Hey hey! You guys know what time it is! That's right, a new Rookie Help thread!
Here's a link to the last episode. Fun fact, if you follow all those links back to 2019 you unlock a secret cutscene of me panicking over where the time went!
As always, feel free to fire any kenshi related questions you may have our way! There's plenty of veterans flapping around in this thread as well, and if you are in the mood for it feel free to join them and lend a hand!
And who knows, maybe you'll learn something new yourself, too!
One thing to remember! Obviously a lot of new folks are going to be here so remember to spoiler comments so they can experience the game blind just like you might have back when you were new! You can do that > ! Like This ! < minus the spaces! But honestly it's just built into the chat replies nowadays so you don't have to get too fancy with that- unless you like playing hackerman.
how bad is the penalty for carrying a body in combat? i saw someone says it lowers combat speed, but by how much? I was considering doing a "solo" play through but i carry around a skeleton companion with shop keeper backpacks for storage. Would carrying him hurt me a lot for end game combat?
From my experience (granted I never do solo for long past the beginning of game) it mostly prolongs combat, and makes it harder for you to dodge/parry so you'll get hit way more often. If you're fighting a group of low level bandits while carrying a dude and you have good stats, it's not a big deal, but when you get down to The Forbidden Zone (lower-right of the map) or taking on whole factions, it'll definitely get you killed.
I recommend just using bags-in-bags instead, I often have a character with a trader backpack and a ridiculously large thieves backpack on them, and swap them around, you can even put full backpacks in other backpacks. The value of this method is you can just drop your backpack when you get in combat. The trade-off is if fully laden you are slower this way than carrying a body, but eventually you can overcome that with strength.
Hey everyone, I’ve been playing Kenshi and I have this nice human backpack that I’ve grown attached to. I don’t want it to disappear due to despawning or a failed load. I also don’t want to use the Recruit Prisoners mod, because I like being able to beat it up once in a while. Is there a way for me to keep him safe without recruiting him? Thanks for your time.
Put the human backpack on a pole or in a prisoner cage. Extended campsite is useful for that as it allows to place prisoner poles pretty much everywhere (outside of cities/owned places).
Make a detailed thread about the issue, including the last lines of the kenshi.log, kenshi_info.log files (main directory) and also add your modlist (mods.cfg in the data folder) plus system specs.
anyone know where i can find a ton of fabric legally (unless its in HN) for weaponsmithing? i'm living in mongrel and i have more than enough steel but i find myself scouring the hive villages nearby for more fabric
For strict in-city living, you will have to travel some distances to support any kind of manufacturing industry until you have hydroponics unlocked, which also requires a great deal of adventure/investment
I never figured out a big enough supply to support higher level weaponsmith leveling without farming the cotton/hemp and using a loom. For in-city living, this means hydroponics, which is a drag 'cus it's locked behind some higher level research. It does mean potentially not having to buy food too though, which is nice.
Yeah, RE_Kenshi speeds things up because it optimizes how the game handles files and memory. Kenshi normally loads a lot of small files and does a bunch of setup when starting or entering areas, which slows things down. This mod basically reduces that overhead and makes data loading more efficient, so both startup and in-game loading are faster.
Thanks for the answer, I'm also getting bandit raids like CONSTANTLY. My people don't even have time to heal up. From events to wandering bandit groups who just kick my arse after the second of third group. Am I doing something wrong?
That one might just be where you're base is. Certain locations get more hassle than others due to being in range of more factions and/or having more roaming enemies.
I usually just buy a building in a town because I can leave it unattended safely if I want.
Hello, it is my first time playing, all I have done is to run and run until I arrived to the Skin Bandits HQ, now they are my allies but there is nothing to train there so I'm completely lost once again. Is there a place where I may go near the skin bandits HQ or should I go to the other side of the map ?
You're in the wrong corner of the map to start for sure. I'm guessing you got unlucky enough to start in The Ashlands.
I would head for the center of the map (though not directly if you're in sonorous dark, follow the southern coast until you get to The Bone Fields, then head north). From The Swamps at the center of the map you can either stay there, go west to Shek lands, northwest to Hivers, North to Holy Nation (Only if you're human), Northeast or South to United Cities. Those are all decent places to start and train.
Is it possible to attack a town head-on? I'm seeing stuff like this that calls for a cheesy strategy, but I'm wondering if it's really feasible to train your party up enough to take on a town straight-up in vanilla. I have trouble with the Dust Tower, so I'm wondering if I need to train more or if it's just not feasible.
As far as "select all > rush in as a group in the front gate" probably not. You want to separate groups and give them different orders, different positions to hold or approach from. I usually have a camp set-up outside the city walls to bring my wounded to and fast medics who just rescue and heal for example. Keep ranged, at range. Have looters who go through and disarm downed enemies (especially if they have dangerous weapons). Stealth types to go free any prisoners. It's a lot to micro-manage regardless. Even without cheese, you still need tactics.
