Kingdom Come Deliverance: If You Can’t Beat ’em Main Quest Walkthrough

If You Can’t Beat ’em is the 17th main quest in Kingdom Come Deliverance (KCD). This walkthrough will guide you through the fastest way to solve the If You Can’t Beat ’em Main Quest.

If You Can’t Beat ’em triggers automatically after completing All that Glisters Main Quest.

This walkthrough assumes that you captured Jezhek of Ronow alive in All that Glisters and interrogated him in the prison cell.

There are multiple ways to solve this quest. When it starts you’ll be tasked with going to Sasau and inquiring about where the crimps meet. Then you can either fight the 5 wrestlers behind the tanner’s house, talk to Miller Simon and do his side quest “Thick as Thieves – Simon”, or speak to the wounded loudmouth in the monastery (but you have to do Johanka’s quest first to heal him and this is glitchy at the time of writing). This walkthrough concentrates on the first method as it’s the fastest, most straight-forward and doesn’t require you to take on any side quests.

Ask the Sasau Bailiff about the crimps

All of the objectives & people you need to talk to during this quest are marked on the map. When the quest starts you can talk to 3 people in Sasasu: the Bailiff and the two innkeepers. I’ll show you the fastest way. You only need to talk to the bailiff and can skip the others.

Go talk to the Sasau Bailiff. At day he’s sitting in the house of the Sasau Scribe by the market square (Quest Marker “A”).

Pick the dialogue “I hear they’ve been recruiting bandits here” and he will tell you to talk to the Sasau Tanners.

Talk to the Sasau Tanners

Go to the tanner’s house outside town (south-west) and question him. He will tell you of wrestlers fighting behind his house at night.

Optional: You can persuade him with the strength dialogue (swords icon) to get an optional objective to take care of the brawlers. Whether you do this or not is irrelevant for progressing the quest. You can challenge the wrestlers either way. However, if you can pull it off, you will get 95 Groschen for free in the next step.

Take care of the brawlers who meet in the evenings behind the tanner’s house.

This objective won’t officially show if you failed the persuasion with the tanner, but you can talk to the brawlers anyway. You must challenge them to a fight. Go talk to their leader called “Punch”. He will tell you to defeat the other 4 fighters first before you can fight him. So in total you must defeat 5 people in a fistfight. After defeating “Punch”, he will be unconscious for 1-2 minutes. Wait for him to stand up again and talk to him! Pick dialogue “Defeat of Punch” and he will tell you that the crimps meet up in the church at night and mark it on the map for you. That’s all the info needed to finish the quest. The first 4 enemies aren’t too bad but Punch has a lot of health and Stamina. The fight can last 10 minutes or longer. Just keep attacking him so he doesn’t have a chance to hit you at all. He blocks most attacks but eventually you get lucky and land a few hits. Just don’t rush it, every hit you land depletes his health a little. Always keep some Stamina, this way you don’t lose health when being hit.

See the exact location of the brawlers below:

If you persuaded the tanner in the last step, you will officially get this objective in your quest log. When you talk to “Punch”, select the speech dialogue (white icon) to convince him to double-cross the tanner. He has speech stat 0 so you’ll always win. Then you can return to the tanner to get 95 Groschen from him, that’s free money for you! When you return brawlers don’t give them their share of the money, just fight them until you defeat “Punch”. Then question him when he’s conscious again (as explained earlier) to learn of the crimp’s meeting place.

Go to the crimp’s meeting place and try to find out from them the location of the camp

Advance time until night (22:00 – 4:00). Go to the church in the south-west of Sasau. When there’s a light in the church’s window go pray at the shrine inside and a cutscene will trigger. The crimps will arrive and give you a task to proof you’re worthy of joining them. Exhaust all dialogue options and accept their task. When they leave they lock you into the church but leave the key under the door so you can open the door with the key, no need to lockpick it.

This concludes the If You Can’t Beat ’em Main Quest and triggers “Poverty, Chastity and Obedience“.

Next Up: Poverty, Chasity and Obedience Main Quest

For more Walkthroughs, check out the full Kingdom Come Deliverance Walkthrough (All Main Quests).