Last updated: 13 July 2026

KCD2 Reputation Guide Per-Town Tracking, What Affects It, and How to Fix It

Reputation in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is one of the game's most consequential systems and one of the least explained. Unlike a simple good/evil meter, KCD2 tracks Henry's standing separately in every settlement he visits, broken down by social group. The guard captain in one village may distrust you while the local merchant respects you; the clergy in Kuttenberg may hold you in high regard while the civilians are still on the fence. Solid reputation unlocks better merchant prices, smoother dialogue checks, and quest opportunities that low-standing Henrys never see. Poor standing leads to guard suspicion, refusals to trade, and a cycle that is slow to reverse. This guide covers how the system works, what builds and damages it, how to recover quickly, and the perks worth taking if you want to keep your standing high across both regions of Bohemia.

01How Reputation Is Tracked — Per Settlement, Per Group

The most important thing to understand about KCD2's reputation system is that it is not global. Every town, village, and settlement in the game maintains its own separate reputation score for Henry, and within each location that score is further divided by social group.

Open the Player tab and select the Reputation page to see exactly where you stand. Every settlement you have visited is listed, and next to each one you will see icons for the groups you have encountered there:

• Civilians — the ordinary residents, traders, and workers you meet most often
• Men-at-Arms — guards, soldiers, and law enforcement
• Holy Men — priests, monks, and clergy in churches and monasteries
• Nobility — lords, knights, and aristocratic figures in castles and courts

Each group's standing is represented by a face icon. A yellow smiling face means you are well-liked and in good standing. An orange neutral face means opinion is mixed. A red angry face means people are not fond of you and you can expect hostility or refusals.

One important mechanic: word spreads between communities. If you commit serious crimes in one settlement, neighbouring towns may already have a mixed or negative view of you before you ever set foot there. You cannot simply move on to a clean slate after causing trouble — the reputation damage travels with you.

02What Raises Your Reputation

Reputation gains in KCD2 are spread across many activities rather than concentrated in one obvious mechanic. The following are the most reliable and broadly confirmed ways to build standing:

• Complete quests for the local community. Main story and side quests are the single most effective reputation-builder available. Each quest you finish for the residents of a settlement tends to raise your standing across multiple social groups simultaneously, not just with the quest-giver.
• Help people during random encounters. When fast-travelling or riding between settlements, you will occasionally encounter people under attack by bandits or wild animals, or NPCs in distress. Stopping to help — and speaking to them afterward — spreads positive word through the local community. These encounters are brief and reward reputation disproportionately relative to the time spent.
• Choose respectful dialogue options. When talking to NPCs, the tone of your responses matters. Selecting considerate, engaged, or deferential options — particularly when talking to strangers who have no prior reason to trust Henry — builds goodwill over time. Rude, crass, or dismissive choices have the opposite effect.
• Pass dialogue skill checks. Successfully landing a Persuasion, Impression, or Presence check during a conversation improves your standing. Failed checks — where Henry comes across as bumbling or unconvincing — can actually lower it.
• Trade fairly with merchants. Paying slightly above asking price, accepting slightly below market value when selling, or simply completing transactions without prolonged negotiation is treated in KCD2 as generosity. Merchants in a settlement are part of the local social fabric, and treating them well contributes to your broader standing.
• Donate at church indulgence boxes and complete pilgrimages. These religious mechanics are covered in a dedicated section below, but they are among the fastest ways to restore reputation across a whole region after it has suffered damage.

03What Lowers Your Reputation

Reputation damage accrues faster than reputation gains, and some sources of damage are easy to overlook. The most significant causes:

• Committing crimes. Theft, trespassing, lockpicking locked property, pickpocketing, poaching, assault, and murder all lower reputation — and the damage compounds if witnesses are present or if you are caught and punished by authorities. Getting branded by the pillory delivers lasting reputational harm that affects future gains.
• Disrespectful or threatening dialogue. Choosing aggressive, dismissive, or threatening responses in conversation — particularly using intimidation against civilians who pose no threat — causes small but real reputation drops each time.
• Failed dialogue skill checks. An unsuccessful persuasion or impression attempt that leaves Henry looking weak or dishonest damages standing. The Liberal Arts perk (Scholarship tree) addresses this directly by showing check difficulty before you attempt it.
• Breaking promises and betraying quest-givers. Agreeing to complete a task and then abandoning it, or actively working against someone who trusted you, causes the community to doubt Henry's reliability.
• Excessive and aggressive merchant haggling. Grinding merchants down with repeated counter-offers eventually triggers refusals and small reputation penalties. A few rounds of reasonable negotiation is fine; pushing well past the merchant's patience is not.
• Appearing visibly criminal. Blood on Henry's clothing alerts guards and raises suspicion even if no one witnessed the act that caused it. Guards who spot a blood-stained Henry near a crime scene or body are more likely to stop and question him.

04How Reputation Affects the Game

The practical consequences of your reputation tier touch several systems simultaneously:

• Merchant prices. Strong reputation with the traders in a settlement translates to better deals — lower purchase prices and more favourable sale prices. The reverse is also true: low standing means merchants price goods higher against you and may be reluctant to negotiate at all.
• Merchant willingness to trade. A very poor reputation with local civilians can cause merchants to refuse service outright. This is especially costly in smaller settlements where there may only be one vendor of a particular type.
• Guard reactions. Men-at-arms standing falls independently and has the most direct day-to-day impact on how freely Henry can move through an area. Low standing with guards means more frequent stops, questioning, and searches. Extremely poor standing can trigger immediate arrests on suspicion alone.
• Quest and dialogue access. Some NPC quests and dialogue paths only open when Henry has built sufficient standing with that group. Villagers in good standing will share problems, rumours, and requests they would never raise with a stranger or someone they distrust.
• Persuasion and social check success rates. Many dialogue skill checks are influenced by your existing reputation with the person you are talking to. Arriving at a negotiation with strong local standing gives Henry a baseline advantage before a word is spoken.

