Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not exactly an easy game, but you can transform Henry from lowly peasant to fearsome knight fairly quickly if you know what you're doing. Modder Knoxogoshi's Ultimate Realism Overhaul looks to change that by making the game harder, especially early on. It bumps up the difficulty of combat, slows down progression, and makes Groschen—Bohemia's currency—harder to come by. It sounds brutal, but if you've already finished your first playthrough then it might be a good excuse to start all over again.

It touches on almost every one of the game's systems. The mod tweaks every weapon's damage value and strength requirements, which will make it more difficult to wield the best weapons and almost impossible to one-shot enemies late in the game. You'll also have to pay more attention to the type of weapon you're using: maces, for example, will do barely any damage against padded armour, will weigh a lot more than other weapons, and will have a much shorter reach. 

The mod shrinks the window for a perfect block, while enemies will co-ordinate their attacks to try and hit you at the same time, rather than queuing up to strike, which they tend to do in the base game.  

The mod slows down leveling and nerfs some of Henry's perks. You'll build up hunger faster—to the point where you might starve if you don't eat for a day—and you can't simply eat from stew pots anymore, because they'll only give you a tiny meal. 

Making money in Deliverance can be a struggle at the start but this mod makes it ever harder by lowering the prices that merchants will pay you for goods and ramping up the cost of certain items, especially armour.

It'll make the early game particularly difficult: inflated inn prices mean you might not be able to afford a room for a while, leaving you to sleep on the street. And because you'll need more food, you'll run out of gold quickly, which means you'll probably have to steal lots of bread if you want to survive.

Best of all, it's modular, so you can choose to just overhaul the combat and progression systems, or take everything but the economy changes, for example. Download it all from the mod's Nexus page. I'd recommend reading the description in full first so you know what you're getting yourself into.

If you're looking to tweak the game further, check out our list of best mods.

Patch 1.3 for Kingdom Come: Deliverance has arrived, and while it's a bit later than many players had hoped, it brings changes and bug-fixes that will hopefully cure a number of the game's ills like the quest-breaking glitches that have stymied player progress.

Feature-wise, most notably there's now a save and exit option, meaning if you need to quit the game (and you haven't been using the unlimited saves mod) you can do it without having to trudge to a bed or glug a potion first. There are improvements to lockpicking, making it "much easier to hold the sweet spot while turning the lock" and players using a controller will now find it easier to unlock Very Easy and Easy locks—though when using a mouse, the difficulty has not been changed.

For those who felt the game got way too easy once Henry got a bit of experience under his belt, a few combat perks have been toned down, weapons don't scale as much with high-level stats, and tough enemies will be harder to one-hit kill (unless you pop them in the head and they're not wearing a helmet). A few chests containing "extremely good loot" that were a bit too easy to access at the beginning of the game have been removed as well, which should make things a bit more challenging.

How about those game-breaking quest bugs? There's no specific information available—the patch notes simply say "over 300 other fixes in various quests"—so we'll just have to see if players that have been experiencing problems have had their issues fixed when they start playing with the new patch.

Some quality of life changes are in the patch as well. Guards won't frisk you as often, your horse "shouldn't" get stuck while jumping fences, you can sleep in a bed without having to sit down first. There's some good news for alchemists, too: "Alchemy bench will no longer shoot you into the air."

Have a look at the full patch notes below:

• The game now has Save and Exit feature.
• Saving is much more robust and saves won't get corrupted even if the game crashes while saving.
• Alchemy bench will no longer shoot you into the air.
• The last quest with Lord Capon is now visible on the map when he is ready to assign it to you.
• Guards won't frisk you so often.
• Your horse shouldn't get stuck when jumping fences.
• Horse items are cleaned along with player items in bathhouses.
• You can see when looking at a bed whether it will save your game.
• You can sleep on beds without having to sit down first.
• Levelling up stealth by sneaking past enemies is more consistent.
• Sneaking past sleeping NPCs is now easier.
• Some easily accessible trunks with extremely good loot have been removed.
• Cave mushrooms can now be found in many other damp places.
• You can no longer autocook potions that you haven't brewed by hand at least once before.
• German voiceovers will no longer cut off in mid-sentence in cutscenes. 
• (PC only) It is now possible to select different types of anti-aliasing.
• (PC only) It is now possible to set VSync to 30 or 60, or disable it completely.
• (PC only) Steam Cloud saving enabled.
• And over 300 other fixes in various quests.

Performance improved:

• LoD switching tweaked, reducing pop-in and improving texture streaming.
• Stuttering in some areas reduced.
• Slightly smoother framerate on Vsync 30. (Consoles and some PCs)

Improved lockpicking:

• New interface design makes it much easier to hold the sweet spot while turning the lock.
• Easy and Very Easy trunks are now easier to lockpick when playing with controller. (Mouse difficulty unchanged)

Improved pickpocketing:

• You will no longer get caught if you stop at the beginning of the minigame. (Unless someone sees you)
• The risk indicator is now much more precise. When green, you are sure not to get caught.

Late game player strength tweaked:

• Some combat perks that were unintentionally overpowered were tuned down.Weapons scale less with high-level stats.
• It should now be much harder to kill high-level enemies with one hit. (Unless they're helmetless. Stupid Runt...)

Other combat system tweaks:

• "Untargeted attack" exploit fixed.
• Enemy combat archery AI improved.
• Guards now react to combat more aggressively.
• And many other minor tweaks.