In Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 the first main quest that requires you to use your brain is For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hans is in trouble, and you’ve only got 12 in-game hours to save him. The problem is, you’re forbidden from actually navigating the quest area freely, and you’ve got complete a series of side tasks within the alloted time limit. Exciting stuff.
But, if you’ve found yourself stuck, we’ve written this Kingdom Come Deliverance For Whom the Bell Tolls guide so you can follow our process step-by-step, and escape the castle with Hans as free men. We’ll break down everything you have to do, so you can just follow along without the hassle.
How to complete For Whom the Bell Tolls quest in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
Okay, so your first step should be completing your mandated tasks as a prisoner-of-sorts at Castle [?]. First, carry all the sacks from the wagon to the marked shed nearby, and forge a horseshoe at the Blacksmiths for the guy down at the stables. From here, you should be able to focus on getting Hans out of prison.
As a quick side note, depending on whether you chose to complete the Miller quest chain prior to the wedding, you might have a quest to track down a certain book inside the castle. You cannot complete this until after Hans is free to go, so don’t bother about talking to the Scribe while you’re doing For Whom the Bell Tolls. You’ll have a chance to do so immediately after you’re finished with the main quest.
Okay, your first step is climbing all the way up to the chapel, on the top floor of the North side of the castle. There are two ways you can do this. First, you can sneak your way up. This is possible, but there is a guard posted by the stairs and he’s tricky to avoid. But, if you can’t be bothered with a little side task, this is totally an option.
For the less sneaky of us, you’ll first need to head to the kitchen on the bottom floor of the castle, also on the north side. Here, you’ll find the Chamberlain. He’s got some medical problems, and is in need of your help. If you’ve got the requisite speech skills, you can diagnose him yourself and gain access to most parts of the castle (at least, all the rooms you need to finish the quest and free Hans). If you don’t have the charisma, you can be tasked to head to the Apothacary’s quarters on the South side of the castle to find him a cure. Either way, you’ll be able to proceed, but obviously being able to diagnose him yourself will save some time.
Regardless of what you ended up doing, you’ll now be able to walk to the South side of the castle and the chapel upstairs without issue. You can go up to the chapel now, so do that and you’ll find that the only witness that can prove Hans is sick is very ill. Not only that, but the apothacary is out of town! You’ll have to handle this yourself.
Head back downstairs to the kitchen. As you leave the kitchen’s South door, proceed straight ahead and up the stairs to the other kitchen on the South side of the castle. You’ll find a hungry guard who usually won’t let you pass unless you feed him. However, if you have the Chamberlain’s permission you can pass no problem. Though, you can still feed this guy. Getting some food is a bit tricky though, and I just pickpocketed some random block for some cheese to help him out. Any food, stolen or not, will do.
Once you pass this guard head all the way upstairs to the Apothacary’s room, which should thankfully be marked on your in-game compass. Inside his quarters you’ll find a lady trying to pick the lock on a chest there. She’s a thief, but unless you’re also gifted in the art of nicking stuff you won’t be able to call her on it. All you get for figuring her out is a clue that a chest in the opposite room contains pre-brewed potions, but this chest has a hard lock, and guard keys you can pickpocket don’t open it, so consider this an optional way for the truly skilled thiefs out there to bypass the majority of this quest. If that ain’t you, don’t worry about it.
As the lady leaves you’ll notice two things. The first, is there’s a book on the bookshelf left as you walk in. Grab it, it’s the apothacary’s diary and contains a recipe you need to complete the quest. Also, there’s a alchemy ingrediant chest on the floor of the room – the same chest that lady was trying to break into. It, of course, is locked behind a very easy lock. Not usually a problem, but you don’t have any lockpicks! You guessed it, time to get some.
Inside the alchemy diary there is a entry near the back that provides a recipe for a brew that lowers fevers. That recipe is as follows: Add three feverdew, two ginger, and one elderberry leaf to the mortar. Add wine to the pot. Boil the wine. Add the mortor mixture to the wine. Boil for one turn (flip the hourglass and wait for it to run out once). This is what you need to finish the quest. There’s also a recipe for a potion that’ll cure the Chamberlain’s stomach ulser (nasty), which you can brew if you like. As you’ve probably realised by now the 12 hour time limit isn’t actually that dire, you’ve got plenty of time to mope around.
But, as part of the main potion you need, ginger is required! Talking to the lady thief in the apothacary room will trigger a little event outside in the courtyard between the North and South sides of the castle. You’ll see an old lady cook from the kitchen complaining about the blacksmith. Talk to her, and she’ll explain that a chest in the basement has a broken look, and she needs the blacksmith to open it for here. After talking to her, go talk to the blacksmith near where you carried the sacks of coal, and he’ll point you to where you can find lockpicks.
The lockpicks can be found in a red pot by the forge, on the shelf to the right of the anvil. It’s important to note that these lockpicks are always there regardless of whether or not the blacksmith told you. The reason why you talk to him first is because, with his permission, you can loot this container rather than rob it. If you don’t mind robbing it, you can loot this red container the moment you are asked to carry coal – just be careful!
Okay, so you have lockpicks. At this point you can run all the way back up to the apothacary’s room and pick open the chest there for all your ingrediants. You can help the old cook out, but it’s kinda just gives you a big tip if you didn’t actually read the Apothacary’s diary. The cook will guide you down to the basement below the North-side kitchen, and ask you to open a chest. Lockpick it open, and you’ll find there’s no ginger because the Apothacary has nicked it all.
Also, you only get one pick. If you break the pick, just reload your save. Every major step you complete gives you an autosave so the game is quite generous here, thankfully.
Now, all that’s left is to brew the potion. Gather all the ingrediants on the shelf, get the wine boiling, and drop in the correct amount of each ingrediant (there are enough to mess one attempt up, but mess two up and you’ll need to reload). It’s important to note that the potion doesn’t have to be perfect in terms of time on the boil, but you must get all the ingrediants correct.
Once you’ve got the right potion, you can head up to the chapel for the last time. Go all the way up the stairs on the north side of the castle, talk to the woman caring for the sick bloke and you’ll have done it! The quest will be finished. But is Hans okay? Did you make it in time? You’ll have to watch the cinematic to find out…
After the quest is finished you’ll get all your stuff back so don’t panic. In addition, you’ll get yourself a new bed you can sleep and save in at no cost, which is also handy. You’ll also be rewarded with a horse if you haven’t got one already, which is nice!