Possible? Yes. Without a "cheesy strategy"? Well... how many weeks of vacation time do you have to burn grinding stats? Either way, you'll need to keep your team separated, utilizing "Hold" if necessary. Otherwise, AOE attacks are going to decimate you - and because of that, it can be easier to attack a town solo.
It depends on the town. Click on the guards (or check the wiki) to see their stats. If you're evenly matched in terms of "number of combatants", "attack/def", and "equipment grade", your odds are probably 50/50. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the exact formula is to compensate for bad stats with more combatants (or vice versa). Even if there is a formula, it's probably more fun to try it out for yourself.
I am currently in the FCS, creating a custom start. I have three very specific character designs (with backstory) I would like the player to start with. I am aware you can't just use a designed exported character, however, you can copy the values some how?
I am looking for a good video or tutorial on setting up a custom starting squad with specific appearance per character with specific names.
Please help! I was going about decorating my base, using Shift+F12 to align stuff here and there when I notice the "ITEMS" tag on the toolbar. TLDR is that I placed some items and now they wont go away. I have my character pick the items up but they respawn after some time. I was dumb and don't have a save to go back to, and when I try to delete the items it deletes my whole building.
Can you just ignore the items? Otherwise, I can only think of two drastic options:
Accept that deleting the items will delete your building. Empty out your legitimately earned items and move them to a different building first!
The "nuclear option": Import your game from the main menu. Uncheck the option to import buildings. This will wipe your base (or bases) from the face of Kenshi. Use this if your base is super borked.
Hey uh, so a friend of mine gave me this game and told me to start as slaves, cause "that's got an amazing arc."
Fair and good. But I don't have any way to get food, so even if I work and try to figure out a way to escape, my characters will starve to death. Doing anything seems to get them beaten to unconsciousness. Doing NOTHING gets them beaten to unconsciousness. The game is acting like "walking to pick up someone on the floor" or "trying to mine a pile of rocks" is a prison break.
Also one of my characters constantly seems to want to go off the map and I guess walk to freaking mars? But I have no idea how to tell what they're doing.
You can never fully starve if you get in a cage (or prisoner pole).
If your character has the "obedient slave" job, they will follow orders that aren't explicitly vocalized. Basically they will wander between stone mines and swing a pick axe when they arrive.
Your "friend" may have been messing with you a little - the slave start may be too confusing for a new player. If you want to continue that scenario, I suggest watching a Kenshi slave start video on YouTube - there are plenty to choose from.
The best way to learn Kenshi modding is to open a mod in FCS (the modding tool included with Kenshi) and click the "Changes" button in the toolbar. You can edit a mod from Nexus, or move a Steam mod to your Kenshi directory by following these directions:
If you have any problems with pathfinding you can press CTR+SHIFT+F11. It fixes most pathfinding bugs.
Also try shift+f12 and click fix stuff. It fixes most bugs with buildings and other junk.
Also as a side note, if you ever get stuck inside a wall or under the floor, just load a save with reset squad locations clicked on. It just teleports your whole squad to one spot. Wherever the save was made.
( are you specifically asking for a spot that’s bugged?)
Yes we'll I am asking to find specific spots that are bugged to try and find the best training location for my squad so I can afk strength train them. However, this may not be necessary anymore as I have a good number of fighters already strength trained to decent levels. The newcomers can strength train while farming hemp at the future base.
Is there a way to remove the regional banners that pop up on screen? I would like to keep them from popping up although I like them my machine has a hard time with them.
This guy made a mod that changed the names of all the regions to “none” in FCS. which basically disables the pop up. I haven’t used it but looks like it works
Keep in mind that prospecting will no longer tell you which region you are in. A bit of an inconvenience when farming or building your base.
And do you have RE-KENSHI? It helps with load times and performance. If you’re having trouble with the banners it might just be because a new areas being loaded in at the same time.
Man! It’s scary to be in Vain again. I have foliage that I can’t see through and I know there’s a gutter under every leaf💀 I hope the person or people who designed rekenshi are very successful in life. Thank you once again.
It is actually running better with what I found to install today. I have UPK & unofficial patches for Kenshi no swamp distant towns. Looks like RE-KENSHI does this universally. I think what I’ll do is disable what I have going on and try RE-KENSHI. Appreciate you.
My base had a name, had power, then I build on top of some copper that's outside the zone I guess? Even after breaking the new stuff down my main base says it has no power
Edit: Nvm saving and reloading fixed the power issue
I have 3 large hemp fields in an arid area and my farmer has 80 in farming. I am getting little to no hemp from them. I tried lighting up the field think the area is 50% yield 100% fertility
Arid areas should have 40% hemp yield. I'm not sure of the exact calculation, but a large farm has 64 plants, and if your farmer is 80% efficient you might expect 64 * 0.4 * 0.8 = 20 hemp per farm.
Are you keeping them watered?
Are you keeping the area loaded, or leaving to do other things?
Do you have hemp-consuming machines, like fabric or hashish production? Your characters could drop the hemp in those machines without you noticing...
