If you’re like me, you may find seeing in the dark a little difficult in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Many quests require you to travel long distances at night, often out of range of a suitable place to sleep. And, if you’d rather not waste time using the ‘Wait’ command to pass the hours, you may benefit from using a Nighthawk potion or torch.
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Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – Complete Trosky Map
Our interactive map for the Trosky region in KCD2. All the locations, quests, NPCs, and chests in the game.
Torches are great for increasing your immediate field of vision, but they can eventually break and don’t provide a comprehensive look at your surroundings while you travel. The best way to travel at night is to use a Nighthawk potion.
Nighthawk Potions
By far the best way to increase your field of vision at night is to use a Nighthawk potion — the medieval equivalent of night-vision goggles. You’d be surprised at just how much these potions can increase your vision.
Rather than only illuminating a small area, like a torch, Nighthawk potions light up the entire night sky as if it were daytime. Once you’ve downed the potion, you can easily mistake your surroundings for daytime. That’s how bright they’ll be.
Nighthawk potions are great for traveling long distances in the dark without using fast traveling. Traveling at night can be difficult because bandits, wolves, or other combatants could be lying in wait on the road.
NPCs don’t know when you’ve used a Nighthawk potion, so if you approach them at night without a torch, they may still think you’re sneaking about to rob them or worse. Hold a torch when approaching guards or NPCs to avoid suspicion.
The biggest caveat, however, is not to drink the Nighthawk potion during the day, or too close to daytime. With a Nighthawk potion in your system, the sun will become extra bright and can have a blinding effect on you. If you want to avoid this, try Waiting or Sleeping to kill some time.
Additionally, there are four variations of Nighthawk that you can make, depending on the quality of herbs you use when you brew the potion. You can brew Henry’s Nighthawk, Weak Nighthawk, Nighthawk, and Strong Nighthawk. The differences between each are as follows:
|
Potion |
Effect |
|---|---|
|
Henry’s Nighthawk |
You can see in the dark and your Energy will not decrease for 25 minutes. |
|
Weak Nighthawk |
You can see in the dark for 10 minutes. |
|
Nighthawk |
You can see in the dark and your Energy will decrease 25% slower for 15 minutes. |
|
Strong Nighthawk |
You can see in the dark and your Energy will decrease 50% slower for 20 minutes. |
How To Get Nighthawk Potions
There are three ways you can get Nighthawk potions. The easiest methods are to either brew them or buy them. However, you may get lucky and find them in the environment, such as in chests or forgotten locations like abandoned buildings.
You can get a free Nighthawk potion very early on by entering the Cottage Ruins by the pond where you were ambushed at the start of the game. Inside the cottage (which looks more like a hollowed-out oven) you’ll find the Nighthawk potion sitting on some planks on the counter.
Buying Nighthawk potions is probably the easiest way to obtain them. However, it’s not the best option if you’re short on Groschen. You can buy potions and potion recipes from Alchemists, but not all Alchemists carry every potion recipe or potion, so you may need to do some exploring.
The next best way to get Nighthawk potions is to brew them yourself. However, as mentioned before, you can’t brew them unless you know the recipe. Aranka, an NPC in the Nomad Camp, will also sell you this recipe.
Nighthawk Potion Recipe
You won’t automatically know the recipe for Nighthawk, so you’ll either need to buy a recipe from an Alchemist or brew it manually from memory. You can only add the recipe to your recipe book if you have earned or purchased it.
Before you start brewing, make sure you have the required ingredients on hand. You’ll need Chamomile, Belladonna, and Eyebright.
To brew Nighthawk, you need to follow these steps:
- First, pour water into the cauldron.
- Grind two handfuls of Eyebright using the mortar and pestle, then add it to the cauldron.
- Next, add one Belladonna to the cauldron.
- Now, boil the mixture for three turns. Don’t forget to use the Sandglass to keep track of turns.
- Next, grind one handful of Chamomile and add it to the cauldron.
Once you’ve completed those steps, you can pour the finished potion into a phial.
Torches
While not as effective as Nighthawk potions, Torches are one good way to see in the dark. Torches will illuminate the immediate vicinity, but they’re clunky, can break, and are easily spotted by enemies.
You’ll still need to hold a torch around NPCs at night to seem nonthreatening.
