Kingdom Come Deliverance From The Ashes for Xbox/PC review: Engaging and rewarding

The From The Ashes DLC for Kingdom Come: Deliverance is slow-going, but it's both fun and rewarding in the long run.

By Brendan Lowry
last updated

Kingdom Come: Deliverance's first major DLC, From The Ashes, sees you rebuilding the fallen town of Pribyslavitz. Using money, management and patience, you can turn the rubble of the forgotten land into a thriving mini-city. The process isn't quick, but it is enjoyable and you get some great payoff for your investments.

Read: Kingdom Come Deliverance gets a 'Hardcore Mode'

From ruin to prosperity

From The Ashes begins when you travel to the city of Talmberg. The lord of the land, Sir Divish, will name you the bailiff in exchange for the help you lent him during the game's main story. But before you can start rebuilding Pribyslavitz, you need to cleanse the land of bandits first. There's a fair amount of combat in the introductory section of From The Ashes, so having your blade and armor at the ready is important.

Once you do this, the real meat of the expansion becomes accessible: constructing Pribyslavitz from the ground up. Everything from a church to produce shops to armorsmiths are structures and services that you can create, but workers, guards, and buildings all cost money — and quite a lot of it.

The high monetary costs are what drive the long-term experience with From The Ashes. As you travel Bohemia and build your wealth, you can set aside funding for Pribyslavitz. 100 coins here, 500 coins there. It's a game of saving, building up a small fortune over time in order to use as an investment. It's slow, but it gives the player something to work towards...and it isn't without rewards.

Sticking with the renovations and will eventually pay you your money back, and then some. If you put in the effort, you can turn Pribyslavitz into a profitable location that can help fund the cost of buying and maintaining late game items. What I found myself relishing in, though, was the fact that I had turned a land of despair into one of growth and opportunity. That pride is priceless.

Not without faults

Overall, this expansion is great, but it does have some problems. For one, it's disappointing that despite all of the hard work the player needs to put into the town, you don't get to own a house in it. There were already very few options for permanent living in Kingdom Come prior to From The Ashes, and this was a missed opportunity.

Another thing that's unfortunate is that there's no real reason to go back to Pribyslavitz after the fact. It offers goods and services, but they are all things you can obtain in the rest of the game's towns or cities. I would have liked to see something unique to Pribyslavitz only.

Final thoughts on KCD: From the Ashes for Xbox/PC

While there's not much in Pribyslavitz that's worth returning to, rebuilding it and reaping the monetary benefits is a great experience.

Pros:

  • Excellent long-term gameplay.
  • Very rewarding.
  • Satisfying to see through.

Cons:

  • No player house.
  • Lack of unique items.

From The Ashes is available for $9.99 on both Xbox One and Steam. The base game is available for $49.99.

Brendan Lowry
Brendan Lowry

Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. You'll find him doing reviews, editorials, and general coverage on everything Xbox and PC. Follow him on Twitter.

4 Comments
  • Oh yes! Count me in! I am 172 hours into Kingdom Come Deliverance, 102k hard earned Groschen, just learned Alchemy and haven't even completed the My Friend Timmy quest! Poor Sir Radzig will die of old age before I return to report the location of the bandit camp. It will be a while before I get to building anything in Pribyslavitz but by then, I'll probably have well over 200k Groschen.
  • Anyone know if they actually patched this game to be fun? I bought it day one and played it for about 20 hours. It was horrible. So many bugs and balance issues. Lockpicking was a big issue for me and a lot of others (on the console seemed fine on PC). And so many crashes that caused me to have to replay areas because of their horrible save system. It just wasn't a very fun game. I haven't gone back to it for fear that it hasn't been fixed.
  • Yeah bought it last month and just finished. I had a few crashes. Maybe 4 or 5 in about 50 hours. No worse than skyrim was. Some amusing bugs but no quest breakers. It takes a while to build up skills so it feels clunky to begin with but by the end I was killing and lock picking with impunity!
  • There actually are unique items in the DLC. But you need to craft them of course.