, and this particular tree is fairly distinctive. Continue northeast and you’ll find a trail, the birch tree is right along the path of this trail, a two-trunked white tree that splits into a “V” shape. Next up, you need to find a marked tree and pile of stones.

• Marked Tree and Stones: Another landmark that sounds bad, but is hard to miss in practice. Follow the trail northeast to the edge of the forest and Vostatek should call out the marked tree to the right of said trail. It’s got a crude Chi Rho symbol carved into it, while the “pile of stones” are just some rocks to the side stacked on each other.

Endure Vostatek’s flatulence, barf and banter and eventually you’ll reach his camp. Set him down near a shelter, interact with a barrel to get him some water, then talk to him to learn that his horse, Pepik, is indeed missing, and he suspects several poachers of stealing him. You can’t carry Vostatek all the way back home on your back, so it looks like you’ll need to find this horse to get Vostatek out of here. On the plus side, he promises you a crossbow on Pepik’s saddle for your trouble.

Reclaim Pepik from the Poachers¶

After spending so much time carrying Vostatek to his camp, your next objective is… following more clues to another camp. Granted, now that you’re not carrying the complaining sack of drunken foulness that is Vostatek, this trek will be decidedly quicker. Head around a large tree to find the smaller tree Pepik was tied up to and examine it to confirm that, in fact, there is no horse here.

Follow the trail southeast and eventually you’ll find a hunting horn on the ground. Like the other landmarks you followed earlier, you’ll get a search area when you’re closeish, and you’ll need to examine the object in question to trigger the next objective to appear. Continue following the trail southeast and repeat the process with some hoof prints, then a pile of horse shit at a crossroads. Continue southeast from the pile and investigate a saddlebag and finally some more hoof prints before you reach the poacher’s camp - it’s hidden in some rocks to the east.

There are four bandits up ahead, but only one of them is armored and hence, capable of proving any real danger… provided Henry also has some passable armor at this point in the game. At least two of the lightly armed bandits have bows, and if you’re fighting you’ll need to be mindful of them and keep another enemy between you and them at all times, lest they pepper you with arrows during the fight. Again, if you have armor, their arrows probably won’t do more than drain your stamina a bit - they’re generally armed with low-quality gear.

All in all, this fight boils down to whether you’ve got armor or not. If you don’t, you may need to get sneaky - use hit and run tactics, preferably with a ranged weapon of your own, to whittle your foes down, sneak up behind one and try to chop him down before his allies can intervene, or if you’re really feeling frisky you can attempt to sneak over to Pepik and ride away before the bandits can stop you. If you’ve never ridden a horse before, this isn’t the best time to learn the controls, as the bandits can and will knock you off Pepik if given half a chance. All in all, getting crafty can pay off, but it’s not the worst idea to quaff a Saviour Schnapps before approaching the poacher’s camp, just in case.

Should you defeat the bandits, loot the armored one for a Bandit’s Key, some Door and Chest Keys and the Vidlak Bandit’s Map, as well as any promising pieces of armor he may have possessed. The keys will help you get into various chests and areas in the camp without having to pick locks, while the map will allow you to chase down optional treasure. You can also loot the camp - various sacks and chests will contain groschen and other valuables, and a save along the southeastern edge of the camp houses more loot, including a chest containing an Old Hunting Crossbow (presumably the weapon Vostatek promised you) along with other goodies.

Kill the bandits and rob their camp or sneak past them - either way, mount Pepik and ride back to Vostatek’s camp and dismount when prompted (you’ll have to ride into the center of the camp, over the remains of the campfire) at which point Vostatek will inquire about the bandits (you’ll earn extra reputation if you slew them) before offering to ride back to his house with you or meet up with you there on your own time. If you choose to ride back with Vostatek, you’ll skip right over there and to the end of the quest. Vitek will call out his father’s drunkenness and you can attempt to set the young man straight by attempting a speech check (note that you’ll lose reputation is you pick the option “He was pissed out of his skull.”).

Either way, you’ll get 80 groschen and access to permanent lodgings… even if it’s just a blanket on the ground in the stable. It still serves as a humble port in the storm that’ll extend your reach to the Vidlak Pond region, should you wish to explore further.