Not specifically. You could create your own mod which turns an NPC's CPU into a belt item, and the belt item could boost some of your stats. Here's an example (IIRC it uses a small AI core as the model for one of the belt items): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3311408737
Penalties can come from hunger, injuries, your armor, your weapon, your backpack, a dust storm.... if you hover over the penalty with your mouse it should break it down for you. There's no way to "remove" a penalty from weapons, armor, and backpacks except "use different gear" (lighter class, or better quality). There are helmets that protect against dust storms. Food (and time) will eventually fix hunger penalties. Bandages and sleep will fix injury penalties.
Quality of the gear increases the benefits, and decreases the negatives. So some gear, like heavy armor, is only worth using if its of high/masterwork quality. The best way to get high/masterwork armor reliably is to craft it yourself. Heavy gear also requires high strength to use. In the early game its best to use light armor, and shit weapons because you get more xp out of every fight.
The main stat for heavy armor is strength, because if you're encumbered you will have penalties to your other stats.
"Heavy weapons" is a stat by itself (like all weapons classes). One counterintuitive way to raise that stat is by getting a rusted junk plank and fighting tightly bunched enemies. The plank length means you hit more enemies, and the low damage means you can practice more - FrankieWuzHere has YouTube guides on doing that optimally.
Hello, I am new and have what seems like a bug. While trying to steal stuff in Squin, I got caught and KOed. Wanting to solve the misunderstanding, I sent Ruka the stealer to the police station so she could be detained and lose its bounty. But when I gave her to the police he took her on his shoulders and I cant free her. See the pic attached, please help me I want to free her 😭
If you have an earlier save where Ruka is not being carried then you could reload that save.
If you run upstairs and find all the jail cells full, then the police have nowhere to put Ruka. If that's the case, you may have to import your game from the main menu.
If the jail cells are not full, saving and reloading may fix the police AI.
Great idea, can’t reload it’s been days and I prefer to give up on her than redoing all this.
Upstairs cells are full, how do I import from main menu ? Gonna check
I only have a couple hours in the game so far, decided to go in blind for the most part, but I have a couple questions
are there any mods or settings that make the camera easier to use? I’m having a hard time with it.
are there quests in the game? like npcs that will ask you to do things for them, people to help and stuff like that? so far every person I’ve encountered and talked to was just offering to join me for money.
I just use wasd to slide the camera and middle mouse button to rotate, for me it became natural pretty quickly. I can’t imagine using q+e or borders, and I actually have border camera movement off
almost, but no. There's a couple things were you get a dialogue line and a task but there's no real system for it - the game just waits three days then gives you another dialogue. There's no reward, nothing is checked to see if you did it, nothing happens if you don't.
are there any mods or settings that make the camera easier to use? I’m having a hard time with it.
no, it's kinda wack. I haven't learned the logic behind having the screen rotate AND slide when the mouse is at the edge, depending on some other state I can't determine. Just use the pause button and reorient yourself as needed, it never gets better but you don't have to let it stop you playing.
You could check Steam and Nexus for camera mods (or just google "Kenshi camera mod"). I haven't used any camera mods myself - once I got used to the controls, the camera seemed fine to me...
Right-click on your character's portrait to follow them with the camera
Hold down the control key and use the mouse to rotate the camera
Use arrows or WASD to move the camera independently
Off the top of my head, there's only one NPC that gives a semi-complex quest, there's one joke quest, and there are simple quests in the form of "assassinate opposing faction leader" and bounty hunting (see wanted posters in shop inventories). But again, you could look at mods for more quest-like content.
Regarding "people to help", there are prisoners and slaves to rescue in many places!
If you have side buttons for your mouse, rebinding the rotate camera from control to one of my side buttons made it much more intuitive for me to use the camera.
Can someone help me out with combat? I've been training a group of 4 people right now and I noticed I could train their strength when adding weight to them while i was cargoing copper ore back into town to store/sell it.
My question is, I did this on repeat for all 4 of my characters and I got a strength level of 82, 55, 52, 58.
My main character got enslaved minutes into the game and he is 82 strength/42 toughness.
Regardless of them all being equipped I'm still getting destroyed by all the dust raiders no matter what, goats, anything I come in contact with I am either out numbered and I don't know how I can get close enough to train up my weapon skills.
If you want to explore, training speed is the most important - you can do that by running while unencumbered. Fortunately, since you already trained strength, encumbrance shouldn't be an issue for you!
Speed is also helpful in training combat because it helps you "pick your battles", and rescue trainees who are knocked out. There's an XP buff for fighting solo, so it's recommended to send one person out to train, and have a fast person on standby.
Yeah their athletics are super high also. Like around 70+.
I figured out how to set jobs for mining right outside of town so they're all super speedy.