05Appearance, Cleanliness, and the Blood-on-Clothes Problem

Appearance feeds into the social impression Henry makes on every NPC he meets. While cleanliness is most directly tied to the Charisma stat — which governs Presence dialogue checks — its effect on how NPCs perceive and treat Henry is real.

Arriving in a settlement in clean, well-maintained, situation-appropriate clothing increases Henry's effective Charisma for social interactions, making Presence and Impression checks more likely to succeed. These checks, in turn, affect reputation as discussed above — passing them improves standing, failing them can lower it.

More immediately, bloody or visibly filthy clothing triggers guard suspicion. If Henry has blood on his gear from a recent fight or crime, guards who encounter him are more likely to treat him as a suspect and demand explanation. This is distinct from his formal reputation score but can escalate into a confrontation that damages reputation further.

• Bathe before entering a settlement after combat or crime. Bathhouses, wash troughs near rivers, and laundry spots by settlements all clean Henry and his clothing. The bathhouse is the most thorough option and also restores health and can grant the Time Well Spent buff.
• Match attire to context. Arriving at a noble court in bloodied combat armour creates a poor social impression regardless of cleanliness. Fine civilian clothing suits most non-combat social encounters in KCD2.
• Repair and maintain clothing. Gear in poor condition signals both poverty and neglect. Quality, well-maintained clothing raises effective Charisma independent of cleanliness.

06Religious Absolution — Pilgrimages and Indulgences

When reputation has suffered serious damage — either from a crime spree or accumulated poor choices — normal passive recovery through quests and good behaviour is slow. The game's two religious restoration mechanics offer a faster route back to acceptable standing.

Indulgences are collection boxes found inside village churches and chapels throughout both the Trosky and Kuttenberg regions. Donating to an indulgence box grants absolution and raises your standing with the holy men of that settlement and, to a lesser extent, with the broader civilian community nearby. The boost from a single donation is modest, but visiting multiple churches on a route through the region adds up.

Pilgrimages are the more powerful option. Find a priest — Father Nicodemus at Trosky Castle is an accessible early contact — and ask to go on a penitential pilgrimage. The priest will direct you to a specific shrine on the map. Travelling there and praying at the shrine completes the pilgrimage and grants a meaningful reputation recovery across the whole region, not just the town where the priest lives. The Scholarship perk Fundamentals of Theology II amplifies the gain from a pilgrimage if you have invested in that tree.

Pilgrimages and indulgences are most effective when targeted after a specific reputational crisis rather than used constantly as a substitute for good behaviour — repeated reliance on them loses some efficiency compared to building reputation organically through quests and community interactions.

07The Best Perks for Reputation Management

Several perks have a direct or indirect effect on how quickly reputation builds and how much damage it takes from setbacks:

• Opportunist (Main Level) — reduces any reputation loss Henry suffers by 10%, regardless of cause. In the early game, avoiding catastrophic reputation crashes is more valuable than accelerating gains. Mutually exclusive with Charming Man — take Opportunist first unless you are certain you will avoid crime entirely.
• Charming Man (Main Level) — increases reputation gains from positive social interactions by a percentage. Worth taking later, once a baseline of decent standing has been established and you are in a position to grow it actively. Mutually exclusive with Opportunist.
• Liberal Arts (Scholarship) — shows the difficulty of dialogue skill checks before you commit to them. By only attempting checks you are likely to pass, you avoid the reputation damage that comes from failed persuasion and impression attempts. One of the highest-value utility perks in the game for social builds.
• Good Natured (Main Level) — grants a bonus to Persuasion, Impression, and Presence checks across all social interactions. More successful checks mean fewer reputation losses from failures and more reputation gains from successes.
• Fundamentals of Theology II (Scholarship) — increases the reputation gain from completing pilgrimages. If you are relying on religious absolution to recover from serious reputation damage, this perk makes each pilgrimage significantly more impactful.

08Quick Strategies for Raising Reputation in a New Area

Whether entering the Kuttenberg region for the first time or trying to recover standing in a settlement where things went badly, the following approach builds reputation efficiently:

1. Accept every available local quest immediately. Check innkeepers, craftsmen, and any NPC with a quest icon. Even short fetch or delivery quests grant reputation with multiple groups at once and compound quickly.
2. Ride the roads and respond to random encounters. Fast travel between nearby settlements and intervene whenever you see civilians under attack. These encounters are quick, carry no risk to Henry's standing, and each successful rescue spreads good word through the area.
3. Make a modest donation at the local church. Visit the church as soon as you arrive, donate at the indulgence box, and pick up any tasks the priest has available. This immediately raises standing with holy men and signals good faith to civilians.
4. Trade with local merchants — without aggressive haggling. Buying even a small purchase at asking price from the settlement's traders contributes to your standing. If you need to negotiate, keep it measured; the cost in reputation of pushing too hard outweighs the groschen saved.
5. Bathe and clean up before any social interaction. Arrive looking presentable. The impression Henry makes in his first conversations in a new area sets the tone for how much goodwill he starts with.
6. Avoid any crime until standing is stable. Even a petty offence in a settlement where Henry has neutral reputation can tip the balance to hostile and undo hours of goodwill. Save theft or trespassing for areas where you have strong standing you can afford to spend — or avoid them entirely in populated settlements.