Crafting the Plague Mask in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

The Prevention task in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 asks you to help contain a dangerous illness by creating a distinctive plague mask and protective outfit. This objective comes with a few moving parts: you’ll need to scavenge herbs, steal building materials, discover an alchemy recipe, and then put everything together at a workbench. This guide walks you through every step, with extra tips to make the sequence smoother and less confusing.

Overview of the Prevention Task

Prevention unfolds inside and around the monastery and its infirmary. Once the task begins, you’ll be asked to help produce a protective outfit that acts as early personal protective equipment for those treating the sick. In practical gameplay terms, this boils down to three main phases:

• Gathering ingredients for both the outfit and the essential oil.
• Unlocking and brewing an aromatic protection oil at an alchemy station.
• Assembling the plague mask and hood at a dedicated workbench.

You can tackle the steps in a mostly flexible order, but following a logical loop around the monastery grounds saves time and reduces risks from guards.

All Ingredients Required for the Plague Mask

Before roaming the monastery, it helps to know everything you’ll ultimately need. The game lets you mix and match certain herbs, but the final crafting screen checks for a specific bundle of items in your inventory.

In total, you’ll do a single herb run, a single stealth trip to the building site, a detour to the library, and a brief crafting session at the alchemy bench, followed by final assembly.

Planning an Efficient Route Around the Monastery

While you can wander in any order, organizing your route cuts down on backtracking and reduces the number of risky encounters with guards. A sensible sequence looks like this:

1. Visit the herb garden and gather all plant ingredients in one sweep.
2. Slip into the construction yard to grab rope and leather.
3. Enter the library to obtain the aromatic oil recipe.
4. Return to the infirmary to brew the essential oil and assemble the mask.

This loop naturally leads you back to the infirmary where the task began, keeping the narrative and your inventory aligned.

Gathering Herbs: Mint, Sage, Chamomile and Valerian

The herbal portion of the quest is surprisingly generous. A single garden area contains all the vegetation you need, though you still have to be careful to collect the correct quantities and not burn through them accidentally in other recipes.

Finding the Herb Garden

Near the infirmary, a path leads around the monastery grounds to a cultivated garden used by a local herbalist. Even though an NPC may be associated with the hut nearby, you generally can’t buy what you need; harvesting plants by hand from the beds is your only reliable option.

What to Pick and How Much

Once in the garden, prioritize the following:

• Mint and Sage (8 total) – you can collect any combination, such as 5 mint and 3 sage or the reverse. These will be requested when you assemble the mask.
• Chamomile (3) – needed later for the aromatic oil.
• Sage (1 extra) – specifically for the oil recipe, in addition to what you’re saving as mask stuffing.
• Valerian (1) – also used only for the oil.

Because the garden is lush, pick a bit more than the bare minimum if you can. Extra herbs are useful if you make a mistake during brewing or want to experiment with other potions later.

Inventory Management Tips

To avoid confusion later when you’re at the alchemy station:

• Keep at least eight units of mint and sage untouched in your inventory; think of them as locked for the mask turn-in.
• Set aside the exact quantities for the oil recipe in a mental checklist: 3 chamomile, 1 sage, 1 valerian.
• If you’ve already been collecting herbs earlier in the game, double-check quantities so you don’t leave yourself short by using them all in other potions.

Securing Rope and Leather from the Construction Site

The non-herbal materials come from an active building site near the monastery. Unfortunately, the workers and guards aren’t keen on you borrowing their supplies, so this part often involves stealth.

Locating Rope and Leather

Head toward the half-finished structures and cranes visible on the monastery’s outskirts. Within this area you can find:

• Flax Rope – typically lying coiled on the ground near a cart, scaffolding, or storage barrels. It’s easy to overlook, so pay attention to the floor.
• Leather (Pig or Cow Skin) – often stored on a table or in a nearby chest or shed. Any hide recognized by the game as leather will satisfy the requirement.

Because workers and guards patrol the area, watch their patterns before snatching what you need. Using distractions like thrown objects can buy you a few crucial seconds to grab the rope or open a chest.

Minimizing Suspicion

Monastery grounds often enforce rules against theft. If you want to minimize risk:

• Approach at dusk or during quieter hours to reduce foot traffic.
• Use line-of-sight blockers such as half-built walls, carts, and stacks of timber.
• Save before entering the danger zone so a failed attempt doesn’t cost you much time.

Once you have one rope and one acceptable hide in your inventory, your material requirements for the leather component are complete.

Unlocking the Aromatic Oil Recipe in the Library

To turn your herbs into a protective oil, you must first learn the correct alchemical formula. The monastery library holds the crucial text, neatly tying this practical task into your character’s scholarly activities.

Finding the Correct Book

Inside the library, look for a lectern or bookstand that stands out from the rows of shelves. A specific volume dealing with fragrant oils is placed on it. Interacting with this book opens a text you can leaf through.

Scroll toward the later pages to discover a section describing an oil specifically intended to ward off illness—this is the in-game justification for the mask’s fragrance. Once your character reads this passage, the recipe is automatically added to your alchemy notes, appearing under the title used in your apothecary book (often translated as something like “Oil of Protection from Illness”).

Why the Oil Matters to the Story

Historically, plague doctors and healers believed aromatic herbs and oils protected them from disease by purifying the air around them. The game draws on this real-world idea by having you create a scented blend to soak the inside of the mask. As the World Health Organization notes, before modern germ theory, practitioners often turned to strong smells and herbal fumigation as a way of combating mysterious illnesses, even though their understanding of pathogens was limited¹.

Brewing the Essential Oil at the Alchemy Bench

With the recipe unlocked, head to an alchemy bench. The infirmary contains a convenient station in a side room, which also happens to be where you’ll later assemble the outfit. Using this bench will keep everything close together.