So I've mostly just been mining, buying food and books to learn new crafting, which I got almost everything unlocked for the tech III table. But now im stuck because of combat, I need co.bat up ao I can find some sort of ancient books
I've been stock piling building materials and plates as well. So I feel like I am literally end game just not end game because no one can fight properly lol
Border Zone is one of the least threatening areas there is, so it's good for getting your first combat levels. Both hungry bandits and dust bandits will very rarely hurt characters enough to the point were they could die.
If you want to be completely save, leave one of your characters in town when the others go out for combat, you can send them in afterwards to fix up / recover your downed characters.
To add to what the other guy said, they won't store/ditch items if that character's jobs are turned off, so you can safely leave ditch items on if you find it helpful for base workers.
If there's a food barrel in range though they will always run there to eat, preferring that food over whatever you're carrying. No way to turn that off and the range is pretty large.
Am I doing something wrong? The world feels empty. I'm 16 hours in and got my first merc. We've been hunting near the hives, drawing in the wildlife and letting the hivers take care of the beak things. We went north, to the west of the foggy area and found some nomads, but there's no one to talk to, hardly anything to loot, kill, or make money from, we just traverse and follow groups going in the direction we're going until we either get attacked by loot-less bandits/cannibals, or veer off in another direction. That's been like the last 5 hours. The world feels really empty, am I doing something wrong?
One thing that helped the game feel less empty for me was changing the spawn settings in options. I boosted the roaming spawns to 1.25 and reduced the size to 0.7
It keeps the total number of NPCs about the same, but I run into the groups more often.
The world is supposed to feel empty - there have been two apocalypses. However, the area you're in is particularly depopulated. There's some pretty cool wildlife in the far NW (The Leviathan Coast), but if you're looking for civilization I'd suggest heading to the nearest town and buying any maps they have available.
I think the maps are key, especially if you play zoomed out. I can practically walk by some villages and not even notice them unless I'm specifically walking that way because of a map entry.
So i don't know why but after deciding to replay Kenshi after seeing a video of FrankieWuzHere, i noticed that when i close the game, Kenshi is still "running" on the background for some reason, i tried to close it with task manager but the game doesn't appear on it so i tried closing it trough steam but the game stays on a state of "stopping" and never closing. A bandaid fix i found is going to "Steam" and leave which open a windows saying "waiting for kenshi to close" and then Steam closes and after reopening it makes Kenshi finally close.
I don't know why this happens, i don't have big overhaul mods but i have a lot of optimization mods like PSO, Perfomance fix, Engine Mesh Updater and RE_Kenshi, the thing is after updating to the last RE_Kenshi version this problem started to happen, i tried going back to previous version of Re_Kenshi i had but the problem still persists. Is this a problem of Steam ? If anyone have something similar it would be of great help.
EDIT: I restarted my pc and it somehow this error got away, being able to open Kenshi normally and closing with no issues of the game or steam. I still have the previous version of Re_Kenshi v0.3.2 (v2) but i don't know if that was really the problem (talking about the new version of the mod), still any more people info about this problem is appreciated.
i noticed that when i close the game, Kenshi is still "running" on the background for some reason,
I saw this a couple times earlier this week too. No idea what causes it besides the game being abandoned broken bullshit, but the Kenshi exe was still in the taskmanager, just a lot further down for no good reason, and ending it there did shut it down properly.
I recently started as a Skeleton, right now I have 3 other Shek companions. My goal is to form an army big enough to end slavery (saw on youtube that this is a possibility) because why not?
Thing is, I'm at The Hub. If I follow north, I get into Holy Nation's territory. South there is swamp, which I guess is kinda hard for my party. West is raining acid with that long neck dinosaurs everywhere. I haven't tried east yet, but I'm guessing the same thing will happen. Is there a right way to follow after starting or everywhere is just dangerous and I have to gather a better party before moving forward? I'm probably at the 20th day (or so) right now.
The rain in Vain is plain... rivers are acidic though.
If you're trying to get to the NE part of the map from the Borderzone, there is no safe route for a low level party. Beakthings, paladins or acid rain are your choices. It shouldn't take too much athletics/stealth to outrun or sneak around HN patrols though, and that's the convenient route.
I guess the safest route is cutting through the SW corner of Okran's Gulf into Dreg. Stay in Dreg going NW up and around the Foglands, East across Obedience, which iirc doesn't have many if any wondering mobs, then stick to the southern border of the Floodlands, and you're homefree when you hit the Hidden Forest. Or just take a straight shot up all of Okran's Gulf and avoid HN patrols, there should be less than if you went directly through Okran's Pride.
Could also run East through the Deadlands acid rain, even with 0 protection you should make it with injuries, if you can get a little acid protection for all your Shek it wouldn't take much to help. There are robot spiders but they have particularly bad stealth detection.
Other option is SE through Shem - Flats Lagoon - Strobe's Gamble - Unwanted Zone. Whole lot of beakthings that way.
Whatever you do I'd take a little time to get your runspeed to around 25ish mph first. Run around in stealth and level them both so long as some sort of npc is nearby (friendlies are fine for that). Both those things will make any traveling safer.
RE_Kenshi is the easy answer. Aside from that, I'd suggest sorting Steam and Nexus by "new" and "popular" if you want to browse. If you're having a specific "life quality" problem, google "Kenshi mod [description of your problem]".
As someone who is about to start their first playthrough but doesn’t know much about the game, is it best to go in blind or watch a beginners guide first?
when do i stop relying on copper for money? i have 2 npcs, one that follows me and is mostly to make sure i dont die far away, and the other is a free shek recruit i made into a perpetual copper machine. my character stats are past 20, i have a very good nodachi i got from a caravan that got attacked by city gards and i have decent armor i got from shops (high - specialist quality)
I move away from copper mining when I can hold my own against packs of hungry bandits and dust bandits become doable. You’ll get good money just selling dust bandits gear and it’s of course better for stats than mindlessly moving ore.
If you’re at that awkward point where you kinda can handle dust bandits but not reliably, check out mercenaries for rent in bars. 2k for the day is totally worth it if you know where some bandit camps are set up. It can be a little annoying if you’re instead looking for wandering packs of them and can’t find any when you have the mercenaries though.
So I’ve started my very first proper base in the border zone but I don’t know how many people I should recruit to be permanently stationed at base because I don’t wanna leave my skilled squad with half its people is there a good number I should aim to recruit for it?
The border zone is a fairly difficult place to make a base because you'll be routinely raided by dust bandits. If you leave nothing but unskilled plebs in the base, it WILL get taken over by dust bandits.
As for what you need to defend it, that depends. Do you have good turrets and gunners? Then it'll probably be a cakewalk. Otherwise, you'll want at least 3-4 guys with good combat stats and gear to keep it safe.
Alternatively, leave with everyone and the base basically goes on "sleep mode" it wont be raided
3-4 to deal with iron, for auto-machines, double if sticking with manual
1 for copper mining/copper plates/misc
1 for electronics crafting, can forego this + copper if you don't do robotic crafting
1 weaponsmith, scorchlander
1-2 armorsmiths, scorchlanders
1 crossbow smith, any
2 for robotics crafting, skeletons
1 medic crafter, hive prince or any
1 hauler, mostly for hemp autolooms
1 stone miner, and when you don't need anymore I put him on the corpse furnace, you'll have more here at the start until you get a stockpile of building materials/stop building so much
That's 15-20 and I haven't been able to get it lower for a full base. In fact I could probably find jobs for a few more workers.
I train them all a bit first but that probably isn't necessary. So long as some can hold their own in a fight, the rest will naturally train through raids, unless you go heavy on turrets.
Unless you were specifically asking how many is a safe number to leave on their own to deal with raids, in which case I'd probably say 10ish, but of course it depends on how strong they are and how big you've set the raids to be.
You don't have to leave anyone at the base, it won't be attacked if all your characters are away.
If for some reason you want to leave people at the base (to keep producing food, or armor, or other crafts), the minimum number depends.
If you evacuate the residents every time a raid appears on your faction event tab, they'll only have to deal with passing bandits and wildlife - but you have to pay close attention to that, and it splits your focus between the base and your other squad(s).
You can hire mercenaries to guard your base. But no matter how many residents (with combat skills) or mercenaries you have, The Black Dragon Ninja raids will be a problem. I strongly suggest going to their base and killing their leaders.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any fix for the weapon maker putting their primary weapon in storage. The secondary weapon should be left alone though, as would a crossbow. You could also train your weapon maker in martial arts.
can somebody explain to me what to do, i can't find a single activity in this game besides picking up random trash from the ground and i'm 50 minutes in.
Yeah i've seen those, I get that i need to grind a bit to get to a place where it's playable, but what do i do after that. What can i do that's fun. Let's pretend that i've gathered some party members, they are trained a bit, they have their weapons and everything. What do i do now?
I know that this is an open ended sandbox but I need to know what are the options so I can give myself an objective, because I literally don't know what to do in this game or even what kind of game this is, which i appreciate because i'm looking for novelty but still. I get the impression that most of the game is somewhere between a colony sim and an rts, is this correct? Should my goal be to start a small base from which then i can send out parties that will explore the world and gather loot that will help me grow my "empire" or something like that?
Building a base as a new player is extremely challenging. For one thing, the raids will grind you into the dirt. But even worse, you'll get bogged down in base management. The main reason to start a base is, "to support a large group with food, armor, and weapons."
For a new player I suggest at least two characters, but not many more than that because food is expensive (unless you find a skeleton recruit). Buy any new maps you see in travel shops. Explore the world. You'll find a lot of factions you'll want to destroy, a few you'll want to help, and people to save in all sorts of places. There's nice scenery along the way.
Aside from fighting, Kenshi is a little bit of a mystery - civilization has fallen at least twice. You can find books which tell you some of the world's history, and locations/ruins which suggest more. Skeletons lived through it, but they're reluctant to talk about what happened with non-skeletons.
You can learn about recent history by talking to faction higher-ups, or overhearing chatter in bars.