Preparing to Brew

Before you start, confirm you have the following on you:

• Base oil (from the alchemy shelf at the station).
• Chamomile x3.
• Sage x1.
• Valerian x1.

These ingredients mirror the mixture implied in historical plague remedies, which often combined calming or aromatic herbs such as chamomile and sage².

Following the Recipe Steps

The precise button presses or controls depend on your platform, but the underlying logic of the recipe is the same. The game typically expects a sequence along these lines:

1. Add base oil to the cauldron.
2. Add three units of chamomile and boil the mixture for several cycles of the sandglass.
3. Grind one sage in the mortar, then add the ground herb to the cauldron.
4. Boil again for a shorter cycle to activate the sage.
5. Grind one valerian and add it last, without over-boiling afterward.
6. Pour the finished potion into a vial from the shelf.

When done correctly, your character creates a bottle of essential or aromatic oil recognized by the quest. If you mis-time the steps, you may produce a spoiled mixture, so pay attention to the sandglass and to which herbs you’ve already added.

Assembling the Plague Mask and Hood

With everything prepared, it’s time to turn ingredients into the iconic protective gear. The assembly step is simple but easy to overlook, as it uses a separate workbench rather than the alchemy table itself.

Finding the Crafting Workbench

In the infirmary’s back room where the alchemy station sits, look for a nearby table or workbench you can interact with. It may initially blend into the background. When you approach with all the necessary components, an on-screen prompt indicating that you can craft the mask or outfit will appear.

Supplying the Final Ingredients

When you activate the workbench, a menu will ask you to confirm delivery of the items required. You should be ready to hand over:

• 8 units of mint and/or sage (any combination).
• 1 leather hide (pig or cow skin, as recognized by the game).
• 1 coil of flax rope.
• 1 bottle of the aromatic/essential oil you just brewed.

Once these are delivered, the game handles the actual crafting animation, turning your loot into a finished plague mask and, in some quest variants, an accompanying hood or full outfit. When the sequence finishes, the objective for making the mask is considered complete, and quest dialogue updates accordingly.

Historical Inspiration Behind the Plague Mask

Although Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 plays with timelines and iconography, the concept of a plague mask is grounded in real European history. In the 17th century, some physicians wore beaked masks stuffed with aromatic substances—often herbs, spices, and vinegar-soaked cloth. The beak design was intended to keep foul air (miasma) away from the doctor’s nose and mouth³.

The game’s recipe, which emphasizes strong-scented herbs and infused oil, mirrors this idea. Sage, mint, chamomile, and valerian were historically used in European herbal medicine for both their fragrance and their perceived healing or calming properties. Modern research has confirmed that essential oils from some of these plants have measurable antimicrobial activity in laboratory tests², though this doesn’t mean they can replace modern infection control methods.

By tying your crafting task to these ingredients, the quest gives a grounded, semi-historical feel to what might otherwise be a simple fetch objective, blending authentic medieval herbal lore with engaging gameplay.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

A few pitfalls tend to catch players during this quest. Keeping them in mind can save you from repeated trips across the monastery.

• Using up the wrong herbs: Don’t burn through all your mint and sage in other potions. Keep at least eight units reserved for the final crafting step.
• Forgetting the extra sage for the oil: The oil recipe needs its own sage on top of what you’re keeping for the mask itself. Grab more than eight sage if you’re leaning heavily on that herb.
• Leaving without the Valerian: The garden provides everything, but Valerian can be easy to overlook. Double-check you have one in your inventory before you leave the beds.
• Missing the rope in the construction site: The flax rope often blends into the environment. Scan the ground near carts and barrels carefully, and don’t assume chests are the only loot.
• Trying to craft at the wrong station: Remember that brewing the oil happens at the alchemy bench, while assembling the mask occurs at the nearby workbench. They’re in the same room but serve different purposes.

Rewards and Gameplay Impact

Completing the Prevention task and crafting the plague mask isn’t just a cosmetic flourish. In quest terms, it demonstrates your character’s willingness to help protect the sick and those who treat them, which can influence story progression, faction relations, and how NPC healers respond to you. Historically, organized responses to outbreaks—including protective gear and quarantine—have been central to limiting disease spread, as documented in modern outbreak management guidance from agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)⁴ and the World Health Organization¹.

The game adapts this principle to a medieval setting: your work on the mask becomes a tangible contribution to containing a local crisis, reinforcing the grounded, historical tone that defines the series.

FAQ: Plague Mask and Prevention Task

Do I need exactly eight mint, or can I use sage instead?

You don’t need eight of a single herb type. The quest accepts any combination of mint and sage that adds up to eight units total. For example, 4 mint + 4 sage or 2 mint + 6 sage both work.

Can I buy the herbs instead of picking them?

In this quest, the most reliable approach is to harvest herbs directly from the garden near the herbalist’s hut. Even if an NPC is present, quest-critical mint, sage, chamomile, and valerian are best secured by picking them yourself from the beds.

Is stealing rope and leather mandatory?

Typically, the necessary rope and leather are found in the guarded construction area, where taking them counts as theft. If you want to minimize crime, plan a stealthy approach and avoid being seen removing the items. The quest is built around you appropriating these materials from the building site.

What happens if I mess up the aromatic oil recipe?

If you spoil the potion by mis-timing or adding ingredients incorrectly, you’ll need to gather the herbs again and retry. This is why it’s smart to collect a few extra plants in the garden in case of mistakes.

Does the plague mask give any special combat bonuses?

The primary function of the mask is narrative and quest-related rather than combat-focused. It’s meant to protect against disease within the story context, mirroring how historical plague gear was intended as protection for medical workers rather than as armor.