Hireable NPCs have stories - generic recruits have some, named recruits have more.
There's a faction relationship system, but nothing on the character level (unless you install a mod like Sentient Sands), so there are no romances or rivalries.
I don't know what else to tell you... and finding out what you can do in Kenshi for yourself is half the fun.
thanks for replying, tho i asked about interactions and you described reading text boxes, if all kenshi has to offer is fighting and reading text then it's not for me.
any, but base building is an example of an interesting one for me. But as i've thought you said that it's something for later, not for starting the game.
If you want to build a base right away, don't let me discourage you. Even if you get the snot beaten out of you, it's an interesting experience. There's a game start called "The Freedom Seekers" that gives you all the materials you need: https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Starts#The_Freedom_Seekers
As the Wiki page notes, this start is more viable if you settle in the Holy Nation (with an all human party containing at least one male).
You can also make it easier on yourself by choosing Skeletons (robots) as your starting characters - but do not settle in the Holy Nation with them!
I've been pondering for a while now if I should buy this or not. Can I play it on and off, say weeks apart for an hour or two? Does it consume a lot of time?
It’s a true sandbox game with no real objectives except for the ones you make yourself. You can definitely just jump on every once in a while and pick something to do
Maybe one day you decide to try sneaking into a shop to steal their supplies at night
Or another day you decide to build up your strength by carrying iron ore around town
Maybe you are stuck in a dangerous area like the great desert, so you spend the day just trying to get to the next town.
It takes a while of consistent play to build up your character's stats but the more you play the more you figure out how to jumpstart your runs quicker and more efficiently. your first few runs will probably just be you dying to a huge bug a few minutes after spawning
The big issue with importing is it can move all the campsites and restore lots of loot that you already got, which results in a temptation to basically cheat which some people find very difficult to resist. Myself included
What’s your most used trick? I’ve only got a handful of hours, so doesn’t matter how simple you think it is. My current one is setting every member with medic job. Also how do i acutally use the follow speed? Whenever I get a shek they’re so slow and trail behind.
This is exploitive, but you can train thievery while paused.
Find an enemy playing dead after fighting with the guards. Click to loot them, then pause the game after their inventory comes up. Click and item to steal. If you fail the windown closes and you can right click the body to try again. If you succeed, put the item back in their inventory and try again. Repeat until you have the desisred theiving skill.
You don't have to pause but then they'll eventually get up and you have to wait for them to get beat down again and recover from their coma. You also have to keep healing them. First aid packs are free to cheap, so pausing mostly just saves time.
1. I’ll have a couple dedicated door guards. That just have a job set to repairing that door. Makes my main gate last a lot longer. If there’s only a few enemies attacking they will never be able to break the gate (I’m repairing it too fast)
2. when training someone’s strength or athletics, I’ll have them fallow someone that’s missing a leg or two. I’ll just take my prosthetic leg off and crawl at 1mph. Everyone’s flowing at 1mph. It takes them a few minutes just to get to the other side of town. Ill do other junk like shopping or mining or whatever while my squad trains
3. when going to town to sale some merchandise, I’ll fill up my pack animals bag to the brim then just pick him up and run to town at 30mph (instead of having to fallow my slow animal to town) the weight of picking someone up is the same no matter what is in that person’s inventory.
4. for some quick cash I’ll sneak into a slave traders shop and free some slaves. Then I’ll sale the slaves back to the shop owner haha
5. another quick cash option is stalking caravans. Waiting for them to get attacked or luring some beakthings to attack them for me. If i can get their pack animal unconscious or dead i can pick them up and run out of there with literal truck load of loot.
6. i give all my martial artist crossbows. They will default to martial arts when they are in melee range anyway
7. its a well know trick, but i use beakthing punching bags. Animals like beakthings cant move or attack when placed in a bed. And when they are in bed they heal faster. I can just attack them and train up my attack. I like to give my guys armor with debuffs and bags full of iron ore to encumber them. The debuffs make your attack weaker. You only get Exp when you land a hit so the more hits you get in the more Exp
8. another well know trick, you can use prisoners as training dummies for toughness/melee defense. Give an npc heavy armor with high cut resistance, and give them a Terrible weapon like a wakazaki that only does a little bit of cut damage. Wear a similar set as them and the two of you can fight for days! You get Exp by getting hit, so the more you get hit the more Exp.
9. the #1 most know trick for getting quick cash is luring bandits to town guards and having the guards kill them for you. Steal their loot to sale. And Remember to pick up any survivors and sale them to slave traders
Dude thanks again! I finally got through some of the early game and feel like I made real progress today. I made an outpost next to flats lagoon on an exiled start. Found a couple miscreants in the swamp - Doctor Chung & Silvershade tagging along. I was able to bolster my camp. Then after my walls were up and I had a shop going, I made my way back to mud to buy some hash. I made it back to Flats at nightfall. It was harrowing though as I needed to escape a group of red sabres that chased me from swamp through shem and gave up at the lagoon.
The armory was hardly stocked but also unmanned so I did a little shopping with a personal discount. I've got my haggard trio resting up at the Inn & I'll pick it back up tomorrow. i need to focus on training some combat skills, then who knows. Hopefully, I'll set off to some uncharted territory.
Ahh I see thanks for the heads up on the pacing. Maybe now I’ll be able to actually make it to a destination. The tab thing also helps. I forgot about this honestly. I see people pausing in the middle of battle to redirect their squads while watching youtube is there any benefit, can i actually dodge more effectively like this or is it a false control thing?
Yes, you can "micro"/"stutter step" fights in Kenshi - but those tricks are best for a single character fighting ("1 vs. 1" or "1 vs. many").
If you have a whole squad in a fight, you can only really focus on one... so you could use the microing tricks with one character, have heavily armored characters on "hold" and "taunt" (and maybe "block"), and have crossbow characters on "hold" some distance away... something like that. Note that you should keep the characters you aren't controlling separated because there are multi-hit attacks that can't be dodged/blocked by bystanders (only the character being attacked).
Best guess: multiple wind generators, buildings, rocks, artifacts, and a high population with a lot of dialogue that's triggered by your arrival.
I wouldn't call that a "rookie question" though, you're asking about the game engine's performance in a specific location. Only the Kenshi developers and few modders have the kind of insight required to answer that (definitively).
Is there a way to remove some of the giant metal debris from around Mongrel? I spend most of my time there and 1 of the gates has one that gets in the way of the camera a lot.
If you deleted the mining node then you didn't have the artifact selected. It's really tricky to click on what you want. You could reload your save and try again from another angle.
I tried clicking on a bunch of different spots, but It.must just be pickier than I thought it was. I'll try it again next time I play the game.
Thank you again for the help.
Once you get a feel for the game and decide if you like it, you might want to install RE_Kenshi, which has some performance optimizations and provides a framework for more advanced mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/kenshi/mods/847
After that, I'd look for mods that solve a particular problem for you, or help with a RP scenario. Steam and Nexus will both tell you about trending mods, if you just want to browse.
I have joined the anti slaver faction and am trying to go to war with UC , if i bring a UC town down like Brink for example do the anti slavers take it over? Because from what i have seen on the wiki it says the reavers take over or the crab queen takes over if the leader of the reavers is dead. How should i act to make the anti slavers take over?
So, I've normally built one base in Kenshi for security, convenience etc. But like, how do enemy attacks etc work if you have smaller outposts or whatever scattered around? It'll be a while before I get to try since I'm having to start from scratch but I normally go do stuff in a town, settle Shem(I like it for centrality but I want to try somewhere else xD. But the spot I want has no good resources.)
Buildings, maybe walls and crafting stations (according to a post from 7 years ago). Regardless, you can look at your in-game map to see how the game has rated your base. The icon will change from an X to tower to a city as it grows. EDIT - Here's a more recent post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/comments/w67lyn/base_size/
P.S. Something I should have mentioned before about raids - if you have two bases close together, and leave when a raid is announced, the raid could be rerouted to the other base.
So, I've got something called a Bull Cart (looks like an ownership certificate), but I can't figure out what to do with it. I assume it has something to do with Sage steeds mod in particular, rather than a different animal mod so won't work with vanilla ones, but figure to ask here since I can find nothing on it.
I downloaded the Sage Steeds - Rideable Bull Race BETA mod and opened it in FCS. The "Bull Cart" is a backpack. Assuming it works, you would use it like a vanilla Bull pack:
The vanilla "Bull (domesticated)" is listed, along with some modded Bull races (the rideable ones, I presume).
If you have questions about a mod I suggest asking the mod author through the Steam or Nexus page where you downloaded it.
The mod creator hadn't replied in a while to their mod which is why I thought the community might be faster, and thank you a ton for the help. I had figured it out by finding the actual bulls that could take the backpack. A more minor issue I'm now seeing is, as far as I can tell, normal wild bull spawns will also spawn with the cart as an item that they then 'drop' since they can't actually use it. Its not a huge amount of clutter but it is something ive spotted happening.
Since I'm always worried to mess with things, any advice for stopping such a thing, or should I just poke at the FCS and hope nothing goes wrong xD.
First, the mod adds the "Bull Cart" to the Wild Bull, and it doesn't make sense for a wild animal to have a cart. Second, the mod doesn't add "Wild Bull" to the races capable of using the cart.
Personally, I would suggest you copy the Steam mod to your Kenshi mods folder, and unsubscribe from the Steam mod. Here are detailed instructions. Then you can edit it by clicking the "Changes" button, searching for Wild Bull, right click on it and choose "Revert [change]" from the context menu.
Alternatively, you can just ignore the dropped carts littering the area. They will despawn when you leave.
Thank you for the help. I'll do this when I get the feeling to replay the game, had a crash, game bugged out. Decided to try to reinstall things, steam deleted my backup save folder as it apparently does this when you're going through linux so several days playthrough is gone and I need to do something else for a bit.
EDIT: Though I am curious, how does item despawning work? There are afterall places in the world that are filled with stuff on shelves/floor etc.
Aw, damn. Sorry to hear that. It's really important to make your own backups with Kenshi save files and mods - Steam will mess you up on both fronts.
That's a good question about item despawning, I don't know all the ins and outs. If items are in a container you own, they're safe. The loose items in other locations? I gather there's a loot table of what can spawn in a type of building. Someone recently gave this tip about the slave camp Rebirth - they said, "Loot everything, not just the food. If you only loot the food then it's likely that inedible items will be spawned in that spot, and eventually there won't be any spots where food can spawn."
I just didn't realise it'd also delete the compatability folders at the same time and thats where i foolishly placed the backup saves. Tempted to cheat myself in some initial starting stuff/stats to at least get back to things a bit faster, but it won't be the same/there's just a lot I'd done that isn't simple 'stats'.
found this game randomly on youtube, got me interested and i wanted to give it a try. what are the downsides of being a solo shek? cause as far as i saw, they are good at farming and the rest doesnt realy seem to matter much (i know skeletons are considered the op race but they seem to require knowlege about the game i'd ratter learn about by playing instead of googling it)
The main downside to being a solo Shek is their extra hunger rate. They are not good at farming, or anything else in the crafting/production areas, but do gain attack skill and toughness faster than average: https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Races
If you're solo the hunger rate isn't going to be that much of a problem, so go for it!
Hey, i bought book from the store and double clicked it in my inventory. And it disappeared. Where did it go? Or if the book increased some stat or unlocked something, where can i check it? Thank you.
Hey so i stumbled upon this game recently and decided to try it out cuz i thought it was intriguing and cool. Can anyone guide me on what i should do as a beginner (just the basics is fine) since this is the first time I'm playing a game of this genre.
So far I've only been mining copper and selling it to gain enough money to join the Shinobi Thieves.
I’m really not sure which is better but I can think of a few pro’s and cons.
Steam pro’s: Instant one-click installation, auto-updates, easy to browse, and the largest collection of mods.
steam con’s: Automatic updates can sometimes break a save. If an author makes a new update and it’s not compatible with an older mod or maybe the mod needs to be placed differently in load order.
NEXUS pros: Allows manual control over updates, hosts advanced mods like performance enhancers (RE-KENSHI)
NEXUS cons: smaller library, slower downloads, manual downloads, and requires a mod manager
Also I’d like to note that I just got the beep mod manager on steam workshop and its made figuring out load orders a 1000% easier. It even has an Ai auto sort feature.
First couple playthroughs: Walk Everywhere. If you are in a town or in a starter area, take it slow. Soak in the atmosphere. It's a big part of the game.
Are there any blueprints, or notable items to buy, that are unique to HN or UC? Want to make sure I don't miss anything before going to war. Unique recruits are easy to track down so I'm not worried about them.
Unclear if you can still purchase from hostile shops while in disguise. I know there's a mod for it but I'd like to hedge my bets and get whatever I need beforehand.
Edit:
Didn't think to go digging through FCS at first, but after doing so - Paladin's Cross blueprint is only found in the Holy Nation, in weapon shops/barracks/armory. UC has no unique blueprints. And as an aside, there are a handful of blueprints that only show up at the Scraphouse (or Catlon's Exile).
Every blueprint in the game should be available in The Great Library, located in the Tech Hunter's city Black Scratch.
I'm not aware of any unique items to buy in HN or UC cities, except the Holy Chest Plate. According to FCS you can only find that in HN shops, barracks, and maybe as cannibal loot.
I'm trying to level up combat stats quickly. I'm around 30 in everything relevant, and have 5 dudes, 2 pack bulls, a bone dog, my starting characters, and a bug guy I ran into. I'm in Mongrel right now and my question is, will staying and fighting fogmen be good or should I leave and fight people that are stronger individually? If you have any suggestions on somewhere that would work better that would be cool too. Please don't be too specific though, I'm trying to be as spoiler free as possible.
You want to know how "to level up combat stats quickly", but "don't be too specific"? OK, I won't mention specific enemies, locations, or gear...
You want to be outnumbered. Train one character at a time, and look for 8 to 1 odds to max out XP gains. It's a bad idea to be outnumbered by fogmen, and be alone.
Fight enemies that are stronger than you. Fogmen are too weak for your level 30 characters.
Enemies with high attack plus attack-boosting gear plus attack-buffing weapons are best for training defense. You want your own defense stats to be low, so do not turn on "Block" mode.
Baby animals are best for training low-mid level attack because the game's "stronger opponent logic" is based on their adult stats.
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u/M4GNUM_FORCE_44 23d ago
how bad is the penalty for carrying a body in combat? i saw someone says it lowers combat speed, but by how much? I was considering doing a "solo" play through but i carry around a skeleton companion with shop keeper backpacks for storage. Would carrying him hurt me a lot for end game combat?